Photos in this blog

I just wanted to mention, in case you’re not aware, that when you see a small photo in this blog, you can click on it to get a larger version. Thanks to the site I use for my photo albums, the larger photo is scaled up to take advantage of your screen.

Here’s an example.

Vancouver weekend

This weekend, Tom, my old friend from the Bear Stearns days, flew to Vancouver, and I drove to join him. It was my first time to Vancouver, and my first time to Canada too.
We had spectacular weather, although it got a bit chilly at times. Hey, what can you expect at this time of the year, that far North?

Vancouver is a great city. It has an enormous park right next to the downtown area: Stanley Park, which is also by the shore, and next to the iconic Siwash Rock. You can see a Douglas fir on top:

The walk to the rock was fun, as the sea was very choppy. You might think, from this photo, that it was open sea, but that is not the case. Vancouver’s bay is the Strait of Georgia, and its access to the Pacific is blocked by the enormus Vancouver island. Still, the Strait of Georgia is big, much bigger than Puget sound, and clearly big enough for waves:

There is also the spectacular Lions Gate bridge:

Across the bridge is Grouse mountain, a pretty intense climb. It took us an hour and a half, the climb goes up around 1000m. It was good to get the exercise, but we could have taken the tram:

Grouse mountain is also a ski mountain during winter, and the ski lift was operating. We took it, and got even better views:

On Sunday we had a lazier day, and just drove to Lighthouse Park, again with plenty of views of the sea, and big trees.

Vancouver gets right many of the things that Portland and Seattle get wrong. There are also industrial sectors to Vancouver, but it has a wonderful, long promenade by the waterfront, a beautiful park next to it, and what looks to be a livelier, spunkier crowd of people. What’s not to like?

Well, for one thing, on the way back to the old US, I got “selected for a random car inspection” at the border. I don’t know what’s random about picking the foreigners, but I digress. I saw an old Canadian man being denied entry to the US. I was impressed by the firmness and friendliness of the officer giving him the news. “Wow”, I thought, “that officer has charisma”. But then he asked the old man to stick out his hands so he could put handcuffs on him. Oh well, I suppose they must follow the rules and regulations.

Here is my favorite piece of Canadian signage:

I would like to redesign it to say: “Silence: Car Thieves Work Here – please be respectful of thieves earning their livelihood, try not to disturb them”.

Ah, yes, you can also see the photo album.

A weekend in Mt. Rainier National Park

My friend Victor, from the IHouse years, flew in from California on Friday. On Saturday morning, we drove to the Northwest part of Mt. Rainier National Park. It was an overcast, drizzly day, but it is always a joy to be out in the woods.

The campsite was only 2 miles (around 3 km) from the start of the hike, so we pitched the tent, left our pads and sleeping bags inside, and had lunch. For a brief period, the sun was out. We were hopeful, but we would need to wait until Sunday for good visibility. We set out to explore with a reduced load on our backs.

Spray Falls exceeded our expectations.

We got back to camp around 6 and had dinner. It started to get cold quickly, so much so that we went to bed not much later than 7. It was a very cold night, and I slept with my fleece on, inside the sleeping bag. Amazingly, I slept almost straight through, and woke up at 9. Not usual for me at all.

Sunday started sunny, and at last we got clear shots of Mount Rainier and some other crowd-pleasers.

Perhaps the most photogenic part of the trip was Lake Mowich, right next to where we left the car.

In Seattle, warm showers and a nice dinner rounded the weekend. It is nice to get a proper meal.

There are more photos in the trip album.

Computers, part 1

I’m back in Seattle after some vacation. I wish I had more.

One of the things I wanted to do in Madrid was rescue the old Commodore VIC20 from oblivion in the garage. I’ve been reading a book on the history of Commodore, and it has stirred some memories. The VIC20 was the first computer we had in our family. I remember being very excited about it. Today, it is a quaint machine.

As you can see, there are less than 4K of memory. No hard drive nor floppy disk drive. No mouse (actually, that isn’t half bad). And yet, I have fonder memories of the VIC20 than of most of the computers I’ve used since. Why?
One reason can be seen in this photo:

The machine came with programming manuals. We used it to play games, but we also tried little programs. The instruction manuals taught the BASIC language, and showed how to make sounds and images. Larger programming projects were almost always games. Javier wrote his own game, which I played often. We had clones of such arcade classics as Scramble and Frogger.

I don’t think the VIC turned me into a programmer. I never did much in it but copy programs from the manuals, line by line. Years later, with the Sinclair Spectrum 128+, I would try to write my own video game in assembly language, a project I quit in frustration. With the Spectrum, I also developed a dangerous addiction to games. One day I decided to let go of it, and my interest in programming and computers went to sleep for several years.

Today we have more powerful machines, but something got lost. Computers today don’t come with programming manuals or tools. They exist mainly for you to run your purchased software on. The world became less naïve. Really, was it realistic to think that people would use computers to write their own software?

I’m very happy the old VIC20 is still running. I typed a little program into it that bounced a ball off the edges of the screen. It was about 12 lines of code, and I was thrilled to see it in action.

Montana and after

The trip to Glacier NP, Montana, happened a week ago. It’s about time I posted the photo album.

Since it feels far away now, I’m not doing a write-up. Know that it was a good, intense hike, and that each of us sustained some physical damage, as happens in intense hikes. We all returned to Seattle in one piece – one piece per person, that is.

Now I’m in Madrid, enjoying idleness and mom’s cooking.