Grab your helmet, check the air in your tires, and hop on your bike because in many U.S. cities, May 12 - 16 is Bike to Work Week! Six Apart has a lot of biking enthusiasts, so we're very excited to support this event by encouraging all of our employees to bike to work this week. San Francisco's Bike to Work Day is tomorrow, Thursday, May 15th, and New York's is Friday, May 16th.
Six Apart is helping out its employees by providing maps (shaded according to steepness - a must in SF!) to help everyone plan out his/her route, as well as finding first-time riders buddies to commute with. We're also supporting ALL SF riders who pass the front of our office by handing out coffee, juice and snacks from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. If you're in our neighborhood, look for the sign that says "Six Apart Supports Bike to Work Day" and stop by to say hi and get energized!
Improve your health, financial status, productivity, and happiness by joining thousands - maybe even millions - of commuters around the country who are hopping on their bikes to get to work. Visit the Bike to Work Week website to find out more about events in your area.
Support the two-wheeled way of life with the "Passing Left" theme found in "Photo-Based" in the Design Area. Planning on cycling to work this week? Let us know in the comments!
As we mentioned last week, we had to postpone the maintenance that was due to occur on Thursday, May 8th.
We have rescheduled the maintenance for tonight, Tuesday, May 13th, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT). We'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
So, this will be weird. I’ve written tons of stuff to post, but the one thing that I never really understood until half way through the trip is that Iran has mostly 56.6 k dial-up (remember that) and it goes through frequent spats of downtime. I have almost 1,500 photos, 60 hours of unedited audio, 100 hours of unedited video, and virtual reams of blog entries. So, how to upload them?
Now that I have a bit of reflection time I think that I will commit myself to one post on Iran per day for the next week, then we’ll see where we are. There will be some real surprises, and I’m not really sure that I want to post them in chronological order as my memories aren’t necessarily in chronological order. I am decided that the final post will be a writing that I’ve been working on throughout this trip titled “Assumptions.” “Assumptions” is my reflection on the presuppositions I made before going to Iran, and how most of them were altered, or slightly skewed, of just flat out wrong.
Currently, I’m sitting in the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, that’s right, I entered the “Axis of Evil” and lived to tell the tale... and I can’t wait to return. If it wasn’t for the constant fear of what my own government will do to that wonderfully rich, ancient, creative, hospitable, diverse and multi-faceted gem of a country, I might even take my wife and children.
So, I begin with these photos and my first entry of writing from Iran will be posted from JFK.
much peace,
sean
Tonight, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT), we'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
Update: we've postponed tonight's maintenance, and will let you know when we reschedule. Thanks for your patience!
Last week, we announced the winners of the HP "What Do You Have to Say? Theme Design Contest and promised you we'd make the winning themes available on Vox in the coming weeks. After a little more thought, we decided you shouldn't have to wait a second longer to use these creative and inspiring designs on your blogs, so we made them available for you today. Who says good things only come to those who wait?
Straight to Video
Now you can share your Flickr videos on your Vox blog!
A few weeks ago, Flickr announced that pro members are now able to share videos of up to 90 seconds in their photostream. Many of you already post photos to your Vox blog directly from your Flickr account, and now we’ve made it so you can do the same with your Flickr videos.
To post a Flickr video to your Vox blog, just follow the same steps you would if you were posting a Flickr photo. (Yes, that means you’ll find your Flickr videos in “Photos,” not “Videos.”)
Not using Flickr to add photos to Vox? Find out how to connect your Flickr account to your Vox account. Plus, using Flickr means you’ll never have to upload a photo twice, or waste valuable storage space!
Around the World with Vox and CupCate
A little over a year ago, we announced that CupCate was one of the Grand Prize winners of the Vox World Tour. A month ago, Cate and her husband, Iain, packed their bags and flew to San Francisco, the first stop of a three-cities-in-fourteen-days vacation.
While they were in SF, Team Vox was lucky enough to have a yummy lunch with Cate and Iain and some of us even made it out for a late night karaoke session at The Mint.
We were also happy to hear, however, that she took some time to enjoy a glass of wine, a roaring fire, and the luxury of utter relaxation.
Then it was off to Tokyo where she saw gorgeous cherry blossoms, the Tokyo Tower and the Sensoji Temple, and even got a special tour around Tokyo with Ayako from Six Apart’s Japan office!
And it wouldn't be a Vox World Tour without Paris in the spring time, decadent French meals, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower.
It sounds like an amazing adventure. Congratulations again to CupCate. We had so much fun with you while you were in SF and we can't wait until your next visit!
Salaam!
Well we made it out of the airport and I think that I finally got to my room at 6 a.m. At about 6:15, there was a really loud crash on the street 14 floors below. I looked out the window and a police car had hit a station wagon. Both were twisted and up on the sidewalk. I crashed too.
After a deep 3 1/2 hours sleep, I got up and went with a group of my fellow diplomats to meet Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian, Primate of the Armenian Prelacy of Tehran. What a warm and wonderful opportunity it was to meet with this spiritual leader of a Christian minority in Iran. He sees the purpose of the Armenian Orthodox Church as a container to maintain national identity and to teach young Armenians about their history "and all the things we have lost." He was a very honest speaker, telling us that the problems in this part of the world are not due to religious difference but political, and he told us about the work of inter-religious dialogue in Iran. For one thing, people involved in this dialogue don't discuss matters of belief or theology -- they find the things that they hold in common (like service to the poor, human rights, education and family life) and that is where they find valuable connections with one another. I recorded a lot of the meeting and have hopes to get some of it up on episcopod.com by tomorrow or Saturday.
First impressions: I'm really struck by how wonderfully we are being treated, and how obvious our similarities are. What they say about the age of Iranians is also true, there are young people every where. As we walked down the street to our meeting this morning, boys of about 9 or 10 were saying "hello" and waving to us. I guess we are pretty obvious Americans. But many Iranians look to be in their 20s.
Driving into Tehran at night was really amazing -- the mosques are all lit up with thousands of colorful lights. There are trees that are completely lit up with what look like neon Christmas tree lights -- it is hard to explain but I did shoot a lot of video. The bus driver who brought us from the airport really likes Celine Dion and was playing the stereo much too loud for my travel-weary head. But then again it was Celine Dion, just hearing it was painful. I'm still not sure how to cross the street because cars don't really stop at intersections and that makes me worry somewhat about all of the bus travel we will be doing. I tried dhoog (the traditional yoghurt drink) and I'm glad I did. I was the only one at the lunch table who liked it. There is a scroll at the bottom of IRANN (the Iranian CNN) in English and it says that the Pentagon denies that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating. I'm really excited to go to a bazaar this afternoon. The weather is actually quite delightful, it's in the 80s and there is a cool breeze blowing. Farsi is a beautiful language. And I really miss my family.
I plan to do more detail as we meet with different religious and political figures, and I will get up a podcast soon. Finding the time to do production will be difficult, but I will do my best. My travel photos will be posted at flickr.com/photos/diocal.
Wishing you all peace,
sean
Okay, this is a weird post, because we are all sitting in the airport in Tehran waiting to get our passports back. Everyone of us got finger printed and i will post a pic of my blue fingers later. No one else going through Iranian customs has been finger printed that I've seen. We all were and we're now waiting to see what happens next. The Iranians probably aren't sure about us because none of us have showered and we've been sleeping in our clothes for two days.
It was hard to choose from the 355 entries, but the judges have announced the winners of our month-long "What Do You Have to Say?" theme design contest, sponsored by HP. And the winners are....
And while we know it's not polite to brag, you'll forgive us for a moment while we gush about the fact that the 2nd and 3rd prize winners are both Voxers!
The Second Place theme, “Live and Learn” was submitted by Li Kim Goh, or as you may know her: gollykim. We thought it was pretty cool to hear that Li, “didn't really think about winning, but mainly [entered] just for fun [while also] creating a few new banners for [her] own Vox blog.
When asked why blog design was so important to her, Li answered, ““because it draws readers' attention and makes your blog stand out from the millions of other blogs.” With such a great design, we think Li did just that.
The Third Place winner, Terri, showed off her “funky-fresh style” with her theme, “Vector Drips.” Terri said that having her theme picked made her day. You know what Terri? It made our day too!
The best part of the contest? In the coming weeks, we’ll make all the winning themes available on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal so that you can use them on your blog!
Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners!
It's been a while. I guess I'm not much of a blogger. But I'm going to try to do better. Especially since I leave Tuesday, April 29, for Iran. I will be going with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the group of citizen diplomats is a really amazing group of people. I don't really know what my internet access will be like, but I am hoping to be able to post here. If I'm not able to sign into Vox, then I will try to email postings to my colleague Monica for her to upload. In other words, the communications might not be instant or regular, but we will do our best to keep you informed. I also plan to post photos on DioCal's flickr photostream.
