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Roflcoptr

7:21 AM

it is really interesting how this is done

hippietrail

8:28 AM

yay it worked!

Roflcoptr

nice

hippietrail

9:01 AM

0

A: How can we attract more questions to the site?

Since weekends here are very dead contributionwise but as the vodka question pointed out, not so for casual browsers generally, I think every Friday or Saturday we can have a scheduled chat room event. We can brainstorm for a killer weekend stimulus question and post it once we hit on it.

ping

one hour of bounty time left!

Martin Tapankov

9:17 AM

this weekend question idea is great

but since sex tourism is probably off-topic, finding a new vodka question could be pretty hard

hippietrail

i expanded my weekend stimulus question answer

Martin Tapankov

how about featuring a few questions for a chosen country every week?

kind of thematic

hippietrail

9:34 AM

yeah that would be good too like we did for liechtenstein

i might ask more specific questions about aboriginal australia too

Martin Tapankov

hmm.. can I eat kangaroo?

i.e. is it edible

hippietrail

kangaroo is great! you have to have it rare/bloody

it's finally available even in supermarkets

good question for cooking.se

Mark Mayo

10:23 AM

What country would you suggest then for this weekend? Somewhere interesting?

Antarctica? South Africa? India? Japan?

Martin Tapankov

How about Madagascar

I wonder what's there to do

but I guess it will be easier if at least one of the regulars have been there

Mark seems to be travelling a lot

and you of course

Roflcoptr

yes we would have to have at least one regular user that also can answer these kind of questions

hippietrail

7:48 PM

good evening

@MarkMayo: there must be some web app that simulates spinning a globe and sticking a pin in it at random

hey we can challenge ourselves as well as the potential new people. we already have questions and answers about the places we know well (-:

wow hardly any traffic today and tuesday ain't the weeked!

Roflcoptr

8:08 PM

yes but some new questions nevertheless

hippietrail

true. i was going to ask my fellow travellers something but i forgot since you weren't here when i came in the door...

Roflcoptr

me?

hippietrail

oh yes i remember. i was thinking there are a decent number of questions that ask really about citizens of country X or people travelling under passport X and i thought it would be useful to tag them, but wanted to bounce the idea of some of you

you plural (-: all of you. "youse"

Roflcoptr

i see

to tag them with the country?

or what tag do you think of?

hippietrail

yes but not the same as the normal country tag used for destinations

like us-citizens or us-passport or some better idea

Roflcoptr

8:12 PM

that would be more complicated but it would also provide a better overview

hippietrail

hopefully there's a better tag name that works for both of those, having both tags would be bad

yes and obviously only within reason since there's the 5 tag max but i think it is something worth doing a tag search on

maybe ??-citizens is best. generally if you have multiple passports you have citizenship in each country after all

Roflcoptr

yes

but then i nevertheless don't know which country

but if we do that for each country

we have a lot of different tags

hippietrail

number of tags is a non problem just ask the jeffjoel (-:

hey there @MarkMayo come join the partay

Roflcoptr

:) yes

but then i never get a tag badge ;)

but i think it is a good idea

hippietrail

you know what the badges are? d-;

Roflcoptr

8:17 PM

the badges?

i'm not a badge whore :P

Mark Mayo

sup sup

you so are mr Notable Question ;)

hippietrail

i only know about the badges i have when the software jumps out in front of me with its arms waving to tell me i got an exciting new badge (-:

who? what? notable?

notably vodka?

Mark Mayo

Roflcopter

yeah, he got notable question for > 2500 views :)

hippietrail

three cheers!

Mark Mayo

haha

hippietrail

8:19 PM

@MarkMayo: what do you think about tagging the questions about people with citizenship or passport of a specific country?

Mark Mayo

no iPhone 5! My day has been made, lol

hippietrail

/me buys a round

Mark Mayo

Hmm, it's possible. How about 'convicts' for Aussies? ;)

Roflcoptr

lol your a iphone guy?

hippietrail

how about chinese goosberries for kiwis?

Roflcoptr

8:21 PM

don't you believe in Android?

Mark Mayo

no I'm Android

I just wanted to see the reaction of fanboys if no v5 came out

@hippietrail - kinda long-winded..

Apple stocks are down 5%

Roflcoptr

haha yes it's amazing. in my office we have still some apple fanboys and they were really disappointed

hippietrail

apple stocks are emotion based

maybe i should read some ./

Mark Mayo

/. reather? ;)

hippietrail

bah it's so arbitrary anyway

4S eh

Roflcoptr

8:28 PM

btw i noticed that my SO reputation isn't increasing any more since i'm more active here in travel

hippietrail

overwhelmingly us-citizen of the specific questions a simple search turned up

the more you look the less it moves

Roflcoptr

:)

Mark Mayo

heh

yeah US-oriented answers are almost always easy to find

Ivo Flipse

I'm tempted to add pictures or some route to this question:

7

Q: What is the best way to fit the sites I want to see in Rome into two days?

Definition of "best": Cheap, time-efficient, in that order. I'm going to be in Rome for two full days and I want to hit up the following sites: Day 1: Colosseum Pantheon Spanish Steps Roman Forum Trevi Fountain Day 2: Vatican St Peter's Basilica Sistine Chapel So what I'm looking for ...

Mark Mayo

I flew past 200 today, so all these votes for my search-by-date airline answer aren't helping one bit, or my Chernobyl answer ;)

There are soooooooooo many 48 hours in Rome webpages that you can find with a single google search. Still, good to have one on here, as it'll be a popular search topic.

Roflcoptr

8:33 PM

so we have to try that our is in the top results ;)

maybe adding pictures helps ;)

Ivo Flipse

@MarkMayo well I think his choices are pretty decent

hippietrail

the one nz passport/citizen specific question i found doesn't have an easy to chuck out tag and already uses all five

Mark Mayo

For sure

hippietrail

don't talk like that when SE people are around mark!

Mark Mayo

@IvoFlipse I'm just jealous because I've not been to Rome, or Italy for that matter ;)

Roflcoptr

8:34 PM

it's worth a visit but i didn't like it at all

Mark Mayo

@hippietrail, it's a positive statement - something searched for regularly will be drawing people to Travel.SE

any fellow geeks doing the Standford free courses as per slashdot today?

Ivo Flipse

@MarkMayo Rome is definitely worth it, I just came back from a round trip through China and I think their architecture is pretty inferior

@MarkMayo Already signed up for all three :)

hippietrail

ok got all the obvious ones except travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2575/…

i've only been to "oh so not the real italy then"

i don't think you've listened to all of jeff and joel's rants

Mark Mayo

All 3? Wow. I and some friends decided to do the AI one. I mistakingly signed up for the ML one (looked more interesting to me), so today signed up for the AI one as well. Quite a few hours a week, but it's only for 2 months (exams, argh!) and it'll help me with a long term project I'm looking at.

Roflcoptr

Stanford free courses? whats that?

Ivo Flipse

8:38 PM

ai-class.com/resources, ml-class.org/course/video/list db-class.org/course/resources/index

there you are

Mark Mayo

news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/04/1343217/…

hippietrail

up to 9 unanswered again by the way

Mark Mayo

or that

yeah it was 12 two days ago

Ivo Flipse

@MarkMayo it sucks my internet was down for 2 weeks after I got back from my vacation, but I should have some time to prepare

Roflcoptr

ah i see

thanks

Mark Mayo

8:41 PM

@IvoFlipse ouch. I did a ML course in Honours in uni, and my year-long honours project was building a neural network / genetic algorithm combo for drug prediction, but it's been (cough) years since then!

Ivo Flipse

@MarkMayo Well I'm self-learning programming with a special interest in data mining and such, so I'm hoping to pick up something interesting

hippietrail

did anyone ever figure out what a "car camper" is?

Ivo Flipse

@hippietrail Just a camper with a superfluous car in front of it

Or like we Dutch:

hippietrail

somebody who camps in cars rather than tents?

Ivo Flipse

Roflcoptr

8:43 PM

something like this

Mark Mayo

@IvoFlipse brilliant, it's a very interesting field, with <marketingspeak>unlimited potential for ideas</marketingspeak>

Definitely my favourite field in Uni

oh I think I saw one yesterday, possible

like a big Hilux

with a camper part on stilts

Roflcoptr

NUI are the future in CS ;)

Mark Mayo

you reverse the back of the Hilux under it, and retract the stilts

hippietrail

oh my god! (-:

Mark Mayo

and clamp it on!

@Roflcoptr Natural User Interfaces or Neural? ;)

Ivo Flipse

8:47 PM

@MarkMayo I first need to finish reading Structure and Interpretation of computer programs, but its getting a bit of a drag

Roflcoptr

Natural

hippietrail

to me those are a kind of campervan and the kind in that photo we don't have in australia but obviously you could always make one (-:

Mark Mayo

here we go: camperforsaleonline.com/Images/truckCamper.jpg

like that!

Roflcoptr

the one Mark Mayo postet are very common in US and A, i think

and the other i posted i saw a lot in europe

Mark Mayo

@IvoFlipse you can always ask @hippietrail about naked urls, seems to be a common distraction

@Roflcoptr yeah I'm in Vancouver at present, so that matches up

hippietrail

8:49 PM

something like that is likely i suppose

Roflcoptr

yes

hippietrail

ooh baby

i would say it depends where the OP is from as to what size vehicle is considered a car. if they're european something like the subaru but americans might expect something hilux sized to be minimal, then again they call even the smallest ute/pickup a truck

Mark Mayo

lol @ tent on car

Roflcoptr

thats a good idea

so the bad animals can't catch you

Mark Mayo

oh good grief: cartopcamper.com

there's an entire industry around tents on cars!

hippietrail

8:52 PM

dave doesn't seem very interested in clearing up the confusion at any rate

Ivo Flipse

Btw I didn't have trouble with mosquito's though my GF did (didn't use enough DEET), our guides repeatedly told me I couldn't get a 3D prepaid plan :(, I got view of Shanghai from the river and Jin Mao tower and the rice fields were awesome. So all in all, this site did pretty well!

hippietrail

what about tents on carts?

even that style i've only seen on vans of vw combi size in australia

Mark Mayo

this is MY sort of camper: thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/05/the-worlds-biggest-rv (like i could ever afford that)

hippietrail

so we would still call it a campervan

Roflcoptr

gothereandback.com/australia/…

here

that should solve the problem

hippietrail

8:54 PM

what no pool??

Roflcoptr

how much petrol does it need?

Mark Mayo

Petrol? It runs on small babies

hippietrail

$29/day isn't cheap - i paid $1/day last time i rented a car - and got reimbursed for fuel

Roflcoptr

:D

i don't have

my dream is something like this, just with a more powerful engine

hippietrail

but well nobody bothered to ask me that question...

even though as a traveller i should prefer the pop top camper the microbus is sooo sweet!

Mark Mayo

8:59 PM

right, I'm being super slack today, really must go get some stuff done. I want to check out a suspension bridge, but it's a 13km walk, each way. Going to investigate bus options.

chat later folks, good to see a busy chat room!

hippietrail