I really like libraries. The concept and the physical entities themselves. There is something awe-inspiring about walking through shelfs holding thousands of books, most of which you will probably never read. It is also somewhat overwhelming if you're trying to find something to read but not sure what. I wish there was a better way to browse and preview books, like how on iTunes you can watch movie previews before renting (I have spent way too much time watching movie previews, and have you noticed how all movie previous are so ridiculously silly and cheesy, regardless of the quality of the film being previewed?) I spent today searching for a new book to read. I don't really care what genre, but I focused my searches on sci-fi because it was easy to search for yet broad. I did some google searches and found a few lists of recommended sci-fi, then searched for availability at the campus library (unfortunately the town library is closed today). Only a few of the books/series I searched for are at the campus library, and of those one or two were actually available. I settled for a book called "Gateway" by Frederik Pohl. It was written in 1977 and got some good reviews. Sometimes the more "classic" sci-fi annoys me if they try to be technicall because they more often than not miss the mark and date themselves pretty horribly with references to advanced computers and machines that still use the likes of analog magnetic data storage. Not that I'm expecting anything like that, it was just a random thought. Another random thought related to that is that Isac Asimov writes in such a way that doesn't fall into those potholes, which is good.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit off topic. I originally was going to focus on the broader concept of libraries, books and reading. I do think that eBooks and eBook readers are the future of books for better or worse. I really like the idea of having a single device that can hold hundreds of books and has access to a hundred thousand more (and climbing) like Amazon's Kindle. However, I think possibly the best thing about "traditional" books is the ability to lend or give one to a friend to share some great story that you just read. It would be great if eReaders could implement some kind of peer-to-peer lending scheme like you can do with real books but unfortunately I don't think Amazon has any motivation to do something like that as they are mostly interested in book sales.

I also don't like the idea of missing out on the experience of visiting an actual brick and mortar library. Yes, it is far more convenient to simply search for, purchase and read a book on a small electronic device in the comfort of your own home, or wherever you might happen to be, but there is something to be said for walking through stacks of books, breathing in that old book smell, searching for that call number you scribbled down onto a scrap of paper. Perhaps, in a way, this experience can be maintained in the eBook world with the ever advancing and more popular virtual reality programs. Second Life comes to mind as probably the most well known. I haven't logged on in a while but from what I remember it did a fairly decent job of creating an immersive environment given the limitations of computer hardware. Skip ahead 10 years or so when 3D graphics cards are spitting out photo quality renderings at 30+ frames per second and 3D displays or goggles and haptic gloves are as ubiquitous as the optical mouse is now and one can certainly imagine browsing a virtual library complete with picking random books off the shelve to flip through and checking out any hot academic type guys browsing the same stacks. It might still be missing the old book smell unless someone comes up with a good way of generating odors electronically.

Isn't it interesting how all of a sudden you can start to see a random stranger seemingly all over the place? I guess in this particular incident it isn't ALL over the place, but it felt like it. A few weeks ago I got on the Smart Way bus for my weekend jaunt to Colorado. A curly haired guy got on the bus a few minutes after me and I noticed he had a University of Colorado shirt on and wondered if he was going to Colorado as well. At the airport he ended up being next to me in the check-in line and at some point the counter person verbally confirmed that I was going to Denver. When curly haired guy heard that he ask which route I was taking. I replied "through O'Hare" and he said something to the effect that that was the way he was going after the airline switched his flight for some reason. I probably could have been more sociable and continued the conversation and made a new friend, but I was in kind of a not-really-motivated mode and so left the conversation at that. Of course I noticed him on each of the flights to Denver and also ended up sitting across from him at the gate waiting for our connection at O'Hare. He made a friend there while I just pretend to not be listening in on their conversation. Each time I saw him I felt slightly guilty for not continuing a friendly conversation when I had the chance, at this point it just felt awkward to.

So anyway, as luck would have it, he was on both of my return flights to Roanoke, the Smart Way bus back to campus and then we both rushed over to Burrus to catch the Hethwood bus. He high tailed it to that bus because it left I think 10 minutes after Smart Way arrived at Squires. I felt slightly superior for being more experiences with such things and only walked at a brisk pace, confident I'd make the bus on time. The whole bus ride (all 10 minutes of it) I kept thinking what an awkward coincidence it would be if he ended up getting off at the same stop as me and living next door or something. No luck with that, he stayed on when I got off at the Haymarket square stop. Anyway, I spent the 30 second walk to my front door feeling stupid/awkward/antisocial for never making any small talk but assured myself it didn't matter at this point because I'd never see him again.

Well, naturally that wasn't the case or I wouldn't be writing this post. I decided to spend the afternoon/evening downtown after being in the house all weekend feeling slightly sick and my first stop was the library to look for a good book to read (didn't end up finding one). Well, as I was walking in, here comes curly haired dude walking out and we kind of made that awkward eye contact that's like yeah, we recognize each other but don't know each other well enough to even say "hi" . Le Sigh. I wish I was more gregarious and friendly.

Belgium is a very beautiful country, and we all agreed, friendlier than France when it comes to interacting with random people on the street. We started in Brugge, which lived up to its expectations for charm and beauty. Carl was informed of a good Hostel near the center city which turned out to be very decent indeed. The dormitory style rooms slept 15 people and I think there were 3 rooms on our floor that shared a very small bathroom with a single toilet (a sink was out in the common area). It wasn't that much of a problem though, I guess for the most part everyone was on different poop schedules. There was one shower room for the place which was basic but go the job done.

We did the important things to do in Brugge: climed the 366 steps of the belfry tower and then ate frieteken with all sorts of fun and tasty sauces in The Markt, walked along the canals, visited the old windmills and chilled out in one of the pleasant and quiet parks. At the end of the day (by now it was Friday) we headed back to the train station where Curtis started his journey back to Amiens so as to make his flight back to the states Saturday morning and Carl and I headed up to Oostende. Since a lot happened in the 3 days I was in the Oostende area I will start a new post.

Where to begin? Maybe the beginning, but that might make for a long post if I try and put all the events of the last 13 days or so into one. My trip got off too a late start with a canceled flight out of D.C. But, when United gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? So I spent a day in D.C. and got to visit Stephen (who's parents graciously let me stay the night) and Emily, who's birthday it was, as I discovered after the fact. So, a day late to Paris, but I also was switched to a direct flight from D.C. which was nice.

I arrived in CDG a little bit early (well, early for the new, day late flight anyway), found my bag with no trouble (even though it had been been bumping around in the system since I left Roanoke the day before and had a flight change) and then found Carl who was nice enough to take an early train to meet me so I didn't get lost in the middle of France.

Amiens is a nice city, it has a population of around 160,000, so maybe about 3 times larger than Blacksburg or Amherst. Rather than go one by one through every little event I will just summarize: we ate lots of bread and cheese, went to Paris for the weekend where we visited the Eiffel Tower, some famous street and a famous arch thing which were nice, as far as streets and arches go, and the Louver. That place is huge and would probably take a couple days alone to just see everything they have there. We saw the important things, like some greek pots and famous statues, and of course, the Mona Lisa. Apparently, everyone who sees it says that it is smaller than they expected, and in this case, I will agree with everyone. Personally, I think it is overhyped, I mean, it's just a painting of some woman smiling. Don't get me wrong, it's nice and all, and I think Leonardo Dica--- I mean DiVinci, did a fine job, but when all is said and done, it's still just a painting of some woman smiling. Apparently not everyone is as cynical as me though because there was a constant crowd around the painting, everyone taking flash photography even though there were many signs posted (not to mention it is just common since, but unfortunately people are selfish little creatures and think only of their own selfs) prohibiting flash photography. I did take a photo too (without the flash, naturally), just to show that I was there.

So that was Paris, after a couple days of recoup in Amiens we went off to Lille, where it rained when we were outside and cleared up when we were inside. We just walked around and came across a rather nice cafe were I got a salad and a crêpe and our server called me a fat cow, which sounds much nicer when said in French.

That is it for France, off to Belgium, which I think deserves a separate post, just for organizational sake.

On Saturday I joined a group of grad students to do some volunteer work down at Miracle Farm in Floyd. It is a beautiful little and Bed & Breakfast run by a couple dedicated to organic growing and sustainability. The experience was truly enlightening and inspirational, it certainly reaffirmed my feeling that one way or another I will end up doing something similarly sustainable and back-to-naturey. If I can manage to incorporate my ECE and EE background, all the better.

Ed and Karen were exceptionally welcoming and friendly hosts, I guess to a degree you would expect that, being that they ran a B&B, but it seemed even more than that, immediately after introductions they treated us as if we were long-time friends. We all learned a lot (and yet still just a small fraction of what there is to learn) about running an organic, sustainable farm. The projects our group worked on ranged from moving fallen trees that would be used for fencing or building posts (black locust trees have especially hard, rot resistant wood that can be used untreated as fence posts and last for 30 years), to separating worms from compost in the worm bin, harvesting the wild lambsquarter (which was then made a delicious part of our potluck lunch) to preparing garden plots for planting. Throughout the day we learned about double digging and no-dig gardening techniques as well as general aspects of permaulture.

Suffice it to say, I had a great time and hope to make it a regular event.