I have posted two CakePHP related projects that I have been working on recently. Both projects are currently being hosted on Github. Detailed information on each project can be found on their project page.
The Prowl component allows you to send messages to the Prowl iPhone/iPod Touch notification service from CakePHP applications. The SmartMirror behavior allows you to mirror one model to one or more other models. SmartMirror tracks your changes and will enact them on the mirrored models at an interval you set (via a cron script). This is especially helpful when mirroring entries onto a remote server when you don’t want your end-user to wait for the new database connection after each change to the database.
For those of you that do not know about the ‘L,’ it is Chicago’s eLevated train system (that sometimes goes underground). I live closest to the Blue Line, one of the two 24-hour lines. It services O’Hare, which will be nice for traveling/when visitors travel.
First, the good things. It is incredibly convenient, especially when used to the SKAT and WTA (haha). I can get pretty much anywhere in Chicago in about an hour (which Jacob-three-months-ago would think that is a long time, but it really isn’t that bad). Not having a car is nice. It almost makes my day less stressful. Having that travel cushion allows for time to zone out. Sometimes I talk to God, sometimes I talk to myself, sometimes I talk to the person next to me, and sometimes I sit silently. It is nice to be free from the convenience of my car (if that makes any sense). Not saying that I don’t miss Monte (my car), but now that I have made public transit a part of my day-to-day scheduling, I want to keep it up.
I am not sure if it has been this way since I got here or if has just been a crazier week than usual, but some parts of the L aren’t very nice. I commute thirty minutes each way during rush hour on the L, Monday thru Friday. I was sick this past week (boo-hoo Jacob). One morning, during the climax of my ailment, I found myself crammed in a train. It was a slightly cold morning and because I follow all of my mother’s advice, I made sure my chest and throat were thoroughly covered and bundled (although I think science is still out on if this actually helps your immune system). Train cars are usually warmer anyways, but this morning I was definitely feeling the heat (it could have been the large numbers of people). I was sweating profusely and with my arms stuck to my side due to the lack of space, my upper lip’s growing snottage (yeah, I just made up a word) was unable to be remedied. Thinking that I may be shunned from the train as “that snotty kid,” I quickly (visually) surveyed the train to see who was looking at my nose. Then I noticed something quite wonderful: I wasn’t alone. Apparently, my immune system was not the only one in an epic battle (by epic I mean mild). Not saying it still wasn’t an unfortunate situation, but no one likes to be the only snotty one in a mass cluster of people.
This is commuting, I guess. If your car bumpers aren’t going to be rubbing up to a bunch of other cars, I guess your human bumpers will. Ahhh (sub)urban sprawl. Anywho, as much as I am still thankful for having the mass transit system in Chicago, I no longer become short of breath with anticipation of riding the train around the city… now I take a deep breath of “fresh” air before I join the sweaty mass of people.
I’ll post later about things you might be more interested in.
On August 17th I arrived, via train, to my home-for-a-year, Chicago. This was approximately three weeks ago, so my memory might not be able to recall all of the details. Stepping into my apartment for the first time was quite the experience. When we arrived, the place was, let’s just say, in a transition period (or two). First, our amazing landlord Chris was giving us a new bathroom (this is still an on-going project). Our old bathroom parts were piled in the middle of our living room, along with the rest of the household items that remained. These items were in piles for the second transition that the apartment was in (hint: it involved dumping all old furniture/cloth items and getting them replaced). Needless to say, it took us a week or so to make it feel settled in. Underneath the dust we found an amazing apartment. It has neat old woodwork and cabinets, a brand new washer and dryer, and (my favorite) an incredibly nice pot/pan set!
Community – Housemates
This is the paragraph where I complain about my housemates. Just joking! Even if I did have anything to complain about, I wouldn’t post it on a publicly available blog! A brief introduction, in alphabetical order:
Community – Neighborhood
Our apartment is located on the edge of the gentrified zone of the Puerto Rican area of Chicago (Humboldt Park). We are a couple blocks away from the section of Division that has two huge Puerto Rican flags at both ends. In brief: I love it. There is a strong sense of community here that is united in a movement working against gentrification (a topic I hope to talk about in a later blog entry). Our landlord, Chris, lives in the apartment below us with his wife, Megan, and two-year old daughter, Fiona. Megan is due any day now with a baby boy… we are excited to baby sit. They are great people with a never-ending supply of stories. Above us live two women, Elanor and [name escapes me] who are in the circus punk marching band that is quite famous here in Chicago called Mucca Pazza. Also famous is our neighbor (two doors down), Neko Case of the band The New Pornographers. We are pretty excited to hang out with them all.
Community – Chicago Jobs Council
Another community that I am apart of this year is at my place of employment, Chicago Jobs Council (CJC). In brief, again: I love it. My coworkers are great. The moment I started (if not before), they have been both welcoming AND hilarious. I am sure I will blog about them later (in a secret PNW language that they won’t be able to understand if they stumble upon this blog). They make working from nine-to-five behind a desk more than bearable. CJC is located a block away from Millennium Park, which is where I go (sometimes) to eat lunch. My coworker Jen just told me about this amazing place to get cheap falafel sandwiches and lentil soup+pita (Oasis on Wabash, fyi). On Friday, I ate my lunch while watching the Lyric Opera of Chicago practice in the park. It was amazing. Earlier this week I went to see a free show in the same park with Andrew Bird. I was blown away. One of the many perks of living in a large city.
Anywho, if you haven’t figured it out, I love Chicago. I miss natural elevation change, Bellingham Bay, and everyone back in Washington. Everyone should plan on visiting me this year! Speaking of which, Bellingham friends Eleni and Andrew are visiting me tomorrow!
Quick Overview
For the next year (August 11, 2008 – August 12, 2009) I will be living in Chicago, IL working for the Chicago Jobs Council (CJC) through the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC). LVC is a domestic service organization that is currently in twelve cities around the country and currently has 106 volunteers placed in approximately 100 placements. I’ll be talking about the tenants (simple/sustainable living, working for social justice, and intentional community) of LVC in more detail later on. I’ll also be talking about CJC more in my next post.
LVC Training
Recalling my week long experience in DC is slightly difficult, but I will try.
I arrived for my training on August 11th. Buying the cheapest tickets around the same time happened to make it so that my flight from Seattle to DC had three other Lutheran volunteers. Unfortunately, we don’t have shirts or matching tattoos, but I was able to recognize/be recognized by a few with our summer reading packet (apparently I wasn’t the only procrastinator). I arrived to registration before my other Chicago housemates, who trickled in throughout the afternoon and greeted each other with that always great “I recognize you from facebook, but we’ve never met” expression on their face.
Eating partially melted chocolate on brown sheets is great, by the way.,, no need for a napkin or the dirtying of my leg hair (thanks society for letting me keep it).
Anyways, back to the District of Columbia. The week was filled with a lot of workshops, such as tips for simple/sustainable living, anti-racism, as well as building and living in an inclusive community. One of my favorite workshops was the self-defense training.
Some of the things I learned:
Sometimes I practice saying that last phrase on the L when I get bored… people react differently, but generally they don’t change their seat.
Other than that, DC was a lot of group bonding and things like that. One day during lunch, I took a bus ride to the Holocaust Museum and met my friend Sarah Condreay, who just happened to be visiting the same week that I was in DC! Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes in the museum, I had to run (drenched in my own sweat) back to training. Welllllll, that’s about it!
I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith, just as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith…. This is most certainly true.
— Luther’s Small Catechism (The Apostles’ Creed–The Third Article: On Being Made Holy)
So I know this is kind of cheating because I am still here, but I have some downtime in the camper so I thought I would do this now.
We arrived in Amsterdam on the 30th because our train passes expired (they actually expired on the 29th). Getting off of our last train was kind of sad. I have grown quite fond of European trains and I don’t think Amtrak will be able to fill their shoes when I return. I still think it would be amazing to punch tickets for Amtrak, so if anyone reads this at Amtrak, I am looking for a job (probably shouldn’t have ‘dissed them before asking them for a job). Trains are much more convenient than airplanes. With trains there are no security checks, they run frequently (usually), no hassle (especially when you have passes and are in a country that doesn’t require reservations), and are generally more comfortable than airplanes.
Before we met up with Noah and Heather (who were staying in some other Amsterdam hostel on the 30th), Nate and I spent our first night at this sketchy Christian hostel right next to the red light district. Why is it that the Christian places are sometimes the sketchiest? They had a lot of banners and cliché Christian posters all over the place… they also didn’t allow anyone who stayed there to be under the influence of any soft/hard drugs or alcohol. They are also surrounded by coffeeshops (which are pubs that sell marijuana) and erotic massage places, which made Nate and I laugh. Coffeeshops are everywhere in Amsterdam (as well as the smell of marijuana).
For our second day, Nate and I head to the place we spent the majority of our time at—Lucky Lake Hostel. This “hostel” is a small park of caravan trailers, located near a lake. The staff are high constantly and are very nice. There is an outdoor kitchen and lots of places to lounge around. It is kind of a pain to get into town (you have to take their shuttle for 2 Euro and then the metro), but it is a nice change of pace after staying in city hostels for the last seven weeks. There are a lot of purple animals around the hostel, including an elephant that has water shooting out of its trunk. Noah and Heather came later that day, so the next day we decided to go into town.
The first day we were all together, we went to check out the Anne Frank House and some small attractions. The Anne Frank House was amazing and very well done. It gives you a tour of where her and her family hid for two years while incorporating excerpts from her journal around the exhibit. After that, we walked around to buy some last … week souvenirs and then went back to our hostel.
All of us took the next day off (because the day before was so exhausting) and hung out at the lake. This was a good idea because a lot of things were closed and the weather wasn’t so great. All of us rented bikes (from the hostel) and rode into town to get some food. The rest of the day was spent watching Curb Your Enthusiasm (my new favorite show) and Arrested Development episodes and preparing my photos for easy showing when I get back to the states.
Nate and I head back into town the next day to check out a few more things that Heather and Noah weren’t as interested in. Nate and I also wanted to see some different things, so after the Van Gogh Museum (which was a good, but I get grumpy when museums charge 10 Euro and have no student rate) we split. I went to hit up a cheap boat tour (to get some photos of the city I am spending the most time in with the least photos to show for it) and walk around. I ended my stroll in the Red Light District, which was interesting (to say the least). Noah and Heather had already given me a description of it (they went the day before we met up with them again), but I was still surprised. We have seen many a Red Light District in Europe, but this one was probably the most red-lightish one yet. Even Rick Steves, who apparently frequents them late at night, said this one is too scary to go to after 23:00. The buildings are designed so that prostitutes can sit in a chair behind a window until they have an interested customer. I was more interested in the Hemp Museum, but when I found out it cost over 6 Euros to see some plants, I went back to our hostel where I can see them for free.
Tomorrow Nate and I are moving to our last hostel of the trip (just because it would be a pain to go to the airport early from Lucky Lake). Noah and Heather are much braver than us and have decided to sleep at the airport, where we will meet up with them early on the 5th. We might go see the Heineken Brewery, because Rick told us to. I am not the biggest fan of their beer, but I do what Rick tells me to. If anything exciting happens, I’ll be sure to append it to this blog entry.
We are going home! I am definitely ready… for many reasons. Now this site will go back to its boring, pre-Europe state.
We went on a train that hops on a ferry! Yup! It just rolls right on. I arrived in Denmark on a train that was on a boat. That was a good way to start our travels in my motherland.
In Denmark we stayed at a distant relative’s (my great-grandfather is first cousins with his grandfather) house that was about my age, named Kim. He opened up his place to us and gave us beer, coke, couches to sleep on, and plenty more. Kim lives in Næstved, which is a smaller town (lacking a lot of tourists, which was nice) about an hour from Copenhagen. The whole town threw a party for us the first two nights we were there. Apparently this town has a town festival every-so-often in which they give out free beer, set up a stage, and invite the country’s best cover bands to come perform songs from ten years ago. It was great.
Many people in Denmark say that Denmark is always ten years behind the States, but I think they are catching up. They are talking about pop-trends and the like, of course, not politics (in which Denmark has historically been quite progressive and ahead of the USA). Also with their design (especially architecturally), I don’t think that statement holds. They also give you coupons for a free coffee, candy bar, juice, or water on every train ride you get on. The rest of Europe should do this.
Our first full day was spent in Copenhagen, mostly getting lost and checking out Christiania. Christiania has historically been known for being a very left-of-center, counter-cultural, and almost sovereign state inside of Copenhagen. In its prime years, the government (while knowing it was going on) didn’t police soft drug sales and let freeloading hippies squat in the community without paying their taxes. Lately, there has been more of a crackdown on the hash selling and most of the residents have started paying their income (while not property) taxes. The place itself is on an abandoned military base and has been outfitted with many colorful shacks, “gardens,” and compost piles. It was a nice place to be for a couple of hours.
I am pretty sure I have mentioned Noah’s love of sunshine. Copenhagen currently has weather that resembles a Pac-NW spring. Noah had a hard time enjoying my people’s wonderful sights with rain clouds above his head. His immediate thought was to go back to his people’s sunny land (Spain), but instead they left to see some places around Belgium while Nate and I enjoyed Denmark. Before they split from us, we spent the day trying to get to Malmo, Sweden. After a number of train issues, we arrived twenty minutes before Nate and I had to leave. We had just enough time to take a picture of a windmill.
From there, Nate and I went back to Næstved to meet up with Kim. That night he drove us to his parents house to enjoy a home cooked, Danish meal that his mother had prepared for us. Since we have been on a Kabob diet for the last 6 weeks, Nathan and I stuffed ourselves with a tremendous amount of food. We had a great time with Kim’s parents. We talked a lot about my crazy family (I told them all your secrets) and they showed us pictures of my ancestors. They also taught Nate and I how to play the Viking Game. Although I was not the victor, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. I think when I bring it back to the States it is going to be a huge hit (I am pretty sure it already is in the States).
The next day we rode with them into Copenhagen where Kim showed us around town. I was quite excited to go to the Copenhagen University. It has a beautiful campus. I could have spent hours (nay … years!) in the library, but we only had enough time to check out the sociology section (which I found one of my favorite contemporary sociologist’s book!). From there we hopped on a boat-bus and saw some of the typical sights. Kim was pretending to be a tourist with us, so Nathan and I didn’t feel bad when we both took a billion photos of the Little Mermaid (“Copenhagen’s most over-photographed piece of metal”). From there we went to the palace (which yes, they have fuzzy hat people too!) and then Kim took us out to lunch. That was definitely the most productive day we had in Copenhagen.
On our last day (or so we thought), Nate and I went back to Copenhagen for a few hours to see the National Museum. It not only was impressive, it was also free (my favorite type of museum). We left Copenhagen at 16:20 and expected to be back at Næstved around 17:20 (plenty of time to catch our train at 18:34). Unfortunately, that train took about two hours and after an insane twenty minutes of running to Kim’s place, throwing our stuff in our bags, and running back to the train station we missed it by two minutes. We hopped on the first train in the morning, which catches me up to where I am writing now.
I can’t believe that the trip is almost over! After spending a quick night in Bruges, Belgium and picking up some chocolate, we are off to our final destination: Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, Nate and I will be staying at three different hostels (yay!). The first night is just one near the train station, then we are meeting up with Noah and Heather so we can go to where we are spending the majority of our time in Amsterdam—a trailer park hostel. Although it is an hour from Amsterdam, we are staying in these caravan trailers, which are parked on some lake property…so it should be a nice and relaxing place to hang out before we fly home. We are staying at the last hostel just because Nathan and I don’t feel like sleeping in an airport before we are on a plane for a billion hours.
Yay for there being only one more blog entry left…which will either be posted before I leave Amsterdam or when I wake up in the middle of September.
Before Nate and I met up with Heather and Noah in Berlin, I made a pilgrimage to Lutherstad Wittenberg. I felt very Lutheran there. The entire town was full of Luther (it was renamed after him, so what do you expect). We checked out where he nailed the 95 Theses and his statue. We couldn’t find a place to sleep there though, so we decided to get back on the train and check in at our Berlin hostel a day early.
Berlin is a really amazing city. There is so much history here even though it is such a (relatively) young city. The first day here, Nathan and I split up so we could see some different sights. I went to the Bonhoeffer memorial at Zionskirch. The church is in a place that somewhat resembles Fremont/Bellingham (it had the second “health food shop” I have seen in Europe), so I really liked it. The church surprised me, though. It was really run down and had graffiti and long grass/weeds all around it (even though it was still an actively used church). On the west side of the church is a memorial for Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the brass statue without a head or arms). Having just finished his book Ethics (which he wrote in part while at the concentration camp he was hung at) while on the trip, it was really nice to just sit on the bench next to it for a while.
That night, Heather and Noah met up with us back at the hostel. We exchanged stories and then went to bed. Our first full day together ended up being the first “rain day” of our trip. We tried to take the free tour that they had at this hostel, but we ended up leaving after we got soaked. It did clear up during the last half of the day, so we went and checked out some pieces of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and then Reichstag (where the German Parliament meets). Reichstag is really something. Above the room where the parliament meets is this huge dome where people pack in at all times. Besides providing tourists with a great panorama of the city, it is also to remind those below who really have power (supposedly the people) because they can always look up and see the people look back down.
The next day Nathan and I tried to take the tour again. This time the weather was great. Our tour guide, Andrew, had a lot of really good information about Berlin and its amazing history. I am definitely going to be doing some wikipedia’ing when I get home. After that we checked out the Jewish Museum (which is in a very cool building) and some Egyption stuff in a few other museums.
Tomorrow we are leaving for Denmark. I am pretty excited about that. We are staying at my distant relative (my great-grandfather Jensen was first cousins with his grandfather, I think) Kim’s place in Naestved (about an hour train ride from Copenhagen), so that will be cool.
I am a tad behind in my updates, but now I have a laptop charger that doesn’t spark/smoke when I plug it in so now I can catch up. I am going to lump all of southern Germany into one blog entry.
From Milan, we completely skipped Switzerland (they are just too neutral for us… and didn’t have very exciting sights [that you didn't have to climb a mountain for]) and went through Austria and into Germany. The train right to Munich was amazing. Every few kilometers (yeah, I am going metric… get used to it) there were these sets of small towns, each one sitting slightly higher on the hills and each one having its own church (all the churches looked the exact same). I use parentheses a lot.
In Munich, we stayed at this really cool hostel called Wombats. It is a self-labeled “party hostel,” but us quiet, lonely drinkers were put on the fifth floor so those crazy young college kids didn’t bother us. You get a “free drink” with check-in (which ends up being a 0.2l beer… which I threw back like it was apple juice). Also, their “shots” are not the standard 1+ ounce that you see in the states… it is more (seriously) like a spoonful. Come on Germans. The hostel is continuously rated one of the top ten hostels on hostelworld.com (where we make our hostel reservations).
The hostel provided a “free tour” through old town, to the Chinese tower, and ended at the English Gardens. Our tour guide, Ausie (I don’t think he was Australian), was really good. I am pretty sure I learned more in those three hours than I have in most of my history classes. He was very into Bavarian culture (so he gave us lots of information about beer) and a lot of interesting facts about Hitler and how the Nazi party started in Munich. The beer gardens were amazing. At the first one I had a TUBED MEAT and a 0.25l. It has been more than a year since my last tubed meat, so that was interesting. It wasn’t half bad, but I am pretty sure my body was “excuse me, what is this once-tubed food you put in me.” Our next beer garden (which we went through a park where there were a lot of nude people laying out on the grass… a very popular thing to do here in Germany). I had a HUGE pretzel and a 0.5l. A typical Bavarian drinks 1.5l of beer per day and there are laws that protect the rights of a Bavarian to drink 0.5l or less beer while they are at work.
While in Munich (the first time we were there), we also went to Dachau, the first concentration camp. They have this free 25-minute English movie about its creation, use, and liberation. It was definitely an experience. One thing I have really found interesting is Germany’s way of remembering the Holocaust. Munich is known for its subtle monuments that are often unmarked and usually on the ground. For instance, they were careful in the restoration of the city and tried to keep its old look while still putting little reminders in certain places. One example is the government building where they didn’t repair the shrapnel damage on the columns. This supposedly acts as a constant reminder to those in power to not let something like WWII happen again.
After Munich, we stopped in Heidelberg to see a castle. After finding out our rail passes don’t work in Czech Republic or Poland, we decided to find other interesting places to spend five days. Noah and Heather decided to check out southeast Europe out while Nathan and I checked out more of southern Germany. Heidelberg’s castle is quite something. It had a great view of the old town and a gigantic wine cask inside. From the castle, Nate and I checked out the university (Germany’s third largest university, I think it is about the same size [if not bigger] than UW). At first glance it seems like a really small university, but it is scattered all over town making it quite large. We felt right at home in their cafeteria. There is one difference though–they don’t sell beer at Western’s cafeterias. After being in Germany for about ten days, I really wish the U.S. would lighten up its public drinking laws and such. Nathan and I having been blaming the puritans a lot lately.
Wow, this is a long blog entry. From Heidelberg, Nathan and I went to Frankfurt. There wasn’t anything there, so we left for Wurzburg. We used Wurzburg as a base for Rothenburg (a really cool walled Bavarian town), but Wurzburg had some nice sights too. After Wurzburg, we left for Nuremberg (which also had some cool sights) and then back to Munich. During our second stop in Munich, we stayed at the same hostel and checked out some of the other sights we wanted to see. We also went to the Neuschwanstein castle, which was one of the castles that Disney based their castle on. That was about four or five days in a paragraph.
We didn’t feel stylish enough in our travel attire to hang around Milan much, so we used it as a base for our day trips to Venice and Lake Como.
Venice was unique, to say the least. Besides the whole water thing, there were a lot of pigeons, tourists, and tourists feeding pigeons (food with birth control in it, says Rick Steves). One [pigeon] had consumed so much of the tourist’s food that it left a nice little present on my shoulder. That hasn’t happened since about 5th grade when I was out on the lake in the paddle boat with my green jacket. I guess its good for a bird to poop on you every-so-often (to keep you humble and remind you that birds can poopah on you and you can’t do too much about it).
Nate and I rode on the boat-bus down the main canal. The water was surprisingly clean and smell-free. After that, we walked around and hit the main sights till it was almost time to meet up with Noah and Heather. While waiting for them, I found a café for a cappuccino and place to read. I do love the Italian cafes (although I am pretty sure all café drinks are made with automatic machines).
I am going to cut out Fanta from my diet (note: since I wrote this blog, I haven’t had a single Fanta!). Noah and I have been drinking a lot of it lately. It is very popular over here! I don’t know why it isn’t respected back in the States. I figure if I can’t read “High Fructose Corn Syrup,” then it must not be in there. They have an imported beer that my people (the Danes) brew, so that has been a nice replacement for Fanta so far.
After Venice, we split the next day between Milan and Lake Como. Nate and I checked out Duomo, a very large cathedral. I might even say it that it’s the largest cathedral yet (and we have seen many cathedrals). Afterwards we walked around town a bit and then met Noah and Heather at the train station.
Lake Como is much larger than I imagined. We didn’t see the Cloone-ster (George Clooney), but we made sure to look for him everywhere we went (let’s be honest, I am always on the lookout for George). I kept thinking to myself, “I bet George has walked on this cement before.” I wonder how much cement we have both walked on. Back to Como… The villas (especially how they were arranged on the hills) were pretty amazing. The city and lake are surrounded by these large hills (they might call them mountains, but I wouldn’t) that they build on above the lake. A large percent of the actual waterfront isn’t even developed.
Next we are off to Germany, which takes up ¼ of my heritage pie chart. Germany is the land of tubed meats [sarcasm] so that’s exciting [/sarcasm]… but they have a lot of good beer, so I guess that makes up for the shape and quantity of their meat. I hope they don’t hang strings of tubed meat all over the place like Christmas lights.