This made me think of the train systems in one of Asimov's books. I can't remember if it was in Prelude to Foundation or one of the Robot novels. In his system there are belts which move at various speeds. Those closest to the platform move very slowly, those in the middle move much faster. You progress from belt to belt to move faster and faster along the path. The longer your journey, the faster you'd want to go.

You could possibly accomplish the same thing with trains and a clever way to move from one to another. Unfortunately, though, most folks would be too clumsy/stupid to figure it out and the threat of injury would never allow this to happen in the States.

My father in law was telling me this weekend about a few Appalachian Trail thru-hikers that are blogging their trips. He didn't mention any websites, but I'm sure they're easy enough to find, if you have the right mindset. I bet anyone that has done that would have some useful information.

He mentioned that when he's hiking, he powers off everything, and sometimes even removes batteries when not in use. His cell phone lasted two weeks on his last trip, and he called home almost every day.

Looks like their website is down (and they didn't configure a custom WordPress error page).

Oh wait, just reloaded that tab and it's working now. This would be great for my wife's camera. She takes tons of pictures of the kids, but I never remember to upload them on a regular basis. You could also use something to keep a WiFi enabled picture frame up to date with your latest photos.

I created a desktop background using the four images.

http://chuck.steel.googlepages.com/legobackground

Please Lego, don't sue me.