I spent a month in March 1989 driving along the Mediterranean coast of Spain, staying at small hotels along the way. I didn't have plan - if I liked a place I would stay there a few days. Then I had to quit my job to get travel time, now with remote internet working "from home" you can work while you travel. Here are some travel tips for longer term travel doing remote internet based work based on both that trip and many I have made around the world since then.

While I mention Spain a few times below, most of this advice applies to all countries.

Money

At the time it was not aways easy to find a working ATM, especially in small towns. Not sure if that has changed. So I recommend you have some Euros and dollars as back up when traveling. Also recommend you have several ATM and credit cards because sometimes your bank will cancel your card due to "suspicious activity" which is really just you spending money abroad. They will do this even if you tell them by phone ahead of time of your travel plans. So some back up cards come in handy while you wait for you bank to either reinstate your card or FedEx you a replacement. I have read that some automated ticket machines in Europe don't like US credit cards (except for Amex) because they want to see a chip on the card. More on that here 

Security

I recommend you scan all your passports, IDs, cards, tickets etc and put in a secure, password protected place such as Evernote so you can access them if you loose any originals. And put a backup card and cash in a separate place in case your main stash is stolen. Keep an eye on bags at all times. Do not assume that a hotel room is 100% safe. 99% of the time all is fine and people are honest but it makes sense to be safe.

I would recommend figuring out your backup strategy in case your laptop is stolen. I use a USB external drive plus an internet backup solution. And I encrypt my data using TrueCrypt. I also bring a laptop cable lock to prevent casual walk in thieves from walking away with my laptop. With 25% unemployment in Spain I would not recommend flashing expensive computers, cameras or jewelry around. And in the event you see any riots or protests I recommend walking the other way no matter how interesting they appear.

Computers and phones

I think you will find wifi in most places. I imagine it is free but not sure. I have found my Boingo account useful at airports and other places where I would otherwise have to pay for wifi (about $10 per month). Your computer power adapter will work with the 220 V electricity in Europe but you might check any other electronics that you bring with you - sometimes they are 110 V only and plugging them in will short them out and smell bad! A mini US power strip can be handy if you have several items to charge and then you only need one power adapter to plug the power strip into the wall.


It is a lot cheaper to get a local SIM chip for your (unlocked quad-band) phone or buy a local phone rather than using roaming which can easily add up to thousands of dollars in voice and data fees. Skype is great too and they have a flat rate plan for calls in US and many other countries.

Costs and housing

I have read that it is pretty expensive in Madrid with high prices and 20% VAT (sales tax), so you might want to get out in the countryside. If you are going to stay in one place for a month or more it will be cheaper to rent an apartment. You will get a better price if you can enlist a local to help call the ads in the paper. Not all places are advertized on the internet, so this is best done on the ground once you are there. Another way to get free housing is to do a house swap with a local who wants to live in your house - there are several websites for this kind of thing. House sitting is another way to score free housing.

Visas

I am pretty sure you can enter Spain on US passport and get 90 day tourist visa entry. You can probably visit another country after that and get another 90 days if you desire. Don't tell the immigration people that you plan to work while you are abroad- it only causes excitement and might get you barred from entering the country. And in truth you are working in USA while you travel. Just say you are tourist if asked.

Language

While many people will speak English you will find many people who do not, especially outside of big cities. So some Spanish will come in handy. You can get a Spanish-English dictionary and phrase book for your phone or a paperback works well too.

Traveling light and resources

The less stuff you carry the easier your trip will be - most items can be bought abroad if you really find out you need them.

The travel stack exchange is good for researching and asking travel questions  I recommend reading the 4 hour work week and Vagabonding on traveling light longer term travel. Those resources and more here.

This entry was posted on June 7, 2012 at 10:44 PM and has received 1564 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

When I studied math there wasn't much about it on the internet. You had to go to a college for classes and to the library to read textbooks and papers. Now there are all kinds of math resources online. I think this lessens the need for universities and academic journals. When people can share and solve problems online, publish papers on their blog or arXiv and even put textbooks online then knowledge is liberated!

Here are some math resources that I have found useful and interesting:

• Math articles and ebooks
  • wikipedia math portal and categories
  • wikiversity math portal
  • Free e-textbooks (search for math in the long list of subjects)
  • 79 online math textbooks
• Shared problem solving and archive of solved problems
  • Math Overflow (for serious students and researchers) 
  • math.stackexchange.com (for everyone).
  • there are other stack exchanges for statistics, physics, Spanish and 80 more areas
• Math papers
  • arXiv
• Math blogs and personal websites
  • Tim Gowers  -
  • Terence Tao - great discussion of topics, open problems and career advice
  • Tom Körner - learning guides, lecture notes and more
  • Vicky Neale - who blogged for everyone of her lectures with background notes and problems
  • Vi Hart - super fun math videos and math music
• Course materials
  • Cambridge - Pure math example sheets, lecture notes
    • (drill down into the staff person pages to see posted lecture notes)
  • MIT - math lecture notes and example sheets. Some are full OCW Scholar courses that are designed for independent learners who have few additional resources available to them. These courses include exam solution notes, online study groups, video and simulations.
  • Open University - OpenLearn free course materials on pure, applied and statistics
  • Udacity - free video lectures, online tests and learning community mainly related to applied, applicable and computer science topics.
  • Free math video and audio courses
  • Indian professors' free video lectures along with Lecture Notes and references  (Select "Mathematics" from the list of courses available).
  • Kahn Academy - online courses, videos and interactive problems/tests
• Books
  • Princeton Companion to Mathematics - an encyclopedic overview of pure math and some theorical physics with chapters on proof, many areas of math and biographies of famous mathematicians.

This entry was posted on June 4, 2012 at 8:19 PM and has received 1766 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This article is by a girl who has traveled and worked her way around the world straight out of college. If she could do it with no experience perhaps you could too.

Next week marks the two-year anniversary of the day I graduated from college.

Holy cow, does time fly.

In that time, I’ve lived in two countries, traveled across three continents, and had too many adventures to count — and (except for one six-week period) I did it all while holding a job abroad, or with another one lined up.

Not only does she tell her story of how she did it, she also gives some tips on how to do it. Including:

• Scout out places where cost of living is low.
• Research visas and working holiday passes.
• Take a TEFL course online while you have free time.
• Buy a one-way ticket.
• Set up online billing and payment
• Don’t be afraid to look in unconventional places for jobs.
• Give yourself a deadline and a back-up plan.
• Make yourself useful/Volunteer.
• Step out of your comfort zone.
• Don’t be afraid to say yes to a job or opportunity.
• Be passionate.
• Network, network, network. Even if you were shy before.
• Be patient and flexible.
• Take risks.

I would add that if college doesn't inspire you then it would be possible to do this straight out of school too and people have done exactly that.

This entry was posted on June 4, 2012 at 12:22 AM and has received 1466 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I found this table of which UK banks and building societies are owned by larger banks. Not sure now up to date it is but it does give a starting place to look for more secure banks. There are similar lists for other countries.

And this article on how to evaluate your bank's risk and protections in place. It's general principles apply to all countries.


When such government protection schemes have existed in other countries they work if only one or two banks collapse. But payouts can take months... So best not to have all your eggs in one basket. In a more general crisis the protection scheme itself may fail. In that case best to have some eggs in baskets held in other countries far away. Particularly as during past crises governments have been known to raid the hen house and prevent transport of eggs out of the country...

This entry was posted on June 3, 2012 at 7:23 PM and has received 999 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Here is a list of 377 words to avoid using in email or Facebook or anywhere else online. Why you ask? Are they rude like George Carlin's famous "Seven words you can never say on television"? No they are the words that the Dept of Homeland Security uses to monitor all internet traffic in US and abroad. So watch out if you use any of these words by mistake. Oh, by the way, criticizing the DHS also counts, so don't complain about this either...

Oh and that pesky amendment in the Bill of fRights about unreasonable search and seizure, don't worry about little details like the US constitution because DHS is here to protect you.

After vigorous resistance, the Department of Homeland Security was finally forced into releasing it's 2011 Analyst's Desktop Binder. It's a manual of sorts, teaching all the storm troopers who monitor our Internet activity all day which key words to look for.

Afterwards there is a list of 377 of key terms to monitor, most of which are completely innocuous. Exercise. Cloud. Leak. Sick. Organization. Pork. Bridge. Smart. Tucson. Target. China. Social media.

Curiously, in its 'Critical Information Requirements', the manual decrees that analysts should also catalog items which may "reflect adversely on DHS and response activities."

Absolutely unreal. Big Brother is not just watching. He's digging, searching, reading, monitoring, archiving, and judging too. Have you hit your breaking point yet?

Read the whole list of words here

This entry was posted on June 3, 2012 at 2:00 PM and has received 3106 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

If you have been waiting for the "right time" it might be a good idea to take some financial, home, community and personal resiliency steps now (see article below). Here are some suggested steps

• Reduce or eliminate stock and long term bond positions including in retirement accounts
• Move money out of banks that may fail (eg Bank of America) - look up your bank's credit rating
• Put some money in physical gold - both in (non-bank) vaults and some in coins under your direct control
• Hold a few months of expenses as cash - outside of any bank
• Put some assets outside of your home country - bank accounts, gold, real estate
• Connect with friends and neighbors now so you can help each other in a crisis later
• Store some food, grow some food, have a way to purify water, keep your gas tank over half full
• Secure your home
• Improve your health with diet and exercise
• Practice daily ways to release tension and remain positive

Resilient systems are better able to withstand stress and change. Especially the dramatic kind of changes that are happening this year. Ask yourself repeatedly "What would it take for system X to be resilient?" (where X = my finances, health, community, home etc) And then take small inspired steps each day to improve.

Attending to Your Financial Resiliency

It's been a frenetic couple of weeks.

Amidst the deterioration in Europe and the growing weakness in the US markets, in mid-May Chris issued the warning Get Ready: We're About to Have Another 2008-Style Crisis. Downside momentum has built since then, leading him to release a rare call to buy gold last week (which has since proved prescient in the immediate term) as well as a more-pointed report today to our enrolled members: Buckle Up - Market Breakdown In Progress.

It's times of heightened uncertainty like this where dislocating change has the potential to occur swiftly and sharply -- often events move much faster than people's ability to react appropriately to them. We've been recommending a defensive posture for investors for a long time now, but it's critical to adopt that position before the big market swings occur.

If you are going to keep money in the financial markets (stocks, bonds, etc), you need to honestly ask yourself if you have the expertise and the bandwidth to intelligently and actively manage your investments throughout a coming period of potentially gut-wrenching volatility and uncertainty.

...

We are quickly entering the phase now where Chris' predictions from The Crash Course are no longer in the future: they are happening now. Please prioritize taking action today on the areas where you may have the most vulnerability (our What Should I Do? guide can provide a helpful refresher if you need it)

From http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/attending-your-financial-resiliency/76088

This entry was posted on June 2, 2012 at 6:42 PM and has received 587 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

These insect eye cameras are smaller than a finger nail. They have infinite focus without moving parts. Once production ramps up they will be super cheap. Combine with micro transmission chips for a super mobile camera that is so cheap it could be thrown away after single use.

Just think where you could put cameras using this, or where a government or corporation could put them... Every object in a room, car, books, eye glasses, on micro drones, balloons, even on food for sale, plants, pets, children, shoes, inventory equipment, on credit cards. To track, monitor behavior, prevent theft, control rioters... Everyone could become a super spy with this technology. Who needs a billion dollar spy satellite when you can uses a bunch of 1 cent cameras sprinkled around an area? Every action and change could be recorded.

The insect eye lens can also be used in reserve in a micro projector that can put a clear image on an uneven surface and is only 6 mm thick. Think movies and adverts from your cell phone. Or embedded in the streets like the personalized ads in the movie Minority Report.

This entry was posted on June 1, 2012 at 6:59 PM and has received 1551 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.