Review: Redemption Ark

Redemption Ark (dead tree edition) is Alastair Reynold's third novel in the Revelation Space universe.

This novel introduces Nevil Clavain, one of the original Conjoiners who fled the Solar System ages ago (in a back-story that's revealed in Galactic North). One of the best things about the series is that the science is impeccable. We have explorations of inertia, of relativistic interstellar combat and tactics, and an amazing amount of exposition that's not very neatly hidden amongst the conversations between the characters.

Yet the characters, I feel, are the best Reynold's has come up with yet --- they're still wooden, but at least their motivations are sensible. Even more interesting, the presence of the Inhibitors (Reynold's answer to the Fermi Paradox) is explained well, and a far more interesting answer than I expected. We do get an explanation about the hell-classed weapons that were presented but not explained as part of Revelation Space, and some of the characters from both that novel and Chasm City show up as well, though not in such a way that you'll need to read those two novels before reading this one (but those novels are recommended, so you might as well read them).

While other books in the series have been self-contained, this one does manage to end in a very bad place --- a place that leaves you wanting to flip the Kindle over to the Amazon.com store and click the buy button for Absolution Gap. The reviews on that novel, however, are leaving me cold, so I'll check it out of the library. Nevertheless, Redemption Ark is highly recommended --- old fashioned science fiction that doesn't leave out the science and gives you the good old tingly sense of wonder that science fiction is supposed to provide!

Australia: A Photo Journey

At last, it is done! I have processed all the pictures from the Australia Trip. I still have a few that need work --- for instance, all the panoramas need to be stitched, and I need to play with the HDR, but the bulk of the work is done. Enjoy!

Sydney

Blue Mountains

Great Barrier Reef

Atherton Tablelands

Melbourne

Tasmania

Tasmanian Overland Track

Great Ocean Road

Perth and Margaret River

Ningaloo Reef

The Red Center

Australia Panoramas

Black Mountain Summit

I'm definitely out of shape --- it took 110 minutes today to reach the summit, and just as long to get to the bottom. It was hazy but there were lots of flowers (though there're signs that they'll all be gone next week). Unfortunately, none of the flower pictures turned out, but the panorama at the top did.

Review: HP m9600t Desktop PC

After returning from Australia, I had to buy a new PC to cope with the 100GB of pictures and run Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 to deal with the output from the Canon 5DMk II.

Interestingly enough, the HP m9600t went on sale the day after I returned. HP is kind enough to give Google employees a 10% discount, so for $973.59, I configured a machine with the ATI Radeon 4850 (1GB), 4GB of RAM, and a DVD writer. I did not upgrade either the hard drive or the memory, since those were much cheaper if you bought them and installed them yourself.

If you want to go over every nook and cranny of the machine, there's a more thorough review elsewhere. I'm just going to summarize my impressions of this machine.

First of all, the inside of the machine is cramped! To install memory or to install a hard drive, you have to pull the drive cage out. The first time I opened up the machine to install the hard drive, I had no problems --- following the instructions the cage came right off --- and then I discovered that in their infinite wisdom, HP had not left me even a spare SATA cable, so I had to run out and buy one. Once I had one, I discovered that I had to cut the zip tie to the power cables so that I could extract one and use it for the new drive. Not having any spare zip ties sitting around, I left the wire loose and one of them got into the fan of the video card, which created a god-awful noise until I figured that out and moved the wire out of the way and zip tied the cables.

The second time I opened up the machine it was to install memory --- and this time I just could not for the life of me get the drive cage out. Fortunately, I have slim fingers and good manual dexterity, so I worked the DIMMs down below the drive cage and plugged them in with no problems. The resulting total cost was around $1300 when all said and done (including taxes, shipping, and everything). I even got to figure out how good their tech support was --- I had an intermittent fan noise from the video card for a bit, and was surprised to get their weekend support crew, which while it seemed was staffed by high school kids, they seemed to know what they were doing.

My first impression is that the machine is quiet! It's much quieter than my Infrant NAS box, and it only makes noise when it first spins up. I'm very impressed. Secondly, it is fast. In fact, at this point, I'm completely disk-bound except for generating large panoramas in Photoshop or HDR involving 5 or 6 RAW files. What I did discover was that 4GB was insufficient for running Lightroom and Photoshop together. Photoshop wants about 3.7GB of RAM, while Lightroom wants about 700MB. That makes 6GB comfortable (until you're dealing with 5 RAW files), and 8GB just enough. Purists will want to go for 12GB to make use of the triple channel RAM, but since we're not CPU bound anyway, there's no point going for more speed --- the next step really would be getting a striped disk array to reduce the delay from reads, or solid state disks (which realistically speaking, isn't cheap enough for what is essentially an accessory to my SLR!).

I plugged in two Dell 2407wfp monitors, and the result is I can view all the thumbnails on one monitor while doing photo manipulation in the other. The extra real-estate is very nice, and my work-flow is now relatively efficient.

Games: wow! This is the first time I've got a machine with a graphics card powerful enough to play most PC games, and I'm impressed. Now if only I had more time --- I could get some gaming in and get my photo editing done, but I guess that's going to have to wait. All this super duper compute power does come at a cost --- the machine dissipates about 127W while browsing the web, and about 206W (peaking to 220W) when crunching through photos with all 4 cores busy. Fortunately, I expect not to have to keep the machine on all the time once the initial backup to off-site storage is done.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this machine. I usually like to keep machines for 5-6 years, but had to upgrade earlier than expected this time because of digital photography. I don't expect to have to upgrade for another 5 years. I did have the usual people bugging me to get a Mac, but realistically, a quad core Mac starts at $2500, which doesn't come with the Radeon 4850 video card. I like the Mac Pro's case, but I don't like it so much that I'd be willing to pay $1300 for it. Realistically, the next time I get a PC, I'm just going to have to build it from components if I want a less cramped case with more room for drives (or better yet, hot-swappable drives). But that's 5 years away.

The Promise of Sleep

(A hat-tip to Niniane Wang for loaning me The Promise of Sleep to read)

I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea 3 years ago, yet it wasn't until last year that I managed to adapt somewhat to it by using CPAP therapy. The Promise of Sleep is ghost-written by William Dement, the person who opened the Stanford University Sleep Disorders Clinic, and who was the first person to document the various stages of sleep. Amongst other things, one of the big features of this book is that it mentions the names of some doctors I'd heard about and one I actually met!

The book covers very quickly the history of sleep research --- extremely valuable and told from a first-hand perspective of course. Then it jumps into our biological clock and the opponent-process model for why we feel sleepy at certain times of the day and not others, despite a large amount of sleep debt. It turns out that this leads to certain dangerous situations --- if you're a night person, you might be extremely awake at a party, but then when driving home you could doze off and crash your car and lose your life because of how this process works.

He then covers certain sleep orders that were discovered --- restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea, and insomnia. In particular, he recommends sleeping pills for insomnia, especially since he feels that building up a dangerous level of sleep debt is much worse than the possibility of any addiction to sleeping drugs (which are by and large quite safe nowadays).

Finally, he shows you how to apply these theories to every day life, jet-lag, napping, and the life cycle of a person's sleep (for instance, we sleep soundly and well as children, most people shift from being Owls to Larks in middle age).

I found myself enjoying the book, even the parts that I've read before, and would heartily recommend this book over Take A Nap and other shorter books. Thanks, Niniane!

The lifetime of bike parts

I broke another set of industry standard SKS mudguards yesterday, marking the second pair of SKS mudguards I've destroyed in 5 years. I'm generally sanguine about parts failing, since they do face a harsh environment, but I guess I have a few months before the next rainy season before I start thinking about getting Honjo fenders.

Over the years, I've collected through personal experience various expected life time for parts, so I'll summarize them here in order (from most frequently replaced to least frequently replaced):

• Chains. These don't last more than about 2000 miles if you ride every day and don't keep them squeaky clean. If you keep them clean, you might get about 5000 miles out of them. The longest lasting chains are single speed chains on fully enclosed crank case bikes --- those will go about 10000 miles between replacements.


• Tires. Depending on how heavy you are, these can range from 1000 miles (28mm tires on my tandem) to 4000 miles (23mm tires back when I was running Michelin Hilite Comps). You can double their lifetime by starting new tires on the front and then rotating them to the back when the back is worn. (That's the recommended replacement procedure!)


• Bar-tape. These usually die every year or so.


• Deraileur cables. These don't last much more than 2 years or about 8000 miles. The inner wire usually frays from the end if you don't cap them, or snap in the shifter if you have bar-ends or STIs. Downtube shifters will give them longer life. By contrast, deraileur housing lasts almost forever. I've only replaced one due to rupture in about 15 years of active cycling.


• Brake pads. These are entirely dependent on weather conditions. On fair-weather bikes, you can run the same pads in California for a decade or more! For commute bikes, I replace them every 4 years or so, but if I was living in Germany or Seattle, I'd have to replace them every year. Heck, mountain biking in Seattle, I had to replace the brake pads every other ride!
  
• Chainrings. These last about 15000 miles in optimum conditions (tandem timing rings, which don't have any cross-chaining during their life), or 10000 miles in on a normal bike.


• Bottom bracket. Phil Wood sealed BBs are supposedly good for about 20000 miles. I once rode one for 40000 miles, but apparently you couldn't turn the spindle by hand after that if you removed the cranks. After last year's stint in Germany and France, though, I ended up with a BB that wasn't smooth after only 8000 miles. So much for 20000 miles...


• Cassettes. These go every 30,000 miles or so. If you don't replace your chain often, you can expect them to go earlier. The strange thing is that if you do replace your chain often, the failure mode isn't that they wear down --- the failure mode is that you break teeth in the sprockets! Very weird.


• Brooks saddles. On my singles, these have gone as much as 12 years. But on the tandem, they don't last more than about 5 years or so. That's because you don't stand up enough on a tandem so the leather gets soaked every hot ride.


• Seat posts. To be honest, I've never had to replace one in 15 years of riding, except for the carbon seatpost after only 3 years, which has scared me off carbon seatposts for a long time.


• Cantilever brakes. These have proven extremely unreliable for me. I've gone through 3 sets on about 8 years of active mountain biking, and they fall apart in weird ways, most of it having to do with the springs inside popping out. I don't think they should be spec'd on bikes.


• Deraileurs. The front ones don't seem to be good for more than about 5 years or so --- at least, until recently, that's how frequently I've been replacing them. Recent stuff seems to be getting better, so now I don't know. Rear deraileurs are good for about 60000 miles, with a pulley replacement every 20000 miles or so. I used to be able to say that I've never worn one out, until I sold a bike to Lea that she claimed had a worn out deraileur. In my defense, I never noticed a problem when I was riding the bike, but then I wasn't running 10-speed either, which has much closer tolerances than the 7 or 8-speed stuff I was running. According to an old-timer in my bike club, you used to have to replace rear deraileurs every 20,000 miles or so, until Shimano came along and started actually engineering the part!


• Cranks. Now we're getting into stuff I've never broken. My 17 year old bike still has a good crank. Now if you're big and strong you might expect to break one every 10 years or so, but the real answer is if you're that big and strong you should be examining your bike every year with an eye to seeing cracks in frames and stuff.


• Frames. For me at least, these don't go bad unless you get run-over by a car (and unfortunately, that's happened). Update: I've broken 2 Ti frames now. Ti frames seem to be very much subject to manufacturing defects.

Review: Chasm City

Chasm City (kindle edition) is Alastair Reynolds' second novel set in the Revelation Space universe. This is a standalone novel designed to be read in any order within the series. However and it would still make sense to have a good understanding of the Universe before proceeding so I still recommend reading his collection of short stories Galactic North. The novel centers around use former soldier known as Tanner Mirabel. We start off with a cinematic action sequence with Mirabel stalking someone for revenge, but ends up fighting for his survival.

Despite the title of the book, the novel is as much about Sky's Edge as it is about Yellowstone, the star system in which Chasm City exists. Through a series of dream sequences, we learn about Sky's Edge's founder, Sky Haussman, who turns out to be a thoroughly despicable character. Despite the misdirection, we figure out what the connection is between Mirabel and Haussman is by the middle of the novel, but the novel has us firmly in its grip by then and the urge to read on is compelling. What's more, Reynolds has yet another surprise up his sleeve, and while that one is tougher to figure out, it's not too hard for the reader to put two and two together.

The universe is realized very finely, and we learn about the origins of the Melding Plague, as well as the backstory behind Chasm City. The result is a deeper view into Reynolds' universe. At the end of the novel there's a little bit of redemption, and a hint as to what's coming in future novels.

Recommended for a plot that's interesting and fair (in that it's possible to unravel the mystery before the reveal), and a reasonable exposition. As usual, the characters are shallow and not that interesting in themselves, but that's a common fault for science fiction writers, who love their ideas more than they love their characters.

Review: Tivax Digital TV Converter Box

Because I don't watch any TV, I never bothered with a cable subscription. A few years ago, Lisa indicated she wanted to watch PBS or NPR once in a while, so we bought an indoor amplified antenna (a pair of rabbit ears), and the signal was so bad that we immediately gave up and returned the antenna.

Thanks to the stimulus package, we applied for and received $40 coupons to buy a digital TV converter box, due to the impending switch-over to digital TV. Since the converter box would have been useless without an antenna, we also bought a matching amplified antenna. According to the Amazon reviews, this was a consumer's report choice, so I bought it. The total cost after coupons: $25.

The box is surprisingly small, about the size of an external 3.5" HDD. It comes with an IR remote, which inexplicably wouldn't teach my 4 year old Sony Universal Remote. It takes as input the RF cable from the antenna, and you have a choice of outputting to an RF cable to feed into the TV, or composite + audio cables on the TV. Since those slots were taken by a Wii, we opted for the RF cable. There's a selector that lets you choose between Channel 3 and Channel 4.

The device powers up slowly, but once it comes up is fairly easy to use. The responsiveness is slow --- it takes about a second between button pushes for each change to happen. The first thing to do was to take about 10 minutes to scan for digital TV signals. I was surprised at the number of digital TV channels it found! Then we started to see pictures. This was quite interesting because we had never seen TV so clear before! (Remember, we're on an ancient Sony analog TV!)

Then there was a few minutes of frustration as I tried to deal with a black box that filled the bottom 1/3rd of the screen. It turned out that we had close-captioning on, but set to an incompatible setting. A quick adjustment on the TV's menu fixed that. We took a look at the various channels, and checked the signal strength --- it was apparent that our input signal was mediocre at best, with only one of about 12 channels showing a strong signal. With the amplification on the indoor antenna turned down, we would get stuttering or a frozen picture, so the amplification was clearly necessary. But when watching TV, we saw no sign whatsoever that our signal was so attenuated --- clearly this digital stuff works!

I probably still won't watch much TV, but with $25 for a one time charge for the KQED, I guess this is not a bad deal, especially since we're unlikely to upgrade any time soon. This is literally the first time in 9 years we've had a working TV set in the house, so if you're like me, go apply for that coupon already!

Review: Stephenson Warmlite Tent

I first bought my Stephenson Warmlite tent 2 years ago. But I never did get around to using it because all my trips had not required a tent of the caliber. Here were the big features I got it for:

• Weight: 3 pounds for a full size, 2 person tent
• Roomy: far bigger than any of our existing 2-person tent
• Quick setup (this was advertised, but I wasn't so sure about it)

What do you get for your money? A tube of seam sealer, laser-printed instructions on how to setup your tent and care for it and seam seal it, 2 sets of fat (but light) poles shock-corded together, the tent of material, and some swatches of material, including 4 bags attached to cords. The important missing ingredient here? No tent pegs. Given the price of the tent, I was shocked that even normal tent pegs weren't included, let alone lightweight aluminum or titanium pegs.

It took Lisa and I about half an hour to setup the tent the first time for seam sealing. Most of it was spent searching for the entry-way for the poles! Then it took us another hour or so to seal it, all the while sliding around on the slippery mylar that made up the inside of the tent, including the floor. Interestingly enough, in use, the slipperyness never became an issue, while we thought it would be a major issue unless the tent was perfectly flat.

Setting up the tent involves assembling the poles. These lightweight aluminum poles are so light that you are urged not to allow the cords to snap them together, as this could damage the structural integrity of it. It also doesn't take much to dent the tube, and I've already put a ding on mine, and consistent with all other dings I've ever had on bikes, I don't know how the ding got there. Then you find the pockets to slide the poles in. The first couple of times you do this, it's extremely hard to find the pockets, but if you're doing this every day it becomes extremely fast. The first few times we set it up, I didn't realize that you could put the entire pole into the tent, and had a bit sticking out, which looked funny. After a few times, the poles settled in and what we had looked much better. Finally, you stake down the tent ends (only 3 pegs required), and tension the cords and the tent raises itself up like magic.

Setup is extremely fast. So much so that even by myself, our tent was always the first up and the first down when doing the Overland Track. There really is nothing to it. I didn't know whether I wanted to believe this piece of marketing, but it really was true.

Once the tent is up, you have several options, depending on which tent you bought. We bought the version with 2 windows. You can either roll up the windows on the outside, granting maximum ventilation but no rain protection, or apply the corded pockets mentioned earlier to the loops at the end of the window, and use rocks or some other weight to stabilize the window covers to the side. This provides some ventilation, as well as rain shelter, but you better use heavy rocks or any kind of hard rain will cause the window to flap back into place. Finally, you can keep the windows zipped up if you're expecting snow or it's going to rain all night.

If you manage to get the ventilation right, this tent stays dry, but on our first test in California winter, it was too cold to keep the windows open, and we got condensation inside the tent. Stephenson would claim that we should just keep the windows open and dress appropriately. In the rain, despite having open windows, we still would get condensation in the tent, so I conclude that the marketing on condensation is just marketing, though Stephenson would probably say that we need to buy some of his vapor barrier clothing.

How robust is the tent? We used it for about 8 days in Australia and it stood up to that fine, except for the ding in the pole. We had strong wind one day, and a bit of rain for a few days here and there, but the one day we had a torrential downpour we chose to use a hut instead of camping out for an unrelated reason, so we did not get a chance to test it. It does feel extremely fragile, but I think it'll withstand regular use if you follow directions. And as for weight, no one had a lighter tent, no matter where we go, and folks were quite impressed by the large windows and the good ventilation as a result.

One big negative compared to our other tents was the lack of ceiling attachments --- it's impossible to attach a candle lantern to the inside of the tent. You have to use a floor lantern if you want light, or just wear a head lamp. You also can't hang wet clothing to dry or anything like that. On the other hand, the tent is so big that you can easily stick your packs in there.

How do I feel about this tent? Given the price, I'm not going to use it for car camping. I have other tents more appropriate than that. For a single person, I would investigate the use of a camping hammock. However, for a couple that's cycle touring or backpacking, this is probably as good a set of compromises as you can get. I'll call this a cautious recommendation --- it's worth the money, but it's not a no-brainer tent --- you really do have to treat it with care and respect.

The Out of Shape Ride

I hadn't been on a real bike ride for 2 months (since I was in Australia), but somehow the usual suspects I left behind at work claimed they were even more out of shape, so I announced an Out of Shape Ride. Joe Gross, Kekoa Proudfoot, Cynthia Wong, Lea Kissner, and Mike Samuel met me at the outfitter and we rolled off. I was so happy to be back in town that I had to pick all the random alternate backroutes to get to Old La Honda Road. Old La Honda Road is the standard climb around here, and Joe and I did it in about 38 minutes, about 13 minutes more than my best recorded time. Unfortulately took more than 3 minutes more to get up the hill, so I had to go back and do the climb over. ,After that climb, Joe, Kekoa, and Cynthia elected to descend 84 back into the Valley.

Lea and Mike went down with me on West Old La Honda road and when the view opened up we were impressed to see the hills around us, all lush and green, with road side poppies peppering the green with orange. In La Honda, we stopped at the Deli for some potato chips and water, and then I declared "Duck Pond!" "Duck Porn?" asked Lea. I had to spell it out for her before the miscommunication was resolved.

Then we wound around inside the Redwoods and ended up riding West Alpine on a not very cold day. Unfortunately, there was still quite a bit of haze, so we could not see Big Sur or Monterey Bay from the road. It was still stunningly pretty, though --- after all the desert I was seeing I was glad to see green. All in all, not a bad ride for a bunch of out of shape office workers: 52 miles, and 5000' of climb.

Australia Impressions

The best feature of Australia is Australians. Australians are funny, friendly, and the most welcoming people. I've lost count of the number of times we camped out in a campground and had a neighbor come by and greet us, say hi, or give us tips. Whether it's the climate, or because a large number of folks we meet are tourists, it's such an amazing experience. It's even institutionalized. Young people, for instance, can apply for a working holiday visa, where you can work (and minimum wage is $12.50/hour in Australia!) while on vacation for up to a year. There aren't too many other countries that are so generous to visitors!

As an old continent, I knew intellectually that Australia would be eroded and not have as many mountains, but that still did not prepare me for the emotional reaction I had when I visited. This is definitely a country where most of the features are off the coast, under the water. Australia is definitely a great place to visit for a SCUBA diver or a snorkeler. The water is nice, and the wildlife plentiful --- for this trip, the highlight was definitely the trip to Ningaloo Reef. What an amazing place.

I learned that one of the reasons why I enjoy my cycling trips, and why I enjoyed the coast to coast trek is the navigational challenge. At the time when I did the Coast to Coast, I was annoyed by how frequently I would get lost. It was only after doing the Tasmanian Overland Track that I realized that being led by the nose had never been the experience I was after in the outdoors, even if I had some nominal choice as to which side-trips I could choose to take!

What would I do differently on this trip? The big one would have been to plan to visit Ningaloo right from the start. That would have saved us some time and money! Secondly, rather than doing the Overland Track, I would have chosen to whitewater raft the Franklin/Gordon river system. While the Overland Track is nice, I don't think it actually offers anything that many other hiking trails in New Zealand, the U.S., or anywhere in Europe doesn't, while the wild rivers in Tasmania were really impressive. I would cut the amount of time spent in the Red Center to just 3-4 days rather than almost an entire week. While Kings Canyon is impressive, it really wasn't worth a whole day, and by the time we got to Alice Springs we were quite sick of desert. I don't expect to visit Bryce Canyon, or any of the desert U.S. parks either, after this visit to the desert.

All in all, however, this was definitely a trip of a lifetime.

Australia Index

This is the consolidated Australia related trip index and report. The photos are still being processed and worked on (hopefully it'll go much faster when the new machine arrives). I'll also try to update the text-heavy pages with photos as well.

• Sydney
• Sydney (Part II)
• Sydney (Part III)
• The Blue Mountains
• The Blue Mountains (Part II)
• The Jenolan Caves
• The Spirit of Freedom
• The Atherton Tablelands
• Melbourne
• Tasmania
• Tasmania (Part II)
• The Tasmanian Overland Track
• Tasmania (Part IV)
• The Great Ocean Road
• Perth
• The Margaret River Area
• Ningaloo Reef
• The Red Center
• Conclusion: Australia Impressions
• Australia: A Photo Journey
• Equipment Review: Stephenson Warmlite Tent

New Computer

I was a foregone conclusion that by buying a Canon 5D Mk II I was going to have to get a new PC --- my 3 year old Mac Mini just couldn't run Adobe Lightroom with any degree of interactivity, and after playing with Lightroom a bit, I decided that was the software I was going to process serious photography with. I did decide to put off buying a machine until I had a significant amount of photos to process, however.

We came back from Australia, with 92GB of photographs, so now a new machine was inevitable.

Shopping around, I discovered that the lowest end machines with quad core processors (which Lightroom and Photoshop are designed to use --- to the point where if you have a dual core box and run lightroom, one of the cores just gets pegged doing apparently nothing!) are Dells, running around $600 at Dell's refurbished outlet store. The big issue with these machines is the video card. To upgrade to a video card that can dual-head, I'd have to upgrade the power supply and the video cards, which was a pain and wouldn't save very much money.

So to my surprise, the cheapest quad core machine I could get with a decent video card turned out to be HP's m9600t, which with an EPP discount came up to about $974 with a Radeon 4850 1GB video card. Dual-head wasn't something I thought about at first, but it is nice to be able to plug in either a second monitor or go with a 30" screen. The amount of memory wasn't ideal (4GB), and neither was the disk (500GB), but both are easy to add, and the machine came with Intel's latest Core i7 processor.

And no, the Mac Pro wasn't even a consideration. At $2500 even an EPP discount won't get it down to twice what the HP costs. I've long come to the conclusion that Mac fans just have a lot of money, which I guess, is what Apple counts on!

[Update: Too late for me this round, but I found another well-reviewed site, CyberPower, which sells customized, water-cooled PCs for about the same price as the HP I got with the employee discount (sans OS). It's more or less the same deal, but having a bigger power supply and water cooling does give you a bit more headroom. A reference for next time I have to buy a PC.]

Review: Galactic North

Galactic North (kindle edition) is Alastair Reynolds' collection of short stories about the Revelation Space universe. Sorted in roughly chronological order, the stories range from the founding of the Conjoiner sub-race of humanity, to the far future where intelligent races have to flee the Milky Way because of a mistake made by two people.

Every one of the stories is excellent and worth the time. Many of them are quite haunting, including one in which the secrets of the Conjoiner light-hugger drives are revealed. Others seem a bit love-craftian, which isn't really a bad thing. Ironically, the story I liked the least is the last one, Galactic North.

All of the issues that I have with Reynolds' first novel are gone in the short stories --- in a short story, the plot trumps characterization, and the ideas trump all, and Reynolds proves himself as the master of both, over and over. Highly recommended, and in fact, this is probably the best introduction to Reynolds' universe.

The Red Center

The flight to Ayers Rock was without a hitch. The small airport that was the destination had a resort bus waiting to take us to our hotels. We soon realized that Ayers Rock served a captive audience --- visitors to Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park, and most folks just stayed in the captive Ayers Rock resort. The temperature was astoundingly warm, 37 degrees Celsius. We did not realize that this was the coolest day temperature we would experience over the next 6 days.

Like Cradle Mountain Lodge, Ayers Rock Resort was run by the Voyages company, which seemed to own a lot of captive-audience type resorts. I'm inherently suspicious of such resorts, and Voyages confirmed my fears. Our room was tiny, without even a table to sit down and eat at, the better to which to force us to dine at the restaurants.

We walked down to the visitor center, and tried to decide between the options provided for our free time. Lisa definitely wanted a camel ride, and the star-gazing option seemed like a good idea, but the resort offered Sounds of Silence, a combination nice dinner + star-gazing. I neglected to notice that the nice dinner was actually a buffet with unlimited alcohol, which really meant that this wasn't all that good a deal for us.

Looking at the guide book, we saw that the Outback Pioneer Inn had a self-service BBQ which might be interesting, so we walked over and had dinner there. The meats were interesting, beef, emu, kangaroo, and some sea food, but after trying everything I decided that I still liked beef better.

The next morning, we got picked up at 5:45am for a walk around the base of Uluru. The Anangu people ask visitors not to climb Uluru, so most tours just take you around the bottom of Uluru. Up close, the monolithic piece of rock is impressive, and the guides did a good job of getting us to a good sunrise viewing area, but the rest of the walk was meh. I could have gleaned all the stories by reading plaques around the walk, and didn't enjoy having pace forced upon me by others in the group.

We then had a free afternoon, during which we took a nap, had lunch, and read. At 38 degrees, it was really too warm to do much else. When dinner rolled around, we were shuffled onto a bus and taken to a set of dunes near the resort. The location was obviously not chosen by a photographer, as the sunset was hitting Uluru wrong, and while we could see the Olgas, they were too far away to be a realistic subject.

Dinner wasn't terribly inspired, but the star gazing portion was. The speaker had a flair for drama, and used a high powered lazer pointer to illuminate the night sky. It was easily the best part of the evening.

We were told to expect a pick up at 6:35am the next day, but when we got to the reception at 6:30am, we were told that the bus had left without us. This pissed me off, and I was even more pissed when told later that this was official AAT Kings policy --- they'd give you a pick up time but show up 10-15 minutes early, and leave without you if the hotel somehow got you registered incorrectly, or their data was incorrect.

To try to salvage the rest of the day, we rented a car and went to the cultural center, where we got a presentation of bushtucker and the traditional foods of the Anangu people. We then rearranged our schedule so that we had our camel ride that evening and then Kata Tjuta again the next morning before we left.

The camel ride was interesting. It turns out that Australia probably has a million feral camels in the country, mostly because the government tried to get the cameleers to shoot their camels rather than paying for them to be shipped back to the middle east, resulting in the cameleers just letting their camels go free. So the camel population went from a mere 20000 to a million in about a century, and Australia now has a camel population problem since in the outback they have no natural predators.

I thought that it would be like a horse ride, but instead, the cameleer had it set up like an old-time camel train --- she would load all of us up on the camels, and then lead the camels by walking in front of the lead camel, which was tied to all the other camels in a train. I got along fine with my camel, but the camel behind us kept trying to take a bite off me or my shoe. Fortunately, during the ride, he managed to get some grass and finally left me alone. The views were similar to what we got the day before, but at least we were moving. Being on a camel is very much like being on a boat --- you can't fight it, so you learn to let yourself flow with the camel's motion.

Our last night in Ayers Rock Resort went uneventfully, and we awoke early the next day to get onto the tour bus. Kata Tjuta's Valley of the Winds walk was not very windy that day, and it was down right warm by the time we got to the first lookout. We learned a few things about aboriginal traditions by the driver, who used to teach English to them. One of the interesting things was their burial traditions: historically, they would put the bodies onto trees, and only after the bones had been bleached, would they then bury what's left. Well, that can't happen in a tourist area, so they aren't allowed to do that now. One big belief is that if you die in an area and aren't buried properly according to that tradition, the place becomes haunted as your soul sticks around. Hence the request for you not to climb Uluru --- they don't want your soul hanging around if you died there (only 37 people have died, but it's not such a big place that 37 souls wouldn't make the place quite haunted, I supposed).

After we were returned to our hotel, we only had an hour before our bus transfer happened, which took us to Kings Canyon. During the drive there, I was very happy not to be the one driving, since I had never seen a road so darn straight for so long! Arriving at the Voyages-Run Kings Canyon Resort, we found it to be an incredibly run down place, with one mediocre restaurant, and not much to do but drink. That didn't interest us, but we were signed up for the 5:45am rim walk the next day anyway, so going to bed early after we were cheated out of the sunset by incoming clouds was the thing to do.

The walk around Kings Canyon Rim was easy: 6km is barely 4 miles, but even at 5:45am, the temperature was warm, and the day was projected to be 41 degrees C. The climb went by fast, with only a few stops to get pictures, and we were at the lost city by the time the sun came out and greeted us. I was used to Canyons being carved out by rivers, but it turned out that the Canyon was eroded almost completely by rainfall --- there was no river running through it! We got a geological overview, including the fact that this part of Australia once was taller than Everest! 360 million years of erosion without any tectonic plate action has made Australia as flat as a pancake (relatiely) as a result.

By the time we got back to our hotel, the day was warm, and getting warmer. We ate lunch after checking out, and were shuttled to Alice Springs by bus again, this time getting into Alice Springs Resort at 7pm. It was too late by then to do anything but eat at the hotel restaurant and do laundry.

Our one day in Alice Springs was entirely driven by the McDonnel Ranges coach tour, which led us to several short walks, a swimming hole, and the Glen Helen gorge. Again checking in at a blistering 41 degrees C, we got views of the desert, beautiful in its own way, but I was quite sick of the Australian outback by this point, and ready to return to more temperate climates.

Review: Revelation Space

Revelation Space (dead tree edition) was Alastair Reynolds' first novel.

Set 5 centuries into the future, Reynolds introduces us to his universe (which apparently has already had 5 novels set in it, plus several short story collections, and I somehow managed to miss this Brit. phenomenon, just like I missed Richard K. Morgan).

Since Reynolds was apparently a real scientist, we get very realistic exposition --- we get to see relativistic travel, the question of the Fermi paradox, a great description of neutron stars, black holes, and time travel used in computation, as well as the usual grand sweep space opera concepts such as very large ships, planet destroying weapons, and space civilization/archaeology.

The plot revolves ostensibly around Dr. Dan Silvestre, an egoistic, obsessive archaeologist who's exploring the remnants of an expired civilization, the Amarantins. We then get seeps of back story, and two other convergent plotlines that converge very early on in the novel --- most of the mystery behind the book has to do with tying the civilizations together, and figuring out what's going to happen next.

All the clues are fair, and in fact, when I figured out a crucial plot point ahead of time, I felt extremely satisfied, rather than cheated or feeling like the author was being stupid.

The only criticism of this novel is common to all scientists turned writers --- the characters are quite wooden, and seriously, how could anyone learn to care about such characters? Then again, with science fiction of such epic scope, the sense of wonder (often only achieved by Iain M. Banks, another great British writer) is a great substitute for characterization.

Recommended for realistic science, a plot that doesn't make you feel stupid, and a fun romp through an interesting universe. I'm buying the next book in the series for the long flight home.

(A note on the Kindle edition: it is very badly proof-read. Little typos like modem are substituted for modern all over the book. Nevertheless, the story blows it all away)

Warning to Australian travelers, avoid AAT Kings

So this morning, we were scheduled for a tour to the Valley of the Winds done by AAT King. We were told that the bus would come pick us up at 6:35am, but when we got to the lobby at 6:30am, were told that the bus had showed up looking for us at 6:20am, and then left without us! We were livid that they didn't even search for us or have the hotel call us. Then we found out that they had searched for Lisa's name, rather than mine, despite my name being on the reservation anywhere else on this trip.

They switched us to the afternoon tour, but the park closed the Valley of the Winds walk in the afternoon because of heat, which was why we had signed up for a morning trip in the first place. After some rearrangement of our schedule, we managed to get onto tomorrow's tour.

The receptionist at the hotel confided to us that this was a common occurence with AAT King's tours. He recommended that we use APT (Austalian Pacific Tours) if we were doing more touring, which is of course too late for us, but fortunately, we only have a few days left.

Review: Fight Club

I bought this short novel (Kindle Edition) as a break from reading more Recluce novels.

The premise seems on the surface to be about men living lives of quiet desperation, looking for something to enliven their lives. Calling out a stranger and fighting, and having a club to do that would seem to be that kind of ticket in a perverse world. We get really gross stories (though not Richard Morgan gross), and the fight club escalates in the way all such ideas do, into more and more sinister versions of itself.

By the time the big reveal happens, my ability to believe in this little piece of fiction has been going down. Nevertheless, the novel is short enough and the plot interesting enough that the big reveal was enough to get me to finish it. The novel is also short enough that I can see how a movie wouldn't mangle it, so I guess I'll have to get around to watching the movie as well. Mildl recommended as an airplane novel.

Review: The Order War

The Order War jumps further ahead in the history of Recluce, and uncovers the history of Justen and Gunnar. Those who are alert will remember Gunnar as the parent of our hero in The Magic of Recluce, and Justen his brother.

Justen starts off being unhappy with the state of the affairs in Recluce, where Recluce seems too eager to mind its own business, while Justen wishes Recluce would do something about the Chaos Wizards slowly enroaching upon the affairs of the continent of Candar. He volunteers for a regiment to help prop up one of the countries on the continent, but ends up being isolated from Recluce.

The story feels a lot tilted towards the fan: you get to meet some interesting historical figures. Again, the characters seem rather stilted, and Modesitt's exploration of yet another coming of age story seems rather dull. In fact, for about the first half of the book you can skim yet another smith/healer/warrior story and not miss any important plot points.

Not recommended except for die hard fans (which unfortunately, it seems I am).

Exmouth, Australia

The flight to Exmouth went off uneventfully, despite a 5:40am Taxi pick up and flight attendants that were quite intrigued by the Kindle. We originally planned not to have a car in Exmouth, but the airport pickup shuttle person told us that having a car was a must, so we stopped off in town to rent a stick-shift car for $50/day.

Getting into the Best Western, we discovered that it was right in the middle of the former U.S. Naval base! The owner, Axel, was a German transplant who had lived in Exmouth for 15 years with his wife and kids, and eagerly set us up in a nice room that looked like great value (full kitchen, full size refrigerator, etc.). He then gave us an orientation of the area, lent us an ice box, an umbrella, and rented us snorkels and masks.

We then headed to town for lunch and a visit to the shopping center to fill the ice box, and then drove to Turquoise Bay to try the drift snorkel. The beach is filled with pieces of coral skeletons, just to show you how robust this coral reef is. The drift snorkel is set in a lagoon with a consistent current from South to North. You enter through the South, and the current carries you to the North, the only catch being that if you forget to leave the lagoon before it carries you past the Southern sandbar, a powerful rip-tide will send you right into the Indian Ocean, where there's no landfall between Australia and Africa!

We snorkeled cautiously, and it was a lot of fun --- I even saw a reef shark moving around in the water. Then while preparing for another entry, I saw another snorkeler doing something very smart --- she put on her fins and stepped backwards towards the reef, and by the time she was forced to swim, she was almost right on the reef, and didn't have to fight the current at all. I followed suit and had a great time.

In fact, we had too great a time, since after we were done it was 4pm, and we were feeling a little sun exposed. We drove South to Sandy Bay, which was a pretty place, and then back North to Mandu-Mandu gorge, which was a walk up to the highest place in the park for a good view of the entire Ningaloo Reef. I started the walk, but found the going tough, not because of elevation gain, but because the trail was right on a stream bed which was rocky and painful to walk on. After a while I started looking for short cuts. I found a rock climbing ascent, but on examination discovered that I just wasn't good enough to do it. A little while later, I backtracked and found a chimney. I'd read about how to do this in The Freedom of the Hills about 10 years back, but never had a chance to apply it, and so took the chance to do so. What do you know, it worked like a charm.

Once at the summit, I took a few pictures, and walked back down, and on the return, discovered to my chagrin that if I had only been more patient I would have found the non-mountaineering ascent. C'est la vie. Lisa then wanted to look for turtle hatchlings, while I wanted to see the sunset from the local lighthouse. Fortunately, the two attractions were right next to each other and so we could each do so. I found the sunset disappointing, however, and Lisa found no turtle hatchlings.

We had dinner at Whalers in town, and the food was found to be absolutely top-notch, right up there with the best I had at Google, while the service was slow but acceptable.

The next morning, we were picked up at 7:40 for the Navy Pier Dive, billed as one of the top 10 dives in the world. The U.S. Navy built a submarine communications system that consisted of really high towers (the tallest is taller than the Eiffel, but doesn't look that tall because we had nothing to compare it to), and ran a base in Exmouth in the 1960s. Since then, most of the work has been automated away, except for the pier, which is used to deliver diesel to operate the system.

The dive itself was quite amazing --- you really do feel like you're in an aquarium, surrounded by fish. We saw Rays, Sharks (multiple of them!), Lion fish (also multiple), Potato Cods (big huge ones), schools of Barracuda, the list goes on. The visibility was not great (20 feet at most), but the density of wild life was quite impressive. If you're in the area, this dive is definitely a must do.

We returned to the hotel at noon, went to town to have lunch at Grace's Tavern (surprisingly good food), and then I went snorkeling again while Lisa stayed at the hotel. By the time I returned, it was almost time to return the car, so we did so and had dinner at Pinnochio's, an Italian establishment that was disappointing.

The dive on Saturday was changed on account of the wind --- it was way too strong to go to the Murions, so we were sent to the West Coast instead. We dived two dives and did a snorkel in between, but I wasn't too happy with the dive guides this time. The reason is the Ningaloo Reef Dreaming also trains Dive Masters (known as Dive Control Specialists in the SSI lingo). In this case, the number of trainee Dive Masters outnumbered the paying customers (this is because Ningaloo trains you for free if you work for them as an intern for 4 weeks after your Dive Master course), and I did not appreciate being used as a guinea pig for trainees during a dive I'm paying for. The first dive felt like a race, with the trainees shooting off like a rocket, and us paying customers chasing them. The second one was considerably better, with better wild life viewing, but with all the switching arounds and confusion, I would have preferred getting an experienced guide. If you're signed up for a trip with these guys, I recommend making sure you get a real dive guide, not an intern or a trainee!

By the time the diving was over it was nearly 4pm, so we chilled in the hotel room and did a BBQ for dinner.

The big disappointment this morning was that our whale shark spotting trip had been cancelled, again due to wind. We salvaged the day by renting a car, and going snorkeling again, first at South Mandu (which Lisa loved), a site where the coral is practically at your nose, granting great visibility but few large fish, and then we had lunch at the Yardie River. We finished up the day at Turquoise Bay again, but on the non-drift loop, where we saw a small Manta Ray, and I spotted a clown fish --- but the drift loop really is better. Dinner was at Whalers again, as we tried to drown away our sorrow at not seeing Whale Sharks with good food.