The Relay, 2009

So two weekends ago, I participated in The Relay.  As part of the third Google Team, we ran 199 miles.

This blog chronicles everything that my team went through, giving pretty much a blow by blow account of the entire race. =)  

Yes, we blogged on the run.  Say yay, to mobile WiFi!

The race was more of a logistics challenge more so than a challenging run.   As a bonus though, I got to run one of my favourite hills to ride up, Redwood Gulch. =)

Ironic, I never thought I would be running up that hill!  My time for that portion fortunately is worse than my ride up it (50 minutes for the 3 mile stretch)

I don't think I'll quite do this again as it didn't turn out to be difficult and was just long stretches of waiting.  It IS quite incredible to do this as part of a team though, and that I'll treasure more than anything else.

Review: Black Diamond Orbit Lantern

I bought the Black Diamond Orbit Lantern during the REI 20% off period. I actually spent some time debating between that and the Apollo, but decided that the lighter weight of the Orbit would soon meet my needs.

Prior to this purchase, I always used a candle or a Coleman gas lantern, but the Stephenson did not come with straps for hanging the candle lantern, and the Coleman always had problems with use inside a tent --- not only is it dangerous, but a topple could burn up your tent!

The Orbit is tiny. It weighs 5 ounces with 4 AAA batteries. Each set of AAAs will go for about 10 hours, which is more than enough for a 5 day backpacking trip during the summer, or 2-3 days in the fall. It is bright!. With it fully lit, the inside of the tent feels very much like daylight. (that's an illusion, since it only has a 1W LED) It's so bright that your see white spots for a bit after you stare at the lantern directly.

As a reading light, it is so bright that I had to turn it down (fortunately it comes with a dimmer switch). I found a great way to use it, which is to lie it down on the side and then read on my back with the book (or Kindle) held up in my hands. For extra battery savings stick a mirror behind it, and use the dimmer.

Needless to say, this light is highly recommended. I'm retiring all my candle and gas lanterns as a result.

Cazedero LDT

From Piaw's Blog

From Piaw's Blog

What a gorgeous weekend it was! Not wanting it to go to waste, I joined the Western Wheelers for the Cazedero Circuit rides, a combination of really gorgeous rides in Northern California, on the Sonoma Coast. I knew I was out of shape, but this ride told me how badly off I was. Two years ago, I did the E ride on Saturday, 85 miles and 8500' of climbing, and was surprised on Sunday by how easy the ride up Coleman Valley road was. This year, I did the C ride, 65 miles and 6500' of climbing and was exhausted, feeling a lot of lower back soreness from the climbing. Then Saturday's climb up Coleman Valley road was a slog, no question about it. I was just too tired to be frisky.

Nevertheless, with wild poppies abound and gorgeous coastal scenery, I can't complain. It's good to be able to enjoy California after spending so much time away.

Kindle DX a massive boon to travelers

I did not bother upgrading to the Kindle 2 because I thought it was an inferior product compared to the Kindle v1. Today's announcement of the Kindle DX, however, will likely have me digging out my wallet to pay for the next time I travel. It's heavier (8 ounces more, so it will now compete with my CPAP machine in weight), and bulkier, but has one major feature, which is PDF support.

For the traveler, that means all the lonely planet PDFs can be stored for searching when you travel. When cycling in Europe or backpacking through Japan, this is a massive weight and space savings over the paper books. I begged Lonely Planet a year ago for a Kindle edition, but now I don't have to wait.

I don't know when the newspapers and magazines will switch over to PDF content, but it's only a matter of time --- now you'll be able to get all those glossies with images, etc. In other words, if you're about to travel somewhere independently (i.e., not part of a guided tour), this will become an essential accessory for you.

Review: My Life as a Quant

My Life as a Quant (kindle edition) is Emanuel Derman's memoir of his journey from being an ambitious Physicist to being a much lauded financial engineer.

The first half of his book covers his training and education as a physicist. There's not a little bit of the usual physicist's arrogance built into his training. There's the note that in Physics, you frequently run into people so smart that you know you'll never be at that level, and the widely accepted opinion that Physics is so much better than other fields that a poorly paying post-Doc as a physicist is better than almost any other profession. From being a professor at the University of Colorado to finally ending up at Bell Labs where he was essentially trained as one of the early C programmers, Derman's gradual disillusionment with Physics and his lack of material progress in that field shows through.

The second half of the book is much more exciting. It's provides a good layman's introduction to financial engineering (that Derman's currently a professor of financial engineering shows through), as well as Derman's life in Goldman Sachs and Saloman Brothers, firms which were central in the financial collapse last year. Now that he's a successful theorist in financial engineering, Derman's a lot more humble --- he ends with a long treatise on the limits of financial engineering, and emphasizes that ultimately, it's the trader's human intuition that makes the final decision, and that no model in finance can give you the same exactness as the ones in Physics --- in one you're playing a game where the rules do not change, and in the other you play against humans, who learn and always find new exploits.

The book was worth my time, but I wonder what he would say now, given the events in 2008.

Review: Escaflowne

I found this in my archives on my hard drive, and still have fond memories of the TV series, which is now available in all sorts of special collection editions on Amazon, and decided that Escaflowne can't possibly be popular enough, so I'm resurrecting it on my blog.

Vision of Escaflowne is a science fiction adventure. Produced by Shouji Kawamori, who also produced the delectable Macross, Escaflowne is a story that combines fantasy, romance, and adventure in 26 25-minute episodes. Aired in Japan in 1996, this TV series is now available as a complete DVD collection.

The story revolves around Hitomi, who is a first year student in high school. Hitomi has a crush on one of the seniors on the school track team, Amano. When she learns that he is leaving for England, she gathers up her courage, and asks him to clock her on the track. And if she gets in under 13 seconds, would Amano-sempai please give her her first kiss?

Unfortunately, during her run, a boy from one of Hitomi's dreams show up in a flash of light, followed closely by a dragon. In the events that transpire shortly thereafter, Hitomi is transported along with the the boy to his planet, Gaea, with no apparent way back. I'll let other sites do the rest of the plot synopsis. Rest assured that the adventure never lets up, and surprise after surprise will challenge the viewer to keep the story straight.

As a world, Gaea evokes Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter, Princess of Mars series. There are ape-men, and cat-women, boy princes and dashing swords men, flying ships which levitate using anti-gravity rocks, and powered-armored suits (called Guymelefs in the story) which transform, fly, and draw their energy from a stone called a Dragu-Energist, which can only be found in the remains of a dragon. The title of the series, Escaflowne, is the name of the Guymelef that Van Fanel pilots.

The boy whom Hitomi rescues is Van Fanel, a prince of a small country on Gaea. When Fanelia is destroyed by an invisible army of Guymelefs, Hitomi and Van spend the rest of the story trying to discover who is doing this and why.

The Characters
There are four major characters in the story, along with a large supporting cast. Hitomi is the viewpoint character, a natural choice, since the audience is far more likely to identify with her than with anyone else. Van Fanel, the King of Fanelia starts the story appropriately enough, as a King without a country, and eventually grows to become the warrior that he did not want to be at the start of the story. The third leg of Hitomi's romantic triangle (you knew there was going to be one, didn't you?) is Allen Schezar, a dashing, handsome swordsman of Asturia, the country Van and Hitomi flee to when escaping from Fanel's destroyers. Princess Millerna, who's the third daughter of Asturia, however, is in love with Allen, hence the romance turns out not to be a simple case of who does Hitomi chooses?

The interactions between characters is entertaining and perhaps classically romantic. The characters have histories that come back to haunt them, as well as unresolved pasts that they eventually have to confront. But as with most good stories, the most impressive thing about Escaflowne is that the characters do grow and mature. Hitomi does not return to Earth as the same girl who left for Gaea.

Plot

This is a fast paced series. There are at least one or two plot twists every episode,
so watching it in a collection is much better than trying to pick it up off broadcast TV. Escaflowne was first conceived as a 39 episode series, but the budget was set for 26 episodes, hence the tight pacing. In many ways this is a good thing, since there are no episodes where nothing happens, and even the character development episodes don't leave a viewer feeling cheated.

What I really like, however, is the fact that for a romance, Hitomi definitely does more than her fair share of rescuing in the series. The female leads are strong characters, and the story is compelling and full of the kind of wonder I started reading science fiction for. Of course, there are a few inconsistencies, such as Hitomi's school uniform remaining intact and immaculate despite the rough treatment she gives it, and the number of adventures she puts it through. (And except for a few episodes, she doesn't wear anything else!)

Is it worth 13 hours?

Yes! If you don't feel like buying the series, rent it, borrow it, or pool money with your friends and buy it, but by all means watch it. This is Japanese animation at its best. Unlike older series such as Macross or Gatchaman, this series is incredibly well-drawn for a TV series. The art is uniformly high quality, and consistent from episode to episode. Sure, there are the usual cases of long still shots and reused footage from episode to episode, but by and large the animation, even on a small screen is as good as anything I have seen. You won't be disappointed.

There is a movie, but as with Macross, the movie has no plot resembling that of the TV series, and in fact, will have some of the characters redrawn so dramatically that you will not recognize them except by name.

For More Information

The Big Escaflowne Website. This is a well-designed site, with lots of production information and notes on the show, as well as episode guides and a good idea of what's going to be in the movie. Spoilers are carefully marked.

A Consolidated Cycle Touring Page

For years, my cycle touring travelogues and web pages have been all over the place, ranging from my Alma-Mater to this blog to geocities. With recent news that Geocities was to be shut down by the end of the year, I asked on FriendFeed where to host all my soon-to-be-gone content.

The overwhelming vote was for Google's App Engine. I had played with it 2 years ago when it was a Google internal alpha, but I didn't think of using it for hosting static content. It does have a few quirks, but it's cheap, and visitors are unlikely to overwhelm the free quota, which is more than I can say about the Geocities page! I do like that I finally get to use the domain that I registered two years ago.

The runner up was DreamHost, which came with rave reviews by many users, but my experience with their promotion for migrating Geocities was less than ideal, and I have reasonable confidence that Google's free quota will always be more than I can use.

I'd like to say that I rescued everything before bit-rot set in, but unfortunately, I've already lost quite a number of photos, and in many years had to settle for just rescuing the text.

So hop over to my Consolidated Touring Pages and have a look! (I do apologize for the years in which I didn't do write ups of my trip --- I intend to remedy them eventually)

Review: Almost Perfect

One of the best things about owning a Kindle is that items that are too long to read entirely online are easily converted to Kindle format and then are indistinguishable from books. Almost Perfect is one such item.

Almost Perfect was written by W. E. Pete Peterson, one of WordPerfect's early employees and CEO in all but name. For those of you who remember the era of desktop software, there's the usual Microsoft story of the evil empire using its formidable influence to tilt the market to its playing field. I was on the sidelines at the time, and my observation was that most Microsoft competitors didn't need Microsoft's help doing themselves in.

In WordPerfect's case, it was clear that they had an incredibly good product for DOS and character-based interfaces. I was an early Wordstar user, and I remember how MicroPro shot itself in the foot with the introduction of Wordstar 2000, destroying all the backwards compatibility the users had come to expect. Frequently, the lack of backwards compatibility was what killed a lot of software companies. (Microsoft's current woes with Vista driver and application compatibility is only the latest such example)

The book is short and well-written, and unremittingly describes WordPerfect's success (listening to the customer, supporting them well, and learning from their mistakes) and mistakes (supporting platforms and programs that didn't make money, never developing in house management talent that could think the way the founders did, and being too optimistic about the resources required to compete in GUI-oriented word processing programs). In this case, the attempt to diversify across product lines extracted a costly toll on the company that it could not afford, since it did not have a monopoly that Microsoft had to sustain as many disparate development efforts as they did.

Ultimately, however, I consider this book a good example of the importance of building an organization that can function along without key people, rather than an organization composed of superheroes. While Pete Peterson was undoubtedly a talented executive (proving once again that business school is no substitute for hard work and common sense), towards the end he was strained past the breaking point by WordPerfect's growth, and could not keep track of all that was essential for success. He wanted to run a flat organization, but the shortage of management talent in the company (and his flailing attempts to remedy it at the last minute) eventually came to roost, and WordPerfect paid the price.

Recommended for its brief, honest appraisal, and a good look at the inside world of desktop, shrink-wrapped software.

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.

Review: The Magic Engineer

The Magic Engineer is the third book in the Recluce series. I'm starting to see the pattern that Modesitt is putting together: the first book introduced the world, while the later books seem to be filling in back story. This book covers Dorrin, a smith/healer who was exiled from Recluce for dreaming of mechanical marvels. As yet another coming of age story, it's nothing special, but of course, what drew me in was the depiction of the engineer who was the first to analyze Recluce's special brand of magic: while those before him were content to manipulate energies, Dorrin struggled to understand the big picture, and hence becomes the author of a major ground-breaking book depicted in the first novel.

The character is again quite wooden, and we see the flaw to Modesitt's approach to world-building: his characters aren't free to be themselves, but rather must fit into a history that he has clearly designed in advance. This makes the characters feel very shallow.

While I enjoyed this book, I can't put a recommended tag on it. That's not going to keep me from reading newer books in the series --- it just means that I can't say that anyone else will enjoy it.

Margaret River Area

We started driving in the morning after a quick supermarket breakfast and stocking up at a near by super-market. This was interrupted by stops to take calls from our travel agent about the Ningaloo trip, and so we made it only to Bunbury around noon, where we had lunch. At lunch, we confirmed all our arrangements with Ningaloo Reef Dreaming for our dives, but with one snag, they wanted everything faxed to them in writing, which was quite tricky --- there were no guarantees we would be able to arrange that today. Our travel agent offered to deal with that for us, so we remained hopeful.

At Busselton, we stopped at the information center, and saw the ads for the Bushtucker Canoe tour. That sounded like a lot of fun, especially since it meant a chance to try the Australian Witchetty grub, so we signed up for it. I also called the Hamelin Bay caravan park to see if they had a powered site for the night.

Then onwards we went, to Cowaramup, where an road sign for a wine shop stopped us. We had seen signs for a mango wine earlier and had hoped to see it, but it turned out that the shop didn't have it. They did point us at the Berry Farm, and we resolved to see that tomorrow. After that, we gassed up the car and headed to Hamelin Bay Campground, which was right in the middle of Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park. The Australians don't seem to mind having a commercial campground in the middle of their National Park. The campground is quite pretty, and very close to the beach, so after we had a quick dinner, we walked along the beach for some sunset photos. After the sunset, we were treated to a visit to the beach by Manta Rays, who were drawn by fishermen scaling fishes on the beach. Lisa had quite a bit of fun feeding them with the fish scaling remains.

The next morning, we drove the much touted Caves Road, which winds along the Karri forest to the Pevelly Cove for the Bushtucker tour. The tour guide, a former policeman from Perth named Chris, delighted in showing us the forests, the birds of the area, as well as a short hike and of course, the Bush lunch. The Witchetty grub was not bad, tasting a bit like a nut. Well worth the trip! On the way back, we had a canoe race, and with Lisa & I sharing the canoe with Chris, we won the race and a bottle of wine for Yuri and Monique.

After this trip, we went back to Margaret River and used the internet cafe there to finalize our Ningaloo trip. With all that printing and writing and faxing behind us, we headed to the Berry Farm, which to our delight had Mango wine. A tasting, however, revealed a sharp, spicy taste to the wine which made it a disappointing wine, despite my wanting to like anything mango-related. We did try their sparking strawberry wine and their sparkling nashi pear wine, and those were quite good, so we bought a bottle of the pear wine for the evening.

Having done so, we decided to stay at Hamelin Bay again for the night, since an inspection of the Riverside Caravan Park in Margaret River didn't impress us. Rather than provision the caravan for one more night of cooking, we decided to buy take out food in Augusta. While we were in the area, we took a look at the cape (unfortunately arriving at the lighthouse just as it closed), and were surprised to find that the color patch cafe calling itself the last dining house before Antarctica.

The overcast day meant that the sunset wasn't nearly as good that day, but we met an Australian family and spent an evening with them.

Our last day in the Perth region started out overcast, but as we drove back along Caves road, which slowly started to look more and more like other wine valleys in the world (including Napa valley), we started seeing more and more sun, until it became only partly cloudy at the Busselton pier, where Chris had recommended that we rent snorkels and swim back from the end of the pier so we could see the fishes up close and personal. I did so, and the water was cool, but not unbearable. Folks in the underwater observatory took pictures of me, though! I enjoyed the swim for about 20 minutes and then got stung by two jelly fish in quick succession, ending my snorkel in a hurry.

After that, the drive back to Perth happened uneventfully. At Monique and Yuri's home, we unloaded everything, and I borrowed one of their bikes and stuffed it back into the camper van to drive to the return office. I made it back there just in time, returned the van with no problems, and then rode my back. The ride back was initially terrible, with heavy traffic and hot weather. But I soon found the cool bike path along the Swan river, and that made for nice riding.

Lisa & I repacked our bags for Ningaloo, had a final reunion with Yuri (who was going to Europe on business the next day) and Monique, and had dinner at the local Asian food restaurant. We had a 5:45am taxi pick up the next day, so we went to bed early. At this point, I noticed my CPAP mask was damaged from the trip, so had to make some repairs with scotch tape.

Review: The Towers of Sunset

The Towers of Sunset was the second book in the Recluce series, and this one jumps us back several centuries and gets us to see the founding or Recluce.

Told in the third person, the novel mostly focuses on Creslin, who's an extremely talented man. As in Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince, one has to wonder how such a being could exist. Let's see: the guy's a master swordsman, a powerful weather wizard, a talented singer and guitarist, and one heck of a hard worker.

The plot revolves around the Chaos Wizards' dominance and pursuit of Creslin, who eventually flees to Recluce with his wife. While the novel reveals a lot about the world of Recluce and how things came to be, the characterization is weak and the plot is merely an excuse to hang "history" on. The romance is handled badly, in typical Modesitt fashion --- his characters probably reflects his views on romance and morality, but I find it more than a bit unrealistic.

All in all, this book is not recommended, unless you (like me), read the first book and got hooked.

Perth

We got off the plane right on time in Perth, and walked from fall into summer. The weather was well over 28 degrees centigrade, and it was warm just walking to the taxi stand where we took at taxi to the Maui rental. The rental was for 10 days, so we bought a National Park Pass as well as renting the awning. Now that we knew what we wanted, and knew the van well, checking it out was easy.

We then drove to Monique and Yuri's house in East Perth, which was nicely located near the river and seemed to be a pretty upscale location. Just as we found parking, Monique and Yuri walked up and helped us move our luggage into their home. Despite being in suburbia, Yuri and Monique managed to keep a European lifestyle despite living in Australia, by being able to bike to work, and not driving very much. Yuri had just bought a Jeep, though, and was working on installing Roo bars. He needed some parts, and so was glad that we showed up with a van, and he and I made a run down to the store while Lisa and Monique took a walk.

For dinner, we rode bicycles to Fraser's a restaurant on top of the hill in Perth. Since we couldn't find a bicycle small enough for Lisa, Yuri did the gentlemanly thing and gave Lisa a lift on the rear rack of his dutch bike. The views from Fraser's was good, as was the food.

The next morning, Monique had a triathlon she was doing as part of a corporate challenge, and we rode to the start line to cheer her on. After that, we packed everything up and drove our van to a caravan park in Fremantle, since we had a dive scheduled on Monday. Lisa's friend Daniel showed up to pick us up and show us his place of work, E Shed markets, the major tourist market in the area. It turned out that Daniel was the general manager for the market, which is owned by ING.

After the tour, Daniel dropped us off at the Fremantle prison, where we had signed up for the 3:45pm tunnel tour with Tara, whom we had met on the Overland track. Monique and Yuri also joined us, and we got to see the underground part of the prison, which was apparently also featured in The Amazing Race TV show. It was quite a fun tour, and when it was all over we got pictures and went off to have dinner with Daniel and his friend A.

Daniel, Lisa, A. and I exchanged travel stories and food longings, since A. was from Singapore and of course, that's what Singaporeans do when they meet --- discuss food.

The next morning, we drove once again to E-shed to meet our dive guides and get fitted for our dive gear --- we were going to dive Rottnest island today! Our driver was late, however, so we ended up browsing at the store --- they had a brochure for Ningaloo Reef Dreaming, an outfit that did dives up North, and also advertised a Whale Shark tour. Since Ningaloo was at least a 4 day round trip drive, we had written it off, but I thought that if we used a plane to get there, it could work out. I called Swain Travel, our travel operator and asked them to look into it for me, and Ningaloo Reef Dreaming as well, to see if Whale Sharks were in season. The big one was that we would lose the use of our camper van without any refund, but a sunk cost is a sunk cost.

The two dives at Rottnest were great --- the water was a little cold, at 22 degrees, but once the wet suits filled up it was comfortable. The dives were along limestone bottoms, so there were a lot of swim-throughs, and a lot of wildlife, though the water did not have great visibility. Still it was fun and Lisa and I thought that since our Great Barrier Reef dive was so disappointing, we could make it up here.

That night, we went to Woodmans Point caravan park, and had dinner once again with Daniel and A. We would head South the next day for Margaret River.