We took a zig-zaggy route from Lone Pine, CA (A), to Las Vegas, NV (F) --- passing through Stovepipe Wells, CA (B), Furnace Creek, CA (C), Dante's Peak, CA (D), and Indian Springs, NV (E).
The scenery along the way? Stunning. I can't tell it, so have a look at the photos. Here's just one:
We began Tuesday morning by spending a few more hours down by the Topaz Lakeshore, so serene as it was. We went on a micro-hike through the rocks and brush around the water, meeting towards the end some wrinkly local fisherman who cheerfully informed these sandal-clad urbanites that "there's a buncha rattlers around here this time of year". At this point we tip-toed back to the car and headed to our next stop.
Next stop was Lone Pine, CA, and Google's directions from Topaz Lake to the Dow Villa Motel there couldn't be much simpler:
And indeed 192 miles later there it was, on the left on the main road:
You'd have been forgiven for missing it, though, in the day's dust storm. Dust storm! The guy at the Dow Villa reception shrugged resignedly and confessed that no, it wasn't unusual for the town---and that yes, it sucks. He'd lived there a few months and didn't seem to be loving it so far. He muttered about the dry lake bed, and looking at satellite images of the area you can definitely see where all the dust comes from.
For a photographer it was something brand new: a cloudless spring day at 3,700 feet and yet strangely hazy and completely deserted:
Bright sun on the dust in the air seemed to make everything glow, although that's not the easiest to capture in pictures. The emptiness of the place was easily recorded, though: when I say "deserted" I mean really deserted:
We took refuge in a bar, played some cribbage and shuffleboard (we were the only people in the bar apart from the barmaid and her beau), and waited out the storm. After the dust had subsided I took some pictures in the setting sun
and we had dinner in Lone Pine's finest "Seasons".
I uploaded more photos too, including a rare shot of the artist himself.
Topaz Lake (population 2,128) is a tiny town about 30 miles south-east of South Lake Tahoe, and 65 miles due north of Yosemite Village. It's right on the California-Nevada border; in fact the border runs right through the lake itself. On arrival in the area you will find
The motel was nice enough, with a view of the lake and... well, that's pretty much it unless you count a parking lot. We checked in and went straight down to the lakeshore to hang out for a while. I got these pictures down there in the setting sun:
After it got dark we went to the casino, the only place in town to eat. The tempting cash-for-catch offer outside gives away the local pastime: people in Topaz Lake like their underwater animal friends, it turns out, but they like them even more when they've been snagged and brought up above water. And if the interior of the casino is any guide then they like them most when they're stuffed, mounted behind glass and nailed to the wall.
The casino was half-closed on a Monday night, but the bar was open and over a few beers we learned to play video poker. After a quick dinner and we wandered back to the motel. It was dark but I think we saw some more dead fish on the way. Fish are everywhere in Topaz Lake.
I forwarded "Empire strikes forward" to a good friend of mine who I knew would enjoy it. Delightfully, he countered with the below, here with his permission with his comments in bold interspersed with the original in italics:
1) Use firearms. Blasters are slow, not very powerful, and easily deflected by a light saber. An AK-47 would be far, far more effective. And don't forget the training! Despite the advantage in fire power, the storm troopers clearly can't shoot straight. Take them out to a range once in a while, and see how much more effective they become only after a couple training sessions!Projectile weapons were rendered obsolete many years ago by kinetic deflector shields, which most people still carry around with them. Light, discrete and 100% effective2) If you use droids to fight your wars, build the best kind - do not waste time and money on anything else. It looks like the Destroyer model is more effective than50 units of the other kind (and even more effective than a Jedi). I doubt it could be more than 3 times more expensive. Why not just build Destroyers?But just like the fact that the army has humvees *and* tanks, you need a selection of droids. Destroyers can't negotiate stairs and are no good at fighting in groups, for example. Perhaps most importantly, key parts of the Destroyer design are patented, making them 100x more expensive than generic droid designs.3) And while we are on this subject, let's have droids use more effective communication channels than human speech when they talk to each other. The same goes for all interfaces between the droids and everything else - spaceships, vehicles, and weapons. There is no reason while a droid should press a button to fire a weapon - a wireless interface would control it far more efficiently. Also, do invest in computerized targeting for your weapons. If your droids can already see, making them very accurate shooters is a relatively trivial task - ask any engineer.One technology - super-advanced field jamming - made wireless technologies obsolete 2 centuries ago.4) Missiles seem to be an extremely effective weapon in Star Wars, except that there are very few of them. Why not build more of them and launch, say, 20 or 30 at a time? I doubt the Jedi, who have visible trouble dealing with one or two, would be able to escape ten. Also, consider building missiles that are FASTER than the star fighters they attack.Missiles are never faster, cos they have smaller engines. They're more maneuverable, cos of inertia, but can never outrun ships (as there's no friction) and that's why they're hardly ever used, except in situations where maneuvering is tight and they can take advantage of their agility.5) Consider using encryption. It looks like anyone can plug into the system anywhere and take control of everything in the space ships. This problem has been solved years ago! It really is not that hard.The imperial mainframe OS is notoriously riddled with security holes. Although 22 CTOs have been executed, the main imperial supplier continues to deliver shocking quality software, but is so deeply entrenched that's it's impossible to replace. Most commentators believe this effective monopoly status is the cause of the problem.6) Pack animals are slow, can't carry much, and are very, very hard to maintain. They need food, living compartments, etc. Consider eliminating them from the army in favor of mechanized transporters. Animals are not very effective in executions either - this has been proven many, many times. Instead of staging elaborate shows with giant predators that always fail to kill the prisoners, just shoot your captives, and put their heads on a stick.There's a galaxy-wide shortage of actuator motors of sufficient power to meet transporter demand. The military are embarrassed by their temporary reliance on alien pack animals, but what can you do?7) I cannot overemphasize the importance of conventional firearms. If the probe sent to assassinate Princess Amidala had used a regular rifle instead of the poisonous centipedes, the subsequent events might have taken a very different turn. And in space, consider using nuclear weapons. The laser guns you currenlty mount on your ships are massively underpowered.Energy weapons are rendered less effective by shields, but still do better than nuclear weapons, which are difficult to deliver (see problem with missiles, above). Plus you have to drop you shields to fire them, meaning almost certain destructions from the enemy's otherwise lethal energy weapons (see below).8) Did you know that space ships do not need wings to fly in space? Once you get entirely comfortable with this (yes, I do know it's extremely hard, given that they even make fying noises while moving through vacuum, but making this leap of faith might be crucial to your survival - do it!) you can start using very different design paradigms - like, for example, minimizing the surface area so your spacecraft is easier to protect and harder to target.These are not wings, just mounts for weapons in order to give them better firing positions.9) On the subject of spaceship designs - there must be something in the way you build them that makes them explode after they are hit. Unfortunately, this applies to all other vehicles as well. While this generates impressive visuals, this design point leads to unnecessary casualties among your troops. Consider enclosing whatever it is that explores in extra layers of protection. You have already solved this for your small weapons, which do not seem to have the same problem. Why not use similar design everywhere?Once shields are depleted or knocked-out, the awesome power of energy weapons becomes apparent.10) This is more of a tactical rather than an engineering advice, but I will give it anyway. Instead of deploying the Walkers and other weird ground assault vehicles, consider attacking from the air to suppress the adversary's ground troops.There is a surplus of walkers, following a contract the Empire signed with the Emperor's brother-in-law's military walker company. And because of protectionist measures from the walker manufacturing industry and the WOU (Walker Operators Union).
In other news, here's one from a while back:
This time last week I was sitting on a flight to England. Wendy and I got to see not only my family but also lambing season in Derbyshire in beautiful Spring sunshine. Utterly gorgeous. I took a bunch of photos.
We got back on Monday evening. On Tuesday we went for a walk on a lovely San Francisco sunny day. A bunch more photos.
Spring is here in San Francisco. The clocks have changed too, and at 6.41pm right now the sun is still up. Everything's coming alive.
Wendy and I took a walk up over and around Potrero over the weekend---we both feel so lucky to live in a place where one can set off on foot from the house in any direction and have a great time just walking around the city and seeing what's going on.
I uploaded some pictures I took on the way to Potrero and back:
After playing around with black and white for a bit, and also with a tilt-shift lens, it was only a matter of time before I married the two. I just uploaded a set taken last month on a walk up Bernal Hill. It's a very photogenic few miles up and around and down the hill:
Another thing I've been playing around with (as well as black and white) is a tilt-shift lens I have on loan. Such a joyous thing! Here are some recent shots with it:
I had these grand plans for my sabbatical. I imagined a reading odyssey, where I would chew voraciously through my book backlog. Imagine how much you could read if you had no job, right?
It didn't quite work out that way. Back in late October I listed 24 unread books waiting for my attention. In early November I'd read one but three more had been added to the pile. Turns out that this is my downfall: getting books faster than I can read them. And OK, yes the weather was much nicer during my sabbatical than I expected, meaning less time inside reading than I was imagining, but really the problem boils down to the fact that I tend to read the books I most recently acquired, and I tend to read books slower than I acquire them. I'm operating a LIFO queue with a mean arrival rate greater than the mean depletion rate.
So here I am, three months later, and how many of the 24 have I read? Actually, just the one. Here's what I've actually got through:
This young lady I met the other day on Shotwell Street. It was her birthday.
Listening to This American Life in the car the other day, I was enchanted by a story about a project to have kids across the country write letters greeting Barack Obama to office and giving him advice on how he should spend his time. The project was started round the corner from where I live, at 826 Valencia, and the collection has just been published as a book, Thanks, and Have Fun Running the Country.
On the radio they had a couple of the original authors (the kids) read their letters. I was utterly charmed. Here's one:
Dear Barack Obama, one thing you could fix is the economy. Something happened to me. I went out for lunch at Starbucks and I wanted to buy a cup of whipped cream. And normally it's 43¢ but now it's 74¢. The price raised 31¢ for no reason! So you should probably try to change things like that from happening. You should keep an eye out for things like that. I wish you good luck.
PS. I love whipped cream.
Love,
Alexis Feliciano, age 9, Brooklyn.
Here's another, which wasn't on the show but is in the book:
Dear President Obama, I have a great idea for you: you should set up a special phone, a special place just for kids to call the president if they find things that are dangerous and can affect people, like someone smoking. This would be a special place for kids to talk to Barack Obama and let him know what's going on.
Dhamaril Nunez, age 9, Boston.
Great, no? I think I'll buy the book. You should listen to the show. Alexis reads at 17 minutes, 20 seconds; worth hearing.
Here's an old one of Matt, taken in July 2000. He hasn't changed much.
This weekend was a long weekend in the US, so we got to do twice as much as usual. Not only did I get a chance to take these shots of a day in Healdsburg (the place we got married in October 2007):
but I also got to take these shots of my walk through the Mission night-time that Sunday evening:
For Christmas, Wendy bought me an original late-60s copy of Grimble. I read Grimble and Grimble at Christmas as a kid and I've been loving reacquainting myself with the stories.
The station was at the end of the street and Mr Wheeler was in charge of it. There were two little shops on the station, one of them selling newspapers, and the other things to eat — like old sausage rolls and sandwiches that were wrapped in bits of paper as if no one expected anyone to unwrap them. There was also a machine with a sign on it saying Platform tickets 2d. and the 2d. had been crossed out and 3d. put in its place.
Grimble wondered why it was now more expensive to stand on a platform, which is all you are allowed to do with a platform ticket, and Mr Wheeler had explained that it was probably because you now had to wait longer for trains.
I went on a walk yesterday with Wendy and Ros. Took these shots:
I'm up in South Lake Tahoe with Wendy, Matt, Mary, Craig and Hannah to celebrate the New Year. These are some of my very favorite people in the world; it's great to be here.
What's more, I've been using the time productively on the laptop: not only have I firmed up my schedule for my first week back at work; (sabbatical ends this weekend) but I've finally put together and published a set of my Playa Del Carmen photos from 2006:
I also took a photo of Craig today which I liked:
It was three years ago that I first set foot on a frozen lake. A couple of days ago, up in Fort Collins with Wendy's family, I gave it another go.
lifesaving.org gives a handy ready-reference for what's considered safe on various thicknesses of ice:
From a vantage point off the ice, I took this one in the sunset:
She said:
Hello Isaac,
We recently received your King Bloom Lavender duvet cover and I am afraid we will not be able to replace the duvet cover for you.
Amenity is happy to accept any item that has not been used or washed and if the discrepancy had been found before use, we would certainly be able to help.
Upon review, the duvet cover appears to have been heavily used and washed. Given these circumstances it is company policy that the return cannot be accepted as a manufacturing flaw.
We are truly sorry for any disappointment this may cause. We are due to return your original purchase to you and as a good will gesture, we would like to offer you a choice of any amenity pillow.
Please let me know which pillow you would like to receive and we will make sure they arrive as soon as possible.
Regards,
Helen
He said:
Hi Helen, thanks for getting back to me.
I can assure you that the duvet cover has never been used and has been washed precisely once before it was returned to you---the defect became apparent when spreading the item out after washing, which is the first thing we did when we unpacked the thing. Never at any point has the duvet cover even been on a duvet, although it did sit folded on the floor for a couple of weeks while waiting to be returned to you.
To put it very mildly, I feel wholeheartedly let down by your response. The Amenity Home web site dares to mention "nature's flawless elegance" while our duvet cover, however elegant, was flawed at the moment we bought it. Your proposed good will gesture falls substantially short of Amenity Home's actual moral obligations here, and I will certainly not be salving Amenity's corporate conscience by taking you up on your offer of a compensatory pillow.
In fact you can keep the duvet cover too---please do not waste any resources returning to me a faulty product for which I have no desire. If ever I require a defective duvet cover with a hole in it I'm sure there is a wealth of cheap and cheerful options available to me at my local goodwill store. I was, though, rather hoping that spending significantly more (I paid $378.67, including tax, for this item) might get me a defect-free product from a company prepared to do the right thing and stand behind the quality of their products. I guess not.
I know this isn't your fault personally, Helen, but "disappointment" doesn't come even nearly close to capturing my mood. I am outraged. Please do me the favor of passing on my utter disgust to those in charge at Amenity. The mind boggles at how a "company policy" like this---generating such bad will in a first-time Amenity customer---could possibly make business sense. You can rest assured that for my own part I will be getting maximum value from the $380 cost of my education about Amenity Home by passing on my learnings to friends and colleagues.
I wish you, Helen, a Merry Christmas. Amenity Home, not so much.
Isaac
After that he uploaded a new old photo:
So heads-up, people. Beware Amenity Home, who don't replace faulty products.
Short story: bought an Amenity duvet cover. Got it home, washed it, and found a small hole in it when spreading it out after washing. Sent it back to Amenity, who say that their policy is not to replace items which have been washed.
Huh?
This thing cost $380 including tax. Pardon me for thinking that for such a price one might expect better than this. Amenity FAIL.
I took this one way back in February 2000. The artist's impression turned out pretty well, but failed to anticipate the Gherkin:
