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In 2008, a number of friends and I traveled around the Adriatic Sea on a sailboat, visiting various islands off the coast of Croatia. Toward the end of our trip, we stopped by the small coastal village of Korčula (map).

While there, I decided to take off for a bit and go on a hike outside of town. I stumbled across an old fort hiding in the woods.

Curious about it, I walked inside to explore it for a bit. I'll admit, it was kind of dark, dusty, and rather creepy. But also pretty cool!

I even found a way onto the roof of the structure, where I took the awesome panorama that you see at the top of this post.

As I was falling asleep a few nights ago, I thought about this trip and this structure specifically. I still didn't know anything about it and random internet searches over the past two years revealed nothing.

I had the idea to load up Google Earth and view a layer of Panoramio, which shows photos embedded at where they were taken. While viewing the area near Korcula, I noticed a number of photos near the fort I had stumbled across. And they were named!

The mystery was solved: Fort Wellington!

This is the English tower Fort Wellington that was built in 1813 on the place of the Venetian fortification of the open type from 1616. It is located on the hill above Korcula Old Town, about 20 minutes walk along the steps from Plokata - the main square. This building is currently deserted and is dangerous to climb the staircase inside the tower, as they are old and unreliable. Forteca tower is also devastated by horrible mobile phone network cables and transmitting masts that are placed there by Croatian mobile phone company.

Built in 1813, dangerous to climb, but awesome views. So fun! Interestingly enough, when I visited in 2008, they had actually taken the transmitting masts off the top of the building and moved them to a structure located near the building.

Anyway, it was a fun mystery to finally have solved! I'm glad I took the chance to go exploring for a bit. Bonus: the views on the hike back down to Korcula was top notch as well!

Last week, I was in Boston to help setup our latest gdgt live event (recap soon). I landed in Boston at 7AM on Tuesday and left at around 7PM on Thursday.

For the 60 hours or so that I was in Boston, here's a heat map of the locations I visited, based on my Foursquare checkins.

Generated using Where Do You Go.

I'm currently somewhere over New York state, flying Virgin America back from Boston (where we had our gdgt live event last night). I only brought my iPad with me on this trip. Which is painful, because Civilization V is currently out!

So, I wanted to see if it was even possible to play. Are you ready for this mark of desperation?

Civ V running on Windows 7. In a Parallels for OS X virtual machine. Via a VNC client on my iPhone. What?! So, what happened? Screen shots below!

Yes?

Yes.

YES!

NOOOOO!

This weekend, I went camping and canoeing on the Russian River with friends. Near the town of Guerneville, I had an interesting case of real life deja vu.

Standing in front of an RV park near town was a giant statue of Paul Bunyan. How giant was he? I am standing in front of him, for scale.

You might be wondering why this is notable, or why anyone would even care.

I actually grew up near another large Paul Bunyan statue, located in the small town of Mentone. It was the strangest thing to see, heading to school or back home every day. A large statue of the infamous lumberjack, just sitting in front of someone's yard. It's still there today!

Here's a photo I took while visiting my parents a few years ago (yes, that's also a Statue of Liberty head sitting on top of a roof). It's nearly identical!

What sort of madness is this? A flaw in the matrix perhaps?

I'm sure Corona's marketing department is thrilled about this.

[H]e returned to his residence in Kabul to find it had been burgled. The intruder took money from a drawer and left behind a bottle of Corona beer. The Corona bottle sat on his counter for the next two weeks Yeager says, because Corona is one of his least favorite beers. He finally opened it during a going away party as the other drinks began to run low.

"I pulled it out and when I popped it there was no fizz and the cap was loose," says Yeager. "Because this one didn't have fizz you wonder if it went rancid or not, and I just kind of sniffed it and I went 'Oh, that doesn't smell like beer.' "

Yeager, a geochemist familiar with acids, realized it smelled like sulfuric acid - otherwise known as battery acid. He called a friend over who had the same reaction to the smell. Yeager poured the "beer" into the toilet and it foamed and fizzed, leaving "no question" in his mind it was sulfuric acid.

gdgt is visiting Chicago next week! It'll be my first visit to the Windy City, so I'm pretty excited.

If you're in the area, come check us out at Gallery 223 (223 West Huron) on May 12th at 7pm. We'll have a ton of cool gadgets on display, drinks, music, and even the potential to win some rad gear. More info is available here.

I'm here in Austin, TX for a few days for our gdgt live event at SXSW. Since such a large contingent of the San Francisco tech crowd is here, a group of San Franciscan folks are handing out SF Embassy cards.

On March 11, 2010, the San Francisco diplomatic mission to Austin commenced with the establishment of the SF EMBASSY on 6th Street. San Francisco residents traveling to Austin for SXSW 2010 are advised to stay in close contact with SF EMBASSY for the duration of their visit. Especially around brunch.

Hah, pretty awesome!

Watch out for South-by-SARS though, that'll get you.

This weekend, a number of our friends ventured to Lake Tahoe for some R&R. We stayed in a friend's family's cabin, went snowboarding, and watched the Super Bowl.

Of course, the perfect way to start (and end) the trip is by visiting In N' Out.

A new year, and a new decade are upon us! Here is my annual photographic review of the year. More travels, moving, a new job. So sit down and come along for the ride.

You can also see my past year in reviews for 2008 and 2007.

January 2009

January started out with a short, surprise trip down the coast to Half Moon Bay and Moss Beach. Kerry surprised me for my birthday, and we stayed at a phenomenal bed and breakfast for the weekend.

MacWorld came to town. It was my first time visiting the convention. Naturally, we geeked out on all the cool companies that were demoing products.

San Francisco residents wasted no time in finding something to protest over.

One of my favorite punk bands of all time, Tsunami Bomb, reunited for one final show in Petaluma.

February 2009

A number of friends embarked on the great Burrito Ingredients Scavenger Hunt: scouring the city's taquerias for the best individual ingredients they have, and building our own, epic burrito.

My sister was in town for a brief visit.

This year, instead of checking out the annual pillow fight, a few of us decided to check out Toronado's annual Barley Wine Festival.

We paid a visit to the Mission for the Grilled Cheese Sandwich battle.

March 2009

Donated some blood. (Gross!)

Awaited the results of the California Supreme Court's ruling on Prop 8.

Had a good view from my apartment of a rally for Tibet, as they marched towards the Chinese Consulate.

I walked across the entire Golden Gate Bridge for the first time in my life.

Pi-Day celebrations! 3.14

Took a stroll through Golden Gate Park. Beautiful as always.

April 2009

We went on a backpacking trip to Big Basin State Park

May 2009

Another month, another backpacking trip! This time, to California's Lost Coast.

And encountered wild life.

Attended the Maker Faire and saw some great art and inventions.

June 2009

A curious cat.

Robogames 2009!

July 2009

Enjoying some drinks on a lazy summer day.

Kerry and I took a whale watching trip out to the Farallon Islands.

August 2009

We had our gdgt SF party to celebrate the launch of our website!

Big road trip time! We embarked for Canada.

Sawtooth Range in Northern Idaho

More of Idaho

Hamilton, Montana

Kootenay National Park, Canada

Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada

Banff, Canada

Vancouver, BC

Victoria, BC

Space Needle in Seattle

Mount Rainier

Mount St. Helens

Oregon Caves National Monument

We returned from our road trip to cheer our friends on in SF Food Wars.

September 2009

Got to shoot an Apple Keynote / Stevenote for gdgt!

Cal Academy

Walked around San Francisco and took some random photos.

Someone in the neighborhood must have been pretty angry with Muni.

Flew to New York City at the end of the month for gdgt's NYC launch party. Hello Virgin America!

NYC!

October 2009

Visited New York City for the gdgt NYC event. While there, I visited the newly created High Line Park.

gdgt NYC at the Manhattan Center!

The Blue Angels came to town for Fleet Week 2009

Headed up to Tomales Bay for some friendly oyster shucking.

Wished my apartment of the past 3 years, so long!

Last sunset at the apartment. It was fantastic as always.

Adjusted to living with one of my new roommates.

The end of October meant that Halloween parties were neigh!

Walking through our neighborhood at night.

November 2009

Since I had recently purchased a Canon S90, I decided that the Cal Academy would be the perfect place to break it in.

Checked out the museum at SFO

Beautiful fall days in San Francisco

Beautiful fall nights in San Francisco

San Francisco sunset

December 2009

Kerry and I saw Cirque du Soleil's OVO show when it came to town.

(And I got yelled at for taking photos...)

Attended the Laughing Squid Un-holiday Party at the Gallery With No Name. And saw their neon Jelly Fish.

Don't forget, Santacon / Santarchy made an appearance in San Francisco!

Some of my companions during the day. (Because the only currency on the internet are cat photos).

Where Do You Go is an interesting mashup that shows the areas you most frequent in a city, using a heat map layed on top of Google Maps. The data is derived from your Foursquare checkins.

The above image represents the areas of San Francisco I most frequent, based on nearly 400 checkins with Foursquare over the last year. Red / white are areas visited the most, while blue / green (and grey) are areas I visit the least or not at all.

This is a pretty fantastic use of one's geo-location data and it's something I've always been curious about. Just where exactly do I go all the time, and what areas do I frequent. This sort of thing might help plan further adventures to parts of the city that I neglect. I just might have to reinstall Foursquare on my iPhone after all!

Of course, when I do finally reinstall Foursquare, what happens?

Go figure.