I wrote about the trip and the seg­way tour a while ago. But that's not all that hap­pened in San Fran­cis­co, of course.

I for­got to men­tion that on one of the air­ports there was a dis­play of an­tique boardgames:

I did­n't know San Fran­cis­co had a sign-in-the-hill like Hol­ly­wood

The Seg­way trip end­ed in a ... rather scenic place:

So there I said good­bye to my steel pony, good old seg­gcrates, and went out for a walk.

Ar­gen­ti­nes-on­ly joke:

We had a grilled cheese sand­wich, went to the hotel, yad­da yad­da yad­da. The next day was our last day of­f. We had a car. So we went to ... Fry's! We got a met­ric crapload of gad­get­s, in­clud­ing a tiny USB bat­tery, a pow­ered 7 port USB hub, beef jerky, usb flash drives, SD card­s, ca­bles, a sim card, a cam­er­a, a Nexus 7, a back­pack, and oth­er stuff.

Af­ter fight­ing for two hours to get a phone with a da­ta plan, we sailed of­f, guid­ed by google maps and EDGE. Yes EDGE. It worked, though!

We had a very vague no­tion about head­ing north, in­to San Fran­cis­co, across the Gold­en Gate in­to who knows where (end­ed up be­ing Na­pa Val­ley).

So, we start­ed, and found our­selves in­to (I think) the Pre­sidio Park, which is love­ly but the pic­tures are in Lu­cio's cam­er­a, so it's up to him to post a link to them in the com­ments. emade And of course, the Gold­en Gate. Which is a very pho­to­genic piece of iron. So we got off the car, at the park­ing lot, and saw this:

A lit­tle walk through a fort...

And there it was.

Of course I took a ton of pic­tures. The rest is in the gallery if you want to take a look.

So, we got a cup of ghast­ly cof­fee, got back in the car and set across the bridge.

Then there are some hill­s, and this cute tun­nel:

Nice land­scapes, in a sur­pris­ing­ly ru­ral area 15 min­utes off the city.

Then the in­fa­mous home­made jerky in­ci­dent hap­pened.

no­ta men­tal: con­tar­le a mis ni­etos que no co­mi beef jerky casero por cul­pa de @ralsi­na

— Lu­cio Torre (@lu­ciotor­re) January 22, 2013

So, home­made-­jerky-­less we con­tin­ued in­to the Sono­ma Val­ley, and got to the Viansa Win­ery where we stopped for a taste (Lu­cio, I don't drink. Al­so, I don't drive so just a taste).

It's a re­al­ly nice place. Love­ly handrail­s, too.

We got some sou­venirs, some pic­nic sup­plies (salami, cheese, olives, Pel­le­gri­no lemon­ade, cros­tini), and start­ed off again. We for­got to re­set the GPS so in­stead of go­ing back, we kept for­ward in­to Na­pa Val­ley. And we got to some vint­ner's mon­u­ment which clos­es at sun­set. Right on time.

We got back via Oak­land, at night which means there's no more pic­tures. I was shocked to find out that not on­ly does ask.­com still ex­ist, but that they pay for bill­boards with inane ques­tions in them.

The rest of the trip was ba­si­cal­ly work, with din­ner ex­cur­sion­s. We had amer­i­can (Cheese­cake Fac­to­ry), lebanese (at tan­nourine ok, sort of bor­ing), and .... mon­go­lian at Lit­tle Sheep Hot Pot.

At the mon­go­lian restau­rant none thought of bring­ing a cam­er­a, so the on­ly pic­ture that ex­ists is tak­en with a Nexus 7's fron­t-­fac­ing cam­er­a. Since the Nexus has no cam­era ap­p, I had to take it us­ing twit­ter. I am ashamed.

So, what is that? You get a pot of soup which is about 40% gar­lic, 40% pep­per, 20% un­known things, and you check box­es in a menu for things to dip and cook in them. Since we are ad­ven­tur­ous nerd­s, we in­clud­ed:

• Rice and pig blood cakes (tastes ex­ac­t­­ly like a rice and mor­­cil­la sand­wich)

• Goose in­­testines (taste like in­­testi­­nes)

• As­­sort­ed mush­­rooms

• As­­sort­ed meat­balls (in­­clud­ing beef ten­­don meat­balls (taste like noth­ing))

• As­­sort­ed seafood

• As­­sort­ed beef slices (looks creep­­y, taste as beef)

and a ton of oth­er stuff. The bad side of it is that af­ter a while it all has ex­act­ly the same taste: hot, spicy soup. The good side: it's fun to eat, and fill­ing.

We had a last shop­ping spree a few days lat­er, (I got shirt­s, 24 pairs of sock­s, a suit­case to put all the things I could not fit in the old one), and I start­ed back alone to Ar­genti­na (Lu­cio stayed).

The re­turn trip was com­pli­cat­ed.

• I for­­got the car­ry­on suit­­­case in the air­­line's desk, so I had to do the se­cu­ri­­ty check twice.

• I did­n't know the checked-in suit­­­case was head­­ed to Buenos Aires di­rec­t­­ly, so I tried to check it out and back in, and thought I had lost it. Of course, not lost, but I paid 5 dol­lars for a cart I used for 5 me­ter­s.

• Dal­las->Ezeiza plane got de­layed be­­cause it was "too ful­l" (WAT?)

• For­­got my pass­­port in the back­­seat pock­­et, so I had to run across Ezeiza twice to get it back, got so flus­tered and ner­vous my blood pres­­sure spiked. Not fun.

• Got stopped at cus­­toms be­­cause I had not de­­clared my lap­­top on the way out. Luck­­i­­ly, I talked my way out of it.

But got back, was fun, and very use­ful in the work-re­lat­ed bit­s.

A while ago, I cre­at­ed a 2-­page PDF ver­sion of the re­struc­tured text quick­start meant to be print­ed, fold­ed in half and kept handy un­til you fi­nal­ly re­mem­ber how to do foot­notes (10 years and still wait­ing, in my case).

It was brought to my at­ten­tion that the github project did not men­tion how to build it. Then I no­ticed that not on­ly it did­n't ex­plain that, it was al­so miss­ing crit­i­cal files.

So, I added the files, fixed a cou­ple of things that were not work­ing per­fect­ly with the lat­est rst2pdf and there is now a fresh PDF ready for you!

Just for com­plete­ness' sake I have gone over Wikipedi­a's list of light­weight markup lan­guages and added sup­port in Niko­la (a stat­ic site and blog gen­er­a­tor) for a cou­ple of them: BB­Code and tx­t2­tags, which brings the num­ber of sup­port­ed markup for­mats to 7 (the oth­ers are re­Struc­tured tex­t, mark­down, HTM­L, tex­tile and Wik­i).

Of the list of markup lan­guages, the on­ly miss­ing ones with a Python im­ple­men­ta­tion are Asci­iDoc and Mark­down Ex­tra.

Why both­er with this? It's not as if there was some­one ask­ing for BB­Code sup­port. How­ev­er, one of the us­es I want to sup­port is ar­chiv­ing sites. Sup­pose you have a fo­rum you want to shut down? I want you to be able to ar­chive it (even if it's some work) and keep the da­ta out there. A wik­i? Same thing.

This is a first step in that di­rec­tion.

One of the things that have helped me be less shy and thus have helped me move for­ward in life is speak­ing in pub­lic. How­ev­er, I have been speak­ing in pub­lic very lit­tle these last cou­ple of years.

So, make me do it more. I am look­ing for­ward to speak­ing in places I haven't been. If it's not hor­ri­bly far from Buenos Aires, I may not even ask you to pay for my trip and/or hotel, I will pay for it my­self if the event is in­ter­est­ing or the place looks like a fun place to trav­el to.

I can speak about python, free soft­ware in gen­er­al or oth­er things you may sug­gest, and I can do it in span­ish or in eng­lish.