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The family Values Tour is a huge event wrapping up this week and they've got their tour on a Platial map.
They have an impressive line-up: Korn, Evanescence, Atreyu, Flyleaf, Hellyeah, Trivium... to name only a few.
You can see the map on the Friendster profile of Evanescence, the family Values Tour Friendster page, and on HellYeah's Myspace.
In the past couple of days, we've made time for some exploring, here's one story.
A guidebook in the house listed the five "Best Swimming Pools" in town. We knew from the kids that the one closest to us was dirty and too cold so we opted to try the one that said "Heated" from the list. It wasn't far away but it was another world. A world of strip malls, satellite dishes, the Mexican Wal-Mart Mega, and auto repair shops that littered the wide, dusty, hot road but at last we arrived at the swimming pool at La Siesta Hotel. The surrounding area was already depressing and we imagined this our oasis, however, the hotel was more of an RV park and the heated pool was so murky that you couldn't see beneath 1.5 feet of the deep green algae pond. Slightly fazed, we started walking back in the hopes of haling a taxi to another part of town. But as we crossed the already surreal street we saw an even more surreal and out of place object; a circus tent right in the middle of this suburban desert. It looked abandoned but we approached and asked the two people standing outside about hours. They said the circus had started just 10 minutes prior and we should come on in. The sur-reality of the moment was too perfect to pass up and we went in.
This circus is what you dream you will encounter when you go on a random exploration. A cross between Santa Sangre and The Simpsons. The huge tent housed only 50-60 people all sitting close to the single ring. It was the perfect production value; glitter falling sprinkled by the trapeze artist - no flawless overdone high production event where you cannot see what is being performed. More like our favorite indy circuses in Brooklyn or Amsterdam BUT with incredibly talented performers who probably are not Burners. There were pink poodles dancing salsa, Capoeira dancing pole climbers, contortionists, acrobats and more. Then at intermission all of the performers came out to the crowd to sell candy apples, key chains, light sticks and other circus fare. At the end, they all lined up to shake our hands. Wonderful. On a side note, jason was asked to be in a short film of a local producer but we wont be here long enough. He was asked to play someone who had been in the Iraq war.
A successful adventure.
We did end up finding the best pool nearby from a tourist we met in the park. Heated AND clean and almost decadently picturesque. Hotel Aldea.
There is no replacement for a local mom to connect with resources you need. But it should be easier than it is to find places you need ...fast. We had two experiences where we found our way only due to the new Platial mama and housekeeper of our house in San Miguel de Allende, Margarita. She has given us a new inspiration- a new bar for what our Place Discovery engine has to achieve.
Two days ago, our nanny (my sister-in-law) got sick and we're here for work so we needed a new nanny right away- Margarita to the rescue and we had a perfect girl within 30 minutes- the kids adore her and so do I. She's local so knows all the best kid-spots in town. Then today, the same nanny who got sick needed to go to the doctor- we didn't find anyone convenient online, in the guide book or the guest book at the house but Margarita brought us to the doctor two doors down. (Yes, there was a tiny and very good medical center two doors from us and we didn't know because of the beautiful, mysterious doors with no or very subtle signage) who saw her literally immediately. Mexico really has it together for accommodating spontaneous life events. (The medical system here is accessible, high quality and lacks the self consciousness you can sometimes find in the US. Therefore our doctor could be open, honest, fast and provide a vitamin based treatment.)
We haven't needed to eat out at touristic restaurants because none of us have tasted food this good in a LONG time.
Polzole rojo
Margarita
So my new approach, as soon as you get to a new city, find a local mama. And my new goal, become as good a resource as a local mama!
Thanks so much to the great little crew at the Computer and Technology Club for meeting with us and getting folks involved. We look forward to next week, when we'll do a little demo and then go for a mapping walk of the central city. Special thanks to Stan who we got to hang out with all day while he kicked off his social mapping video project from our Platial Mexico HQ. Stan also told us a great story about when he visited Nicaragua after the regime change. They used all of their street signs for scrap metal and the historic learning necessary for receiving directions was almost unbearable; take a left at the tree which was there until about 5 years ago...
The end of the discussion turned to custom vocabularies for communities; a concept dear to our brains, especially Chrisg's. We're just getting there now after laying the groundwork for the past 1.5 years. How do you begin to structure data collection in ways specific to communities like sailing (who care about wind speed), wine, and surfing. The Gentilly project Dan Gillmor has been working on will be our first live implementation of this customization. Imagine my delight when we didn't even bring this up- the group was already there thinking about this, asking for this. Our upcoming api release will offer developers a chance to create their own vocabularies and their own post pages. Step by step the fog is lifted and massive geographic relevance abounds making it easier for all of us to find our way anywhere!
The problem with mapping San Miguel was actually in geocoding and Google indeed has fairly close in satellite data - good enough to make this map anyway. We had to get the lat/long from Google Earth and enter it in as our starting point. Here's our start.
We also learned that in this micro focus group gps support was even more important than multiple languages. The street data/map data changes so rapidly in some countries that the only reliable way to say where you've been and annotate it is through gps. We had kind of shelved our gps work as a little luxurious for our tiny team, but we'll see.
Enrique Iglesias is back with a new single called “Somebody’s Me” off of his latest record, Insomniac. To promote the new single, he's got a fan map on his Myspace. Drop by Enrique’s myspace page and add yourself to the map.
The new music video is set to debut mid-August with a English version, a Spanish version, and a third version to come out later this year.
Don’t forget to add a couple pictures to Enrique’s map to show where you're “Somebody’s Me” on the map.
Google maps has no street data or close-in sat data.I'll be trying out Virtual Earth, Yahoo! and maybe even Mapquest to get this going. So, here are places I intend to map once I figure out how to plot...
Biblioteca Publica
This is our real HQ; beautiful courtyards, kids room with movies and kids music lessons, theater, cinema, computer lab (Tomorrow I get to check out the local weekly computer and technology club meeting), cafe and the only free wifi outside of our pad that we've found. Although no one seems to block access to their networks so free wifi has not been challenging. On the surface San Miguel de Allende is not very geeky but it's got an underbelly I can tell. Stay tuned.
Insurgentes #25
Telephone: 152-0293 Fax: 152-7048
E-mail:
Sandra@bibliotecasma.com
Web page:
www.bibliotecasma.com
Hours: 10am-7pm, Sat 10am-2pm
Large English collection
Library card available - temporary and yearly
Parque Benito Jaurez
Fountains, flowers, huge playground with climbing walls and net climbing for all ages and a place to go running where you won't break your ankle on narrow cobble stone streets or rudely bump into strangers walking single file to avoid traffic.
Gordita Lady
Yum. Under the bridge at Calle Canal.
Santa Clara
Ice cream fix and great spot for all things dairy like Apple yogurt and Mexican cheese.
Ancha de San Antonio #1
Telephone: 152-5141
E-mail:
staclara@mpsnet.mx
Hours: 10am-9pm
Ice cream, yogurt and coffee
La Tienda
We've traded the life of whiteboard paper and markers for huge scrolls of paper and colored pencils
Insurgentes #25 (next to Biblioteca Publica)
Telephone: 152-0293
Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-4pm, Sat 10am-2pm
Cards and gifts
La Cava
Zacateros #40 (corner of Tenerias)
Telephone: 152-1549
Hours: Mon-Fri 10pm-3pm and 5:30-8:30pm, Sat 10am-4pm
Closed Sunday
Fine Imported selection of cheeses & foods
The Tuesday open Market is next-door to Giganti heading out of town,
a very large
affair, great for secondhand larger size clothing - fruit & veg -
bric-a-brac
- secondhand
& new handmade furniture - tools - food stalls - CD's & DVD's and
treasures of all kinds.
We did also sneak off to La Gruta yesterday. The kids loved it (so did we). 4 pools including kids pools fed from hotsprings and even a cave with a magic shower and a long line. Hanging out with small children is always a good way to practice a new language. They overcome language barriers so quickly. We had a group of Mexican girls join us for a playdate at La Grunta after only 2 days of Emiko being too shy to say "Hi, I'm Emiko" in Spanish.
It occurs to me I've never seen Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Now is a good time.
Come join Platial in Mexico anytime between now and August 26th! If you think you'll be around or are coming now that you have a reason just let us know. We've been wanting to travel as a team for a long time-- shake up our thinking with more global outreach and collaboration. Plus it's an extended hackathon where we can work together and adventure together 20 hours a day. Depending on the momentum of this week, we're thinking of hosting a WhereCamp of sorts August 17th and 18th. We'll be in DF, San Miguel de Allende and Querétero.
We scored a fantastic house in San Miguel from friends from which to start this experiment. It's hard to tell if your indoors or outdoors in every room of the house. Fountains, tilework and patios abound. The experiment goes something like this; If we are building a global resource doesn't it make sense to be untethered and actively collaborate with developers, artists, thinkers and users around the world? The challenge is to do this cheaply, effectively and with visible advancement and development.
We just arrived a few hours ago so please give us recommendations of where to go and who to meet!
If it works out, heres where we hope to go...
We're banking on our new friends at Coushsurfing to show us how it's done!
Today I stumbled across one of the more bizarre community mapping projects I've seen on Platial so far. Find He Man.
Yes, He Man, of Masters of the Universe and Castle Greyskull fame. It seems that a new Masters of the Universe movie project is in pre-production and planned for 2009.
I suspected that this Find He Man project might have something to do with the movie plans, but the more I look at it, the more I doubt it. For one thing, they are recording sightings of one particular He Man, who seems to be a Manhattan character the blog authors noticed. It's a funny project, but clearly bordering on the stalker-like. I hope He Man has a sense of humor.
Class of 3000 is the latest project from Andre 3000, famous for his work as half of the pop band Outkast.
Class of 3000 is a cartoon show. Andre does the voice of an entertainer-turned-teacher named Sunny Bridges. He's writing a new song for each episode and has a hand in production and writing, too.
If you or your kids are fans of Class of 3000, be sure to stop by the Myspace page and add yourself to the fan map.
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