Blogs about hospitality exchange: experiences, ideas, fun, software, philosophy.
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Last updated:
July 03, 2009 06:30 PM
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Last night I came back to Brussels from the Hacker Space Festival in Paris, which I greatly enjoyed. Big cheers to the people of the Hacker Space Brussels for the lift and the short tour of their romantic small artisan space!
For people interested in my lightning talks about PowerTOP, BeWelcome and the TransHackMeeting Istanbul 2010 I uploaded the presentation slides to my sandbox. Wow, that was a sentence with a lot of links. :)
Today I noticed that a green tick now appears on the images of CouchSurfing members who have paid for verification. I notice these ticks on groups, I assume they’re all over the site. Wherever you see a thumbnail picture of a person, it marks who have paid and who have not.
This continues what Jim Stone started back in New Zealand all those years ago. A campaign to drive verification revenues ever higher. Given that you only need to pay once to become “verified”, CouchSurfing International Inc rely only on a continual stream of new members to make “donations”. If they can increase the percentage of people “donating”, more money for the coffers.
Perhaps we can subvert this new feature by framing our own profile pictures and adding a different symbol to donate that we opt out of the so-called “verification” system. We could even combine that with a real verification system based on the verification of actual identity and physical location. Food for thought… 
I read that CouchSurfing uses SphinxSearch to improve member search. The software is available under the GPL or a commercial license.
I mention this here in the interests of collating technical data on how CS is built.
The “Brainstorm” group is famous for being a place to discuss new features and policies on couchsurfing.org . It is now frozen. You can’t post or reply (but it is still readable).
Chronology:
Until the 2006 crash, Brainstorm was a place where the users and the admins could discuss about new features and on how to implement them. Following the crash, all admins stopped replying.
The group keeped the Brainstorming action but a growing ressentment at the silence from the admins lead to many reactionary threads. The ideas matured there never found their way up to the top of the pyramid. The unmoderated group grew more and more filled with aggressivity.
In late 2008, an active moderator was appointed (the founder of the group never actually posted). It sanitized the atmosphere a bit.
Then it goes rather fast. According to the system clock:
3 June 2009 - 3:17 pm, user “Julien” posts a topic about stopping all brainstorming because it was wasted energy, and renaming the group “The revolutionary faction of CouchSurfing”.
3 June 2009 - 4:57 pm, user “Marcus Elder“, the founder of the group, post a topic on what kind of group he meant “Brainstorm” to be.
6 June 2009 - 11:30 am, user “valeri“, the active moderator, resigns from her function
About the same time (but it must have been later), user “Marcus Elder“, the founder of the group, post a topic saying that the group is frozen.
It is now impossible to post or to reply to the Brainstorm group.
Context: this happens one week before the “Vienna calling” event that is meant to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the registration of the domain name “couchsurfing.com”. A thread started by user “Julien” on 4 June 2009 - 6:57 pm was collecting questions from the group that he was going to ask the founders of the website if he got the chance, as he is going to the Vienna calling event.
My personal comment: Something evil this way comes.
Check here and here. You’ll see “Blocked Site Error.”
The site used to be available in the wayback machine, so it would seem that somebody at CouchSurfing International Inc has specifically requested that the site be removed from the archive. Is there any legitimate reason why such a request would have been made? Personally, I can’t think of any.
I’m wondering what happened with me that I am actually writing an article on Opencouchsurfing.org. Reason for this wondering is that I wish the users, AND OWNERS the best of Couchsurfing.com.
MySQL and OTAP
Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case. In my short time as System Administrator at Couchsurfing, I’ve seem it happening more than often that the website was suddenly down. In 99% of the cases there was a change in the code, causing the downtime of one part (or even worse: the whole website). The second cause was MySQL, which just is crappy with the setup of Couchsurfing. In this case, the NDA caused good people to leave.
Downtime
Lately, I’ve heared more moaning of the website being suddenly down. From my place (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), nothing seems to be wrong. Until lately. My mailbox is lately flooded of the loadbalancers that Couchsurfing use, and are no longer accepting connections. With the processing-power that couchsurfing does have (more than 7 webservers *AT LEAST!*), several database-servers, I unfortunately must conclude that the only reason why couchsurfing currently *FAILS* is the IT-management team of couchsurfing, especially the development-team.
Development-team
So, can we conclude that the development-team fails? Unfortunately, this question must be answered as a no. Unfortunately, because otherwise the Couchsurfing Corpganization would be able to ditch the programmers, and get new, well payed, other guys willing to work their asses off.
The problem is deeper: CS is build in a iterative way: once build by Casey, extended by several guys. Unfortunately, the CS-MT is unable to get a firm grasp at the whole, is not willing to make it open-source, and is not able to program it the right way.
OTAP
Even worse, the management has desided that *THE WAY* to program couchsurfing is to have several programmers in several timezones, programming at different (or the same?) things at the same time. In development-land (for what I have heard), a socalled OTAP-Street (Ontwikkeling, Testen, Acceptatie, Productie), meaning a line of Development, Testing, Acceptation and production, is *THE* way to develop things. I must say that I have said this several times to Casey and Weston and they claimed “it was to difficult”. With that decision they also chose a method that gave the following results:
Now, would this above error be there when a decent method of development had been chosen? I sincerely doubt it.
Money
This makes me conclude that Couchsurfing is *DEAD*. Yes, indeed, I must say this with pain in my heart, the current way CS works (ignoring willing programmers, DBA’s etc) is not the way CS will reach the 2 million people (?) they wish to reach. I sincerely hope that BeWelcome.org will not have the same problem.
Conclusion
Walter said it right: 1 million (?) people can’t be ignored. From my stance, we will have a favour of people applying for our couch via BeWelcome. I must conclude that my eyes are (unfortunately) opened. And that my English is worse than that I have hoped
Today I noticed that the CouchSurfing 2008 finances have been updated for the whole year. I whipped up a graph to show where the money goes.
Employee related expenses account for 62.8% of total expenses. In that figure I’ve included salaries, tax, payroll fees, rent, travel, food, and staff development. Admin expenses includes anything not in hosting / verification. Hosting is server costs plus telephone / communication. I suspect most of the telephone / communication expenses belong in Employees, but I left it there to be on the safe side. Finally, verification, the source of 99% of the income, costs only 6% of total expenses. I included printing and mailing in the verification cost.
The numbers are:
Employees: $405′440.59
Admin Expenses: $116′901.33
Hosting costs: $86′723.33
Verification: $36′589.83
It costs more than $400k to staff CS Inc with how many employees? Five? That would be a cost of $80k per person per year.
Hopefully this helps to understand where the money goes.
If you’re interested, you can see some overview visitor statistics for couchsurfing.com on quantcast.
Why CouchSurfing is enabling QuantCast to measure visitors is an interesting question. No doubt this will spark lots of “theories”.
Personally, I think it’s interesting to note that the weekly reach of couchsurfing.com is circa 300k people, nothing like the 1m “members” that CS Inc claims (at best their are 1m profiles).
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://www.percona.com/mysql/xtrabackup/0.5/xtrabackup-0.5-macos.x86_64.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf xtrabackup-*-macos.x86_64.tar.gz
$ cd xtrabackup*
innobackupex-1.5.1 and xtrabackup. You need to install these into a directory that appears in your $PATH. In my case, I am going to group it install it where my MySQL binaries are located (/usr/local/mysql/bin):
$ ls
innobackupex-1.5.1 xtrabackup
$ cp * /usr/local/mysql/bin/
$ mkdir -p /tmp/backup
$ innobackupex-1.5.1 /tmp/backup/
innobackupex-1.5.1 is a Perl script that insures that all of your non-InnoDB tables and other MySQL meta data is backed up. You can think of it as a wrapper around xtrabackup, which backs up the data inside InnoDB.
$ cd /tmp/backup
$ ls
2009-04-08_15-12-52
$ cd 2009-04-08_15-12-52
$ ls
backup-my.cnf mysql-stderr xtrabackup_binlog_info
employees mysql-stdout xtrabackup_checkpoints
ibdata1 test xtrabackup_logfile
mysql
innobackupex-1.5.1 --copy-back /tmp/backup/2009-04-08_15-12-52
Note that "Fun to use" doesn't sound much like a database, and "free from bugs" will always be a distant dream ;).
It was Easy to Use that got me into MySQL, but I think this is one of the goals that has lost focus over the years. If you look at bugs.mysql.com, there are a lot of annoying little S5 (Feature Requests) that would probably take the right person only a few minutes to fix. The sort of things I am talking about are:But they are probably never going to be fixed. I think it is sad to see that many MySQL users have now seen that these issues don't get fixed, so they no longer submit feature request bug reports. My theory is that:
I just got this art piece by email from a person unknown to me. It contains a HTML table with coloured cells that form the letters V I A G R A.
To trick spam filters spammers always need be one step ahead of filter maintainers, which results in a constant creative arms race, letting both sides dive deeper into existing technology. Our spam filter at Ecobytes for example looks into PDF attachments of emails, finds images with text and tries to read the text to search for offending words. I find that quite a performance for a machine a.k.a. toaster. But in this case the spammer actually used some retro thinking. Bravo! Good luck finding spam signatures in coloured tables, dear spam assassins. :)
Spam has been inspiring artists since a while now. Check out Alex Dragulescu’s beautiful Spam Plants, Linzie Hunter’s typographic Spam One-liners or the Spam Garden. On the other hand there is ASCII art spam too now.
Here is my response: I just wrote a table text generator, which you can use to create pretty text like in the image or to scramble your email address. :)
PS: Yes, this is the first post with an image on this blog. There will be more!
I saw a discussion about CouchSurifng International Inc attemping to trademark the term “CouchSurfing”. I feel like this is something I would like to take action on, but I’m not quite sure what action to take.
I guess that if we can find uses of the term “couchsurfing” before the incorporation of CS Inc, that would provide a basis to challenge the trademark registration. Does anyone have references to such uses?
Is this an issue worth pursuing? Comments on a postcard…
When one takes a look on HC/BW/CS from a distance, it can result in one’s smile: so many battles have already happened between these ideological networks - networks with pretty much the same goals. Most of my hospex communication went through HC, I know it, grew up with it - so this comic (click on a picture below) is mostly about HC. One can find it critical, but for me this is just… mostly some ironical notes about common issues one has to take into consideration when working within any of these networks. Enjoy it, and please give me a feedback!
You could pretty much figure out by Veit’s unguided flame against BeWelcome last year, that his income through adds on Hospitality Club was already dropping. But now it appears that there are hardly any volunteers left at HC: these days it takes more than 4 months to get your profile approved after you sign up to become a new member. Nice one if you plan to travel the next day and just found out about hospitality exchange.
Greetings new member. We have just accepted you as a new member of Veit’s Club. It took us more than 4 months to have you approved but finally you (if you still remember us?) can connect with Hostility Club, one of the most friendly clubs on the internet and in the real world. - Slighly adapted welcome message that new members receive.
It might be sad to see Hospitality Club, the first online hospitality exchange service that we shared but also the one that is well known for its censorship-issues, ceased to exist beyond a plane website. But such is life if the so-called leaders simply don’t respect their members and volunteers.
Maybe some of you have heard of such thing as the Unix time, counting the seconds since the 1 January 1970 - something like the beginning of the Unix age. This number is around 1234519870 right now and will reach 1234567890 tonight, Friday, 13 February 2009 23:31:30 GMT! I just spotted this while finding my way through database entries. If you are into numbers at all and into Unix-like things this will blow your mind, if you are not, you simply won’t care or even notice. :) However, it appears that completely normal people celebrate this day around the world. Join the party!
I've been working as a Ruby on Rails developer the last couple of months. It's interesting to see how my impression of MySQL changes when I'm on the other side - and using a development environment I am less familiar with. Here are a two things I wished I could have been able to do:
--log-warnings=2 is enabled, log all statements the server receives that cause warnings or syntax errors.--log-warnings=2 is enabled and --some-other-setting, log all statements which return empty results.Not that it caused me too much pain - but I think I could have benefited. I think I've read something about both of these before too... anyone know if it was in the Drizzle or Google patches?
Unfortunately the environmental activist summer camp that I attended the last seven years all over Europe, the gathering of idealists, mavericks and tree-huggers that changed my life into a nomadic hacktivist existence, is not going to happen this year. Unfortunately?
After some 20 years of Ecotopia the organising NGO EYFA, which I am part of as a board member and web-monkey, has decided to discontinue their annual summer camp under the name of Ecotopia. Some people on the EYFA board have not been so happy with this decision, but since the folks working in the office — who are doing most of the hands-on work — wished to radically change the summer meeting, including finding a new name, we found consensus on the issue.
According to what I heard last, EYFA will organise a different, much shorter meeting focussed on activism this summer and possibly the years to come. I heard the term conference-style somewhere. It’s all a bit vague and I’m curious to find out what’s it going to be. Update May 14th 2009: The new event is called Climate Action Camp and will take place near Antwerp 3rd to 9th of August 2009.
However, the Ecotopia biketour 2009 will take place in a similar fashion as before. Check the Biketour website for updates (no 2009 info at time of writing). As for Ecotopia 2010 the Ecotopian community is working hard on what in software development would be called a fork by the name of “Ecotopia?” — taking place near Belzig not far from Berlin. I’ll be there! :)
Renew, question, evolve, flow. Always.
What do you want to do with your life? What is your mission? This is what Casey and Heather ask you in the marketing video “Couchsurfing The Movie”.
We will choose three Missions and CouchSurfers to star as the subjects in our documentary “Couchsurfing: The Movie” (expenses paid! sic). This journey isn’t just about sightseeing, it’s about traveling with a purpose!
Maybe the idea seems good to the regular couchsurfer, but the status and funding of this project is completely unclear. The website is hosted by Entrip while the project is co-produced and created by Alexandra Liss, also the owner of the websites. In her CS-profile she explains it a little bit herself:
I met Casey Fenton, who recently commissioned me to create the feature length documentary “Couchsurfing: The Movie,”– loving life right now and all the possibilities that this journey will lead to…
In her profile she also mentiones that she is busy with raising sponsorships. It is unclear though what type of expenses and funding are related. Casey mentions in the video that flight-tickets are fully paid, but do people also get some pocket-money? And what if you go hitchhiking? It is also pretty insane to see Couchsurfing Inc. promoting unsustainable forms of traveling such as flying - by the way. And how much community money is actually going into this project?
Let’s see when this project is to start though. First deadline was set for December 15th but now it is January the 15th, according to csthemovie.com. Still, the site is not ready yet and you cannot signin, upload or for example “Rate Missions and Vote”. (See also the beta-site which is a bit further developed).
The video is great though. It makes you laugh, guaranteed.
hey,
my profile was deleted some six months back.
whatever the issues, i have promised not to repeat any mistakes again.
is there any chances of getting my profile back? or i am doing a futile exercise.
i feel one mistake of a CS lover like me should be ignored.
please be unbiased and take a decision.
waiting for a reply and comments.
best regards,
dr harpal singh
harrysmalhotra
If you want to know where the next CS collective will take place, just follow one of the CS bunnies. For two months now Pinkfish, has been traveling (with her expenses paid?) in a tropical wonderland, scouting a place for yet the next ‘collective’…
I’m traveling around in Costa Rica at the moment, in search of the perfect location/house for our next CS collective.
It makes you wonder, as you might think that after the CS leadership team settled down in San Francisco, they would be focusing on getting things done. But… on the contrary, they yet move again.
Changing the world, one decadent collective at a time.
Somehow, I always think it is funny when CS defines itself, knowing that whatever it says about being so wonderful and inclusive, doesn’t count for the organisation itself.
By the very definition of our mission, we have a commutation solution that is 100% inclusive. We invite everyone everywhere into the community: old, young, conservative, liberal, east, west, black, white, gregarious, introverted, rich or poor. The beauty of addressing a communications challenge of this nature—bridging cultural differences and building understanding between people around the world—is that the more diverse our membership base is, the more fully we will achieve our communications goals.
This excerpt is from the submission of Couchsurfing Inc. for the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), where Couchsurfing won the Award “for Excellence in New Communications” for Nonprofits November last year.
We operate on a shoestring budget. This has required us to become experts in distributing our workload to a large, often remote, volunteer work force. We currently only have four paid staff members. We have two approaches to make this happen: sophisticated online volunteering tools that allow hundreds of members to easily perform needed tasks such as individually greeting every new member, and responding to every member inquiry
If you feel like ranting protesting, comments go here.
We are just fresh in 2009 and CS finally launched its new feature: ‘News Channels’, one overview for all organizational communication towards all CS-member. It not only features the latest news from the organization and tech-news, it even hosts the earlier announced member-stories about hospitality experiences and also the news-letters that are supposed to arrive in your inbox soon again.
But what a completely uncoordinated launch this is. We’ve been anticipating this new features since a long while, and now that it is finally ready, you just have the feeling something is still not going right at the CS Basecamp. The only launch-news shown, dates back to news which is 4 months old, August and September 2008, and the thread on the communications channel that catches my eye the most is still the infamous ‘do we have a team?‘.
It could be just a simple lack of coordination but the impression you get from this launch is that volunteers are still not supported in the work they do. Imagine: you work hard on implementing a new system - or enthousiastic about writing news for the CS-members - but somehow you just don’t get the feeling you are receiving support from some key people to get this launched professionally. At the same time, while older volunteers are tired from their effort, there is a lack of empowerment of new volunteers, no news has been written, or the editors didn’t have access to the tools. Really, sometimes you just feel pity for the people that still work for Casey Couchsurfing Inc.
Anyway, let’s see how quickly this new feature will be used and how it will run. I just hope that somehow, the first news item will be a BIG apology from Casey himself about the 14,000 e-mails that got deleted corrupted while upgrading the messaging system last month, and an honest explanation why this took 3 days instead of an hour. Followed the next day by news about the 501c3 status, news about BaseCamp on the third day, new hires on the fourth, expenses and income of the past quarters on the fifth, and support for the OCS-campaigns on the sixth. Now that would be communication.
It always makes me happy to hear from Joe. He wrote something new: How mobile phones can replace a broken economy: The Mobile Manifesto:
When we talk about trouble with the economy, we’ve been overlooking an astounding opportunity. Something new is possible for the first time in thousands of years. If you care about the planet, if you care about your kids, if you care about other people, this is something to pay attention to.
While we continue to argue about capitalism and socialism, for the first time a third option is really possible. We can build a more sophisticated, dynamic, distributed approach to organizing labor and resources than has ever been attempted before.
It’s bold and sensible. It has made sense for the past couple of years, when it became clear to me that the deeper ideas behind the sharing of free software and free information are applicable to the real world, the real economy. It was no wonder I met Joe 2 years ago at the CouchSurfing Collective in New Zealand; it was amazing experience to work with him. His analysis of modern life is razor sharp and combined with his desire for change we could start seeing “actual people, in vicinity to one another, thinking about each others’ needs, and helping each other, in person and on the ground“.
Unlike existing networks based on short messaging (twitter, broadtexter, brightkite, etc), Groundcrew focuses on finding and coordinating like-minded strangers rather than friends. Groups form based on common beliefs, needs, and interests. Broad groups exist for those interested in good deeds, adventures, exchanges, and more.
Another differentiating factor is that Groundcrew aggregates information about members’ immediate availability for action, together with agents’ passions and dreams. This is opposed to other services (twitter, facebook) which work more generally with status updates and feeds.
Through Hitchwiki.org I found wikicostofliving.org. From the Main Page: “Wiki Cost of Living is the world´s most up-to-date international price comparison index thanks to people like you. You can edit any page right now.” So cool, I created an account, made an edit. Then I posted a request to put the wiki under a free license. Then my request was deleted and I was blocked from editing the wiki – forever. Weird huh? I guess it’s a clear message: The Secret to Traveling Big on a Tiny Budget can be found elsewhere.
Meanwhile, 4 hours driving from here hell broke loose.
To many people’s surprise - especially supporters of the OpenCS campaign - CS appeared on the list of nominees for the Open Web Awards. CS was nominated mostly because of the efforts of Ambassadors. In the end -after a voting round of 4 weeks - CS didn’t win at all though. Out of the three finalists CS ended up… last.
For those who feel disappointed now, don’t worry… there might be another chance coming up soon for a another award. Some people even want to get CS nominated for the Nobel Price of Peace….
Planning to buy some fancy new hardware by Apple, Fujitsu Siemens, Dell, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia or Sony? Well, think again! Did you ever wonder why electronics are so cheap, and getting cheaper by the day? Yes, new materials, more efficient production lines, higher number of items — but what about the people putting the parts together, doing the dull work that can not be automated?
The dark side of cyberspace is not the name of a new fiction by William Gibson, but a very real report about sweatshop labour at Chinese production facilities for consumer electronic brands — published yesterday by Berlin-based WEED (World Economy, Ecology & Development) and Hongkong’s SACOM (Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehaviour).
Apart from details about workers’ conditions and statistical facts the report contains various photos from inside the plants, secretly taken by the researchers and the interviewed workers. Read the report summary or download the full report (PDF, 1 MB) and see for yourself.
So, what to do? It is hard to avoid those brands, and even companies not producing at the factories mentioned in the report are likely to cut costs by buying extremely cheap labour. Currently there does not seem to be a way out. :-O Or is there?
In order to be able to be online a bit more I wanted to acquire a wireless router. Erga and I went to (believe it or not) a computer store called bug.co.il and bought an Edimax. Came “home” – the parents of a friend of Erga’s are traveling in South America. Connected the router. Couldn’t connect through wifi. Tried changing many settings – it takes 30 seconds for every setting. No wifi. Worked on other stuff. Tried changing many settings. No wifi. So I just went back to the store in the hope that they could give me another one. The 2 employees couldn’t even check if it worked or not, or if another machine would function. The girl told me to go home and call the hotline they have for cases like this and then I would be able to get it replaced or refunded if they agree. The guy who was busy selling a laptop was able to come up with a slightly better version: they will call themselves tomorrow morning and then they will call us with the outcome. Lesson learned: Next time I buy anything I want to see it working in the store, even if it’s just part of the functionality.
In recent years I didn’t make an effort, but I used to boycott Israeli products. No Tivall fake meat, no products with bar codes that start with 729. (These days I actually don’t buy Tivall because they put egg in their food.) I did this because I didn’t want to support the economy of a country that is actively oppressing and practicing apartheid. Now I can see that both Jews and Arabs are hit by a boycott, but I once I leave this country I will be more aware. For now, I console with learning a lot here. Not all is black and white. Most people in the army seem to merely be hanging around, kept silly for 2 to 3 years. Dressing up in a uniform to enjoy free bus rides – most “soldiers” of the Israeli army are not killing Palestinians at all. Some are put in confinement for breaking silly laws. The first weeks it’s a bit discomforting to see these kids walking around with automatic machine guns, but as anything, you get used to it. I will never forget the sight of this friendly drunk guy with a gun on his back in a supermarket in Jerusalem.
Buses in Jerusalem are terrible. Bus stops only show which lines are going there, no time schedule, no route information. And then the routes seem to be changing as well, without any form of notice, from one day to the next. Fortunately it’s very well possible to hitchhike inside the city. 5 stars to hitchhiking in Israel. Even now that it’s a bit colder, it just feels like summer in Amsterdam – except for the almost non-existent rain. Even at night you can be sure to arrive anywhere you want. Just don’t follow Israelis in their strategies. Somehow hitchhikers here seem to have a problem with using signs or showing a thumb. Signs in English are perfectly fine and so is creativity with your spots. People are keen to pick up European looking foreigners and that brings me to the best part: I’ve met a lot of friendly people here and I’m happy here.
Today is international Buy Nothing Day. Go ahead and try to buy nothing! If you are reading this today you most probably already failed. The electricity that powers your terminal, the Internet connectivity, the gas that heats up your room, today’s share of your health insurance - you buy all this from someone. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but one should be aware of the fact of constant consumption, and reflect on the consequences of each single intake.
The use of fossil fuel for heating is an obvious one, with climate change being discussed everywhere these days, but who supplies your Internet? Is there a big monopoly consortium behind the provider, are there maybe smaller, more ethical companies that can supply the same service? Can you switch your home or office to green electricity? What does your insurance company invest your money in? Find out!
So if every Euro/Dollar/whatever is a vote for a certain part of the economy, please be aware what or who you are voting for.
Here in Ankara I was encouraging people to take part in a small action, but I assume the late notice and the concept of culture jamming being somewhat unknown around here caused the lack of willing participants. So my host Gulnur (thank you for having me!) and I will go to the centre of town now to print some flyers and stickers and spam alternative meeting points with them. And hopefully right after today people will start to gather in large groups to prepare massive actions for next year’s Buy Nothing Day. ;)
As a nerdy sidenote: I just realised that Adbuster’s BND wiki is running on a Micro$oft powered webserver, see this error page. Not very revolutionary, dear Adbusters tech team. Please follow these instructions and apt-get install apache2. Or ask Ecobytes to host your wiki entirely on FLOSS. For free of course. :-P
> Hope you are doing fine… At the outset, I am V Kumara Swamy, a journalist
> with The Telegraph, Calcutta, India… I am doing a story on the concept of
> couch surfing and your friend Thomas Goorden recommended your name while
> responding to my queries on the same. He said that since you are a fairly
> frequent couchsurfer with some experience of India, you would be of great
> help to me.
> I thought an interaction with you would add immense value to my article.
> I would be extremely grateful if you could take some time out and answer my
> queries..
Hi Kumara,
Ok. Great!
I have started using another website for hospitality exchange in April 2004. Since then I’ve traveled extensively, mostly by means of hitchhiking and staying with local people – in Europe, South America,
the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia, China and currently the Middle East.
I have traveled in India once, but that was in 2001, before online hospitality exchange was widely spread. I had a completely different traveling experience, it was my first time out of Europe, so I was very unexperienced. I spent 9 weeks in India though and I had contact with the local population, but I exclusively stayed in guest houses. However, I spent 2 weeks in Udaipur to learn sitar and the teaching space was inside the teacher’s home – so I had food there and was even invited for a Hindu marriage ceremony.
For the short periods of time that I have had a more sedentary lifestyle – renting an apartment and working a day job – my guests were free to use anything they could find in my fridge (which is usually chockfull).
The trucker who took me to Istanbul from the Turkish border helped me find my way in the city, when he left other random strangers continued helping me find my way and (since I hadn’t acquired any Turkish money
yet) pay my bus tickets right up to the front door of a friend with whom I was going to stay. He was not home and his Kurdish neighbors who barely spoke English invited me to wait in their home, offered me
food, and I fell asleep on their couch and I woke up there the next morning. Muslim hospitality can be overwhelming.
Unfortunately I don’t have any experiences as a couchsurfer in India. I am looking forward to go back to India some day though. And though I’ve successfully hitchhiked almost anywhere I am a bit worried about
the possibilities of hitchhiking in India.
I hold an MSc in mathematics and work as an internet consultant (here and there, now and then), but most of my online time goes into non-profit wikis and other forms of social use of the internet (though I recently started two wikis with which I want to make some money: visawiki.org and cashwiki.org). The internet offers new modes of sharing, both online and in real life. CouchSurfing is one way. (I’ve volunteered for the couchsurfing organization for 9 months, but I’m not very happy with the direction chosen by the couchsurfing leadership.) I think we will see much more of this in the coming years, online systems for coordination that allow people to live their lives in more pleasant ways (check e.g. groundcrew.us). Besides that I love learning languages and the restriction of only 10 languages on couchsurfing profiles is a bit annoying 
Ok. Good luck!
namaste,
Kasper
I just read midsch’s posting about his helplessness in the hospitality exchange scene… He described the different situations quite good. However, my view on it and the possibilities connected to it are not as dark than his are…
It does not matter if CouchSurfing, HospitalityClub, GlobalFreeLoaders, BeWelcome… hospitality exchange pages have numerous times been described as the most useful sites in the web as they bring people together in real life. Since then numerous new hospitality exchange communities popped up to establish their own community.
But why establish your own community in times of Facebook APIs, Open Social and Drupal? Why not connect all those different communities together? Why not develop a Drupal module (http://www.drupal.org) that
offers all those established communities the possibilities to meet each other in real life?
I started a project on Amazee.com (as I have been around there when I wanted to bring the thing on paper), devoted to the development of a Drupal module for decentralized hospitality sites. Let us continue to learn from each other - here in the web, but also in real life. So why not spent our energy in this way?
If I read the 2008 CouchSurfing Inc finances (citation) correctly, CS Inc is on track for income in excess of $600′000 USD this year. Contributed support for 1 Jan - 31 Mar is listed as $155,616.73.
Web/ Internet/ Host Fees - $ 2,960.59
Telephone & telecommunications - $ 2,208.03
Equip rental & maintenance - $ 13,923.46
Salaries of Professional Staff - $ 19,384.68
Payroll Taxes - $ 1,955.63
Office Expenses/ Supplies - $ 3,195.01
Rent, Parking, and other occupancy - $ 4,777.81
Meals/ Groceries - $ 10,895.37
Total cost of running the site around $19′092.08. Total salary bill (payroll plus taxes) $21′339.63. Total expenses related to “staff” around $40′207.82. A total of more than $10′000 spent on meals / groceries!
The total “staff” cost is more than twice the actual hosting cost. Yet since the organisation has added so many “professional staff” I see little difference in the actual site. Few new features, little increase in stability. Certainly no change in transparency or solving any of the “we’re too busy to publish details” problems.
CouchSurfing might well have an income in excess of half a million dollars this year. Looks like it’s becoming a viable business opportunity.
Whenever I set an alarm, I don’t actually need it. At 5:30 I woke up, took some food from Cocina Robino, walked to the traffic lights at the Jan van Galenstraat and smiled. After about 15 minutes a painter with an Native American name listening to good old Gabber stopped for me. In an unexpected preview for what was to come he sped through the red light after getting off the highway to pick up his colleague. They were driving to Utrecht and dropped me off at the last gas station on the A2 before the turn to the A12.
My signs were “Arnhem A12 oost” on one side and “Belgrado Istanbul” on the other side. For an hour or so I received a lot of smiles, especially when I told them my actual final destination. I had been smiling and walking around to find a ride onto the A12, in vain. Talked to a guy who would be willing to go out of his way a little bit. Walked back, and then, for the first time in my hitchhike career I was asked to leave the premises (of a gas station at least, some shitty motel manager sent me and amylin away, in the New Zealand rain of 2006). “Company policy”, the manager said. “Never experienced this company policy before”, I said smilingly. When walking to the Rijkswaterstaat property the guy I talked to waved at me and I was back on track. Arnhem with a trucker, Cologne with a Polish businessman, Frankfurt with a Dutch couple picking up a special bicycle with their bio-diesel minibus.
Before Regensburg I was aiming at a HU car when an elderly guy stopped. “Well”, I thought, “never refuse a perfectly good ride”. In his seventies, he was still working, driving a big car and, most importantly, picking up hitchhikers at night. Only one gas station further I wrote down “Budapest” and a couple waved at me. Their doglets were not too friendly at first, but in Hungary they were quietly sleeping on my lap and my feet.
Romanians must love (second-hand) German cars. The 1500 km or so from Regensburg to Pitesti was crowded with German numberplates with a little red date mark on the right. Driven by inexhaustible Romanians, but which language to approach them? At the gas station in Budapest there was almost no activity and I spent a couple of hours under a plastic sheet. Since I hadn’t been able to find a ride towards Szeged for a while I decided to take my chances and head to Romania.
Three drivers, many hours on hair rising Romanian roads later it was dark again. And I got into a local bus, to an unknown destination. In the bus, the first angel of this voyage. I was dog-tired and sat down. She asked a question I’ve forgotten and said “d’accord” at some point. So we switched to French. We went to check a hotel where the rooms appeared to cost more than 60 euro per night. A mix of curiosity and suspicion. I showed her all my papers, my luggage, almost anything I was carrying. Great to see I wasn’t dragging around too much after 36 hours on the road. A cold shower, a nice room, some food and big eyes. Started walking in the early morning. Had some local competition/colleague. In Bucuresti it was not clear. People were giving me different indications, but I managed to find a truck stop popular with Turks – right next to one of the country’s major continuous traffic jams.
Ahmet was happy to take me to Istanbul. Fortunately my passive-smoking capacity had been greatly increased. Bulgaria was not far away. Nor were the baksheesh hungry Bulgarian border officials. Fortunately (both for me and for them) they didn’t bother me. Within Bulgaria we took a break at a truck stop and Ahmet and people around him explained to me in Turkish, Bulgarian, Russian and German that the police were checking a lot. The Turks had decided it was better to drive at night.
We reached the Bulgarian Turkish border at around 3 am. And we got into Turkey when I made a big mistake. Never leave your backpack in the vehicle when you are walking slightly further than 50 meter away.
Now I’m left alone in a hostel in Damascus. A Japanese guy reading, a Chilean couple watching a movie. The fan whirling back time. The streets are full of friendliness, excitement. People genuinely want to meet you here. I don’t think I’ve been able to explain what hitchhiking is to a single Syrian. Confusion plenty, but 30 hours in the Axis of Evil I’ve mostly encountered unexpecting and unconditional friendliness.
Bijar came all the way from Utrecht. Or rather, from Kurdish Iraq. He was on his way to buy equipment for a business he’s developing in the lands of his origin. He signaled his taxi driver to stop for me right before the border. He did almost all the talking (and paying) and we wished eachother good luck in Aleppo.
to be continued…
Short and cynical comments on some could-be-existing networks:
Short but nevertheless also cynical theses for the future of hospex:
The hospitality exchange scene is and always was diverse. This won’t change, no, in the future the number of networks will probably rise and the importance of each one for the whole scene will shrink. I see two main future options / possibilities:
And why this ranting?
I’ve spent and still spend some of my free time to volunteer for hospex networks, but from time to time it’s good to reconsider engagement. Right now it feels like being stucked between something halfdead, that is still working from an user-only point of view, and a luck of ideas/projects to improve/develop things.
So maybe it’s time to look for something useful to do in other areas?
Future of Hospex in Couple Wang’s eys
What would you like to see the future of Hospitality Exchange Network ?
Scenerio 1.
CS have a lion’s share,say take 70% market
BW,HC,GF,SERVAS,www.huzhuyou.com and others have the rest 30%
CS do what ever they want
members without verifed and donation can’t
a. see the whole group members,(you want to do something else beside couchsurfing eh)
b. have unlimited email
c. have unimited search
Scenrio 2
Casey Fenton act as Frederik Willem de Klerk, give out some his power, and CS become ‘user/volunteers/members-driven’ organisation.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=6841&post=1596123
and everything is transparent
CS take 45% market share
BW,HC,GF,SERVAS,www.huzhuyou.com consolidated take 45% market share
the rest take 10% market share
Scenrio 3
CS take 30% market share
BW,HC consolidated take 30% market share
GF,SERVAS,www.huzhuyou.com consolidated take 30% market share
the rest take 10% market share
http://www.hospitalityguide.net
if you like to see the Scenrio 2, 3 let me know, and tell me how much you need to develope a website like CS,
I WILL
1. TRY MY BEST TO RAISE MONEY FOR YOU.
2. convert some Xinger to Hcer
Xing have 6 million member now, 30% are freelancer, if we can convert 30% Xing freelcaner to Hcer, blah blah….
there should no conflict of interest,
some of 70% biz Xinger will use best offfer
https://www.xing.com/bestoffers/
70% of the 30% freelacne will user their own network, friends, realtives.
3. bring/match elderly/physically-challenged and EMIGRANT, Working holiday visa holder, Students from the Second/Third World to small/medium cities
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=14699
for time being, my suggestions are
1.Set “ net watch” with you friends, if you find someone profile deleted,
please record and repor at
Member’s profile issue(deleted, missing,dead etc) forum
https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showforum;id=244416
2.Compare
Thailand ,
Alaska(Participant list gone, I saw once,but unfortuneately not saved you can find some clue here http://blog.couchsurfing.com/alaska/alaska-csc-talent-show-video)
and SF Boot camp participant list,
and tell us how many Americans and White male there.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/collective.html
No later than Apr 2009, CS will reach it 1 million members
what you would like to see
A .CS 1 million members celebration
I created on Sep 22, 2008
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group.html?gid=14492
B. CS is the only hospex website reach a million member historical with volunteesr(“treat your volunteers as shit”)
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=1720836#post1753030
Casey sell CS
or start treat members differently , see Scenerio 1
Is Casey qualifed to be a House of Representatives that time?
and what Veit will think?
http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/veit
If you like Scenerio 2, 3 happen, let me know
I can be reached at
https://www.xing.com/profile/Jingtao_Wang/N17.8265.29f125
Internet belong to everybody, but no body can control it
the only 2 ways on Internet are
1. justice,transparent
2. if do something wrong, apologize and correct immidiatedly
But, Casey and CS would like to demonstrate the third way like delete members profiles without warning, and dare to delete my wife’s(onlinezhao),
ok, dude, let see what will happen then
this article I am going to send on Oct 31 in
https://www.xing.com/net/couchsurfing/ newsletter
I will be appeciate If you can polish my English and send back to me
stay tuned.
T.G.I.F
couple wang
FYI
History replaying in Couchsurfing.com
https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=14603632;articleid=14603632#14603632
“It has to be made clear that all power eventually resides with Casey, and none other. It has to be made clear that volunteering and donating money are most welcome, but don’t entitle you to any influence, irrespective of one’s importance for the organisation.”
https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=14603624
“If you don’t want democracy, you can’t build on volunteers, and you must run the organisation as a business, non-profit or not. You need to have a business plan that says where money is going, and coming from. You have to pay for most labour, and create the necessary revenue by either charging for services, or by using the worth of the community to get commercial sponsors, who expect to profit from members. You may still have some volunteers, or internships, or other low or unpaid labour, but you can’t expect highly qualified work to be done by two people sitting next to each other, where one is paid a market wage, and the other nothing.”
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=328661#post328710
“this group of coordinators would be part of a structure that is organised bottom-up, in a way that the group of coordinators (not leaders!) would be rotating every 1 or 2 years, where no-one can tell others what to do, where there is no such thing as “diplomatic” internal politics (”if you say something I don’t like, I consider that as flaming and you’re out of the group”)
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=1720836#post1753030
“Although incorporated as a not-for-profit, CouchSurfing International inc. is not a charitable organisation. Not-for-profit status only means that the company cannot pay dividend to its owners (i.e. Casey); the company and its assets still are his, and his alone. Casey can do with it whatever he wants, whenever he wants it”
http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/zak0r
# take a look at this query. To start with, we have no indexes used: EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name; # First let's look at an index on population ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX p (Population); # is that index effective? EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name; # no it wasn't. what happens if we modify the query just slightly: EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 50000000 ORDER BY Name; # time for the next index: ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c (Continent); # with two indexes on the table, which one will the optimizer prefer? EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 50000000 ORDER BY Name; # how about now? EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 500000000 ORDER BY Name; # This index is not always helpful. Why? ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX p_c (Population, Continent); # How about this one? ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c_p (Continent,Population); # Why is this one better than just c_p? ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c_p_n (Continent,Population,Name); # Remote all the indexes before trying to add an index on n. ALTER TABLE Country DROP INDEX p, DROP INDEX c, DROP INDEX p_c, DROP INDEX c_p, DROP INDEX c_p_n; ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX n (Name); # the optimizer still doesn't consider N. EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 500000000 ORDER BY Name; # how about now? EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country FORCE INDEX (n) WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 500000000 ORDER BY Name; # drop the index on N. alter table Country drop index n; # SOME trick questions # which is better. EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id = 1810; EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id = 1810 LIMIT 1; # How about this one. EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id BETWEEN 100 and 200; EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id >= 100 and id <= 200; # (the answer is that both of the two above are identical - # they are rewritten internally to the same thing) # This is a bad subquery. EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE countrycode IN (SELECT code FROM country WHERE name='Australia') # this is the rewrite as a join. EXPLAIN SELECT city.* FROM City, Country WHERE city.countrycode=country.code AND country.name='Australia' # does this index help? ALTER TABLE City ADD INDEX (countrycode); # retry EXPLAIN SELECT city.* FROM City, Country WHERE city.countrycode=country.code AND country.name='Australia'; # add an index on city. ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX (name); # how about a retry EXPLAIN SELECT city.* FROM City, Country WHERE city.countrycode=country.code AND country.name='Australia';
mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 239 | Using where; Using filesort | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX p (Population); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.01 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 5000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | ALL | p | NULL | NULL | NULL | 239 | Using where; Using filesort | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 50000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | range | p | p | 4 | NULL | 54 | Using where; Using filesort | +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c (Continent); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.00 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 50000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+-------+------+-----------------------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+-------+------+-----------------------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | ref | p,c | c | 1 | const | 42 | Using where; Using filesort | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+-------+------+-----------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 500000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | range | p,c | p | 4 | NULL | 4 | Using where; Using filesort | +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX p_c (Population, Continent); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.00 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c_p (Continent,Population); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.00 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX c_p_n (Continent,Population,Name); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.01 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> ALTER TABLE Country DROP INDEX p, DROP INDEX c, DROP INDEX p_c, DROP INDEX c_p, DROP INDEX c_p_n; Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.00 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX n (Name); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.01 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 500000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 239 | Using where; Using filesort | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-----------------------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT Name FROM Country FORCE INDEX (n) WHERE Continent = 'Asia' AND population > 500000000 ORDER BY Name; +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | index | NULL | n | 52 | NULL | 239 | Using where | +----+-------------+---------+-------+---------------+------+---------+------+------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> alter table Country drop index n; Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.01 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id = 1810; +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | City | const | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | const | 1 | | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id = 1810 LIMIT 1; +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | City | const | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | const | 1 | | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id BETWEEN 100 and 200; +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | City | range | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | NULL | 101 | Using where | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.01 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE id >= 100 and id <= 200; +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | City | range | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | NULL | 101 | Using where | +----+-------------+-------+-------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM City WHERE countrycode IN (SELECT code FROM country WHERE name='Australia'); +----+--------------------+---------+-----------------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+--------------------+---------+-----------------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ | 1 | PRIMARY | City | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 4079 | Using where | | 2 | DEPENDENT SUBQUERY | country | unique_subquery | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 3 | func | 1 | Using where | +----+--------------------+---------+-----------------+---------------+---------+---------+------+------+-------------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT city.* FROM City, Country WHERE city.countrycode=country.code AND country.name='Australia'; +----+-------------+---------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+------------------------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+------------------------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | City | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 4079 | | | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 3 | world.City.CountryCode | 1 | Using where | +----+-------------+---------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+------------------------+------+-------------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> ALTER TABLE City ADD INDEX (countrycode); Query OK, 4079 rows affected (0.03 sec) Records: 4079 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT city.* FROM City, Country WHERE city.countrycode=country.code AND country.name='Australia'; +----+-------------+---------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+------------------------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+------------------------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | City | ALL | CountryCode | NULL | NULL | NULL | 4079 | | | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 3 | world.City.CountryCode | 1 | Using where | +----+-------------+---------+--------+---------------+---------+---------+------------------------+------+-------------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> ALTER TABLE Country ADD INDEX (name); Query OK, 239 rows affected (0.00 sec) Records: 239 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT city.* FROM City, Country WHERE city.countrycode=country.code AND country.name='Australia'; +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+-------------+---------+--------------------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+-------------+---------+--------------------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | Country | ref | PRIMARY,Name | Name | 52 | const | 1 | Using where | | 1 | SIMPLE | City | ref | CountryCode | CountryCode | 3 | world.Country.Code | 18 | | +----+-------------+---------+------+---------------+-------------+---------+--------------------+------+-------------+ 2 rows in set (0.01 sec) mysql>
With CS getting more mainstream day by day, the culture of hosting might also be changing. Christopher Culver raises this interesting issue on the hitchhiking forum on Couchsurfing. “Does anyone else get the impression that the CS hosting community is becoming less friendly to hitchhikers? I was shocked when two of the hosts I stayed with this summer expressed their disappoval of hitchhiking, considering it ‘freeloading’.”
Chris also puts forward the question: “what experiences have you had as the Couchsurfing hosting community is shifting from a bunch of freespirited wanderers to everyday people with strict schedules and expectations?” And subsequently he concludes: “It feels like we are being forced out of our own community.”
This might be a very valid point. Couchsurfing, Bewelcome or Hospitality Club for that matter, are these still the networks of travelers supporting fellow-travelers? There are still lots of great hosts and travelers around, but somehow - due to the popularity of the network - it is also becoming more and more a network of people that are just looking for entertainment, other people to ‘party’ and get drunk with. Further to that, it does not necessarily has to be a coincidence either that the news-wire of CS has been full with party-events in the past couple of months.
But then again - on the others hand - CS still provides you a pool of lots of different people, which means you just have to be selective in picking the right host. Or like Sanne says in the same forum, “I guess my conclusion is: it’s not bad that ‘normal’ people are hosting, it’s just different. I think it’s a good thing that couchsurfing is turning into a thing for everyone. And yes, that means that you do have to put some more effort in selecting the right host for you.”
Have you always wanted to be a “Ambassador Management Coordinator” or “Safety Systems Coordinator” for CouchSurfing? Now you can! CS published their “career openings“, or “couchsurfing careers“. Since these openings are not even linked from anywhere on the CS-website yet, you might stand a fairly good chance (it got posted!) to get one of the 14 full-time jobs, and become part of their family.
You may wonder why so many talented people volunteer for CS when they could have high paying jobs in the corporate world. The reason is that CS provides benefits they can’t find anywhere else. We live and breath CouchSurfing, and we are all a family.
Although you have to pay your first travel to the “Couchsurfing Base Camp” yourself, CS provides all full-time volunteers and employees “with free housing and meals”. In addition, each full-time staff member “has the opportunity to live abroad for several months of each year at one of our amazing Collective locations while maintaining a home and life in the San Francisco Bay Area”.
If you are the lucky enough to get one of the 14 listed full-time jobs, you will first have to go trough a three month trial period, after which you will be rewarded with “travel tickets, travel expense reimbursements and eventually paid salaries”. However, you will have to consent to your bos(ses) (”supervisors”) and keep yourself to the following social rules, meaning that you shall
- maintain positive references from other surfers or hosts.
- treat your team supervisors and other volunteers with respect.
- follow standards and procedures established by teams you work with.
- follow priorities and objectives established by the team supervisors.
- communicate in a calm and compassionate tone (’thou shalt not flame’).
So what are you waiting for, go and apply for your role! Current (as per 1st of November) “openings” include:
Administrative Assistant; Ambassador Management Coordinator; Database Administrator; Developer, Events Coordinator; Human Resources & Personnel Coordinator; Marketing Coordinator; Member Communications Coordinator & Writer; Safety Systems Coordinator; System Administrator; Gardener / Landscaper; IT Assistant; Trainer, Educator, Coach, or Expert.
Note that there are currently 14 full-time positions available, while there are only 15 people supposed to stay and live in the Couchsurfing Base Camp. At the moment though, according to Matthew, there are already 15 people living there…
SELECT Name FROM Country WHERE continent = 'Asia' AND population > 1 000 000 000;
There is a hidden feature in CS, about what few people know.
No official documentation, except this page:
http://wiki.couchsurfing.com/en/Stealth
When a member get “stealthed” he can’t be found with the CouchSearch but just trough friend links or group links.
If he writes a message, it goes nowehere and it’s never received by its recipient.
Sometimes all his outgoing messages are completely removed.
If someone writes him a message, he doesn’t receive it.
Seems a “nice” way to deactivate an user without deleting it.
Of course the user is not notified at all of the decision taken about him.
It’s always the “polite” American culture, like in facebook, notifying a friend add but not a friend removal.
It doesn’t seem a very transparent feature of CS.
It’s a quite funny feature too, once there were two guys (a guest and a host), both logged in CouchSurfing on two different computers in the host’s house and one was able to find the other’s profile but not vice-versa. :))
Overall, seems that there is not a clear process of who, how and for what should be stealthed.
I doubt it is ruled by “CS safety team” by personal evaluations, prone to prejudices and nepotism.
And, in my opinion, not a good service to the CS community, “hiding” members.
Did anyone know something more about it?
A good day!
littleseed
Pickwick raises some interesting questions and answers them:
With hesitation I take on the task of writing a summary with my view on legal and financial issues, because I’d rather do something more pleasant on this public holiday in Germany. I’ll try to be brief, and I won’t bother with lots of links to documents I’ll mention. If you want to see them in the original, and check whether you agree with my assessment, please ask the management to publish them, and not me. They have them all, and most are public information by law.
What does 501(c)(3) mean?
The term 501(c)(3) relates to a clause in US tax law which gives federal tax exemption to certain organisations, both charitable and non-charitable (eg certain types of family trust funds which serve as a tax shelter for private wealth). Having 501(c)(3) status does not automatically mean the organisation is a charity. But if a charity wants federal tax exemption, and especially if it wants the ability to issue tax deductible donation certificates to US tax payers, or if it wants public funds (grants), it needs 501(c)(3) status. That status requires the organisation to file annual reports, including full financial statements on a form called ‘990’, to the US tax authorities (IRS), and to publish those reports and a number of other legal documents (on a web site, or in print, and send a copy on request). The status also imposes a number of rules on how the funds are used. Charity status does not change the private nature of an organisation, but in fact puts its funds under public supervision.
What is Couchsurfing’s legal status?
It was registered under the name “Couchsurfing International Inc” on 02 April 2003 by Casey Fenton, with four hired straw men as fellow incorporators to make up the legally required number, in the form of a Non-Profit corporation in the US state of New Hampshire. He was sole director and officer at least until 28 January 2007. Non-Profit does not automatically equal charity. Primarily it means that the corporation does not distribute any profits as dividends to its owners or share holders. It can, however, make profits and accumulate them, and if one wants money out of it, one has to pay oneself salaries, in addition to expenses. That’s what Casey Fenton started doing in 2005.
Was Couchsurfing a charity from the start?
That remains a little unclear. The original incorporating document, the Articles of Association, dated and signed March 2003, allow “charitable, religious, educational and scientific purposes” or purposes according to 501(c)(3), which is wider than just saying “charitable”.
One concern, however, is that none of those dedications of the corporation’s income or assets are stated with the qualification “irrevocable”. It may therefore be possible in future to change the purpose of the corporation, or indeed change its status from Non-Profit to For-Profit altogether.
Another concern is that Casey Fenton did not register the organisation as charity immediately with the Attorney General, as required by New Hampshire law, thereby avoiding certain filing and reporting duties, similar to those that come with 501(c)(3) status. As a result the organisation succeeded from April 2003 until November 2007 to keep secret from all members such documents that have to be filed with the Attorney General, and are public information by law, especially the corporate bye-laws, and the annual and full financial reports. This breached the law, and an investigation by the Department of Justice in New Hampshire is still pending, which might still result in the organisation and individuals being fined. In other words: Couchsurfing may, or may not, have been designed as a charity from the start, but unfortunately for several years it certainly did not behave like one. The general understanding in the community initially was that it’s Casey Fenton’s private company; he could do with it what he wanted; and it seems that he did for a long time.
How did Couchsurfing finally get on the official list of charities?
Following discussions in the community it seemed clear around September 2007 that Couchsurfing either indeed was a charity, but had breached charity law by not registering, or it was not a charity, in which case soliciting donations might have been fraudulent. As the management remained unresponsive to urgent questions, a complaint was placed before the Attorney General of New Hampshire on 05 November 2007, with a final warning and advice to the management to try and get their act together now.
On 14 November 2007 the Attorney General then received the registration and reports for 2003 to 2006. As a result Couchsurfing was then added to the official list of registered charities in New Hampshire, despite some remaining concerns. This has for instance made it possible for attendees of the Alaska collective to obtain volunteers’ visa or the US, whereas the earlier collective in Thailand still largely relied on volunteers taking the risk of breaking the local law and entering on tourists’ visa.
What are the remaining legal concerns?
At the time of filing on 14 November 2007 Casey Fenton was President (chairing the board of directors) and paid employee at the same time, and there is no indication that the situation has changed since. New Hampshire law expressly forbids that. As a result his employment contract may be nil and void, and the organisation may be entitled to reimbursement for all or part of the salaries paid to him.
From the time of incorporation until at least the middle of 2007 Couchsurfing did not have the legally required minimum of five members on its board of directors, for at least until the end of 2005 Casey Fenton remaining sole director and officer. This may mean that legal decisions and contracts from those years may be invalid, with all sorts of unforeseeable consequences. It may also cast additional doubts on the validity of Casey Fenton’s employment contract, if it was entered into by him as sole director contracting with himself as employee, which may also have violated legal “conflict of interest” rules.
Some of the documents filed on 14 November 2007 (under penalty of perjury) appear to be materially false or backdated, especially the full corporate bye-laws, “conflict of interest policy” documents signed by directors and officers, and the listings of directors for 2003 to 2006. The filed documents may create the wrong impression as if a full, legally composed board of directors had been in office throughout, and may disguise the facts leading to concerns about Casey Fenton’s employment especially. The other current four members of the board of directors have been made aware that they have been listed as serving during years when they were in fact not, and they appear to condone this, which may, if any of the above mentioned constitutes a criminal offence, in itself be a criminal conspiracy in that context.
What is the history of the 501(c)(3) application?
Even before incorporation, from at least 11 February 2003 to at least 15 July 2004, Casey Fenton stated on the web site that Couchsurfing was “a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Company”, when there is no evidence that an application had ever been filed, let alone approved, at that time. The management have never responded to questions about this with an explanation. (Incidentally this also shows that the company’s name was used at least two months before incorporation, which may constitute fraud.)
Amongst all subsequent statements are these: On 27 January 2007 Casey Fenton states: “We are in the process of moving to 501c3 and hope to do so in the next couple months”. On 13 April 2007 he stated: “We are filing for 501c3 status practically tomorrow”.
The management stated on 24 November 2007 that the application was filed. On 28 April 2008 General Manager Matthew Brauer stated he had to “Edit supplemental statements for our 501c3 application”. Today, 03 October 2008, ‘desaparecida’ states in the Brainstorm group: “CouchSurfing has been asked for more information and additional papers … at least twice … This is what I heard in July in an informal talk”.
The above mentioned concerns held on state level may very well adversely affect the result of the application for 501(c)(3) status. Reversely, a failure of the 501(c)(3) application may ultimately affect the organisation’s status in New Hampshire.
Will Couchsurfing always stay a charity?
So far there is no guarantee for that. As already mentioned, the purpose of the corporation, or even its non-profit status could possibly still be changed. The discussion in the community has therefore come forward with the suggestion to introduce the word “irrevocable” into the ‘dedication of assets’ clause in the corporate bye-laws. This would simply require a documented resolution by the board of directors, but unfortunately this has not found any response from the management.
Once the 501(c)(3) status is obtained this may change, but that will depend on the precise nature of the application, and the particular sub-case of 501(c)(3) exemption. It is unfortunate that the management refuse to publish the application, which may lay all doubts to rest, and would enable the community to add their expertise and help. However, the organisation is legally only obliged to publish the application once it has been approved. This means that if the application remains unsuccessful, they will never be legally obliged to publish it, so that it may never become transparent why it was rejected.
If the organisation has applied for genuine charity status according to 501(c)(3), then everything is fine. If it has made use of one of the other options of tax exempt status, that may in theory be given back voluntarily in future, and the organisation could still be changed into a commercial enterprise. However, at that point all tax benefits received so far would have to be repaid. Practically speaking the crucial point after receiving 501(c)(3) status would probably be when they start issuing tax deductible donation certificates to US tax payers; from that time it may well be impractical and too expensive to try and get out of tax exempt status again. This is the reason for some sceptics to fear that the management may not earnestly want the tax exempt status.
What about the financial statements on the web site?
Couchsurfing has published skeleton financial statements on its web site since 2004. Despite promises to have them independently audited, they remain unaudited. No budget forecasts are published, despite Casey Fenton’s statement on 15 June 2007: “we hope to have ready before mid July … our budget forecast for 2008”.
The published statements only show income and expenditure, and omit all assets and liabilities accounts. This raises the concern whether the substantial amounts of accumulated funds have in actual fact been held in corporate bank accounts at all times, or whether irregular personal “loans” have been made, which are expressly forbidden by New Hampshire law. These concerns are aggravated by comparatively low figures for interest income being shown, given the total of funds that should have been in bank accounts over time. It was communicated in May 2008, as an achievement resulting from the General Manager’s presence at the collective in Thailand (sic!), that a higher interest bearing savings account had been set up in the US.
So far the organisation is under no legal obligation to publish financial accounts themselves, although they have to file the information with the charity regulators, and it is public by law (meaning: everybody can ask the Department of Justice in New Hampshire for a copy), so those listings on the web site are voluntary. However, the figures on the web site are incorrect and often don’t match the figures in the official filings. Whilst there are no significant deviations, accountancy is supposed to be an exact science, and any irregularity, however small, is cause for concern.
What information is public by law and how to get it?
Couchsurfing has to file annual reports and full financial statements for the previous calendar year by 15 May of each year. As already mentioned, according to New Hampshire law they have no obligation to publish those themselves, but the information is public by law, and everybody can request a copy from the Department of Justice in New Hampshire. This includes the documents submitted for registration, especially the corporate bye-laws.
Should 501(c)(3) tax exempt be granted, similar reporting duties will apply, and the report to the federal tax authorities can then just be copied to the state agencies. One important difference will be that then the organisation itself will have the duty to publish, and everybody can ask the organisation for a copy. Once the status is given this will, as mentioned above, also include the full initial application.
At the moment Couchsurfing appears to be complying with the legal minimum requirements for disclosure of public information. Publishing skeleton financial statements without being required to may see as if they went above and beyond the minimum requirements, but that is not really the case, as the published figures are wrong. However, in the world of charities, voluntary and non-government organisations it is generally seen as good practice to be forthcoming and cooperative in disclosing information in which there is a justified public interest.
Conclusion
It would be in the interest of building trust and stability in the community if the management changed its policy from doing the minimum required by law to doing the maximum permitted by law. For an organisation with the core purpose of running a web site there really is no excuse for not having all the information on there.
As there seems to be a policy of ignoring discussions in the groups, and insisting on submitting all “questions” through ‘Contact Us Questions’, I will submit a copy of this posting in that way, stating that I would like a response to all issues raised, and I will post here any response I will receive.
And now I need a drink. Sorry for the length. ;-P
“I live at the CouchSurfing Base Camp with 14 other people in the heart of downtown Berkeley. It’s close to lot’s of great food, shopping, entertainment, and student life. I’m still just learning about Berkeley myself. Base Camp is busy day and night as the home and office for much of CS’s full-time staff. It’s fun to see how CouchSurfing is run, but not a good place to hang out during the day”, says Matthew Brauer on his CS profile.
The base-camp was already announced in the latest post of the CS Alaska Collective. “Currently, our very talented scout, Pinkfish, who found our dream location in Pai, Thailand, as well as this amazing house in Homer, Alaska, is searching for a living and office space to house fifteen full-time volunteers and staff for the next 12 months in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.”
What a surprise to read though that the Base Camp is already there, while it was clearly communicated on August the 20th that “before we move in, we’ll post the available volunteer roles at Base Camp and at the next Collective that will most likely begin in November. Maybe one of these roles has your name on it!”
- No.
In the past 2 weeks I’ve set up two new wikis. Trashwiki is a wiki about dumpster diving and anything else that’s related to trash. There’s already a tiny community, and I guess we’ll soon have 100 articles. We did copy some stuff from Wikipedia to get started, but do feel free to remove the dry encyclopedic stuff.
After that I decided I needed some money. Or cash. So Cashwiki is a wiki about money. So far it’s just me, and I copied a lot of GFDL and public domain stuff from other places.
All this got me to playing with OpenID on MediaWiki, which I also set up on my favorite hitchhiking website.
A lot of the stuff BW is based on (money, texts, layout - see above) was taken away from HC and HC volunteers who worked on it for a long time without their permission. We will try to bring this stuff home and reunite the community. Since BW advertises having a “democratic” setup we will happily work together with them using this framework for the best of the community in our reunification efforts. And you can help us! Here’s how Project “Reuniting the Community” works:
Texts and code are copied, not taken away. And above all, they should be copied if people want to copy them.
Money can’t be taken away from a non-existing organization.
I love the idea of reuniting the Community.
Phase 1: Right now, we are encouraging active HC volunteers to join BeVolunteer as “members”. BV currently has 45 members (see the irony of calling a network run by 45 people “democratic”?), a few of them are absolutely dedicated to HC. You have to jump through a few loops to be accepted by their “Board of directors” as a member, but the fun should be worth it. Basically, you just have to be an “active volunteer”, so just edit around the wiki a bit, join some of the many many discussions in their Forums, or translate a few sentences. Once you are a member, just let us know. We will reimburse you for any “membership fees” you have to pay to BV once the project has succeeded.
There are no membership fees, not even to become a member of the BoD.
Democracy is not a black and white question, but to me it’s a network ran by a single person is the least ideal form (i.e. HC).
Phase 2: We will make sure that HC-friendly people are elected to BV’s “Board of Directors” - the 9 people running the show (kind of interesting model of democracy). They could start making sure that links back to HC are added, and BW as organization stops its aggressive attacks on HC.
People’s profiles (like mine) are deleted for links from HC to BW…
Phase 3: The final step will be to reintegrate BW into HC, a simple “General Assembly” decision will be enough for that. Since both will be based on open-source software then, it won’t be too big of a problem. We might even continue to use their officially registered French NGO as the HC-NGO in France. And all will be good
Sounds like fun? Then help us, or get in touch if you need more info and encouragement!
Great, finally an official organization for Hospitality Club!
See openhospitalityclub.org for a 1 page overview of the issues with HC.
This blog is mostly run by BW-lovers with a clear agenda (make CS and HC look bad so their “oh-so-moral” alternative looks attractive). For all others, who still have a somewhat open mind and don’t fall so easily for Kasper & Co’s constant propaganda, here a link to our side of the story:
The real background about this “democratic, transparent, legal” (sic) network.
Today we reached the milestone of 1000 articles at Hitchwiki.org! It took less than 3 years to get there. Already before I found the then called “Hitchhiker’s guide to Hitchhiking” I was sure that a wiki for hitchhikers was a good idea. So I’m very happy that I moved the project to Wikia.com in December 2005. At some point I had been thinking to move it to hitchhikers.couchsurfing.com, but fortunately MrTweek was around. He did an excellent job setting up and maintaining the current Hitchwiki.org and adding the extremely cool integrated maps. All in all the project has become a prime source of current hitchhiking info, and a lightning rod for online social cooperation – in three years’ time we never felt the need to set up even a single rule.
Next…
copie.jpg "SEIK")
DELIMITER //
CREATE FUNCTION fibonacci(n INT)
RETURNS DOUBLE
NO SQL
BEGIN
DECLARE f1, result DOUBLE DEFAULT 0.0;
DECLARE f2 DOUBLE DEFAULT 1.0;
DECLARE cnt INT DEFAULT 1;
WHILE cnt <= n DO
SET result = f1 + f2;
SET f1 = f2;
SET f2 = result;
SET cnt = cnt + 1;
END WHILE;
RETURN result;
END //
mysql> select benchmark(100, fibonacci(40000));
+----------------------------------+
| benchmark(100, fibonacci(40000)) |
+----------------------------------+
| 0 |
+----------------------------------+
1 row in set (17.94 sec)
..
function fibonacci ($n) {
$f1 = 0.0;
$result = 0.0;
$f2 = 1.0;
$cnt = 1;
while($cnt <= $n) {
$result = $f1 + $f2;
$f1 = $f2;
$f2 = $result;
$cnt = $cnt+1;
}
return $result;
}
..
$ php fib.php 40000 100
Finding fib 40000, 100 times
Took 1.7208609580994 seconds
Sorry about all the detail. The last post has been a while now and I want to write it down while it’s fresh. I can always rewrite it later when I’ll work on my book.
We tried leaving Alta for Tromso, but after 2,5 hours of a lot of cars and none stopping we decided to just head south. It took another 1,5 hour before someone stopped. For the shortest ride of our trip, 2 km only, but it was encouraging, especially thanks to the strawberries we got from the young woman who picked us up. From the bus stop we were dropped at we didn’t have to wait that long again to get a ride to Kautokeino, in a huge Chevrolet, driven by a guy attending a Christian meet-up. He only talked a little bit about Christ and the gospels his friend had made were actually a good way to learn some more Norwegian. After walking and waiting a bit a guy stopped. A friendly dog in the trunk. He was on his way to Rovaniemi, which meant we could go along for quite a while.
We found out he was actually going for a weekend of hunting. Nice to find out for two (mostly) vegans. Well, at least killing the animals you eat is more sincere than having a huge machinery do it for you. We were dropped in an abandoned tiny village and decided to continue a bit more, even though it was 22:30 or so. Of course it was still light, we hadn’t seen more darkness than the blinders would give us in 5 days. Surprisingly, a couple stopped, and then I had made a mistake. I left the bluetooth GPS device given to me by Marcus on my bag. So I lost it there. It was much faster in getting a satelite fix than my N810 so I slightly miss it these days.
Then after 25 minutes driving we were really dropped in the middle of nowhere and killing mosquitos decided to set up our tent. In the morning we heard “nok nok” and some Russian but we didn’t feel like inviting the millions of mosquitos in our cozy tent. Later we got a ride from a Norwegian on his way to buy a fridge. At the crossroads two friendly Finnish women picked us up. They were totally into fishing. We were dropped at a city at the Northern coast of Finland where it took us not too much time to get a ride to Oulu.
I had sent a bunch of texts to our potential host in Oulu but hadn’t received anything back. I decided to give her a call when we were 50 minutes away from Oulu. Apparently none of my messages had come through. The same thing happened in Denmark, where my messages never made it to the recipient. I will have to file a complaint with Vodaphone, especially if they still dare to charge some ridiculous amount of money for sending less than 160 bytes. She was actually on her way to a festival close to the spot where we found our ride to Oulu.
In the meanwhile, our driver told us he was driving all the way to Lahti, 90 km from Helsinki. Since our back-up plans in Oulu were not working out either we decided to head to Lahti and see if we could still hitch to Helsinki from there. Our driver had to drop off his trailer at his summer house, which freaked out Erga a little bit since it was not even on my GPS map. We got there around midnight. There was a gas station and a big mall. And lots of mall rats. With scooters. And “no picknick”. We had some food anyway, thanks to the supermarkt guard. Then we tried a bit of hitching. No luck. So we pitched our tent in a little bush next to the highway. Next morning, oh well, a bit later, we started hitching. I guess it took 2 hours (not looking at the time) before a car stopped. Not going south. We decided to take the ride anyway and the friendly old man showed us how pretty the little village used to be. We wereropped and started walking in the direction back to the highway (but more south). Again we were picked up by a friendly old guy and then we had to walk even more.
After hours of walking and thumbing we were getting slightly desperate, less than 80 km away from Helsinki. Then finally an angel stopped. She was a very friendly nurse who had been looking for berries in the forest. We hugged goodbye at a metro station in Helsinki.
We finally were able to take a shower and clean Anu’s fridge. We quite a few days in Helsinki, first at Anu’s, then at Laura’s. Dumpster dove quite a bit and made delish food, vegan soup, pancakes. I finished the garam masala and bought some new.
The ferry to Tallinn was a forebode for the internet situation in Estonia. You can find (unprotected wireless) internet in almost every street corner and apartment. Apart from Andros’ place. I had to plug a cable into my newly bought Acer Aspire One. We cleaned out his junk room so we had a very comfy place to sleep. He also had a car and loved to drive around people all over town. Yesterday morning he took us to a good spot to hitch out of Tallinn.
The first driver was an IT/artist guy who drove us to Parnu. When we got there we had some baked goods and it started pouring down. We were almost tempted to take a bus. It appeared to cost more than 10 euros per person though, and the rain, well, hitchhiking in the rain is good for character building and practicing bad Russian.
We found a local bus eastward and when I thought I saw a gas station we got off. To find out that we could have gone 4 more stops. But we saw a lot of trucks coming our way and started walking there, almost drowing in the rain. We decided to ask at a gas station and my bad Russian appeared to be very useful. We found a ride to the border with a friendly Latvian Russian guy. The radio was all about the war in Georgia. In Russian though, but we had already been drowned with news about the war in Tallinn. People are very concerned here. I’m glad Marian didn’t take the plane to volunteer and report the mayhem.
At the border we tried hitching. I asked 2 truck drivers, but they didn’t want to take two people. I did see 4 very similar trucks and decided to try and ask them if they could take us. We where dropped next to a highway because they didn’t go all the way to Riga and through my GPS found out that we were at Salaspils. Walked a lot. Missed the last train. Walked even more. Found a microbus for 1 lat (1,50 EUR) to the city. Happy. In Riga we were warmly welcomed with Leffe, food (but not veggy) by Inga, her roommates and two tiny black tom kittens who where very happy with the food.
Now we’re sitting in the Old Town hostel that was the focal point of the Riga Winter Camp 2,5 years ago. There’s free wireless and I’ve done some Drupal hacking on my 1 kg laptop.
Good news for all CouchSurfing volunteers who signed the non-disclosure agreement: the California Supreme Court rejects noncompete clauses. Since it seems as if the organization has moved on to San Francisco it would be even harder to enforce anyone breaking the non-compete clause, although Matt Whatley seems to have been aware of issues with the non-compete clause in California.
No more extremes? CS updated their reference system, following examples by other hospitality networks. This is not the only change that had been implemented during the latest Alaska CS collective. In fact, a whole lot of bugs have been tackled [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ]. Weird though that, according to this post in the brainstorm group, it took over a year (!) to repair the translation tool, with the result that “lots of people have turned their back to the project.” Now, that’s what you can call volunteer-empowerment.
We didn’t leave Stockholm the time we expected. It happened a couple of days later. And even on that Sunday we were very late, I got stung by a bee in the last moment. We went to a hitch spot I found on Hitchbase, which was rather bad actually. We got a ride after a long while and ended up in Uppsala. But we didn’t want to stay there, so we hitched out while it was getting dark. Fortunately you can put your tent almost anywhere in Sweden, legally. While I was looking for a place for our mobile home a car stopped. A Peruvian, which was great for refreshing my Spanish a little bit. (Peruvian Spanish is a lot clearer than Argentinian or Spanish Spanish.)
We were dropped in a little village not too far and found a nice spot. After an hour or so it started to rain. And thunder, and pour down. It was the first (and so far only) real test of our tent. It held out perfectly fine. It was a little moist on the sides, but next time I’ll put the plastic ground sheet underneath the tent so that the water can disappear easily.
Time is different here. It’s 23:55 and it’s completely light out. Apart from the dark clouds. We made it all the way up to Alta, which is only 237 km from Nordkapp and 3000 km from where we started in Amsterdam a week and a half ago. When we woke up in the little village we tried hitchhiking, but there was almost no traffic and the few cars that passed us, well, they passed us. After a while we found a gas station and there was a guy with his daughter who we asked about the situation. He was so nice to go out of his way to drop us at the highway entrance.
Unfortunately there was not much traffic either, and well, it didn’t stop either. When we saw big dark clouds appear we decided to start walking. On the highway. A lot of traffic passed us, but as always, there is this one great person who decides to stop. We were dropped at the best gas station ever. We met two hitchhiking girls with amazing arm pit hair and we spent some time in swimming in the lake. It was beautiful. But then we had to find our ride to Umea, where we had two places to stay, and many people at the gas station gave us “the face”, not even an answer, just an empty gaze.
We tried walking out of there, but the next gas station according to the map software on my N810 was just a bunch of trees. So we had to walk back. And waited more. While I went to the toilet a car finally stopped, heading for Sundsvall. Again a non-Swedish driver. This one from the North of Iraq. He spoke many languages, but not English. So I had another great chance to practice my Swedish. He dropped us of at an amazing spot for long-distance hitchhiking.
There we met Josephine, a 17 year old barefoot first-time hitchhiker. She was on her way to some hippie festival relatively close to Sundsvall and missed the last bus (at 16:00 or so). She asked us if she could join us. Well, fine. I started “priming” on a little corner so that people could see me from afar and Erga and Josephine stood close to the bags at a good place for stopping.
After an unspecifed amount of time (I don’t really check the time anymore) a Norwegian car stopped. I told Josephine to talk to the driver and he was heading to Umea! We all got in the car and started driving, towards the town of the festival. Josephine appeared to be in a circus high school and had travelled to Egypt. It was great fun talking to her. Tomas, the driver, was a bit more quiet. Josephine was dropped and I moved to the front seat, talked a little bit and found out he was driving all the way to the North.
We decided to go for it! We dropped by at a big supermarket to spend our last Swedish Kronor on food, contacted our host in Umea. Jonas is probably the coolest truck driver I ever met. His fridge is vegan and his computer runs Ubuntu. Unfortunately we didn’t have a lot of time to chat. The next morning he had to leave to work early and we were picked up at 9:00 sharp by Tomas for our long ride North.
We met up with Linnea for a short lunch at the beach in Lulea. I had met her in Lima and it was nice to see her in her home town. We continued through endless forests, lakes and mosquito storms.
Today I’ve done a tiny bit of work on my favorite Wikipedias and as it happened Tonita has an acquaintance from Mali in Tromso. I spoke to him on the phone and we’re heading there after Nordkapp. He’s doing a PhD in anthropology and I guess he might be interested in WIkipedia in Bambara and/or Peul.
I also had the defend the existence of the latter (and several others). Someone proposed the deletion of a whole bunch of Wikipedias. I still think that wikis are a viable mode of development for Africa, and that Bèrto ëd Sèra overlooked the fact that free software and wikis are a radically different mode of production, a third way, that somehow blends in perfectly well with capitalism. And that native speakers set the rules on Wikipedias, not corporate white America. In my experience you only need 3 active contributers to make a Wikipedia blossom and I’m very willing to spend a couple of hours now and then until we find those contributors for Bambara and Peul.
Besides these serious issues we enjoyed the Alta Museum, the light, the hospitality of our host and merely being alive!
We left Amsterdam last Friday, after 15:00 or so. It took 50 minutes or so to leave Amsterdam at the liftershalte (which is also the longest wait of this trip!). We arrived at Julien’s front door in Hamburg right in time for dinner. The third ride was great, a Danish managing director of 7 companies was happy to take us from the parking spot close to Osnabrueck. His Chrysler quickly accelerated to 220 km/h, and he was driving like a madman.
Unfortunately it was not convenient enough to blog with maemowordpy on my N810. So I’m writing this in Stockholm. Or well, in a really nice Summer house that is currently inhabited all the time in the Southern suburbs of Stockholm. It’s close to a beautiful lake. It’s actually not really suburbs here. There’s not even regular water. The pump broke and now we have to help ourselves with bottles and buckets. It’s a great lesson on how not to waste water.
Hamburg was great. Despite the heavy rain. We met up with Matthias and Lena (who was at the CouchSerfing Collective New Zealand) and met some new friends. We stayed with Julien, who is simply hilarious. A lot of parties and vegan pancakes. Again we left Hamburg a bit later. We quickly had a ride – before the rain came down, into sunnier weather. The couple (in their fifties) who picked us up told us they hitchhiked themselves in Norway, with their children. At the gas station we immediately had eye contact with a woman and then it appears that she (Swedish), her husband (from Belgium) and children (bilingual) were heading to Denmark and they were happy to take us there. In the car we talked a lot. Then I found out that her husband was making a living through Drupal and that he had too many requests and he’s willing to pass on some work to a starting Drupalist!
At the lines before the ferry I walked around to find a ride towards Copenhagen. I found a group of German kids (16, 17, 18 and 19 y/o) with big kanos on a huge Mercedes van. They were happy to take us and then we found out that they were actually going to the North of Sweden. So we skipped Copenhagen. I wanted to see Sigurdas and Stockholm though. We spent the night in our tent in the South of Sweden, which was quite comfy, woke up and continued with the German kids. They dropped us at a gas station where there was only one potential friendly car driver, who also took us to Stockholm.
Now it’s 14:00, Erga is preparing pasta and we’re planning on eating that and head North to Umea.
Yep, after working like there is no tomorrow for G+J in Hamburg for a few months — hence the silence here — I am officially on the road again. Still hitch-hiking, but now accompanied by a fully featured small fold-up bike (R+M Birdy premium + mud guards + back carrier) — I call it hitch-biking. Getting from Hamburg to Vienna via Schwerin and Munich was surprisingly easy, despite the relatively big cargo. This tells you how much unused space there is in cars on the road. One empty truck took the bike into its empty cargo room — there would have been room for hundreds of bikes, even unfolded! Anyway, all those moments when I badly wished for a bike while walking for kilometres from a drop-off point to the next good starting point are now past. Unfold bike, mount Greenpeace bags, be cycling happily, cycle a little further just for the fun of it. :)
Just so you have a better chance to get hold of me, here is my current Travel Plan for this summer.
Hi Guys,The tech team migrated the messages off of the main server in the last few days to lighten the load further and so that glitch may have been part of that migration. I’ve just got back online after a few days holiday so missed it myself and I’m just catching up on the latest of the tech team. If I hear anything else then I’ll let you know.
Trent Collins from Montreal, Canada
What is important spin or real communication ? You decide link
We have had some unexpected time pressures on communications team this week, which involves the tech team news release and
a press release being launched about CouchSurfing surpassing 1 million positive experiences, which are currently taking priority.
This safety news item is then the next priority.
I was just reading about BlueHat and snyder
The Blue Hat program, which opened communications between Microsoft developers and outside security researchers. Previously, Microsoft was loath to share technical information with those outside of its Redmond, Wash., headquarters.
BlueHat is an internal Microsoft event, where Microsoft employees and executives learn from top security researchers from across the world, and use the knowledge they gain to improve the security of Microsoft products.
This reminded me of a lot of similarities between the two entities.
Both M$ and C$ are not open source
Both are paranoid about who reads their badly written code.
But… If M$ can make a changes for the better can … ?
And we are not just talking about code here.But everything about security,safety networks all over the world.
And to end with an off topic quote
“The strength of Mozilla is absolutely the community (of tens of thousands of volunteers). We have to make sure they know they’re being heard,” says Snyder,
