Seeing how locals live and eat is probably one of the main reasons you travel. One way to explore the regional cuisine and find out what locals really eat, according to Anthony Bourdain, is to visit a local open air or grocery market.

We've all been trapped in that vicious cycle: "What do you want to do tonight?" "I dunno, what do you wanna do?" It's frustrating. Keep an always up to date list of potential activities so you spend time doing fun things instead of just talking about them.

Google News recently added a localisation feature to its main page, gathering stories not just from local newspapers and web outlets, but supposedly from sources across the internet:While we're not the first news site to aggregate local news, we're doing it a bit differently -- we're able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources. We're not simply looking at the byline or the source, but instead we analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.Nifty stuff, and a good way to keep up on what's happening in your neck of the woods. All News is Local

Two years after imposing a $US50 subscription fee for people to view its archives and columnists' writing online, the New York Times has decided to reverse the decision and open up all areas of its website for free browsing.

It seems to be a global trend in the online world, but I thought this was particularly cool - in addition to opening up its website, the Times will also make its archives from 1987 to the present freely available, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.

Times to End Charges on Web Site

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Formerly Windows-only free, open source FTP client FileZilla upgrades to version 3.0, adding cross-platform support and a few small feature updates, most notably an improved transfer management window. If FileZilla has been your FTP client of choice on Windows but you've been forced to find an alternative on other platforms, now you can get the free, no-nonsense FTP client for Linux and Mac as well (the Mac version of FileZilla has been delayed, but should be up soon). Former FileZilla users can import old FileZilla settings to your new FileZilla installation by selecting Edit -> Import and navigating to the FileZilla.xml file in your old FileZilla directory.

AU - we reported this on September 3. :)

FileZilla

A few extensions, hacks and a little elbow grease can turn your vanilla installation of Thunderbird into a powerful productivity app. Mark Shuttleworth recently professed to us that he uses Thunderbird for email and Evolution for calendar management. While Mark's confession was enough to push me away from Gmail's web interface and onto Thunderbird full-time, having separate apps for email and calendar management makes no sense. The Ubuntu Forums has a detailed thread that shows how you can get the most out of Thunderbird by using the Lightning extension and Google Calendar.

AU - Aussie readers will have already seen our reader submitted tip on using lighting to view calendar events in Thunderbird.

Using Google Calendar, Thunderbird and Lighting to full effect

DIY web site Instructables details how to turn heavy duty fabrics into a sealed, malleable bucket. All you really need is the fabric, then it's time to flex your cutting and sewing skills. When you're done, you should be able to fold the bucket for storage and just as easily return it to its full-on bucket state—kind of like the collapsible water dishes you've seen for dogs.
Collapsible Bucket