I hear your quiet murmurings in the vasty hallways of the internet asking “What’s going on?” and “Where’s Dan?” and “Why hasn’t there been a SearchResearch Challenge this week?”

Basically, I’m kinda busy. Lots of travel (see below!) and lots of time on Google projects (yeah, I still have a day job), and lots of work getting details finished on the book (did you know writing a book takes a lot of time?).

The good news is that the book index is finished (maybe with a bit more polishing, but basically done), AND we now have cover art! I’m pretty pleased about it, and hope you are too. This should make it easy to find in bookstores…

The book is now in the hands of the MIT Press editors who have promised that the final (final!) galley will be sent to me in the first week of May. I’ll turn it around, and then it goes to the printer. Everything is actually coming together!

I’m ALSO following up on a bunch of threads I’ve left open.

1. What’s the story with the “a” character on the holiday card? (Why did I get it wrong?)
2. What’s the update on the recycling story? (Where do plastics REALLY go after the trash people pick them up.)
And,
3. What’s the update on the strand jack construction project?

Each of these is taking longer than I ever would have thought… but it means that when I figure them out, we’ll have a bunch of great stories here at Camp SRS.

And, as mentioned, I’ve been traveling. For much of the rest of this year, travel will be the new norm. The downside is that it delays my SRS writing… but the upside is that I’ll have a bunch of new Challenges in the near future.

In particular, today’s travel has brought up a couple of little questions–the kind of questions that happens to me (and I bet to you) every time I travel around. Here are three from my walkabout today. Can you answer them?

1. When I look out of my hotel room window, THIS is what I see: spectacular mountains. Can you tell what city I’m in? (Yes, I’ve removed the EXIF metadata. You’ll have to work with just what you see.)

2. As I walked to my meeting, I found a large field of these beautiful blue flowers–what are they? (Species specific name, please.)

3. Just past the field of blue flowers was this former church building. As with many church buildings, it has a very distinctive window shape. As we know, if you know the precise term for this window shape, it’s much easier to search for information about these things. So… what’s the precise term for this window shape? (NOT the round one…)

BTW, for extra credit, is there a specific term for a building like this that was a church, but is no longer a church??

As always, please leave your answer in the comments, being sure to tell us HOW you did it! What worked? And what didn’t work?

Search on!