Someone Comes To Town

or Diary of a Software Socialite
  1. I'd just finished reading an excellent book, set in an interesting part of town. Hostels.com is great for finding somewhere temporary to stay nearby with free wireless internet.
  2. iPod + coffee + sunshine = explore.
  3. Set the time zone and a local NTP server.
  4. Read the Wikipedia, Wikicities and Wikitravel pages.
  5. Used geobloggers.com and Flyr to find photos with nearby geotags. Found the local Flickr group and arranged to go along on their photo expedition (but then didn't turn up because my lift didn't arrive. Next time).
  6. Installed some magical screen scrapers for Piggy Bank, which import apartment listings from Craigslist as well as movie listings and restaurant reviews from other sites. Also installed my Google Maps scraper, to import specific addresses.
  7. Used HousingMaps to look through places already advertised, then subscribed to the Craigslist feed for rooms or apartments in this area. When the ideal place showed up in the feed 10 minutes after it was posted, called, visited (used Google Maps for directions) and paid the deposit before anyone else got there. And relaxed.
  8. Set my new address as the default start location for Google Maps and set the zip code in My Yahoo! to get local weather and cinema information.
  9. Found concert listings for the next few days and subscribed to some feeds: Upcoming.org [iCal], all concerts [still working on this one, there are multiple incomplete sources]. Also subscribed to the webcal feed for public holidays and a feed for Yahoo's cinema listings. Two local free papers also have lots of event details, as does the local xist weblog which has links to other local weblogs too.
  10. Subscribed to the filtered del.icio.us feed and Flickr photo feed for items tagged with the city's name.
  11. Got a bank account, then switched addresses or opened new accounts with Amazon, Ebay and Paypal.
  12. Got a bike from the local community bikeshare hub and a map of the cycle paths.
  13. Went to the beach.
  14. Todo: sit back and wait for winter.