Category Archives: CouchSurfing

Casa Mercurio near San Isidro

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Update: Much more detailed directions are now here.

Ruben suggested our new house be called Casa Mercurio or Mercury in English. He explained why he had chosen the name of that planet, and maybe he’ll write something about that later. I’ll post a link if he does. It seems like a fine idea to me, so that’s what our place will be called.

For those wishing to visit, I’m posting directions. All are welcome. Our accommodation is basic. We have tents, tent hammocks, hammocks, and other places to sleep. We invite you to come and experience this beautiful part of the world.

We’re just outside the town of San Isidro. From other places in Costa Rica, take a bus to San Isidro. The bus from San Jose takes 3-4 hours and is run by a company called Musoc.

From San Isidro, there is a local bus that will bring you to our driveway. Take the bus for Pedegroso and San Ramon. Ask the bus driver to get off just after the road for Arizona, at Pupleria El Dorado. Our driveway is 100m before the pulperia, on the left side of the road. When following our driveway, keep to the right hand side for our house. Follow the driveway down the hill, past a small finca (farm house) and around to the left. You’ll see 4 houses in amongst trees. Ours is the one in the middle, painted yellow with green trim.

I believe a taxi from San Isidro costs about 2’500 colones (approximately $5 USD). You can tell the taxi you want the road to San Ramon, just after the road for Arizona. Then follow the directions above to find our driveway. If the gate is open, a taxi can drive right down to the house. If the gate is locked, there is space for a person to squeeze through the fence, next to the gate.

If you arrive and we’re not home, please make yourselves as comfortable as you can and we hope to see you soon.

CS Greasy on Launchpad

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I created a project on Launchpad for the first time today. It’s called CS Greasy, a collection (or soon to be a collection) of Greasemonkey scripts related to CouchSurfing. It took a little time to figure it out, but thanks to Kasper’s help, I think we’ve got it working now.

I created a new team called ~csgreasy. The tilda (~) distinguishes teams and users from projects. So the project name is csgreasy, the team name that owns the project is ~csgreasy. The team is open, so anyone can join. Upon joining, new members can commit code immediately. Once you’ve joined the team, the commands to check out and commit code are:

bzr branch lp:csgreasy/trunk
# make some changes
bzr push lp:csgreasy/trunk

After the first push, subsequent changes can be pushed with just `bzr push`, the location will be remembered from last time. Now anyone with bazaar and some javascript skills can contribute. To get started, install bazaar, register on launchpad, join the team, branch, start hacking, push back changes. Happy hacking… :-)

Creating Launchpad projects

Creating the project was relatively simple. There were a couple of steps I didn’t fully understand at first, it was simple once I got it.

Firstly, I registered a project. Second, I created a team. Then, instead of pushing branches to lp:~user-name/project-name/branch-name, I can push to ~team-name/project-name/branch-name. Using the team name instead of my own username means that the code is owned by the team and can be edited by anyone else in the team. A team on launchpad is essentially a regular user that consists of multiple other users. Very handy. That’s the whole process. :-)

I’ve Been Fired!

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This morning I woke up to find an email in my inbox telling me that my volunteer services are no longer required by CouchSurfing.

Apparently I have “fundamental differences in ideology and communication styles”. I’ve asked for clarification on that, fundamentally different from whom. I’m not holding my breath for an answer!

One thing was stated clearly in the email, CouchSurfing is not going open source. Not now, not any time soon. So at last the OpenCouchSurfing campaign has received one answer. That’s real progress I think.

Interesting times… :)

A Sad Day for CouchSurfing

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At least three volunteer developers have resigned from the CouchSurfing Tech Team on account of the new NDA that all volunteers will be required to sign.

The new NDA includes a non-compete clause preventing volunteers from working with any other travel or social networks. It also requires that volunteers transfer their Intellectual Property rights to CouchSurfing International Inc.

I heard that somebody describe it perfectly, they said “it’s not volunteering, it’s slavery”.

CouchSurfing.com is Back

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CouchSurfing.com is back online after almost 20 hours of down time.

This downtime was especially frustrating for a number of reasons.

1) It was unannounced. Even on the public developers list, there was no forewarning of the upgrade. No doubt travellers were left stranded while the site was down for almost a full day.

2) It clearly wasn’t planned well enough. There are so many willing and skilled volunteers who could have helped with this upgrade, if it weren’t for CouchSurfing’s ludicrous NDA.

I warmly encourage you to take action now, join the campaign, sign the petition.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to NZ

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It has been an adventure. Thursday morning NOT_BILL (new window) and I hitched out of sunny little Nelson down to Christchurch. We stayed with the awesome THURSTY (new window) and then after a fairly wasted night, hit the road again bound for Dunedin where we caught up with VIAJEN (new window) and partied with the formidable Brett Herman (new window).

Then we drove down through Invercargill to Milford Sounds, camped, all three of us in a 1.5 man tent (oh that was fun, NOT) and then up to Queenstown to catch up with KERSEF (new window), JUKIEN (new window) and OmJoshuaOm (new window). We stayed in Queenstown for a night, then I hit the road back up to Christchurch.

A couple of very friendly German lads gave me a lift right to the very door of my home for the next 2 months. Gotta love hitching.

Rain

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It’s raining today. Terrible business really. All grey and dark. The view from my newly formed outdoor office is not up to the usual standards. At this rate I’ll have to ask the weather man for my money back!

New Zealand Nelson CS Rainy View

Bill working hard in the new office…

New Zealand Nelson CS Bill Outside Office

Servers and Friday Night

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This week has been an adventure, well not really, this is Nelson, but it’s been a technological adventure. I’ve been discovering a little about the CouchSurfing.com server setup and checking out ways to bring the servers up to date. With the gazillions of other things going on, server maintenance has slipped through the cracks a little.

Other than that, it’s Friday night and I’m faced with the prospect of another Friday night in Nelson. Oh dear. After last weekend’s mis-adventures I’m not sure I even want to leave the house. That coupled with the inevitable cost of beer, it’s all just a little depressing.

Still, we’re planning a camping trip, or something of that ilk tomorrow, so that should brighten our weekend. And then, the very important weekly house meeting on Sunday. Has it really only been a week since our last meeting? Oh how the time flies…

Not to disappoint, a few pictures from last weekend’s Nelson outings for you!

New Zealand Nelson Friday Nights On The Town

Don’t I look fetching? ;)

New Zealand Nelson Oh What A Lovely Hat

Police Interference

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For the second time tonight, we were pulled over by the police. At least this time there were 7 of us in the car, so they had at least some justification to stop us! It was only after checking the driver’s ID and alcohol level that the policeman noticed there were 7 of us!

Top marks to the Nelson police though, he asked if we were going far, then said, ok, go straight home!

You can just see the blue lights in the background…

New Zealand Nelson CSCollective Police Interference