Review: Chivalry

 Chivalry is Collen Doran's graphic novel rendition of the Neil Gaiman short story of the same name. The story predates Doran's rendition of it by several years, and Doran reveals in the end-notes that it was her pandemic project, discussing how she envisioned it originally as an illuminated manuscript before giving up after many technical difficulties to render it in a more conventional format.

What is to Doran more conventional is for anyone else simply an amazing piece of comic book art. The book juxtapositions conventional side by side panels with entire full page (or in many cases an entire spread) illustrations that overwhelms the eyes with richness, detail, and story. Your eyes could linger on multiple details that serve the story while reading, and the story while simple (and short!) is charming and perfectly set off by Doran's illustrations.

The story is well worth your time, as is the amazing art. Recommended.

Review: Gorewear Shakedry Cap

 

I was so impressed by the Gorewear Shakedry Jacket, that when the Shakedry Cycling cap went on sale I bought one.  Little did I know that I would use it almost right away as a series of atmospheric rivers arrived during the California winter. I used this under my helmet, and one time I made the mistake of putting on the cap and forgetting to put on the helmet --- the feel of the cap means that I can't really feel any ventilation of the helmet when I'm wearing it!

As you can see from the above picture, water beads up nicely on the helmet and it doesn't let any water in. This is perfect since the Shakedry jacket does not have a hood. The brim of the cap doesn't quite protect your glasses from getting water on them, but on the other hand, there is a little bit of shielding. When worn under a helmet it can get hot if it's not raining, but if it's raining you don't mind. If it's not raining, don't wear the cap!

At full price no way would I consider this worth the money, but at the current $33 discounted price I consider it a reasonable purchase. It's light enough that I will carry it on tour.

Recommended.

Review: Anker Nano 3 511 Charger

 Chargers are unsexy technology, to the point where smartphone makers no longer ship them in the box because your'e assumed to have a billion of them at home. The Nano 3 511 Charger, however, is exceptional. I bought one over the holidays for $18, and it's tiny. 30W is more than sufficient for most smartphones, but what amazed me was that I plugged it into a Dell XPS 13, and it would charge that as well while it was running! If you do reboot the XPS 13 while plugged into the charger, it would complain about being plugged into a not very powerful charger, but it would still boot, run Windows Updates, etc. The charger does get hot, but what charger doesn't when maximum load is being pulled from it?

The charger is light enough that even when plugged in upside down it doesn't fall out, and the foldable prongs prevent damage when travel. These are way better than the 18W bulky chargers that came with previous iterations of Pixel phones. Well worth the money.

Review: Lamy Toothpaste Squeezer

 If you squeeze toothpaste out of a tube, you know that it's a pain to deal with different people squeezing different parts of the tube so you always end up having to squeeze it from the bottom again when it's your turn. The toothpaste squeezer solves this issue.  This particular one also turns into a stand for your toothpaste, which means it dispenses nicely. It also has a key that lets you get toothpaste out by turning a key. I tried it and it really works. Recommended.

Review: Far Sector

 When I saw that Far Sector was written by N.K. Jemisin I checked it out of the library. It's a green lantern novel, but about an unusual lantern with an unusual ring. This green lantern is a black woman, and is investigating the first murder in 500 years in an alien city far from home.

The setup is unique, but unfortunately, the alien civilization doesn't feel very alien --- it has all the conflicts and power struggles of contemporary New York, and the injection of cyberspace with some bitcoin jargon as well as the introduction of the default state of being emotionless (with a counter-drug to alleviate that) not helping things along. We don't get a good explanation of how people can be motivated without emotions (or even how society would reproduce), nor are the characters and power groups within the society interact well enough to get invested in them or believe that they are real.

The protagonist, Jo Mullein, is much more fleshed out. Unfortunately, we don't get any idea as to why she was selected to be a green lantern, nor do we get a good understanding of how committed she is to the green lantern corps.

Part of this is the high expectations I had coming into the comic. Consider what Alan Moore was able to do with the green lantern corps in 23 pages, and I expected far more from Jemisin in a 12-issue run. It's probably very good compared with the standard writers the green lantern books get nowadays, but it's far less interesting than anything by Alan Moore.

Review: Nulksen Tire Inflator

 The battery on my costco purchased jump starter (bought in 2014) is dying to the point where it couldn't even inflate one tire when fully charged, so it was time to get another one. The Nulksen Tire Inflator was on sale for $40 during the holidays, so I picked one up.

It came with a cloth case, a hose for Schraeder valves, a pin for balls, and a couple more weird nozzles for whatever other thing you might want to use it for. The hose screws into the device, and I immediately took it out of the box and air'd up all 4 tires of the car with no problems. The device vibrates while doing so, enough to move the inflator and scratch it on the ground, but otherwise it worked.

The USB C plug recharges it using USB C which is very nice, and it can act as a flash light as well. I tried the ball inflator and it worked, and I even tried it on my wife's e-bike in Schraeder mode, and it checked out with decent accuracy. I don't dare try it for high pressure presta tires, since I already have good floor pumps for those. Besides, exercise is good for you.

For $40 + tax, getting something that works well is fine! It's way lighter than what it replaced!

Review: Fairy Tale

 Fairy Tale is Stephen King's novel of a world crossing adventure. It describes a 17-year old who in the course of helping a mysterious neighbor, discovers that the neighbor's shed contains a well which leads to another world. Like many examples of the world-crossing genre, it turns out that he has a special role to fulfill in that world.

The story builds slowly, and Charlie Reade (the protagonist) has a transparent, cheerful, interesting voice which makes for great reading. King is probably at his best when convincing you that Reade is a real person, and establishes the milieu he lives in as no one else can. The protagonist being an almost adult rather than a young child makes the book different than many other examples of the world-crossing genre, and lends the story believability.

Once the story crosses over to the world of Empris, however, a lot of the world building feels lacking. There's definitely no sense of deep history, and many set pieces or important plot points feel like superficial objects meant to act as MacGuffins rather than something real. For instance, one major motivation for Charlie to enter deep into the enchanted capital explicitly draws inspiration from Something Wicked This Way Comes, but at the end of the book the explanation is a huge disappointment.

All throughout the book are sprinkled references to Bradbury and HP Lovecraft, and there are many pieces of brilliance in the novel --- more than enough to keep me reading. It's not a coincidence that the novel is set in Illinois, the same locale as in Bradbury's novel. The climax feels like it comes a bit too easy, but the easy to read prose and moments of brilliance kept me going anyway. Recommended.

Men's Carpis

 I had a pair of Men's Capri pants I had somehow found online ages and ages ago, which were perfect for cycling and bike touring. They were light, had belt loops, and didn't extend far below the knees so you could ride in them and not worry about pants legs getting trapped in the chain. One of them completely fell apart during a tour one year, forcing me to buy women's capris when I was in Bolzano, but those were so narrow-waisted that even Arturo told me that I wasn't allowed to gain weight during that tour. (Perish the thought!)

I could not for my life of me find replacements. "Men's capris" returns crappy results. I eventually learned that the manly term for carpis is 3/4 pants! Jack Wolfskin was the first to come up with their Desert Valley 3/4 pants.  Their standard price of $70 was too much for my blood, and even at $49 on sale it was barely tolerable. I got them and they ride well, with side-pockets that are perfect for a phone and a wallet, as well as two button-up pockets on the outside of the thighs for things you don't need while riding. I like them enough, but they were so pricey I didn't think it's worth a second pair.

Amazon is full of knock-off Chinese products, so I looked on amazon, and 33,000ft has a Men's Hiking Golf Capri pair of shorts for a much more reasonable (though still expensive) $35. These come with double zipper pockets on each side. The belt loops are a bit wide (for clipping say, a badge for going to the office), but the premium feature on these are the cuffs at the bottom of the hem. There's a QR cord there for cinching them down tight so they don't rub against brake cables along the top tube while riding. These are a clear winner and it's worth getting a second pair or watching if they go on sale.

If you hike in California, there are many good reasons to wear full-length pants --- tick protection and mud protection makes sense. But those same pants are annoying to wear on the bike and frequently get chewed up by bicycle gears and chains, so for the daily cyclist, these are the pants to get. I'm glad I found them!

Review: HeCloud Diving Flashlight

 I've had poor experiences with underwater flashlights in the past, and they've never survived more than a couple of trips. I knew I was going to need flashlights for the Puerto Rico trip because of the bioluminescence tour we wanted to go to. The HeCloud Diving lights came in a set of 2, and at $27 seemed worth the risk.

I was very impressed when I saw that the lights came not only with AAA battery holders, but also rechargeable lithium ion batteries that are custom fit for the flashlight. You can't carry those in checked baggage, so be careful! But having both meant that we could carry the lithium ion batteries in carry on, and also carry the AAA battery holders (preloaded) and not bother carrying the chargers.

The lights were bright, easy to use even for Boen, and robust --- we didn't have to be careful with them or baby them. We didn't actually dive with them, but they were also light. And if one flooded, we had a spare right away. I wish they hadn't bothered with the strobe feature, but in any case these were good lights and I can recommend them.

Review: The Big Questions of Philosophy

 After listening to David K Johnson's Sci-Phi, I picked up The Big Questions of Philosophy expecting similar levels of entertainment. But I was disappointed.  This wasn't because he's any less competent as a lecturer or that the ideas he explains are wrong or badly defined, but because of how much time is spent on Religion rather than philosophy. While I get that some people who study Philosophy might want to spend a lot of time thinking about omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, since I don't actually think God exists, that's like spending time thinking about the physics of how Santa Claus gets down chimneys.

The rest of the course is reasonable, the discussion of free will, the existence of government, and the quick tour of Rawlings and his detractors, but I wish he'd spent more time on that instead of religion.

I definitely recommend Sci-Phi a lot more than this great courses series.

Review: Troy

 Troy is the third book in Stephen Fry's Greek Myths trilogy, and to my surprise it doesn't include the Odyssey, just the Iliad. As a retelling, it's much more detailed than Rosemary Suthill's children's books, and goes into details about Achilles and the backstory in gruesome detail. The narrative voice is enjoyable, and I had a lot of fun. Recommended.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Epilogue

We celebrated Xiaoqin's birthday at a restaurant with Mark Brody, with both Bowen and I having swordfish burgers, an exotic specialty we'd never had before. 

 We spent the next day touring Old San Juan's forts, where Boen and Boen got inducted as junior rangers. The weather was warm and beautiful and we got some great food in old San Juan. The condo we'd rented was in fact, exactly in between the awful first place we rented and the noisy hotel we'd stayed on the second night, but this place was quiet and had great facilities.

Our return flight was marred by an unusual snow storm in Seattle that cancelled hundreds of flights out of that airport and delayed our return to San Jose by 6 hours, but after all that we got home. Our casualties on this trip were limited to my diving mask from my 2007 dive certification, and my pair of Keen sandals.

I would agree with my wife that it was ok doing the trip once, but we felt like we exhausted all the possibilities of the Spanish Virgin Islands and had no need to return for another visit.

Review: Great Courses - The Theory of Everything

 I started watching The Theory of Everything as a bit of a lark --- Dr. Don Lincoln of Fermi Lab is an experimentalist, and I that it's a very different perspective from the purely theoretical physicists' take. The video covers everything from Relativity to Quantum Chromodynamics, Quantum Electrodynamics, the Standard Model the Electroweak Unification, and all the details therein. What it provided that's somewhat unique in terms of presentation is a perspective on the difference between (for instance) Grand Unified Theory (GUT) and the Theory of Everything (TOE). It also provides a historical perspective on physics and all the successful unifications in the past, as well as the unanswered mysteries such as Dark Energy, Dark Matter (they're not related), why we still don't have a theory of Quantum Gravity, why we still don't know what caused inflation and what topics of ongoing research are happening. The approach is light on math (though yes, equations still happen) but the presentation is engaging.

It's a great way to consolidate the lots of little pieces of understanding I picked up here and there, and was definitely worth my time. It's available on Kanopy, and therefore free to most people who have access to a library.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Punta Arenas to Punta Del Rey Marina

 Waking up pre-civil twilight, I did my morning routine, making coffee for everyone, including one last pancake for Boen. By first light, everyone was awake and ready to raise anchor and set sail. Weighing anchor was easy, and raising sail was also easy because of the light wind. In fact, once the sails were up I started worrying about whether that 2.5 hour journey would end up being much longer, since we did no better than 3 knots!

Fortunately, once we cleared Punta Arenas the wind picked up significantly. It also changed direction frequently, requiring us to constantly adjust our sails and course as we tried to head up as much as we could to avoid having to come about. We got to see sunrise from the Yamuy, and constantly adjusted the auto-pilot. At one point the auto-pilot started to give CAN bus errors, and we'd have to sail manually while the darn thing rebooted itself.

To our surprise, the wind picked up and gave us 5-6 knots of speed, and by the time we rounded Cabeza De Perro, we were doing the better part of 7 knots and debating whether we had time to sail further so as not to arrive at the marina too early! We called the Sail Caribe and they said they would be waiting for us so we sailed directly to the harbor entrance, dropping sails at the last minute and then motoring in slowly to give ourselves time to mount the docklines and fender lines so we were ready to dock at the fuel dock.

At the fuel dock, we were greeted by the crew members and I was relinquished of the responsibility for the sailboat. The diesel bill turned out to be $94, surprising Arturo and I as well as the dock crew. "Did you sail alot?" asked the crew to Arturo. "As much as we could for the last 3-4 days, but we ran the generator every night to make water." It was a gratifyingly cheap diesel bill.

The crew cast off, turned the boat around, and immediately docked opposite the fuel dock, surprising me. We were plugged in with the AC turned on and told that the dock taxi would be here to pick us up 15 minutes before our taxi arrived. There was nothing to do but clean up the boat, get our $500 cash deposit returned, and eat lunch. It was Xiaoqin's birthday and Google was kind enough to grant us such an amazing deal on a trade-in that she got a new Pixel 7 for her birthday.

The offboarding onto the taxi went without incident, as did Arturo's departure at the airport. Our sailing trip was over.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Bahia Isla Chiva to Punta Arena

 We had a leisurely breakfast, turned on the engines, and raised the sail. With a tail wind behind us, we easily made 5 knots past the tip of Vieques, going 3 miles out to dump the septic tanks again, before turning into a beam reach and arriving at Punta Arena in less than 3 and a half hours. Upon arrival, the point seemed to be filled with boats, but we would later find that one boat after another would depart, leaving us with only 2 other boats to share the bay with. What got us to stay despite the apparent crowd was that most of the boats looked like they would not support anyone on it staying overnight, so we were confident that it wouldn't be a loud party.

We dropped anchor in 15' of water, and snorkeled around in what looked like mediocre water. The water was calm, however, making me eager to make use of the paddleboard. To deliver the kids to the beach. I discovered that the approach to the beach was very steep, so ended up delivering Bowen and Boen to separate parts of the beach as I found a better entry later. I decided I join the snorkelers, but the snorkeling was fairly mediocre.

The beach was unlike any of the other beaches we'd seen in the Spanish Virgin Islands: the sand was coarse and easy to clean off. We walked the length of the beach heading South, and unlike the beach at Bahia Isla Chiva we pretty much had it to ourselves, as one boat after another pulled off --- the only other sailboat, a Catamaran, pulled off to join a BBQ on Puerto Rico proper.

When we were done, I swam back to the boat, got out the paddleboard and ferry'd the kids back to the sailboat, making them jump from the paddleboard to swim the last 10 yards so that they'd be sand free when they got to the swim ladder. I then used the paddleboard to explore more of the Bay to the North, and found some places that looked quite a bit clearer. It would have been a pain, however, to move the boat, since the coral was interspersed with sand, making it tricky to find a good place to anchor.

Arturo and I went snorkeling to see if the snorkeling was any better --- it was indeed a lot better, and he spotted lots of stuff, but I was tired and the visibility still wasn't great --- the water had looked much better from the paddleboard than it did from snorkeling. Besides, we had to pack! The next morning had to be an early start as we had been warned that it took 2.5 hours of sailing from Punta Arenas back to Punta Del Rey Marina. We extracted all the luggage out of one of the V-berths after showering, and started packing away everything that could be packed.

That evening, we enjoyed our last beautiful sunset from the beach, had dinner, and did a little bit of star gazing before clouds came over and occluded our views. I would wake up in the middle of the night to pee and would see one last shooting star in the early morning before waking up for real the next morning.

Review: Heroes - The Greek Myths Reimagined

 Heroes is part two of Stephen Fry's Greek Myths books. This book covers Heracles, Orpheus, Perseus, Theseus, and many of the heroes from Greek mythos. It's all told in a modern style, with many entertaining asides and snide remarks, and is just heck of a lot of fun to read. It's completely uncensored, so I'm sure many people would have issues reading it to their kids, but you know what, that's what makes the book so good. If you've always wondered about all the Greek mythology references being made here and there in popular literature, this series is well worth your time.

Review: What if? 2

 I queued up for What if? 2 as soon as the library's digital queue opened. In many ways, it's a great book for fans of What if?  In other ways it was a bit disappointing. This time, it seemed like he picked questions that weren't nearly as interesting as the ones in the previous book (such as, what if you filled the solar system with soup). In some cases, he has entire filler chapters that are filled with questions, but no answers, or at most a small cartoon as an answer.

Nevertheless, the answers that were in the book are still well researched, entertaining (when there are answers), and full of jokes. Bowen turned up his nose at the book at first but I loaded it onto a kindle for a car trip and he found himself reading it.

Recommended.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Esperanza to Bahia de Isla Chiva

 I looked through the guidebook and realized that there was an anchorage we had bypassed on the way to Esperanza, which was Bahia de Isla Chiva, which supposedly had good snorkeling. Sure, we'd have to do some motoring, but after the long day yesterday and dropping off Niniane and Dan this morning, we could go there, drop anchor, and check it out. If we found it good, we could stay there, otherwise we could sail to Point Arenas and not be worse for where.

Dropping Niniane and Dan off turned out not to be so dramatic --- despite the luggage (and they'd taken a lot of the non-perishables off our hands), when the dinghy wasn't loaded with extraneous people (i.e., my family), once they could get Niniane and Dan off they could just hand the luggage over without any drama or even tying the dinghy to the dock! So after all that, the dinghy was back on the Yamuy's davits by 9:30am, and we motor'd over to Bahia de Isla Chiva.

We were the only boat at that location, so we anchor'd in about 15' of water over seagrass, and then jumped in with mask, snorkel and fins to check our work. There was a surprising amount to see, starting with a starfish that had parked itself over our anchor chain, and then a barracuda had settled in near the island. The snorkeling was mediocre compared with past experiences, but with the water this churned up there's only so much you can do. Still it took a good hour to do all the snorkeling we wanted to do before it was lunch time.

After lunch, I paddleboarded Boen to shore, but immediately realized that it was too hard, and when returning to the Yamuy, declined to paddleboard Bowen over. We swam instead as I noticed that despite giving me a headstart, Arturo made it to the beach snorkeling faster than I could paddleboard. Swimming a shore was fine, and the kids enjoyed the beach while we walked along it.

The beach was popular, being less than half an hour's drive from Esperanza, and we met some fairly large groups, but they would all disappear around 4pm, since most of them had a bioluminescent tour to go to! Arturo had wanted to snorkel on the Western end of the point, but it looked so rough that I talked him out of it. He did find a pair of shoes that were his size and were abandoned though! At around 4pm, clouds appeared over the island and we swam back to the Yamuy.

We debated what to do the next day. The charter company recommended spending the night at Punta Arenas, but sailing back all the way to Isla Palominos was a possibility, though it was likely to be crowded and noisy with parties. We saw that Icacos was also a possibility, but if you got there and conditions were unpleasant you didn't have a lot of choices left. We decided to just sail to Punta Arenas and have a look.

2022 Spanish Virgin Islands: Culebrita to Esperanza, Vieques

 We woke up early on thanksgiving sail determined to sail. The sail from Culebrita to Esperanza was mostly a beam reach followed by a run, and after having to motor the first half of our trip we were determined to make do without fossil fuels as much as possible this day. With an early breakfast, we swam around a bit to see if there was anything to the reef behind the boat, but all we saw was turtles, which were still great.

Once out of the point around Culebrita and headed east, we hoisted the sail, discovering that the sail ties instead of the zippers around the sail covers were a pain to untangle. With the motorized winch, however, getting the mainsail up was a snap, and soon we were reaching towards Vieques with a 10 knot wind, making 5 knots.

With a gradually strengthening wind, we soon made the 3 mile mark and could open the sewage tanks and dump the tanks. We were suspicious as the dumping of the tanks was quite obvious on one side but not the other. We would eventually figure out that this was because the leeward side pontoon's dump valves would be below water but the windward side wasn't, so you couldn't actually see it.

Sailing is a delight --- there's no engine noise, and on a beam reach you have plenty of speed. Nevertheless the crossing was rough enough that Arturo needed medication, which Mark fortunately had.

At Punta Este, we cleared the rocks and started heading West. This put the wind behind us, which calmed down the journey even further. The Yamuy didn't like sailing directly downwind, however, and all our efforts to sail wing-and-wing came to naught. The entire Eastern half of the south coast of Vieques is off limits, since it was once run by the navy and there could be unexploded ordnance to snag the anchor. We sailed pasts all the harbors until we reached Esperanza, where we spotted the Pier (said to be good snorkeling), and dropped anchor. We identified that we were short a few gallons of water, and there were more groceries we wanted to buy, so after lunch, hoping that a supermarket would be open, we dropped the dinghy off its davits and proceeded to the Esperanza dinghy dock.

The Esperanza Pier was obviously not a site to park the dinghy, but the "dinghy dock" so to speak was in bad shape. The pier itself looked like the frame had been taken apart for parts, and the dock wasn't low enough to step off the dinghy onto the pier. We'd have to have multiple people gripping the dinghy, while Dan the climber and Mark would knot tie it up. We would eventually figure out that the right way to do this was to get people off the dinghy before trying to tie it up. I was not looking forward to doing this in the dark for our bioluminescent tour!

Esperanza didn't look like a town with anything other than hotels and supermarkets. Despite being Thanksgiving day, there was a surprising number of boutique hotels and tourists in town! With our luck the way it was, we visited all 4 supermarkets and it was the last one that was opened. We bought ice cream, and more provisions and water, and somehow there was an avocado in the grocery bag at checkout so I paid for it. We couldn't figure out who had put it there, and eventually it was decided that some previous customer had decided against it at the last minute and I'd just unfortunately assumed that it was one of us.

Back at the Yamuy, Arturo had time to snorkel to the pier, but upon coming back he said, that you would only do it for exercise. I didn't feel the need to exercise, but a rainbow came up and it looked gorgeous. Of course, we were immediately showered by a raincloud as it swept over us.

Dinner was the traditional turkey - presented vegetable plate, and Arturo pulled out the stop to make a paella with what we had. The sunset was gorgeous, but I knew I had to dig out the flash light for that night time landing at the "dinghy dock." The cruising guide said that Esperanza was trying to be a yachting destination, but without improving the dinghy dock there was no way I'd go for a repeat visit!

Nevertheless, we all made it safely to shore in the dark, and did Abe's Bio Bay tour. Arturo had done previous bioluminescence tours and told us to set our expectations low ,but it was magical --- mosquito bay truly had the best bioluminescence anyone in the party had seen --- you'd dig your kayak paddle into the water and it would light up with a ghostly light. You could cup your hands into the water and blow it and it would sparkle. You could splash the water and it would light up when it fell back in. I was stunned and amazed and wished it lasted longer. Apparently thje bans on swimming and anchoring were fairly recent --- one of the hurricanes had caused mosquito bay to lose its bioluminescence for months, and not knowing how to bring it bad, they just banned everything until it came back. We have no footage or photos of this tour because none of the equipment we had could see the bioluminescence. You'll just have to see it yourself. And now we understood why there were so many tourists and boutique hotels in Esperanza --- there was no ferry that ran after the tours, so everyone who came to do a bio bay tour had to stay for the night!

We made it back to the boat by around 9:00pm, got everyone asleep. This was the last night Niniane and Dan would be on the boat, but we had no particular plans for the next few days so we knew we could take our time the next morning. It was too cloudy for star gazing anyway, so the kids got to go to sleep early.

Review: Mythos

 Mythos is Stephen Fry's retelling of Greek Mythology. If you've read anything by Stephen Fry, you can hear the voice coming through, with lots of stories about the Titans, Pandora's box, all told in a modern fashion, with lots of remarks and references and footnotes. It's incredibly readable and I thoroughly enjoyed it, learning about all the minor tales that I somehow didn't know, as well as a retelling of well known stories. Fry doesn't hold back from all the craziness the Greeks attributed to the gods. Well worth my time. Recommended.