Chris Streeter

Looking Back on 2013

2013-12-31T20:00:00-08:00

I started a tradition in 2010 and 2012 that I am just barely keeping alive (posting on NYE 2013!). Just like last time, I emailed out the write-up to people I've got email addresses for. So if you aren't on that list, you can check out the update on my 2013 in Retrospect page.

A lot definitely happened in 2013, and the update is, once again, lengthy. But it should read quickly and give a pretty good overview.

You can keep up with me next year here on my site, through Facebook, Twitter or through my photos on Flickr or Instagram. Hope your 2013 was a good one and all the best next year.

A PGP Key

2013-09-01T16:00:00-07:00

Because of all the recent news issues around data security, I went ahead and created a PGP key. I'd read an article on Ars Technica a while back, and so it was a matter of creating the keys and being prepared to receive the email. Since me having created a public and private key does nothing, unless someone else has the public key, I decided to post the public key here, for people to use to send me email.

Thus, here's my PGP public key:

Budapest

2013-06-24T00:33:00-07:00

On May 31st, I had a packed backpack, a passport, and a printed boarding pass, all ready to begin 3 flights and about 20 hours of traveling to arrive in my first Eastern Bloc country. I was heading to Budapest, Hungary. I arrived with my friend Dean, meeting my other friend Ben, to a city I knew nothing about. We'd chosen Budapest because it was close to Istanbul, a city we were visiting after, and because I'd heard that Budapest was an interesting city, despite not knowing the details.

Budapest and It's Bridges

Budapest turned out to really surprise me with its beauty and history. The city is located along a bend in the Danube, and is separated into the hilly Buda on the West side, and the flat Pest on the East. Because the river divides the city, there are tons of old bridges that cross the river. And each bridge has its own style and its own history.

Pest Buildings

During WWII, a large portion of the biggest European cities were bombed, and many old buildings were destroyed. However, Budapest was largely left intact. The bridges were destroyed, and some buildings near the river were also bombed, but away from the river, there is still a ton of very old historic buildings. This made for really great walking as there were lots of great sights.

Would you like salami with your salami?

I didn't know this, but Hungary is also apparently known for enjoying its meat; salami and sausages are everywhere. We visited a market where more than half the vendors had tens of different kinds of salamis and even more cuts of meat for purchase. We also found amazing restaurants sprinkled throughout the city. Many had foreign influences (several were French inspired), but I was able to try some of the local cuisine. One of the most well known is goulash, a hearty soup with chunks of beef. In all, the food options were great, and I definitely never went for lack of food.

Funicular

So, despite arriving in Budapest with just about no sense of what to do, or what to eat (I only had a place to stay), the stay was great. We were there 5 nights, and each day was as full as I wanted it to be. We even managed to avoid the highest river levels in city history, which peaked just a few days after we left. Besides the photos in this post, I've posted more in my Budapest set on Flickr.

Heading to Istanbul and Budapest

2013-05-27T22:33:00-07:00

In just a few days, I'm taking my first trip of 2013. I'm heading to Budapest, Hungary followed by Istanbul, Turkey. The Budapest part of the trip is going to be complete vacation, and I'm really looking forward to exploring the Hungarian capital.

After Hungary, I'll be heading to Istanbul for tourism and to attend the wedding of some friends. Istanbul has long been on my travel bucket-list, and while the rest of Turkey will go unexplored this trip, I should have plenty of time to see and do all that I want to in Istanbul. I'll just have to come back to see the rest of Turkey.

As I've never been to either country or city, I'm very open to suggestions on things to do, places to make sure I see, and of course, food that I have to eat. So speak up and let me know your thoughts!

The Streeters and Nelsons

2012-12-26T15:19:00-08:00

At Christmas, the entire extended family got together to celebrate. While together, we took a group photo that had everyone included except my cousin Alex, who had to work.

Streeter and Nelson Families (minus Alex)

Good thing we left room for me to Photoshop her into the picture.

Streeter and Nelson Families (with Alex)

Hong Kong

2012-12-26T09:42:00-08:00

In October of this year, I traveled to Hong Kong and Nepal over a two and a half week period. From the US, there are no direct flights to Nepal; they all connect through other countries first. And from San Francisco, most connect through Hong Kong. When I saw that we'd have long layovers in Hong Kong, I decided that we should just make them into stopovers, of which I've had great success with before. In the end, I spent around 4 days in Hong Kong with my friend Wenzhe and my sister Amy. Since I've taken several trips to India and parts of Asia, I'd been to the Hong Kong airport on multiple occasions, but never did manage to step outside of the airport (or even customs for that matter). So I was excited to finally get to taste the food and see the skyscrapers I'd heard about.

Spicy Crab

We poured over episodes of No Reservations, reviews on TripAdvisor and tons of other travel blogs and sites we came across. Our plan, arrive, check into our AirBnb place, and get some delicious food. We definitely accomplished that. We ate everything from Roasted Duck (basically Peking Duck, just in Hong Kong), to spicy crab, to a Michelin Star dim sum restaurant (I went back for seconds). We organized our days around what we wanted to eat and where we wanted to eat, then fit in places to see from there.

Fish Market

A visit to Hong Kong is almost never complete without wandering through some of the innumerable markets and shopping malls. In fact, I'm pretty sure all of Hong Kong and Kowloon is just one single market, joined by some sort of underground tunnel system where you never have to leave a man-made building. I've never seen more giant shopping malls in my life. Every single district in the city has their own mall, and every street is lined with markets, stands and people selling something.

Ladies Market

We spent a ton of time just wandering the corridors and alleys of some of the markets. Some of the more famous ones, like Temple Street Night Market and the Ladies Market, were packed. The markets really had everything and anything, as long as you were ok with counterfeit. However, if you wanted non-counterfeit goods, the shopping malls could hook you up. Hong Kong has the largest designer stores I've ever seen; from Louis Vuitton stores that size of a Best Buy to Coach stores taking up half a block. And those were the only brands that I recognized; I'm sure others would recognize the names of the other stores.

Temple Street Night Market

As part of the plan to follow in Anthony Bourdain's footsteps, and to be part of the stereotypical Hong Kong experience, Wenzhe and I both got some tailored suits made. After a long time comparing stores and haggling on prices, we decided upon a spot and each got a tailored suit, an extra pair of pants and two fitted shirts. Now to find occasions to wear my new clothes...

Hong Kong from the Peak

We made sure to visit all the places that were recommended by friends and travel guides; The Peak at night, wander through night markets, fish markets, visit Causeway Bay, drink in Lan Kwai Fong bars and tour the Hong Kong Museum of History. We even made sure to fit in a day trip to Macau to see some sights and gamble a bit in the Vegas of the East. All my pictures from the trip are up on Flickr. We packed a lot in, and we definitely full from food and wandering. For myself, I was left very satisfied with the trip. I think this picture from out last meal describes how I felt before we boarded our 14 hour return flight home.

I ate a lot of delicious food

Looking Back on 2012

2012-12-23T18:30:00-08:00

I started a tradition in 2010 that I promptly abandoned in 2011 because I was too busy. However, I'm back! I just finished a write-up of my 2012 adventures, work and activities. Just like last time, I emailed out the write-up to people I've got email addresses for. So if you aren't on that list, you can check out the update on my 2012 in Retrospect page.

As with last time, this turned out to be a lot longer than I had anticipated. But I'm not a concise writer, and a lot happened that I wanted to talk about! Hopefully the write-up isn't too terrible.

You can keep up with me next year here on my site, through Facebook, Twitter or through my photos on Flickr. Hope your 2012 was a good one and all the best next year.

Refreshed Design

2012-12-04T04:25:00-08:00

I recently decided to switch to a static site framework instead of my old Wordpress-based homepage. Since Python is so awesome, I naturally chose Pelican as my static site generator of choice because it is written in Python. I also wanted something that would be easy to host elsewhere for free, like on Heroku. I'm tired of managing a personal server.

A few scripts later, and I had a site that looked just about the same as before, but was fully static. However, I decided to also take the opportunity to refresh the design, and bring it forward. I wanted to keep the dynamic header that's been part of my site for so long, but I didn't want to create custom rectangular photos like I did before. In addition, if I did the rectangular style photos, they wouldn't fit all the way across the width of the page, leaving whitespace on either side of them.

So I took a design cue from Kickstarter and created a grid of images that are automatically pulled from a Flickr tag on my account at compile time. I also added some other custom plugins to look for special Flickr markdown tags in my posts to automatically insert images. The result is a site that should load faster, be smaller, and should also be easier keep updated and experiment with. I still need to rewrite my travel page to fully port my previous homepage over, but that'll be work for another day as that code is really old, and really messy.

Family Photos

2012-11-25T16:55:00-08:00

It's been a while since we last took any Streeter Family photos. So while together for Thanksgiving this year, I rounded us all up and took a hundred pictures. Then I picked out two that actually came out. See them below, along with one we took while at Lake Tahoe cutting down trees.

Streeter Family

Streeters on Lake Tahoe

Streeter Family with Grady

Russian Ridge Sunrise

2012-10-04T10:00:00-07:00

I haven't taken many pictures lately, and wanted to get back in the habit. This past Sunday, I woke up early and drove up to Russian Ridge Open Space for the sunrise. Here are a couple pictures from the trip.

Valley Sunrise

Bay Area Sunrise

Setting Moon