Remember back in the day when if you moved houses you needed to get a new telephone number, even if you stayed in the same city? Remember all those times you switched Internet service providers and needed get a new email address? In both cases we were victim to a close coupling of identifier (phone number, email address) with identified (us). Fortunately these are well on their way to becoming de-coupled; there’s a reason I’m @rukavina.net and not @myisp.net.

I think it’s time to start worrying about the same sort of thing for our remote media storage: as we pour our photos into Flickr and our video into YouTube, we’re also ceding the address of our media to someone else. My photos are @flickr, not @rukavina.

There’s some recognition in other digital domains that this is a Good Thing: FeedBurner, for example, has an upsell called MyBrand that, for $2.99/month, lets you have your RSS feed like at feeds.yourdomain.com rather than @feedburner.com.

But this photo of mine (mine!) is @flickr, not @me. And as I blog it and email it and gradually insert it into the digital nervous system of the planet it becomes harder and harder to decouple from Brand Flickr.

So I think that we have to start thinking about how to separate the process of storing something from its publicly exposed URL. I can still use Flickr (or anything else) as a photo storage, indexing, tagging system, but I want to be able to assign my media an address that I own, one that I can re-point when and if I move the “physical” storage of the photos.

We already know how to do this — look at the DNS system as an example of a system without “identifier-identified lock in” as an example.

The nice thing about Flickr et al is that they expose the programatic side of their services with a rich API; as such, it should be easy not only to layer my own URLs over my photos (and, indeed, store them in more than one place). Perhaps that’s the next project?

Oliver has decided that he will make lemonade for the big dinner tomorrow. Not wanting to be left out, I thought I should contribute a beverage of my own, and I found just the place to help me on a cycle through Frederiksberg this afternoon: Tea Shop at Falkoner Allé 65.

Regular readers will recall that I fancy myself something of an iced tea expert. Some might say that I’m iced tea obsessed. So the sudden appearance of a tea shop called Tea Shop seemed like a good sign.

Oh, and what a tea shop Tea Shop is. This ain’t no “here’s your Celestial Seasonings Lemon Zinger,” it’s a “let me take these hearty canisters from the shelf and let you smell the many varieties of Rooibos I have.” The shop is hosted by a woman who appears to be a tea savant; she assures me that the Forestberry Rooibos that I selected will make an excellent iced tea. I’ve promised to report back.

Just before Oliver and I left for our trip to LegoLand on Monday morning, Catherine and I hatched a last-minute plan to have our Copenhagen friends for dinner on Thursday evening. Invitations went out by email as we were headed out the door; RSVPs came in as we were away, and preparations are now underway for a lavish spread (in the invites I said “light supper” — Catherine doesn’t do “light supper” — she’s got a separate menu for cocktails).

I feel that I must shout publicly here that I have a most cool and flexible consort: not only does she go in for my cockeyed plans to string a New Hampshire — Portugal — Copenhagen — New Hampshire — Boston — Halifax trip together, but she happily takes up the challenges of feeding a ragtag bunch of Danish hooligans she’s barely even met. Let the Hoisin Sauce gathering games begin.

Henriette says “people from different corners and backgrounds can actually do something together” and to prove it launches Desti:nation. Interesting ideas sprout like flowers in the wake of reboot. What’s yours?

And we’ll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather

Complete lyrics.

GnuBox on SonyEricsson P80x/P90x/P910 and Nokia Series60 phones. Projects like this deserve some sort of award for brilliance and utility (albeit from the small “want to run Apache on our mobile phones” crowd).

Wow. It’s midnight, and I’ve been up since 5:00 a.m. (who could sleep with a day at LegoLand on the horizon?). A full trip report to follow, but if you’re playing the home game you can get started with the photographs.

Note that if you’re a Flickr “friend” or “family” you’ll see lots of cute photos of Oliver in there; if you’re not, you’ll see lots of photos of the back of Oliver’s head. Privacy lines get drawn in funny places. If you’re friend or family and not on the secret inside, drop me a line.

Once Oliver found out that LegoLand existed, there was no stopping him. So in an hour we’re hopping on the train for the three hour ride across the bottom of Denmark, staying overnight in the exciting LegoLand Village Hostel, and then spending the day in the park on Tuesday. Laptop is staying back here in Copenhagen, so expect radio silence until Wednesday.

Saturday was spent with Olle and Luisa in their 3rd floor cabin enjoying a “traditional Danish lunch.” Wonderful fun.