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.

Mailbox Peak

The third try was the charm. On previous weekends, I hadn’t been able to climb up Mailbox Peak. This time, JP and I met in North Bend in the morning, and reached the top by lunch time. It was four hours round-trip. The inclination is impressive: 4000 ft (1200 m) of elevation gained in the space of 2.5 miles (4 km). Surprisingly, there was a trail all the way, and we didn’t need to use our hands.

At the top of the peak, there are two mailboxes. People put things in them, and apparently, letters have been delivered from there!

Pest

For the first few months of this year, and the last of last year, I was having an infestation of pigeons in my terrace. It all began innocently enough, with pigeons roosting on the railing. Then more came, and stayed often, while the weather was getting colder. They liked to roost on the large window frame, as you can see in this photo taken in April:

I thought it was nice to host birds, and although they would make a lot of noise sometimes, I was fine with that. Up to five pigeons at a time would come. As the weather started warming, and I wanted to spend more time in the terrace, I noticed the whole place was filled with bird excrement. They had gone too far. My landlord came to the apartment one day, and suggested that I get bird spikes. These are spikes you put on birds’s roosting spots to make them uncomfortable.

It was a very good idea. The day I installed the spikes, I watched as the pigeons tried to land on the window frame, but could not comfortably. A couple were able to land, but flew away after a second. By the third day, most of the pigeons had gone elsewhere.

One day, I realized that a fat pigeon was sitting in one of the plant pots, unmovable. I tried to shoo it away, but it wouldn’t budge. I figured it was guarding eggs, and I left it alone.
Over a month passed since then, and the building’s board have hired a team to wash and paint the terraces. Last week it was my place’s turn, so I had to put the deck chairs and the table inside the apartment, and move all the plants to the center of the balcony, so that the windows could be accessed. I also took the chance to clean up, ahead of the painters pressure-washing. Now the terrace is very clean. While I was moving the pots, I found a dead pigeon in a corner, and I realized there were two pigeon chicks in one of the pots. I didn’t know what to do. Rick, the building manager, had found a nest earlier on, and had destroyed it and disposed of the eggs. In his view, the pigeons are a pest, like rats.
I couldn’t bring myself to killing the chicks. I’ve decided to let them grow up, but when they fly, I’m getting rid of the nest, and making sure they don’t find it comfortable to stay here.

Pigeons are indeed a pest. In the week since I moved the pot-nest out of the painters’s way, the birds and their mother have dirtied things:

Not happening again, my feathered friends.
All this pot moving and terrace cleaning has had some interesting effect. I generally don’t see much point to having plants on the terrace. They’re a hindrance more than anything. But now that they’re in the center, watching the view through them is nice. I think I’ll make some changes when all the painting is done.

My new toy

For the last few weeks, I have been enjoying my new toy, the Kindle DX. The DX is a version of the Amazon Kindle with a larger screen.
This is a wonderful device, and all the more wonderful, for me, because I got it as a very special gift.

The dimensions are more or less similar to those of a regular hard-bound book, larger than a soft-cover.

The fonts are crisp and clear, and although the grey background doesn’t provide as much contrast as a white page, it provides plenty. The font rendering is better than that of many soft-cover books, which can be chunky. A good hard-bound book still has superior fonts.
In this photo, I recommend that you click to enlarge, zoom in, and move to the bottom of the photo.

I’ve bought a little zippered case so I can carry the Kindle in my backpack. Battery life is great: so far it seems to get over a week of autonomy before I need to recharge it.

The thin little device (it’s slightly thinner than a CD case) can carry several thousand books. So far, I have around twenty on mine. One of them is the latest translation of War and Peace. Having that tome in the Kindle is an unequivocal improvement over handling a printed edition.

I couldn’t be happier.

Mount Si climb

A great thing about living in Seattle is how easy it is to leave the city behind and be surrounded by mountains or water. On Saturday, JP and I went over to Sahib’s house in North Bend. It is very near Mount Si, one of the best known hikes in the area. Mt Si is a continuous ascent for 4 miles, and the trail is wide (for a mountain trail) and in good state.
We were surrounded almost all the way by very impressive trees.

New Zealand re-scans

At last, I got around to sending the negatives from my trip to New Zealand in 2003 to be re-scanned. As happened with the Grand Canyon photos, the re-scans are a substantial improvement over what I had. The colors are looking more realistic, and dark exposures are respected. It is easier to realize, now, that a given shot was taken at dawn or in bad weather.

You can take a look at the full album on my SmugMug page, but here is a selection of some favorites (you can click on the photos to enlarge):

Franz Joseph

Lake Wanaka

Doubtful Sound

Coromandel Peninsula

Tongariro crossing

Kaikoura

Time and transport

The first five months of this year were very hard for me. I worked too much, worried too much, and ended up getting sick. I decided to take measures to stop this.

Of course, measures, like new year’s resolutions (which I never make), tend to be too abstract: stress less, have more time, enjoy more. Yes, of course, but saying it does nothing. One thing that has been helping, though, is that I’ve been very tired. Not really able to drive myself to exhaustion right now. But little by little, I’m getting my energy back.

The best thing I’ve done so far is to change my commute. For over a month, I’ve been taking either the company shuttle, or the public bus, to work. For both, my stop in Seattle is a 15 min. walk from home, and my stop in Redmond is a 15 min. walk from my building. Door to door, then, it’s 50 to 80 minutes, compared to 25 to 135 minutes when driving. I don’t understand how a small city like Seattle can have such traffic jams.

That’s why I used to drive: choosing my departure times carefully , it was much quicker than taking the bus. But driving makes it too easy to become engulfed in work. Arriving home at a late time, after having had no exercise for the whole day, only to get some dinner, and continue to work. Hell. Now, taking the bus, I walk for an hour every day, and that helps me relax. I’m using the time in the bus to read or nap. I’ve finally started catching up with my pile of unread books, after months of neglect.
It’s funny that this tiny difference in my commute is having a big impact on my whole week. I should have known, though: walking is my preferred way to think. It probably has something to do with feeding my brain new images. Perhaps.