• February 28th – March 4th: TED. I’ll be attending, plus doing a short (three-minute) audience member talk about my 30 day challenges.
• March 8-10th: SMX West. I’m doing a session called The Spam Police and a panel called Ask The Search Engines.
• March 11-15th: South by Southwest Interactive. I’m doing a Q&A With Google & Bing On Website Ranking

I’ll probably be much slower to respond to emails and tweets while I’m on the road.

Last week I returned from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. I’ll start with the bottom line: I made it to the top!

That’s three of us at sunrise on the sixth day. We took the Machame route, which takes seven days. In theory, you could march right up the mountain, but you need time for your body to acclimate to the altitude, so after ascending for a couple days, you spend several days hiking around below the main summit getting used to the altitude.

We did something that 95% of people don’t do: we hiked up to the crater at the top of Kilimanjaro (18,000+ feet) and camped there overnight. There are some pros and cons to this approach. One big advantage is that you do the 6+ hour slog up to the summit during the day instead of starting at midnight. Hiking during the day is leagues better than at night, in my opinion. The other big advantage is that you get to explore the crater. For example, this was the view out the front of our tent:

That glacier was just a five minute walk away, and then you could pet the glacier all you wanted. I gave this one a big hug:

There’s a disadvantage to camping in the crater though: you’re just below the summit, and so your body isn’t getting all the oxygen it wants. Most people hike to the top, stay for twenty minutes, and immediately descend. You’re spending most of a day at that altitude. We heard people throwing up in the morning, and later we recognized a couple people from Crater Camp going by us in a stretcher:

That’s a normal stretcher with a single all-terrain wheel mounted underneath, and it helps get people down faster. Our guide jokingly called it the “Kilimanjaro Express.”

Some people reading this post might wonder, “Can I climb Kilimanjaro?” I read that about 50% of people make it to the summit. Kilimanjaro isn’t like rock-climbing; it’s like walking 5-7 hours a day, mostly uphill. If you’re reasonably fit, you’ve got a decent chance. I did a couple triathlons last year and did similar stamina training before the climb. That meant the Kilimanjaro hiking was more of a grind than grueling or arduous.

But it’s not really the walking that gets people–it’s the altitude. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a headache that Aleve can solve or possibly other mild symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). If you’re unlucky, you might get High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) or High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). One book I read said that for climbers of Mt. McKinley, which is about 1,000 feet higher, 3% of climbers experienced symptoms of HAPE, e.g. extreme shortness of breath, while 0.5% of climbers experienced symptoms of HACE, such as ataxia–think poor coordination or the inability to walk a straight line. As long as you’re aware of the symptoms and descend if things get bad, you should be fine. But you’ll want to read up on altitude illness if you decide to climb. In my experience, the guides on Kilimanjaro are very well-trained to spot HAPE and HACE. Fitness training doesn’t really help with AMS, HAPE, or HACE, so I was lucky to be in the “only got a mild headache” set of folks.

A better question is “Do I want to climb Kilimanjaro?” And that depends. Do you like camping and hiking? You’ll be camping without a shower for several days. You’ll face some real difficulties–several people told me it was the hardest thing they’d ever done. And it can be expensive (besides the airfare and the trip itself, you’ll probably end up spending hundreds of dollars on various gear). But it can be immensely rewarding to test yourself and see what your limits are. I think maybe we don’t do that enough sometimes. No matter what, it’s definitely an adventure.

By the way, the best shower I ever took was the first shower after Kilimanjaro. After a week on the mountain, I looked like this:

During that first shower, I think the phone rang, someone knocked on the door, and at some point the power went out. I didn’t care. I just kept on showering.

A few tips in case you decide to go:
- I’ve read lots of Kilimanjaro books, and the best one to start with is the book by Henry Stedman.
- I never walk with hiking poles, so I almost didn’t bring poles. Trust me: you should bring hiking poles. I definitely recommend the FlickLock or thumb lock poles over the “twist to unlock” poles. These poles worked very well for me. I’d opt for black handles if you can, because the gray handles got pretty grubby-looking by the end of seven days.
- Get good hiking boots and wear them all over the place for a month or two.
- Take care of your lips with SPF 15 or SPF 30 lip balm or Chap Stick. I used regular Chap Stick, which is SPF 4, but the sun is much stronger at higher altitudes. My lips were pretty sunburnt by the end of the hike.
- We flew into Kilimanjaro International Airport (JRO, but sometimes written as KIA) from Amsterdam on KLM. But a lot of people flew into Dar Es Salaam (DAR) via Dubai on Emirates. The people we talked to said that the Emirates flights were very nice.
- You may the word “Mzungu.” Our guide told us that it means “guest,” but a more literal translation would be “white person.” As far as I could tell, people are saying it with affection though.
- Hike at your own pace–ideally a slow, steady pace that you can maintain for hours. It’s Kilimanjaro, not KilimaNascar.
- Throw in a safari at Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, or the Serengeti National Park. As long as you’re in Africa, why wouldn’t you want to see stuff like this?

Or a sunset like this?

I’d like to thank everyone who supported me with good wishes or a donation to charity:water to support clean water projects. If you’d like to donate, there’s still a few weeks left.

Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, at 19,340 feet (5895 meters). It’s hard to climb Kilimanjaro, mainly because of the altitude. I’ll be completely without internet access for a few weeks. Don’t expect any blog comments or email replies for the first half of August–right now, I’m not even planning to bring my laptop. Not to worry, the webspam team itself will keep chugging away: reading spam reports, improving algorithms, and stopping spam.

I’ve been doing practice hikes with the three friends that I’m going with. Here’s a few camping tips that I’ve picked up:
- Headband lights sound silly, but they work really well. And if you get one with a red light, the bugs bother you less.
- But it’s important to know where your headband light is, or you’ll just be feeling around in the dark.
- Chocolate bars and pepperoni sticks make nice treats after a full day of hiking.
- OFF! (the insect repellent) is sticky.
- You can pick up Neutrogena sunblock at your local drug store. It works well, and is a lot less oily than some sunblock.

As you can tell, a lot of hiking/camping for me is focused on food and water, plus minimizing how oily/sticky I get.

If you’ve got Kilimanjaro advice or a clean water story to share, I’d love to hear it. In the mean time, please donate to charity:water and let’s get more clean water to more people!

I’m really excited because I’ve never been to Asia before (!). We’ve got our trip mostly planned out, but I wanted to ask for suggestions on things to do, places to eat, or cool things that aren’t in the tour books. Let me know if there are “can’t miss” things that you’d recommend in Japan or Thailand — thanks!

P.S. This is strictly a for-fun trip with my wife, so I apologize in advance that I won’t have a chance to meet up with any webmasters or SEOs on the trip.

For Christmas I got a Flip MinoHD and I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket in case anything worthy of video happened to me. So I whipped out my Flip and got Al Franken in video. Franken was in public and recording a message to inspire kids to study, so I really don’t think he’ll mind if I post it here:

Al Franken: if you do mind, let me know and I’ll take the video down. It was just a nice coincidence given that I’d been in D.C. for maybe two hours before seeing my first senator. Oh, and that’s not even counting how I saw Barack Obama after I landed at the airport:

I’ll be in D.C. for a few days, so if folks could avoid emailing me this coming week, that would be appreciated.

I’ll walk you through the important features of this badge:
- Each attendee’s first name needs to be large and easily readable. When you’re walking up to someone and they look half-familiar, you want to be able to glance down at their badge and see a first name that will jog your memory or allow you to greet them. The last name and company name don’t matter as much, so they should be smaller to make more room for the first name.
- Make the badge big. Four inches by six inches maybe.
- At every conference, about half the people are walking around with their badge facing backwards so that no one can see their name. That’s why conferences should put the attendee’s name on the front and the back of the badge.
- If your conferences costs hundreds (or thousands) of dollars, throw a little hologram sticker up in the top right to keep people from creating fake badges. If fake badges aren’t a problem, don’t bother.

There you have it. Conferences, please don’t write the name in a tiny 12-point font or put the name only on one side of the badge. See also Mike Davidson’s take on the right way to do a conference badge.

Yes, you really can get plastic surgery on Rodeo Drive:

Here’s a 90210 sign:

What’s unusual about that? Well, I also saw an different 90210 ad with the letters sideways, but it looked like the actors had been photoshopped into the second ad with the same poses. Ah, here we are:

That’s just distracting. They could have at least changed the poses around a little bit. Let’s see, I also visited a book store in Los Angeles. When you buy a copy of Beowulf, you get a script book from the movie:

Fitness appears to be a big activity in L.A. and they offer some exercise workouts that you might not find in other cities:

You have your pick of:
- Indoor cycling
- Pole dance workout
- Yoga
- Abs and sculpt

I also saw a “Stunts Unlimited” sign; that’s a business you’d probably only see in L.A. I headed to the beach and enjoyed walking along the boardwalk when I saw this swimsuit sign:

It says “Come in and having the best price bikini for men and women.” But possibly the sign that took my fancy the most was this one:

It says “Organize a teeth whitening party and get your teeth whiten FOR FREE.” I’ve heard of things like botox parties, but that was the first time I’d heard of a teeth whitening party.

Please don’t take these pictures as mean-spirited; L.A. was a ton of fun and an amazing city to explore for a week. I just took pictures of things that grabbed my eye as I saw them. A few of the other fun things I noticed:

- near the Beverly Center, I saw fruit vendors with vibrant multi-colored umbrellas.

- a huge boat parked on the street with a “for sale” sign in the window.

- L.A. has a ton of Land Rovers compared to Northern California.

- someone wearing a hipster shirt that read “MySpace makes work fun.”

- the funniest street name I saw was Cattaraugus Avenue.

That’s about it. If you want more than that, you’d have to read my twitter-logue of the trip.

While I’m gone, enjoy the Android coverage. Even though I love my iPhone, I think lots of people appreciate the concept of an open phone. To the people that point out potential flaws, I would mention Android’s software will only get better. And I love the ideas behind the Amazon music store where you can buy MP3s and listen to them on any device. If a Shazam-like application is coded for Android, I have a hunch that a lot of people will be impulse-buying music any time they hear a song they like.

Lastly, you should really check out Project 10^100. Also known as “May Those Who Help The Most Win,” it’s Google’s 10th anniversary contest where you can propose ideas to change the world. Google will ultimately commit $10 million dollars to the top ideas. I know some of the people that worked on this, and strongly believe that it’s an important project. You can help by submitting your idea for how to make the world better.

I’ll try to write up a little bit about the trip, but for now I’m gearing up for SES San Jose. Places to find me:

- I’ll be on a keynote panel on Tuesday. By the way, I don’t know who put my title as “Software Engineer Guru,” but it wasn’t me.
- I’ll be at the Google Dance on Tuesday night.
- I’ll be roaming the halls and attending sessions, especially on Tuesday and Wednesday.

If you see me, please walk up and say hello! I’d love to hear your thoughts about things that Google should be doing.

By the way, the LED cube in this image is this project.