Review: MoKo Universal Travel Charger

For years, I traveled with the Kensington travel plug adapter, and in general, I've been pretty happy with it. But it's heavy, at well over 100g, and my older version doesn't have the USB power outs in order to charge devices while keeping my CPAP machine running.

I looked for a lighter one, and the Moko Universal Travel Charger came in at the lightest, at under 70g. Here's how to get it to under 70g. The charger comes in two pieces: one piece has a US standard plug with two USB A outputs at the bottom. The other piece is the actual plug adapter piece, and contains plug adapters for Europe, UK, and various other locations. The European piece is detachable, and you can carry that independent of the other adapters. That cuts the weight down. The secondary fuse is located in the secondary adaptor piece, and given my prior experience with Kensington fuses, I carried it separately (wrapped in tissue and stuffed into a ear plug case), but I never needed it.

The fit and finish of the device is not quite there: in particular, the US plug would not stay put inside the european plug adapter if plugged in facing up (happened in a swiss dormitory), or upside down (on a WOW airline flight). The device makes a buzzing noise on occasion when the USB plugs are in use, but not once did the device fail to charge and the noise is barely noticeable.

The device is indeed physically flimsy: if you stuff it into a dry bag, there's a good chance that the prongs will bend: my solution is to wrap the device in clothing (a bike jersey or bike shorts will do). If the prongs had been made retractable that would have been a great improvement, but probably a bit much for an $11 device.

Testing the device on a tour of the Alps is probably the harshest service anyone can put it through. Given that it worked and was the lightest solution I could find, it deserves to be recommended.

Review: Pearl Izumi Elite Shorts

I have a tradition of buying the same bike clothing if I like the item, and then wearing them to death. On one of my first tours, one of my companions one day saw me hanging up my clothes, and then remarked, "Oh, you have 2 of those shirts! I thought you just wore the same thing every day." Well, in recent years, my shorts have been getting more and more worn out. The last straw came when Bowen one day stuck his finger into a hole in the back of my shorts and said, "Daddy you need new shorts!"

I hate shopping for clothing. My solution is to just go to Amazon and buy shorts and then return the ones that are the wrong size. I initially tried the Pearl Izumi Quest shorts, which fit me in the large. Those were acceptable, if a bit tight. At $28 from Amazon Warehouse deals they won't break the bank, and my experience has been that the cheaper the shorts the longer they last. Then one day, I noticed that Amazon Warehouse had a deal for the Pearl Izumi Elite shorts. I had a big tour coming up, so thought, why not. If they're not worth the price I'll send them back.

Well, they arrived and I have to say they're much more comfortable shorts than the Quest, so I bought another and will tour with them. My experience with expensive shorts is that they tend to wear pretty quick, and one tour with them will probably show up any issues they might have in the long run. In the mean time, however, they're recommended!

Robinson: The Original and Three Covers

This is one of those posts that I write to myself for future reference. I'd been listening to Robinson (by Spitz) in the car when driving Bowen around, so he picked up on it. Then during a youtube session, we found a video performance on Youtube:

OK, so a random Japanese pop song, right? But no, Debbie Gibson (of all people) actually produced an English version cover:
That blew my mind. But my favorite cover of this song has got to be Goose House's duet, with two singers and 4 instruments. That's really worth checking out (watch the motion of the guy's right leg --- talk about multi-tasking):
If that's not to your taste you can go for the a Capella version:

S24O with a Pre-Schooler: Sunset State Beach Edition

For a variety of reasons, we never managed to schedule a camping trip this year until now. Fortunately, the kids all loved their last trip and kept asking for them, so we decided on Sunset State Beach so that we wouldn't have to keep going to New Brighton. The freeway noise at New Brighton was always audible even at night, and Sunset was quite a bit further from the freeway and probably wouldn't have the problem.

Now that I'd figured out how to get the triplet into the fit, I no longer wanted to bring the single bike and a trailer. This was also my test run to see how the bike handled with all 4 panniers. We drove to the intersection of Sunset and San Andreas, and parked in a dirt parking lot that I'd spied earlier on street view. However, a man drove up and told us it was private property! I begged and cajoled until he relented and let us park on the condition that we assumed liability and that we'd move our cars at the end of the work day to another location on his property. We happily assented, showed him our bikes, and then I assembled the triplet and we were on the way.

When I first handled the bike, it felt like it fish-tailed ridiculously with 4 panniers. The load wasn't excessive, but I was simply not used to it. Bowen's every movement seemed to amplify the shakiness. Soon, however, I settled down and the bike felt like it handled as usual (for a triplet). Unlike New Brighton State Beach, Sunset State Beach had no gated entry time, so we were able to checkin and ride in at an early hour of 2:00pm. There are two minor climbs once in the park to get to the hiker biker site, which is co-located with the group camps. We were initially dismayed to discover that the hiker biker site had zero shade! I opted to pitch the tent without a rainfly and then we could abscond to the beach where it'd be a lot cooler. The site was cleverly hidden behind a bluff that would act as a wind shelter, so other than the lack of shade it was ideal. The lack of shade probably wouldn't bother most cyclists on a Pacific Coast Tour, as most such cyclists would arrive late in the day when the sun would be low and the warmth welcomed.

The trip to the beach on foot was terribly long.It involved traversing the group campground, going up a set of steps to a bluff, and then down a steep bluff. There was an easier route but it didn't look like it would be any shorter. We got down to the beach and played for a bit, flying kites, etc. The kids promptly played in the rising tideline and got themselves all wet, whereupon we had to take them to the showers. The shower facilities were limited: one of the two coin operated showers in the men's room was broken, so there was a line. Fortunately, with coin operated showers, each shower was never too long.

When we first moved in, the others, based on their experience at New Brighton, assumed other cyclists would show up towards the evening. After my shower, I experienced an epiphany, and told them that we'd have the place to ourselves that night. The reason is that Bicycling The Pacific Coast breaks down the entire trip into 60 mile segments for the reader, and Sunset State Beach did not make it into any of the segments as an end point. Most cyclists stick to the pre-made itinerary, because it effectively guarantees you a campground with a shower every night. As a result, if you're not camping at one of the end points, you'll have the place to yourselves.

After dinner, there was a show, which started with marshmallows, then songs, a game of charades, and a slide presentation about sharks. That was pretty cool, and the kids all had a lot of fun.

The next morning was fogged over, so we woke up, ate breakfast, packed, and rode to the beach. Despite the climb back out (which would have been easier without a load), riding to the beach is recommended over walking there if you have a bike! I certainly wouldn't suggest walking there to a cyclist.

All in all, Sunset State Beach has a lot to recommend it for the cyclist/family camping: it's much quieter than New Brighton (you can park at Seascape if you don't want to risk getting turned out by a property owner or getting your car towed), you will more likely than not get the hiker biker site to yourselves even on a busy weekend. The only minus is that the beach is much less accessible, but that's of little consequence if you have a decent bike. Recommended.

Bowen learns to snorkel

A year and a half ago, for the BVI trip, I bought a mask, snorkel, and fins for Bowen. To my disappointment, while he was enthusiastic about wearing them for a trial, he wasn't excited at all about getting in the water with them. Ultimately, he'd swim in the water with a lifejacket and wetsuit, but never got to see the fishes under water until the Punta Cana trip last year.

For a while we'd take Bowen to swimming lessons. But they never really took. Either he didn't click with the teacher, or he'd treat each swim lesson as an exercise in playing. Xiaoqin got tired of spending the money and decided that we'd teach him how to swim ourselves.

I learned to swim when I was so young that I had no memory of how I learned how to swim. It was pretty frustrating for me, and I'd watch Bowen kick and flail in the water getting nowhere and getting demotivated. I then thought of these old mask, snorkel, and fins sitting unused and decided to try them out again.

Well, this time, they worked! I first gave Bowen a kickboard, his swimming goggles, and the fins. Fins amplify your kicking and the minute he got results out of kicking he was motivated to learn. It took less than 15 minutes before he could use the kickboard and maneuver wherever he wanted to in the pool.

After that, it was time to switch to mask and snorkel. He was really skeptical, but I think finally his mouth had grown wide enough to accommodate the snorkel (barely). I also asked if he wanted to stay on the boat instead of snorkeling to see the fishes, and he finally gave it a shot. With kickboard, mask, and snorkel, he could then swim 25m from one end of the pool to another. He got fast enough that he could swim a lap in the time it took for me to swim three.

Then yesterday, he finally was willing to give up the kickboard. He can now float in the water, look down, relax, and go wherever he wanted in the pool. This was huge, since it really meant that he could snorkel in calm waters under adult supervision. As soon as he could do this he never wanted to leave the pool again, swimming from one end to another continuously without needing to be cajoled. He only left the pool after he got cold, asking, "Are we going with Arturo?" I was confused until he reminded me that he wanted to go sailing in the catamaran and go snorkel off the back of the boat!

That's pretty cool. I rarely identify with people who say they're proud of their kids. I still don't: taking credit for your children's achievements feels kinda iffy. But I'm really glad (and pleasantly surprised) that all that equipment actually ended up being used.

Review: My Neighbor Totoro Picture Book

After returning from Japan, Bowen asked for the My Neighbor Totoro Picture Book. Since I hadn't gotten to do long form reading for him in years, I agreed. The book took a while to ship, but when it arrived, he had me read it from beginning to end, at this point probably 20 times.

The book's quality is pretty good, with pictures that are formed from stills from the movie. The translation seems kind of iffy, and of course is not in congruence with the movie, so I occasionally get Bowen correcting me. The book includes a map of the village as well as several still pictures not in the movie.

I can't say I didn't get value out of the book, as it's become the most read book in Bowen's library. I'm getting a little sick of reading it to him at this point, but it's still a great little story no matter how often I read it. Recommended.

Excellent Customer Service: 2 Great Examples

Most of the time whenever I interact with customer service, I have my expectations set relatively low. From the "high call volume" phone waiting queue to the "I'm sorry but that's not our policy" scripted lines, I'm frequently frustrated, left on hold, and have calls dropped. In fact, one reason why I prefer using a Bluetooth headset to make phone calls is because at least I can have my hands free to do other stuff while listening to "please hold for our next available representative." As such, when I do get great customer service, I have to call out the great companies that provide it.

My first example is Wealthfront. They have what I consider to be an excellent product. Recently, they had a screw up with a contribution. This in itself was unusual, what really was excellent was that they proactively called us to tell us about the screw up. This is how you handle a screw up with a customer: "we screwed up, it's our fault, we take full responsibility for it, and we want to make it right." That in itself is unusual. What followed next was that they offered to give us a lifetime fee waiver. Now we already have a lifetime fee waiver, and upon telling the customer rep that, they were surprised, but treated it as a challenge rather than an obnoxious obstacle. My wife and I were pleased by their resolution of the matter and now we're not just customers but also shareholders in the company. If you're using a human financial advisor, unless it's Vanguard, I highly recommend that you consider switching.

My second example today is Garmin. Garmin has an undeservedly bad reputation amongst loud-mouthed internet forum posters. Part of it is justified: if you're the kind of person who buys the latest gadget, Garmin's new products almost always have teething problems. But if you're a mid to late adopter, buying products even as early as 3 months after introduction, their products outperform the competition and now I'll add customer service to the list of their advantages. Recently, my vivoactive stopped charging. I noted that I was out of warranty, but called them anyway. The customer service rep noted that I was out of warranty, but immediately said, "It's only been by a couple of months, so we're going to extend your warranty." We established that it really wasn't charging, and she offered to exchange the unit. I noted that it was equally likely (if not more likely) to be the charging cable that was faulty, and she immediately sent out a new charging cable. When both the charging cable and new unit arrived, it clearly was the charging cable, so in the future if this happens again (I'll admit to having abused the old charging cable quite a bit, so it's unlikely this will happen to you), I'll just buy a new charging cable.

When I encounter particularly poor customer service, I don't hesitate to call it out, but both Wealthfront and Garmin deserve to be called out for excellence in customer service. Only Amazon regularly exceeds my expectations this way. In this age of machine learning and automated phone responses, the human touch may turn out to be the only way to delight customers and stand out.

Review: Origins of the Human Mind

Origins of the Human Mind is a Great Courses lecture series about the evolution and development of the human mind. The topic is complex and interesting, and made more so by the fact that it's very much an area of open-ended research, with many unresolved problems and issues we still do not understand.

Stephen P. Hinshaw's lecturing tone and cadence reminds me very much of the William Hurt character in Dark City: he pauses, takes a breath, says a phrase, and then pauses again. I wonder if William Hurt used Hinshaw as the model for his performance in that movie. I mention this because if you hated that cadence of speech you may not enjoy this lecture series, even though the content is very good.

Hinshaw covers first the easier, developmental side. How does the human mind develop, and what are the stages it goes through. When does theory of mind first develop, and what are the vulnerabilities and critical periods a child goes through. This is great stuff. He debunks "nature vs. nurture", noting that very often it is the interaction of genes and the environment that creates a problem (or future mental capability or condition), and that the more we know about how genes interact with each other and the environment, the more easily we can intervene in order to head off issues right from the beginning. For instance, people with certain kinds of genes cannot be exposed to certain kinds of foods or it could damage brain development, and we're just in the opening phases of this class of research. He also does a very good job of explicating the difference between boys and girls' development, noting the particular vulnerabilities each gender has.

The evolutionary side is more challenging. As Hinshaw notes, behavioral changes leave no fossils. But there are several major mysteries that he posits solutions to:

• Why is mental illness so prevalent? Schizophrenia is as high as 1% of the population, and other conditions such as ADHD, autism, and bipolar disorder are also dismayingly common. The potential answer here is that some of the genes that confer properties like ADHD actually provided advantages in the past (and in fact, without the existence of mandatory schooling, ADHD might not actually exist as a disorder as children would never be forced to sit still for such a long time). In particular, families of many people with bipolar disorder turn out to be very successful in business and the arts, which indicates that many of the properties taken to the extreme in that condition are properties that actually aid in reproductive success.
• Why are humans prone to prejudice (racial or otherwise). Here the deep rooted treatment of other tribes as non-human seems to be deeply embedded in human's psyche, and might have been selected for in order to tightly bind tribes of humans.
• Why are humans so susceptible to religion? Religion here appears to have been used as a binding force to secure cooperation in groups exceeding Dunbar's number. Over time, the groups that succeeded in securing such cooperation out-competed the groups that did not do so.

Hinshaw ends the lecture series with a very personal story about his own father's bipolar disorder and psychotic breaks. That lecture ties together his themes very neatly: while the study of the human mind is ultimately a scientific endeavor, to attempt to do that endeavor without understanding and using the power of story telling that's deeply rooted in humanity's origins would be a mistake and leave much of the richness of such study behind.

All in all, I really enjoyed this lecture series, and would highly recommend it.

Review: The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting

Parenting books are a dime a dozen, most of them written badly and verbosely. Compared to the usual dreck, The Game Theorist's Guide To Parenting is a breath of fresh air. It's short, to the point, and of course, uses math. The math seems all correct as far as I can tell.

The disappointing thing for me is that I already knew most of what this book covered, including the various auction systems. While they're interesting, the use cases for the various auction technologies available for parenting are really limited, and the examples they provide are really contrived.

Where the book pays for itself are the chapters on strategic voting and how voting systems can be gamed. My own kids aren't old enough to play those games yet, but I'm sure that'll happen sooner or later.

The book's big problem is that most of the examples are either contrived or would yield to simpler solutions. There's an example of two kids fighting over who gets to play a new video game system first. The answer seems pretty obvious: make them bid with time (i.e., whoever plays first would play for less time), but the book ignores that and uses this example to go into Solomon's adjudication of the two mothers claiming the same baby.

Similarly, later on there's an example about a boy who persuades his parents to get a cat, but of course ends up leaving the cat care and training to his parents within a short period of time. The solution should be obvious: getting a cat is an ongoing contract, so extracting a promise up front is useless. You have to design systems where by cat care is incentivized through ongoing penalties. The authors ignore that and get into the Nash equilibrium without ever coming up with a good solution.

Having said that, the book is so short that it's still worth a read and who knows, maybe the ideas presented will eventually be useful. Mildly recommended.

Review: Velo Orange Saddlebag Loops

I've used Brooks B-17 saddles for years, and they come with saddlebag loops. But my last B-17 died quite a while back, and my current B-17N isn't as comfortable as the B-17 standard. It's also a pain to keep it covered in the rain (remember: water can splash up from the wheels, not just come down from the sky), and as I get older I have less tolerance for heavy equipment. I've been using Ritchey WCS for ages, and it's been fine, much lighter, and less maintenance (I also got it on a closeout from Nashbar for about $25). On my triplet, I have a Brooks C17 Cambium: it's essentially a B-17 made out of non-leather materials. For whatever reason, however, the C17 doesn't feel as comfortable to my sit bones as the B-17 did, or I can't keep my butt acclimated to both the Ritchey WCS and the C17 at the same time.

For my tour this year, I wanted to see if I could use the Ritchey instead of swapping back to a heavy saddle. Enter the VO saddlebag loops. The pictures and descriptions look iffy, but $15 isn't an obscene price for a half pound of weight savings, so I jumped on it.

The installation is fairly self-evident, but I managed to install it wrong until I added the bagman, whereupon the wrong-ness of the install was evident, so I reversed the loops. That made things a lot better, though not as nice as the brooks saddle with integrated saddlebag loops.

In combination with the saddlebag support, the saddlebag's kept off my thighs and the tire, with plenty of room under the bag for a fender.

If you're tall enough to not need the saddlebag support or can use a smaller saddlebag, the best solution is still the Brooks C17 with integrated loops and not bag support. But since I need to tote a CPAP machine up and down the alps anyway, this is probably the lightest setup I can find.

Recommended.

Cycling is ridiculously fashion driven

For the last 10 years or so, my preferred rim is the Velocity Aerohead rim. It's a very light rim for its strength, at 425g. It builds up very nicely and is very straight. In fact, it's so straight that my "tell" for knowing when I'm done truing a wheel is that the seam in the rim is what's touching the truing stand probe.

The corresponding rear rim is the Aerohead OC (420g) with an off center spoke bed that lets you build wheels with nearly equal spoke lengths, reducing the number of lengths of spokes you have to carry while on tour. Unfortunately, the Aerohead OC is no longer being produced, and in fact is being blown out by Velocity's on-line store at half price.

This immediately put me in a bind. The 36h rims are hard to find as it is, and with the Aerohead OC going out of production, I pretty much will have to stock a life time supply if I want to keep using the wheels I have. Since the double-butted wheelsmith spokes I have are also no longer in production (fortunately I had quite a number of spares left over from building my current wheels), I've now been officially orphaned. By the way, in case you're wondering, the cheapest and easiest to use tool for measuring rim wear is the Iwanson Dental Gauge Caliper. It sells for $5.70 on Amazon, and is perfectly shaped for going around the hook bead and measuring the inner and outer wall of the braking surface.

I asked around as to why the rim was no longer produced. The answer is that in recent years cyclists have gone to wider and wider tires. The replacement A23 rims are not just more expensive, but also have a wider distance between the hooks. This leads to increased weight (25g more). If I were building wheels today there's no question that I'd go with a rim that's going to be in production for a while, but it just goes to show how fashion driven cycling is. There's no reason you can't mount a 28mm tire on the Aerohead/Aerohead OC. It's just change for the sake of change, but it sure sells!

Review: Patagonia Half Mass Messenger Bag

It might surprise you, but until Quora gave me a Patagonia Half Mass, I'd never owned or used a bicycle messenger bag. Yes, despite all the swag frequently handed out at Google, I never managed to swing getting so much as a Timbuk2 messenger bag as swag.

I hate carrying things on my body when cycling. Backpacks suck, with the REI Flash 18 the only bag that I consider tolerable, and even then only for light loads. The Half Mass is pretty standard as messenger bags go: you have a shoulder sling, and a hip belt that attaches in one of two locations to sling the bag low on your back or high on your back depending on whether you're riding or walking.

There are multiple pockets, including a laptop specific pocket, side pockets for a bottle, a top zipper pocket, and a couple of compartments. My biggest complaint about this bag is that it's way too big. If you load it all up, even walking around is a major pain, and I'd have a tough time considering it handy for anything more than a local milk run.

Riding with it, it does swing a bit, even with all the attachments and buckles buckled in the right place. It's not a great carrier.

Ultimately, none of the "carry on the body" bags can hold a candle to the traditional English style traverse saddlebag. If you commute or carry stuff on a regular basis on your bike, I suggest you get one of those instead. Save bags like these for your bus/train/driving commute or the occasional milk run with your racing bike.

Bowen's First Bike Tour

It was time for Bowen's first overnight bike tour. We grabbed the bike, detached the front section, and stuffed it into the Honda Fit. Since mom wasn't coming along, we could fit both of us in the car with no problems.

We drove to La Honda, assembled the bike, installed the panniers, and then rode off up Haskins hill. It was a beautiful clear day, and we could get sunlight through the trees in the Redwoods. The climb took a little while but the descent to Pescadero was beautiful as usual. Riding onto North street on the approach, Bowen opted to bypass the goat farm, and we ended up at Norm's market around 1:00pm. It'd been quite a while since I'd last been to Norm's market, and I was impressed by the newly installed bike repair station. Bowen told me that we weren't really bike touring, because we'd put the bike in the car and driven out, rather than just riding from our house!

We took our time with lunch, and left for the pigeon point lighthouse around 2:00pm after buying groceries for dinner. It was only a 6 mile trip but we opted to use Bean Hollow road, and despite the tailwind it took us an hour to get there. We didn't wait very long before Calvin, Kevin and Pamela showed up and we checked in, grabbing the sunset spots for the hot tub.

Bowen and Calvin upon seeing the dorm rooms immediately asked to be on the top bunks. Once 2 boys are around it was a chore getting the bedsheets installed. But we did it and eventually managed to get them to go play outside.

We had unusually good luck with the weather, since the projected rain didn't show up, and we got a glorious sunset from the hot tub.

The next morning we had an unusually still weather, and so left the hostel unusually late, around 8:30am. We rode back through Bean Hollow road but opted to take Stage Road to 84 instead of going back over Haskins hill. This gave us 1600' of climbing, but with Pomegranate Clif bars (Bowen's favorite), it took us only 2.5 hours.

It never ceases to surprise me how much difference each age brings in a child. It took Bowen all of 3 months to decide he didn't like having seat belts on the bike. But recently, he started taking advantage of the seat belt: whenever he wanted to have something in his hands (like a drink, or a clif bar), he would ask to have me belt in him. With the biggish descents enough to scare him this time, he also asked for the seat belt whenever we had a big descent. This was great.

We arrived back at the car around 11:15. Bowen loved the hostel, the hot tub, but declared that "uphill makes me slow, and downhill tickles me, so I only like no-hill."

I've had people ask me whether Bowen ever gets bored on the bike, but with so much to see and do, and with nearly every trip being new to him, that hardly ever happens. I think adults who never ride bicycles for long distances simply project their own experiences onto kids who don't have the same attitude. All in all our little overnight trip had us riding 41 miles with about 2400' of climbing.

Review: Do Fathers Matter?

Do Fathers Matter? is a book about fathers as parents. As a father myself I checked out the audio book from the library and eagerly listened to it hoping to find a few interesting pieces. Let's see if I can summarize what I got out of the book:

• Until recently, nobody thought that fathers made a difference to the kids other than bringing home a paycheck. In fact, nobody even thought that fathers bonded with babies the way mothers did.
• As a matter of fact, infants appear to prefer to play with fathers. The current thinking is that it's because mom's always feeding the baby or changing his/her diapers, but when daddy shows up it's play-time!
• Dads play differently with children than moms. In particular, fathers are more likely to rough-house with the kids and present them with challenging, unpredictable situations. This is important preparation for an unpredictable, stressful world. In fact, a study shows that in very young kids, it's OK or even preferred for the parent to push the kid to the point of crying before backing off.
• Older dads (anyone over 30!) increase the risk of schizophrenia among their children. This may not show up until in the late teens.
• Interestingly enough, older dads also pass on longer telomares to their children, and to their children's children, granting them longer lives. No explanation was given in the book as to why this occurs.
• Dads still don't do as much as moms in terms of child-rearing, but studies are starting to point out that this may actually not be because dads are uninterested in child-rearing. In particular, moms frequently discourage fathers from parenting by constantly criticizing the father. It turns out that in couples where the woman actively encourages the father to spend time with the children, not only does the father typically do more of the work with children, he enjoys it more as well. (Duh!)
• Missing dads seem to hurt daughters a lot --- rates of teenage pregnancy and increased risk taking seem to be a lot higher for daughters that did not have a father in the house when they were growing up. No corresponding study has been done on the impact of missing fathers for sons, but some speculation was presented in the book. In one interesting study, even asking daughters to write an essay about a negative experience with their fathers led to increased risk-taking!
• Certain genes coming from mom or dad are actually imprinted in such a way that marks those genes as coming from mom or dad. The details behind that imprinting is discussed quite a bit in the book, and reveals the evolutionary tug of war between mother and fetus: it's in the interest of the fetus to absorb as much as possible of the mothers' resources, while it's in the interest of the mother to try to spread out what she's giving to several children in order to diversify the portfolio of her children.

All in all, interesting stuff, but less deep than I expected. Worth a quick browse from the library.

Review: Uncharted 4: A Thieves End (PS4)

I never buy games on pre-order. I'm the kind of person who can wait for months, buy it on discount, and then resell it for a profit. But Naughty Dog has won my trust over the years, with the Uncharted titles being for me the best blend of action, adventure, story, and exquisite art direction. They just don't make movies like these any more, and I couldn't help myself. (It also doesn't hurt that Amazon gives you a 20% pre-order discount, making the price easier to swallow)

Uncharted 4 is the last of the Nathan Drake stories. The graphics are nothing short of amazing. Bear in mind that the PS4 is weaker than my 7 year old PC from the point of view of compute power, and has a GPU that's weaker than the one I bought in 2013. That's pretty weak stuff, but I never saw anything on the PC that even comes close to how pretty Uncharted 4 looks. Heck, if you compare Uncharted 4 to the latest Pixar movie, you'll see that in many ways, the Pixar movie cuts corners and goes for an art direction that favors computer animation, and requires gobs of rendering power while the game goes for a realistic (albeit gorgeously beautiful) look and yet is rendered in real time by the PS4. Just thinking about it makes me want to pick up my jaw from the floor when I think about the experience.

The thing with these "movies as game" video game experiences is that it's all about pacing. Uncharted 4 has a very different pacing than Uncharted 2, the (previous) best of the series. While only 2 chapters in Uncharted 2 had a "walking simulator" feel to the game, that sort of pacing and free roam exploring with no threats occupies huge sections of Uncharted 4. This gives the player plenty of room to breathe, but unfortunately also adds to the game as far as being sort of a "one shot". A lot of the value of the game goes away on a repeated play through.

The music, art direction and action sequences are all very well done (though the boss fight at the end is a bit of a let down). But what makes the game work is the consistent attention to story: the characters are treated with respect, and at every reveal, we're drawn further into the story. At this point, let me provide a spoiler warning so you read no further if you haven't played it and the story matters to you.

The story takes place years after Uncharted 3, when Nathan Drake has settled down to a boring job as a technical diver. Then his long lost brother Sam shows up and we go into a flash back as we finally learn how the Drake brothers got their names, and how that quest led to the current state of affairs. Note that Sam's never been mentioned in any of the previous games, so this bit of ret-conning strains any suspension of disbelief you might have had, but it's done decently such that you don't feel like it's too wrong. Sam, of course, is lying through and through, but again, it's a reflection of what's been driving Nathan Drake through the previous games. The quest takes you from Italy to Madagascar, and the flashbacks get you a view of Panama. It's all very pretty. And, it's a chase after pirates. This made this a particularly good game for me after reading Pirate Hunters.

There are lots of references to the previous games throughout the story. If you've played through all the other stories, I think you'll get a lot more out of Uncharted 4 than someone who just started with this latest (and supposedly last) installment. I think above all, Uncharted 4 sells you on the character relationships and what they do for each other. And it doesn't do it just in dialogue and cut scenes, but also in the way the characters act. In one of the early scenes, I had Nathan Drake to a stealth take down of an enemy, and I fully expected to have to immediately turn and take out the enemy next to him. To my surprise, I saw that Sam Drake had already taken down the other enemy. I was stunned. To my mind, this is why the Uncharted series does better than even the rebooted Tomb Raider. When playing as Lara Croft, you feel as though the world is full of idiots who can't even find something that's right in front of them without you having to "quest" for it. As Nathan Drake, you're part of a team --- your wife might take out the enemy who's shooting at you, your brother might be trying to distract another one, while your old buddy Sully's scrambling to catch up to you. You're rarely alone in this game and as a result you feel much better about its milieu.

This is not to say that Uncharted 4 is perfect: it's not. As a game, the Tomb Raider series does a better job: the cover system's better, and the collectibles and upgradeable weapons all provide crunchy mechanics that force you to make full use of your skill. But none of the characters in Tomb Raider ever make you feel like you should care about them (not even Lara Croft), while that's not true in Uncharted 4.

Needless to say, Uncharted 4 comes highly recommended. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that you should buy a PS4 just for the game, I'd say that if you own a PS4, you owe it to yourself to play it. After you're done picking your jaw up from the floor, you might consider that it's not very replayable and sell it, but while you're playing it there's no question that this is a unique and satisfying experience.

Review: Rayman Legends (PS Vita)

I rarely review games that I can't (or won't) finish, but I'll make an exception for Rayman Legends. Rayman Legends is a platformer, which is my least favorite genre. But the reviews were all rated so highly that I picked it up on a sale, and I have to say that the reviews are mostly right.

The game doesn't have any story to speak of. Or if it does, the story's lost on me. As with every platformer, the goal of the game is to move from left to right, jumping, flying, punching, or running as needs be. There are 5 worlds, each of which has their own gimmicks, and each level is different. What you do have to do, however, is to rescue certain characters and pick up lums (basically mario coins) in order to unlock further levels or special bonus items (some of which are levels from a previous game, Rayman Origins).

What's interesting about the levels is that they're actually very well designed. The gimmicks are fun to figure out, and at least one world in each level is a musical level. In a musical level, you run and jump according to the beats in the soundtrack (though you must use your eyes as well, since sometimes you have to punch) in order to complete the level. One of the tracks is eye of the tiger, and it's a lot of fun. On the vita, you even get special "murphy" levels, which introduces a character you guide through a level using the touch screen. It's a nice change of pace, and some of those levels are quite creative as well.

What I disliked is that you have to rescue a lot of characters in order to unlock the whole game. While I could unlock all 5 worlds as a casual player, the 6th, musical-only level would need me to go through and play all the levels repeatedly until I got a perfect score and rescued every character in order to unlock. Not only would that result in very sore thumbs, I just don't have the time to do it. For any other game this would cause me to be unhappy and not recommend it, but Rayman Legends is packed full of content that I'll forgive this.

This game is worth picking up on a sale, and while you're unlikely to finish it all the way, you'll get enough out of it that it would be money well spent. Recommended.

Review: What It Is Like To Go To War

After I read Matterhorn, I went to see what other books Karl Marlantes had written, and the non-fiction work What It Is Like To Go To War showed up.

Partly a treatise on war and its effects on the young men who are sent out as warriors to do dirty jobs that their elders thought up, part a "behind the scenes" memoir about the events that went on in Matterhorn, it is uneven but still worth reading (or in my case auditing via audiobook).

The first thing you notice if you've already read Matterhorn (especially in as close proximity as I had) is how little fiction was in Matterhorn. By the time you're done with this book, you'll realize that calling Matterhorn is only fictional in the sense that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is. Names have changed.  In the novel, you don't see the medals that Marlantes win as a result of his actions, that's pretty much it.

What you do get out of this book that isn't apparent in Matterhorn was how much Marlantes liked combat. At one point, he noted (and this is where audiobooks really suck compared to reading a real book --- I can't search the book and pull out the quote) that as a 21 year old XO with a gunnery sergeant and a PFC on a mission, he had a staggering amount of firepower available: he could rain down artillery shells from 3 artillery fire bases, he could call in fire from the heavens as napalm via air-strikes, he had specially custom made machine-guns capable of tearing apart the entire landscape. And then there were the RPGs, LAWs, and grenades. The jeep he was in was so bristling with firepower that he actively wanted the enemy to try to stop him, just so he could get a chance to use it all. His jeep was a veritable chariot of the gods. And society actively handed a 21 year old with that much power to maim, kill, and destroy, and asked him to do it!

Repeatedly, the book emphasizes rituals. A lot of the problems with the Vietnam war was that there was no transition between the arena of war and civilian society. Marlantes describes a desperate battle to evacuate wounded battles during a mission, where the helicopters were so crowded that he had to leave on his R&R by hanging on to the lip of the door with his legs in the air. Hours later he was in Australia. No wonder reports of soldiers carousing and otherwise going crazy were fairly regular during R&R --- they were still charged with adrenaline from the fight. Marlante points out that in today's wars, it's more insidious. With drone warfare, you could be killing people via video camera during the day and still go home for dinner.

Marlantes covers PTSD, and not surprisingly suggests again that better training in the form of philosophy and room for reflection and "talking down from the warrior state" for the returning veteran be a strong part of military tradition.

What really tears at my heart is Marlantes' description of his return from Vietnam. It really was true that young women spat on the veterans, many of whom did not really want to go to war. At least that part seems to have changed for the better over the years.

I recommend this book. It's not nearly as consistently good a book as Matterhorn, but if you enjoyed Matterhorn, you'll want to read this book for the behind the scenes exploration of what happened both before and after the events in the novel, which you will never look at again as fiction.

Review: Ancillary Justice

Ancilliary Justice won the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards, but it took me multiple tries to get into the novel enough to read it. Upon completing it, I understand why: it's the kind of novel that seems almost designed to win awards, rather than read well, or even necessarily be a fun read.

The going is slow, and the protagonist, while she reveals who she is fairly early on, doesn't make a lot of sense --- a lot of what she does appear to be counter-productive, and for someone who's supposed to be a hyper-intelligent AI, her plans appear vague, ill-formed, and her abilities only show up in the physical realm --- either being an impossibly good shot, or being hyper-aware of how she appears to other AIs who are similarly sensitive.

The innovative parts of the novel are interesting: the primary villain isn't really one, and the motivation of the main character, Breq (formerly known as the AI ship Justice of Toren) is obscure and spoken of only at a distance.

Ultimately, however, I never cared about any of the characters in the novel, and the milleu isn't really explained/exposited well. This might be forgivable if the viewpoint character was merely human, or an unreliable narrator. But well, the viewpoint character is a multi-thousand year old AI, and she's not unreliable (in fact, she's supremely reliable at the conclusion of the novel).

I don't think this novel deserves it's Hugo/Nebula though it's quite conceivable that the year it won was an unusually poor year for novels. In fact, though I did finish the novel, I'm not excited to go out and read the next one in the series, which means that I can't really recommend it.

Review: Lonely Planet Tokyo, Kyoto, and Japan

Compared to the cost of a trip to Japan, buying guidebooks is cheap. So when the local library ran out of copies to checkout, I didn't hesitate and bought all 3 Japanese guidebooks. I also bought the Japan Touring Mapple from Omni Map.

In all cases, the pull out maps were pretty useless. They cover too small a section of the city, and aren't referred to at all in the text. I have to ask why they even bother!

Lonely Planet Tokyo: Their recommendation of Homeikan for best-allround Ryokan was great. Not only is the service amazing, their breakfast is good, their baths are great, they have an onsite laundry machine, and the area is quiet. The place is also incredibly affordable. This alone paid for the price of the book. The recommendations for SkyTree and the bigger shopping areas such as Akhibahara and Shinjuku could use some work. The advice on Nishiki Market could also use more color (such as "show up well before noon as the wait outside restaurants is north of an hour at lunch time"). But I'll forgive them all that because of the recommendation of Homeikan. The omission of a subway map is also questionable.

Lonely Planet Japan: Their coverage of the Matsumoto area was great. I'd discount their comments about renting a car and driving if you're from California. If you regularly drive Highway 1, Highway 9, visit the Sierras or the Trinity Alps, you're used to much worse driving conditions than anywhere in Japan. Rent a car and go where you please! Their recommendation of Sugimoto Ryokan was outstanding. Their recommendation of Ougatou more questionable, not because the hotel was bad, but because they probably should have prefixed it, "which was the best season to go?", with the note that late Spring might not have the best conditions. Their disparagement of the Yudanaka Monkey Park was unwarranted, but if the book hadn't contained a sidebar on it I wouldn't have known about it and wouldn't have been diverted so we could go there. Their mention of Obuse was also a worthy side trip.

Lonely Planet Kyoto: Their neighborhood description caused us to pick Yumiko's AirBnB listing.  Huge win. The photos are also really good. We basically picked where to go by flipping through the photos at the front of the book and then going there. The restaurant recommendations were also decent. The only thing I can complain about is that they said that if Kyoto is booked solid, you can stay at Nara instead. I think that's a mistake. Unlike Tokyo, Kyoto has next to no subway, so rapid transit from Kyoto station is nearly non-existent. You're stuck with buses, which are really too slow and frustrating to get anywhere quickly. If you're visiting Kyoto, stay in Kyoto. Ignore all advise to do otherwise, in this book or elsewhere.

All in all, these 3 books were worth the money. It's unusual that I take trips where the visits to cities is more important than touring the countryside. But Japan is unusual: the country side in Japan isn't really all that pretty, especially the mountain roads. The cities are where all the action is, but are crowded as heck. So these types of guide are more useful than is usual.

Review: eConnect Japan

I have a T-mobile Simple Choice global plan. But word from one of my friends who visits Japan frequently is that it was unreliable, and he talked me into renting a WiFi-To-Go Pocket WiFi router from eConnect Japan. I believed him because as late as in 2009, I had to rent a phone from the airline to get phone service in Japan. How quickly things change!

It turned out this was an unnecessary expense. Everywhere I had connectivity through the WiFi-To-Go router, I also had very fast internet speeds on my Moto G via T-mobile. Further more, in many cases, the Wi Fi router would go to sleep without warning, and I'd be stuck without Wi Fi, but found that my T-mobile unlimited data plan was still fast enough to make a Skype call, for instance.

On top of that, the device itself has a natively small battery, so eConnect supplies you with a battery extender that you then plug into it. That battery would last all day, but now you have 2 more things to charge at night instead of one. Given that we were traveling light, I only brought a 2-way charger, so it was a bit of a chore getting all the devices charged.

I supposed if we made use of the tablet more, the WiFi router might have come in useful. Even then, the package we received had all sorts of warnings against download video, large files, or doing anything interesting with the WiFi router.

In any case, I found myself regretting that I paid eConnect any money at all, and by contrast, was very happy with my Moto G running on T-mobile. Next time, I will not bother with eConnect, and I suggest you don't, either.