March 14 - Kona

I called Mom over our pulled-pork omelet and macadamia-nut scone at Lava Java. Mom and Dad were touring a bird sanctuary on Sanibel Island. Here, little brown birds hunt our table, landing on chair backs and buzzing my nose.

No coffee refills here, apparently. Free wifi, though. I checked email and then Chunlin worked. Hotel wifi didn’t work last night or that morning.

And the waves kept coming. Three extra-large waves, then it went calm for a moment.

Kailua Pier, the only place for boats to dock. Next to the pier, a tiny beach where the Ironman starts and ends. Swimmers took to the ocean while we watch. They swam out along a string of buoys and back.

North of the pier, a larger, more sheltered beach for small boats.

We crossed the street to the King Kamehameha Hotel to see the giant marlin -- it’s not the same one I remember seeing as a kid.

Back south, 9 o’clock. Hulihe‘e Palace. The gate was open, so we entered the yard. We didn’t go in the house, though. No photos were allowed inside the house of old furniture, plus there was an entrance fee. We walked around the yard, instead.

South through a shopping mall village, we were stopped for a coffee free tasting. Chunlin doesn’t like Kona coffee, apparently. We bought dark-chocolate-covered coffee beans. Chunlin likes Kona coffee that way. Who doesn't?

Back at the hotel, we fought the wifi modem. 10 a.m. Felt like 3 p.m. Busy morning.

Ours was a corner room with a huge L-shaped balcony. I booked our next two nights in Hilo at a bed and breakfast. The few hotels there were full Saturday.

We hit the road south toward Captain Cook and Kealakekua Bay. Don Ho sang a song about this place.

Big crashing waves. One risk-taker sat braced against a big rock, letting the waves engulf him to the chin. A goose wandered around the park.

Bougainvillea, bougainvillea, bougainvillea!

We headed back to Kailua, back to the hotel, and then out to dinner on the town again.

After dinner, we returned to the hotel and watched _Person of Interest_, because it was a Thursday, after all, and that's what we do.

Hooray for Google!

Google will no longer be conspiring with the totalitarian regime in China to censor web searches. Finally! I guess Google isn't evil, after all.

(As I sit here and use a free service provided by Google. . .)

Hooray for Craigslist!

Yesterday I got three doors for free, thanks to Craigslist.

A layer of old paint needs to be scraped off, but other than that, they're pretty much the same as the doors we were considering at the door store for $100 or so.

Bing Maps

Bing Maps is now officially tied with Google Maps to be my favorite map program. Bing has recently added some click-and-drag functionality that Google has had for quite awhile, while Google has recently fixed some erroneous information (such as removing the Wenatchee Confluence State Park from Snoqualmie Pass!).

Bing has the great bird's-eye view for many areas, but Google has Streetview, contour maps, and better aerial photos for many areas.

The one part where Bing leaves Google far behind is calculating travel times on any road that's not a freeway. Google thinks you need to drive 30 mph on all back roads, even if the speed limit is actually 60!

As for Yahoo Maps and Mapquest, well . . . they can calculate all right, but they're not nearly user-friendly enough. Click and drag, man, click and drag!

They all need to get better at adding new roads, though. Some areas are years out of date.

UPDATE: One feature of Yahoo Maps that the others lack, however, is different colors for different cities and neighborhoods, depending on your zoom level.

Hey, What's That?

"Hey, What's That?" is a cool website that will show you a panorama skyline from anywhere in the world.

Take a look at one I did for the west end of the I-90 bridge. Mt Rainier is the most prominent feature (apart from Mt Baker Ridge in Seattle), but Mt Baker is visible to the north, Mt Index to the northeast, and Tiger Mountain just visible over Mercer Island to the east.

You can click on anywhere on the map, and it will highlight the direction on the panorama, and vice versa. Click on a red triangle over a peak on the panorama and it will show you which mountain it is on the map. Can you find Glacier Peak?

On the map, if you click "Visibility cloak" in the upper right, it will shade everything you can see from the viewpoint. Then you can zoom in on Mt Rainier or wherever and see which features you can actually view from Seattle.

You can also click on "New panorama" near the top of the page and create your own!

Fun fun fun.

When I Lend a Camera. . .

Chunlin took a business trip last week (her first!) to a convention in Raleigh. I lent her my small camera.

Unfortunately, I forgot that I'd left the camera set to take a group of sixteen photos, back to back, as one photo.

These are two of the photos she took while confusion reigned.



I can just imagine her asking, "What's wrong with this camera?"



She called me at about the same time she took this picture and I quickly realized the problem, but didn't remember where in the menu she could change the setting. Luckily Chunlin found the setting (at exactly the same time that I found the right page in the manual (after downloading it)) and correct the problem.

Nice photos, though!

In the Wilds of Kittitas County

Go to Google Maps and take a wander down I-82. A bit spooky. . .

For George's Privacy

Google Streetview's facial recognition software blurred out George Washington's silhouette on the SR 599 road sign!

. . . And just so you know, this is where the short freeway suddenly changes numbers crossing International Boulevard in Tukwila. (We drove home this way last night because there was an accident on I-5 just north of the I-5/599 junction that didn't clear out till 11:30, according to WSDOT's traffic archive.)

Topical Humor from Twenty Years Ago. . .

autoexec.bat

Don't Unplug Things When They're Working

I discovered that when you accidentally plug the cable from the DSL modem into an LAN port on the wireless router instead of the internet port, computers accessing the network wirelessly can no longer get on the internet, but computers accessing by a hard line can still get out -- but slowly.

Samsung Bad; LG Good

I went to the Verizon Wireless store to replace my three (four?) year old phone, since you can get a replacement after two years. I tried a couple cheap phones and decided to get the Samsung.

An hour later, Christina called me. The sound quality was awful, and it wasn't Christina's fault. It was the phone. We tested it at home last night with the same results.

Today, I went back to Verizon Wireless and told them that the sound quality was horrible and that the phone didn't meet the basic requirements to be called a telephone and should instead be only marketed as an oversized pocketwatch.

The VZW guy said that Samsung was actually one of the better brands for sound quality. That's sad.

The conversations lasted a half hour, but in summary, I was able to replace the Samsung with the cheapest LG phone (much better sound quality), which was listed at a higher price but they didn't charge me extra for, and I was able to get them to waive the $35 restocking fee on the crap Samsung phone.

So now I just need to navigate this mail-in rebate they gave me to get my money back to make it "free."

Rain in Northern South Dakota

I don't know if any other airline has this (they probably do), but I'm flying Northwest today, so that's where I found it.

When you go to check the status of a flight that's already in the air, they provide a map showing the location of the plane and its planned route. The map also shows weather.

It's raining in the Dakotas. The plane that's coming to pick me up is diverting slightly northward to go around the storm.

I should head for the airport when the plane gets to the Continental Divide.

Can You See the Difference?

One has the Vibration Reduction turned on; the other doesn't.

I took these pictures from well over a mile away.

VR

I figured out why the anti-jitter on my new zoom lens didn't seem to work before.

Apparently, there's this little switch on the side of the lens that you have to toggle from "off" to "on" . . .

A Little Hiking Music

On our hike back this afternoon, we listened to Chulin's ipod.


It played Morcheeba's "Aqualung" twice in a row, so I looked at it. It wasn't on repeat one. I picked another song. "'Round Midnight" from the cd Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon (a good pick for a rainy afternoon, I thought).

I didn't realize immediately, though, that it was alphabetical. That little apostrophe bumped "'Round Midnight" to the top of the list.

We had four Elvis songs in a row. I thought that was odd. It turns out that they all started with parentheses.

It wasn't until we got to the number songs ("24," "25 or 6 to 4," "59th Street Bridge Song," "1812 Overture," etc.) that I figured out the alphabetical thing.

When we got to Toto's "Africa," we were listening to songs we heard Saturday night in the tent.

We arrived at the trailhead just as the Moody Blues' "Afternoon" ended.

The ipod played "59th Street Bridge Song" twice, just like "Aqualung," so I'm guessing I put two copies of each on the ipod. I didn't think you could do that. . .

I Love the Internet

Reading Bldg Blog:

Wired: When you were growing up, hearing music often required going to see it performed. But iPods make music ubiquitous, like mental air-conditioning. What have we gained or lost by that?

Sacks: At first it would seem to be a wonderful gain. Darwin might have had to go to London to see a concert. But I can't help wondering if the incidence of earworms and musical hallucinations is higher now, with background music in every public place. You can't go to a restaurant without music, and they get offended if you ask them to turn it off. They feel it's part of their creativity – they're doing it for you.

Click on earworms:

See also:

Phonological loop
Meme
Badger Badger Badger
Bananaphone
Motif of harmful sensation
Tetris effect

Click on Badger Badger Badger:

The video series "Shortlist", released by PC World Australia, made a clip on internet fads, listing the Badger fad as one of the top five internet fads (along with the Star Wars kid, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Peanut Butter Jelly Time and Numa Numa. They further showed a version of the original animation, replacing the badgers, mushrooms and snakes with the hosts, and modifying the words to the people's actual names.

Click on All Your Base Are Belong To Us:

The cut scene transcript goes as follows:

Narrator: In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
(spoken in the Flash animation as Someone set up us the bomb)
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
CATS: How are you gentlemen !!
CATS: All your base are belong to us.
CATS: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.
CATS: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
(spoken in the Flash animation as Ha Ha Ha)
Operator: Captain !!
Captain: Take off every 'ZIG' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'ZIG'.
Captain: For great justice.

Which brings us to the source behind James Taranto's use of the phrase "Someone Set Up Us the Bomb."

Oh, the wonders we find!

The Ultimate ZIP Code Map

Google Maps with ZIP code overlay. Very cool.

At a regional level, it shows areas deliniated by the first three digits of the ZIP code. Zoom in further for a typical ZIP code map that you can pan across the entire country.

Sadly, some ZIP codes that comprise a sole building are non-functional on the map. Zoom in on Midtown Manhattan to see what I mean.

Where is the internet?

Phone call just now:

"Where is the internet?"
"On top of the television."
"Which one?"
"Bedroom."
"Thank you."
"Sorry about that."
"No problem. Bye."
"Bye."

Ring Update, etc.

Without my wedding band, my hand looks familiar, yet odd. I quickly put it back on, without spinning it on my desk or anything.

Also, for fun, you can go to flickr.com and search for fremontparade or solsticeparade to count how many of my photos appear in the first page. Sometimes it's zero, sometimes it's five, or anywhere in between, taken from a total of seven I count. I wonder how their computer program decides which ones to show.

In any case, here they are, my top-seven most-relevant photos, per Flickr, when judged as "fremont parade" or "solstice parade":

Athens to Athens

The commies at Google are playing around again. On Google Maps, they've included a swimming link between Boston and Le Havre, France. Which means you can now get directions from Athens, Georgia, to Athens, Greece!