Acrobats at the PNE

Thanks to a really cool gift from my par­ents, a Flip Ultra Video Cam­era, I’m thrilled that now I’ll be able to add not only pho­tos, but now videos of my own to my blog, and plan on doing that from time to time.

Here’s some­thing from the first day I got to use my new toy, at the PNE. We went with my par­ents and had a great time. Once again, the high­light of the day for me (and for the rest of our group, I think) were the Bei­jing Acro­bats. We saw them last year, and were thrilled to see them again. Here’s a short video I did of some of their rou­tines. The light­ing is not ideal, but most of the time I think you can get the gist of what they are doing. Not bad for a first try, I hope:

Whistler in the Summer

We got back on Sun­day from a few days at Whistler, where we spent some days of vaca­tion with my brother and his fam­ily. While we all never felt very rushed, we man­aged to get quite a few activ­i­ties in while we were there, includ­ing a gon­dola and chair­lift trip up to the top of Whistler moun­tain, a Zip­Trek tour in the for­est above and around the Fitzsim­mons river, a hike to Lost Lake, a cou­ple of movies (“Get Smart” at the local cin­ema, “Jumper” on DVD) and sev­eral lunches and din­ners out. My niece Renata also got in a cou­ple of ses­sions on the bungee tram­po­line, which helped her to bounce a cou­ple of sto­ries (at least) into the air. While I can’t doc­u­ment all of it in pic­tures and video, here are some high points (sic):

Pam wasn’t quite pre­pared for how cold it would get, but for­tu­nately, there were some blan­kets avail­able at the chair­lift, about 2/3 of the way up.):

I also thought I’d include a few Zip­Trek videos. This gave me a chance to try out Flickr’s video fea­tures. I’m not includ­ing one that I can’t seem to flip hor­i­zon­tally (my Sister-In-Law held her cam­era side­ways and no mat­ter what I do, includ­ing chang­ing the file and sav­ing it to a new movie, the uploaded file seems to revert to that orientation).

Here’s Pam slid­ing on the wire across the Fitzsim­mons River:

Now, from the point of view of a par­tic­i­pant. Need I add that this is a blast?

In addi­tion to the rides up in the trees (about 5 times over the river and back), you get a bit of an ecol­ogy lec­ture about the area and some tips on what you can do to be more ‘green’. I really like Zip­Trek, who seem to prac­tice what they preach, in terms of an ecologically-aware busi­ness. Aside from the vans that they use to trans­port peo­ple to and from their sites (and I heard that once there are elec­tric ones or per­haps hybrids that will serve in this capac­ity, they’ll switch to those), they are pretty gen­tle on the envi­ron­ment. They even have a small water-driven gen­er­a­tor via the river that pro­vides most of the elec­tri­cal power for the A-Frame where they house their offices, train employ­ees, and end some of the tours. Our tour lead­ers were col­lege stu­dents major­ing in Eco-tourism and Geol­ogy, and they made sure that none of us were ever in dan­ger or uncom­fort­able, despite what looks like an ‘extreme’ sport.

In addi­tion to some good meals together (Monks up there is very nice and beau­ti­ful to look at; Pam’s Hal­ibut dusted with porcini mush­rooms and sun-dried toma­toes was superb), Pam and I also had an excel­lent cel­e­bra­tory din­ner of our third Anniver­sary of com­ing to Canada on July 5^th at Il Caminetto , one of the restau­rants of Umberto Menghi (his Il Gia­rdino and Umberto’s are both down­town). He’s one of the three celebrity chefs in the White Spot com­mer­cials, (the other two are Rob Fee­nie and John Bishop) always talk­ing about ‘the sauce’. We ate a light din­ner; Pam chose a sub­tly flavoured Roast Cor­nish Game Hen atop chick­peas and mixed veg­eta­bles, and I had a sim­ple but per­fectly done home­made Fet­tuc­cine with cream sauce, peas and pro­sciutto along with some excel­lent wine: A good BC Pinot Gris made by the Pen­t­age Win­ery from Skaha Bench in the Okana­gan, as well as an intense Ital­ian Mus­cat for dessert . I’ve become a big fan of dessert wines, and some­times pre­fer them over a cake or tart.

So for try­ing of celebrity chef restau­rants in the area, we are now 2 out of 3. I guess a visit to a Cac­tus Club would now count for Rob Fee­nie, since he has become the ‘food con­cept archi­tect’ of that chain. That’s what the arti­cles say, at any rate.

A nice time was had by all (I think), and we feel pretty lucky to have this beau­ti­ful resort area so near to us (for those who don’t live in Van­cou­ver, depend­ing on traf­fic and con­struc­tion on the Sea-to-Sky High­way, it’s about a 2 1/2 hour drive from the city). My brother summed up Whistler by and large bet­ter than I could: “It’s a bit like Dis­ney­land for adults.”

Back from Baltimore, and a Dubious Honour

Wel­come to 2008!

We’re back from an extended Hol­i­day Sea­son visit to my brother and his fam­ily, my par­ents, and some social calls on both sides of the con­ti­nent. High­lights included see­ing my niece dance in the Seat­tle Ballet’s Nut­cracker for the sec­ond year, and a Roast Goose New Year’s Day din­ner with my par­ents in Bal­ti­more (includ­ing Spaet­zle, Green Beans, and Red Cab­bage — the theme was clearly Ger­man Cui­sine). I’d not had roast goose before, and it is a treat, par­tic­u­larly if you like ‘dark’ meat. Even the breast meat on this bird is dark!

Pam was able to swing north to Mass­a­chu­setts for a few days to visit with her brother and his fam­ily, while I helped my Dad upgrade to Leop­ard. A good thing, too, as his upgrade was just as dif­fi­cult as mine (once again tak­ing 3 attempts, and end­ing up with a call that went to 2 Apple Tech Sup­port Reps and ulti­mately required a clean install, as well as us man­u­ally installing all appli­ca­tions and mov­ing all of his email accounts, doc­u­ments, cal­en­dars and address book entries — just as I had to).

The trip to the States was not with­out some cul­ture shock (it always hits me, despite my best efforts to pre­pare for the dif­fer­ences). On our flights there, my seat com­pan­ions were con­stantly read­ing Bibles. On the way back (with a stop in Cincin­nati, where I was able to get some Cincin­nati Chili at the food court, a del­i­cacy of my under­grad years), we were amazed at the throngs of sol­diers every­where, with make-shift lounges set up in all of the air­ports we were in. Reli­gion and the Mil­i­tary: not a great com­bi­na­tion for me.

I’m still recov­er­ing from a nasty cold that I caught while away (which unfor­tu­nately, my father also caught and in his case it has since turned into Flu). Work starts up, but for me it’s just a week as the fol­low­ing week I’ll be in San Fran­cisco for Mac­World Expo.

Speak­ing of things in Tech, my brother alerted me to a some­what puz­zling hon­our for our family:

Drucker : next gen Win­dows Mobile smart­phone from Palm
Jan­u­ary 6, 2008 – 11:22 am

Now that all of Palm’s flag­ship Treo 750 smart­phones have been upgraded to Win­dows Mobile 6, it’s now time to look for­ward to 6.1. Engad­get reports that the next high end Win­dows Mobile phone from Palm is code-named “Drucker”. Here’s what we know so far about Drucker:

• GSM/EDGE/HSDPA
• runs Win­dows Mobile 6.1
• 2 Megapixel camera
• 1500mAh bat­tery
• 320×320 screen
• Blue­tooth

Drucker, which will be a replace­ment for the Treo 750v, will be the first smart­phone from Palm that sup­ports WiFi. It’s also the first to match cur­rent Palm OS-based smart­phones in terms of screen res­o­lu­tion. Drucker is expected to have a retail price of £270 (about US$534), and will prob­a­bly be avail­able first for Vodafone.

I have noth­ing to do with this phone, and frankly, I’d prob­a­bly never buy a phone using Win­dows Mobile. I wish they had at least code-named the Palm OS phone with our last name, but then again, these days, if it’s not an iPhone, I’m not all that inter­ested. I’m less and less sat­is­fied with my frequently-crashing Treo, and I doubt if a new one is in my future. I’ve been a Palm user for per­haps 12–15 years but it’s clearly time to move on if the best they can do is to use Win­dows and code-name the device after our clan. (Heh).

Holiday Cheers

It’s under­stand­able that some peo­ple get depressed around this time of the year. There is the uncom­fort­able weather, lack of sun­shine, and inces­sant reminders of how we should all be out shop­ping, etc.. For­tu­nately, the flip side of that is that we can get cozy at home (with a tasty stir-fry of lemongrass-marinated beef), meet with friends in the evening (the blog­ger meetup was this Thurs­day night), give and get gifts, and per­haps even make plans for the new year. Pam has the jump on me this year in sev­eral ways: first, with one of the coolest gifts that you can give a nerd, an OLPC (One Lap­top Per Child) XO com­puter. Although it hasn’t arrived yet, I got the email con­fir­ma­tion of the gift so the cat is out of the bag. The way the OLPC pur­chase works is to ‘give one and get one’, so in get­ting me this inter­est­ing piece of tech­nol­ogy, Pam’s also insured that some child in another coun­try (like Uruguay and Rwanda) also gets one. It’s a project started by Nicholas Negro­ponte, the flam­boy­ant and charis­matic founder of MIT’s Media Lab, and now the of the Non-profit orga­ni­za­tion (OLPC) that has cre­ated the device with the idea of get­ting an inex­pen­sive (the orig­i­nal goal was <$100, the real price is now a lit­tle less than twice that num­ber) lap­top in the hands of chil­dren in poorer coun­tries all over the world, with the hope of bridg­ing the infor­ma­tion divide). Here’s an ad with Heroes’ Masi Oka for OLPC:

You can be sure that future post­ings will be about this new gift, and given that it has a pretty long wi-fi range and is one of the few lap­tops that has a screen that is vis­i­ble in full sun­light, as well as long bat­tery life and light­weight design, I’m hop­ing that there will actu­ally be some post­ings for this writ­ten on it (per­haps from the park out back?) as well.

Big Travel Plans

I men­tioned that Pam had the jump on me in the gift depart­ment. She’s also out ahead on plans for next year. She’s going to do some­thing that she’s wanted to do for years now: see Antarc­tica. In Feb­ru­ary (the end of sum­mer for that part of the world), she will first fly to San­ti­ago, Chile, then board a char­ter flight to the south­ern tip of Argentina at Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego (the world’s south­ern­most city). At that point, she’ll board the ship Explorer II, a “Dou­ble bot­tomed Ice Class ves­sel with an ice rat­ing (Ital­ian RINA Class 1-D) that exceeds the require­ment for oper­at­ing safely in Antarc­tica” (thank good­ness for that, with the recent sink­ing of a ves­sel from Gap Adven­tures, the M/S Explorer) The ship cruises for 2 days through the Drake Pas­sage to the Antarc­tic penin­sula. She’ll spend about 4 days there, mak­ing excur­sions in Zodiac rafts to the ice,where hope­fully she’ll see pen­guins like these. There are plans to land on the South Shet­lands, includ­ing Half Moon, Cuverville, Paulet, Pen­guin, Goudier and Decep­tion Island, depend­ing on the weather con­di­tions. I’m hop­ing that she’ll be able to send some of the day-to-day details of her voy­age, although I’m not sure how easy email will be.

Before all of this starts, there are a few other (less impres­sive trips), includ­ing a visit to my par­ents’ house in Bal­ti­more, and a week in San Fran­cisco for Mac­World Expo. Looks like 2008 is going to get off to a busy start.

Happy Chanukah!

A pic­ture can say a thou­sand words, can’t it?