halfway through the vacation….

Halfway through vacation, a weird thing happened.

But first, a digression. Normally, I don’t advertise vacations on-line. I prefer not to put up signs, real or virtual, saying “house empty! nobody will notice!” (even if it’s not true because we have housesitters in, which we do some trips. the housesitters really don’t want surprise visitors, either). Back in the dark ages of the net when I was still active on USENET, there were a couple of incidents (including one where someone did track down the house, although ultimately nothing bad happened…) that make me feel a bit of paranoia is a good thing; it’s one reason why our public address is a rented box and we try to make it difficult to find us without our permission. I’d rather keep the stuff inside the house inside the house, not inside someone else’s house.

but this trip, I wanted to experiment with blogging the trip, and to play with the digital camera, iPhoto and taking stuff online. Had a lot of fun up in Victoria, trying to get back into sync wtih a lens and start trying to put what I see into an image. Lots of work there to do, although I find the digital format really liberating here, since it throws out the film/developing cost out of the equation, so I feel comfortable taking a lot of shots just to evaluate how they come out.

So maybe I’ll become less paranoid… But I think it’s important that everyone who blogs remember some of the implications of it — including things like telling strangers that your house is going to be empty. Not everyone who reads your blog is your friend…

But anyway, end of digression. I stopped blogging midway through the trip for a couple of reasons — we hit Portland, and a bunch of things changed. Victoria was an exploration of the familiar, allowing me to focus on how to frame and display what I was seeing. This was the first time we’d really spent significant time in downtown Portland, so I found myself more interested in exploring. I carried the camera, but used it very little, because it would have slowed me down by about half, and I wanted to see as much as possible to get a feel for the downtown.

There is an amazing amount of really fascinating and kick-butt archictecture in Portland, needless, I’ll be going back and using the camera a lot. But with only one full day in Portland, I wanted to spend it walking and looking.

One thing that hit us walking around Portland is that the Portland downtown is what San Jose has been struggling to build (unsuccesfully) for as long as we’ve lived up here: very active, with lots of shopping, lots of eating, and lots of people. we made it down to the saturday craft fair, all the way down to chinatown (depressing), and a good chunk of the waterfront (enviable). That put me into pondering mode, about what Portland did right that San Jose didn’t; Laurie and I have been talking and doing some research on that topic since, and more on that once it crystalizes.

Unlike some people, when I’m gnawing on a topic or trying to understand something, I tend to get introspective. Some folks can make quick judgements and make immediate comments — I work best taking my time and understanding something before talking about it; I’d be a horrid failure as a sunday morning talking head, but I believe I say fewer things I regret this way, too (the talking heads probably don’t regret what they say much; but they should. Uh, oh, only one digression per post allowed…)

That, the fact that the Westin charges for internet access (not a suprise, FWIW) and I got myself involved with Steve Brust’s Paths of the Dead and then Mike Resnick’s new book return of Santiago (reviews of both coming), I just didn’t go online.

I’m sure you’re all suprised and shocked to find out sometimes I turn off the computer….

I have more photos to upload of the totems at thunderbird park, and more to say about Portland, but when I came back to work, I had a bunch of things needing my attention — no problems, just, well, there’s this shindig coming monday morning, so I had other priorities than blogging, and by evening, I was feeling pretty braindead. It wasn’t until thursday I started feeling like I was back from vacation…

Portland was — wonderful. Being downtown and soaking it in was just great. We both wish we’d had a couple more days there, but we also know we’ll be back…

okay, who had anaheim in four?

who had anaheim in four in the hockey pool, anyway?

I figured Giguiere was playing well enough to give Dallas a run for it, but this is rather crazy… and you know what? I’m luving it!

playoff 2nd round predictions

I went 4-4 in the first round. Okay, I guess.

2nd round picks:

Ottawa in 6
New Jersey in 5

Vancouver in 5
Anaheim in 6

Victoria, day 3

Didn’t blog yesterday, instead we went up to Duncan and had dinner with friends, and got back late enough that I just bagged it — too mellow to blog….

Day 1 was the heavy walking day, out around the city and seeing how the legs hold up. Whatever I’m doing to get in better shape (and right now, it ain’t much), it’s working, because I felt really pretty good for day 2, so we started the day doing more walking — this time, out into the antiques district, where Laurie scored a few hockey books and I picked up a book I’d had reserved — the 1950 edition of Effects of Atomic Weapons, the first monograph to try to define atomic bombs as more than just really big booms. Wandered back through the city a bit, then hit the car to head out for some birding. We drove out to Ogden point, where the breakwater that protects Victoria’s Harbor is (and a place where, if you’re lucky and at the right time of year, you can see puffins), and then drove out Dallas past Mile zero (where the trans-canada highway ends on the western side) to clover point, a great birding place.

It juts out a bit into the sound, plus it has some nice rock structures and has nearby kelp beds, so you can see lots of interesting things (although there are days when all you’ll see are gulls and pigeons). When we got there, we saw: fins? sticking out of the water?

Sea lions, laying in the shallows sunning. Also oystercatchers, mandarin ducks, some grebes, cormorants and a loon.

Continued out dallas on the scenic drive, out to Oak Bay and the marina, then to cattle point, then to Arbutus cove. A gorgeous drive, some great vistas, anda chance to look at some of the most expensive and beautiful real estate on the island…

After which we hit up Bolan’s books, and wandered out to Duncan for time with our friends and a pretty good dinner at a local restaurant (Jakes, downtown).

This morning, Laurie wanted to do a bit of shopping, so we wandered down to Mayfair mall. Wandering the mall made me realize the legs were a bit sore, so we drove for a while exploring the Gorge area, just neighborhood surfing, and then hit Earls for lunch, and back to the hotel room to relax, catch up on mail and stuff, and work on the photos.

Day 2 and day 3 photos are here.

At five, off to dinner at Bravo on Wharf, which I think is close to, if not, the best restaurant in Victoria. Innovative but subdued, Laurie had the Sirloin of Lamb, I had a nice steak, and we both agreed the desserts were exceptional. So now we’re sitting here watching hockey and digesting….

Tomorrow’s the last full day in Victoria, and we’ll likely spend the time around the museum and thunderbird park, and doing the last of the shopping, such as wine (tonight was a 1999 Cedar Creek Estate Pinot Noir, with a hint of apple and a wonderful garnet color…) and chocolates…

One thing we find fascinating is how the city changes from visit to visit, without ever really being different. But that’s another essay….

Embedded in Victoria, day 1

Normally, after two days of driving, we want to stretch our legs, so day 1 in Victoria is usually a walk through town. The weather is cooperating nicely, the rain having waited until we arrived and then headed off to annoy others, so it was a perfect day for a tromp.

We started it early by walking over to Smittie’s, a perfect place for breakfast, and then started wandering around looking for historic buildings and ghost ads, so I could play with my digital camera and iPhoto 2. We ended up wandering some areas of town we haven’t spent much time in, ending up down at the old Bay storefront, then heading back towards the water and the areas north of Chinatown, the old warehouse district, where there’s a lot of older buildings that are in various stages of repair. After that, we walked back into Chinatown (the official chinatown is one street, about two blocks, but it heavily influences the area around it — small, but wonderfully vibrant and colorful, with interesting architecture), and then back into the downtown core around Government street.

Lunch was at the Elephant and Castle in the Eatons Centre, which, since Eatons died and Sears blew it trying to maintain the name, is becoming the Bay Centre, since Bay is moving into the better downtown digs in the next month. The centre clearly needs a solid store anchoring it, so this is a good thing for everyone, I think. I wonder what’ll happen to the old building (guillotine windows and all).

As part of the downtown walk, we did our normal “just in town” dealer crawl, to see who’s got what, and try to decide what, if anything, we’re really interested in. One dealer (Sa-Nuu-Kwa on Johnson) that I really liked for their jewelry had a faded “closed for inventory” sign on it; never a good sign.

I saw a few other pieces I liked, none that really reached out and grabbed me. Since I told Laurie this was a “no shopping” trip, that didn’t disappoint me. Of course, then we stopped in at Alcheringa Gallery on Fort. For the last few years, I’ve been trying to get a feel for Nisga’a styled art, and Alcheringa is one of the few dealers that handles Nisga’a up here.

We started talking about Nisga’a work, and then he showed me some pieces, and then he showed me this other piece, by Wayne Young, a Nisga’a/Haida artist from Prince Rupert, and it’s a Raven in th haida style, and, well, so much for it being a no-shopping trip. Laurie just smiled, but it’s a stunning piece and was at a great price, and, well, you know. I’ll find a spot on the wall for it.

It really is an impressive gallery — they always have a number of better known artists like Robert Davidson and Tony Hunt Jr. They showed me some pieces they have ready for a new showing to debut in May that I really loved, too. Keep an eye on the web site if you care about this stuff.

We also spent some time talking to the folks at Eagle Feather Gallery. This is a relatively new gallery in Victoria, but one I’m increasingly impressed with. They’re strongly tied to the first nations, and while most galleries up here buy at least some work directly from artists, they’re 100% directly bought, and as I understand it, partially owned as well. This means that when you buy from them, you more directly support the artists and their tribes, which I prefer.

I had a chance to talk to one of their resident artists, Art Charlie, about some of their pieces. Their featured artist is Doug Lafortune, who’s a great carver. One thing Eagle Feather does that the other galleries in Victoria don’t is bring in artists to work in the gallery — you can see them carving or working in other media, depending on who’s there.

I’ve told Laurie not to let me back in Eagle Feather with my wallet, there were at least four pieces I wanted, and I have a living room to finish.

After all that, it was back to the room for the hockey (remember? hockey? playoffs?). Dinner at Old Spaghetti Factory, since we wanted something good, but not fancy, and not too leisurely, to get back and see as much of the Ducks game as we could.

One of the things I wanted to do this trip was focus more on photography and exploration, and to give the tools a good workout. I ended up taking about 80 shots today using the digital. When we got back to the room, I dumped them into iPhoto, cropped and cleaned them up, captioned them, edited them down to the best 60, and then exported them into HTML and uploaded them to the web site. All in about 90 minutes: god bless digital photography…

And if you’re interested, the result is here.

Embedded in Victoria…

We’ve made it, embedded into Victoria. Two days of driving, San Jose to Eugene, Eugene to Victoria. About 10 hours travel time both days.

Day 1 we lost an hour, maybe 90 minutes, to weather. Rain caught us heading out the 80, kept it up most of the way up the 5, except at Weed, where it decided to turn into snow. Fortunately, it was short-lived. More fortunately, Laurie was driving. I was, as usual, asleep, but woke up to the lack of rain sounds on the van…

Today we chased the occasional shower, but it was mostly a decent, grey day. Hit the 4PM out of Tswassen, made it to the hotel a bit after 6, and to the Keg for dinner during the third period of the Oilers game.

The picture shows the Empress hotel and the downtown skyline across the harbor, as seen from our hotel room. In the foreground is the wax museum, and the roof in the lower left corner is the ferry building for the Coho to Port Angeles. To the right, out of the picture, is the Parliament building.

As we were walking to dinner, the sun broke out of the clouds and bathed the inner harbour with a golden light, and we stood there and watched the light play off the water as an Air Beaver seaplane took off on one of its runs.

And I turned to Laurie and said “and people wonder why we come up here….”

The daffodils are fading up here, and the tulips are just starting, the cherry trees are in bloom, and the place looks awesome. So far, so good.

Victoria: Butchart Gardens

A few miles out of Victoria is Butchart Gardens. Carved out of a former cement quarry, the gardens has turned into a tourist spot that draws a million people a year. Is it for you?

If you’re at all interested in things that grow, the answer is yes. It’s a fun place to while away half a day, walking through the gardens and thinking to yourself how nice it’d be to have a professional staff of planters and weeders…

but seriously — I think everyone ought to try it once, if you’re going to be in victoria more than a single day. If you have a car, you can drive to it, or the tour groups have busses that will shuttle you out and back.

During the summers, on Saturdays, Butchart does a victorian fireworks show that is very popular. On our trip last July, our concierge convinced us to give it a try, so we were signed up onto the Gray Line, which picked us up in the early afternoon, giving us about half a day in the gardens, a nice, long twilight, and the fireworks — remember, in BC, summer days are long, so the fireworks start fairly late, and traffic is busy, so expect not to get back to the hotel until very late. Also, since it is so popular, and it’s grass seating, plan to go protect space in a prime viewing area earlier than you’ll thnk you need to.

But frankly, I can’t think of a better way to visit Butchart than to be driven there, spend a few hours in the gardens, and then take in a fireworks show (and it’s quite a good one). The gardens has a good restaurant, and is also one of the places you might consider taking tea, if you feel you must (a much better tea than the Empress, which I find expensive and not terribly interesting)

if you’re only in Victoria one day, the gardens would take up too much time. But for a multi-day trip, it’s a great time to get out of the city and wander through gardens you can only dream of….

The playoffs are here!

It’s time for that second season, the hockey playoffs. The time hockey switches from marathon to sprints. Four sprints and you take home the stanley cup. Nothing to it. (yeah, right).

As usual, I’m handicapping the playoffs. And as usual, anyone who bets on my handicapping is an idiot, since I’m consistently under .500…

Eastern Conference:

Ottawa/New York Islanders (Ottawa in 5): I don’t trust the Isle’s goaltending, and I really like Ottawa’s overall play.

New Jersey/Boston (New Jersey in six): Might be the most interesting to watch, but I’ll bet on Brodeur, thanks.

Tampa/Washington (Tampa in 6): who cares? one loses in the first round, the other in the 2nd. I’m not interested in watching either team play.

Philadelphia/Toronto (Toronto in 6): I’ll take Eddie Belfour here, and Nolan, and the Leafs crew. If they can stay out of penalty trouble. Which they have trouble doing. But I’ve made a solemn pledge to never pick a Philly team as long as Bobby Clarke is GM, and in recent years, he’s proven me right. His teams find a way to mess up at crunch time.

My pick to go to the cup finals: Ottawa. My preference to go to the finals: Toronto.

Western Conference:

Dallas/Edmonton (Edmonton in 6): these two meet again. what, did it get written into the labor contract? Aren’t they tired of beating each other up yet? Dallas ought to win, but I’m rooting for Edmonton anyway. Just because sooner or later, Edmonton ought to find a way to beat Dallas in a series.

Detroit/Anaheim (Detroit in 4): welcome back to the playoffs, Anaheim. Well done. But don’t expect miracles.

Colorado/Minnesota (Colorado in 4): and welcome to the playoffs for the first time, Minnesota, even if you’re a Jacques LeMair team and horribly boring to watch. enjoy it while it lasts…

Vancouver/St. Louis (Vancouver in 5): St. Louis never gets out of the first round. nobody can figure out why. But my best guess this year is their goaltending will let them down. Whatever else, though, the Blues will find some way to exit early again. it’s become a tradition, sort of like the Blackhawks finding ways to miss the playoffs.

My pick to come out of the west: Colorado (Roy, Forsberg, Sakic, Blake. any questions?)

My preference to come out of the west: Vancouver: (Bertuzzi, Naslund, Jovanoski, Sedin, Sedin, Linden, Klatt, Cloutier…)

My probable cup final: Ottawa/Colorado (colorado wins in 6)

My preferred cup final: Toronto/Vancouver (Vancouver wins in 7. Sorry, Owen)

The cup final guaranteed to make ABC/ESPN hate hockey: Edmonton/Ottawa.

Dark horses: none.

The politics of participation

Tim O’Reilly has an interesting perspective on the Architecture of Participation, looking at the differences between styles of participation in various open source communities.

One of his comments struck home…

> In the case of Perl, it was CPAN, as much as anything. By contrast, the Free
> Software Foundation was always fixated on control not just of the core but of
> the whole enchilada (cf. RMS’s constant efforts to get Linux renamed GNU/
> Linux), and their community never took off in the same grassroots way.

I think the difference here is that CPAN is promoting use of the software, and the bottomline purpose of FSF is to promote the policies under which FSF develops software, not really the software itself. so to some degree, with Perl and CPAN, the software is the end, and with FSF, the software is a means to promote an end, adn that end is the vision of how software ought to be that RMS has promoted.

And so while the community at large has bought into the idea of licensing as a way to promote a political agenda, the proliferation of licenses shows that it hasn’t bought into RMS’s agenda, but instead we have dozens of licenses promoting different things, most of them much more liberal than RMS likes.

to me, it just shows that (1) free software is a good idea, and (2) RMS, ultimately, had a vision that wasn’t widely (much less universally) shared, and so the community has taken the parts it felt were useful and left behind the rest.

I think it shows that in the open source community, nobody (not even RMS) can dictate. I think one reason Perl/CPAN is so large and vibrant is because Larry Wall actively unties agendas from his software, almost the antithesis of RMS. RMS is trying to change how everyone does software, through conversion or coercion (using his viral licensing); Wall is trying to build software people find useful.

I don’t agree with RMS or some of his policies, but I abide by licenses and support his right to do what he’s doing (and let the market decide). my preference, however, is to depoliticize software and software licensing, much as Larry did. I think that really serves the greater good….

Sun, I think, made a mistake with java — they tried the same basic strategy that worked for NFS/RPC/XDR — open the interface, control the details. But when I was with Sun and working on the third party aspects of this, it was with a server-based technology that was basically vendor-based. Java’s a much different beast, but they seem to have tried to control it in much the same way — and it’s created conflicts within the java community. You can’t have chaos, so someone has to be in charge, but Sun would have been much better served by handing off control to a consortium for Java, not attempting to be both “open” and “what we say goes”.

A few submarine books

Sort of a three dot lounge from my collection of submarine military history books….

I’m not sure where my interest in submarine operations came from. In high school, one of my post-graduation options I considered (and quickly rejected) was submarine ops. A combination of claustrophobia in tight spaces and childhood asthma made that (practically speaking) impossible, so it got crossed off the list early (Ringling’s Clown College survived a lot longer, but that’s another tale, another time).

But a fascination with the submarine stuck around in the back of my head, and when I started reading history and military history seriously, I naturally migrated towards the submarine corps.

If you’re curious about how a submarine operates, a good introduction is Tom Clancy’s Submarine. It (like all of the non-fiction book written under his name) have a distinctly pro-military bias to them (like this is a suprise?) but he also has good access to sources and does good, solid research. I also thought his books on Carrier, Armored Cav, and Fighter wing were good introductions to how these military forces operate.

Submarines are different beasts. The survive and kill by stealth. Lose that stealth, and they’re sitting ducks. They can’t outrun the enemy, they can’t outmuscle the enemy, they can’t hold off the enemy. They’re an assassin, appearing out of nowhere, disappearing into the shadows.

Submarines were also key components of both WW II and the Cold War, and it’s no suprise that a key strategic component of submarine warfare was finding ways to make them quieter and more powerful, and finding ways to improve your ability to hear them, find them, and kill them.

The story of the submarine in the cold war has been for the most part kept rather quiet, but an interesting look at the games superpowers play is Blind Man’s Bluff. Blind Man’s bluff is a series of stories of modern submarine operations, each of which tells the story of the submarine in a different way. Most interesting to me is the chapter that re-visits the loss of the submarine Scorpion using new information originally suppressed from the original investigation, and the tale of the Halibut as it repeatedly sneaks into soviet waters to tap, and then monitor, an undersea phone cable from a remote military base.

One of the people at ground zero of the cold war battle under the surface was John P. Craven, Chief Scientist for the US Navy’s submarine office. His memoir, discussing things now declassified, is The Silent War, and it dovetails and illuminates (and somtimes contradicts) what Blind Man’s bluff says. the two books cover the same timeframe for the most part, and Blind Man’s Bluff does so from thew view of the investigative reporter, while Silent War does so from the insider/personal view. Both are interesting snapshots into a mostly unseen aspect of the cold war, and interesting reads.

Moving back in time to WW II, I can recommend two other memoirs: Salt and Steel by Edward Latimer Beach, and Silent Running by James Calvert. Beach was a long-time skipper of submarines, including the Triton, the first sub to circumnavigate the globe without surfacing. From the battle of Midway to his retirement in 1966, Beach was part of the navy’s submarine establishment, and discusses it’s strengths, weaknesses and flaws (Beach is a very good writer, and also the author of the fictional work Run Silent, Run Deep). Latimer started in the service with the Jack in 1943, skippered the Skate to the North pole, the first naval vessel to reach it, and in this book, tells the stories of his service in World War II in the Pacific. It might be the best description (absolutely pants-wetting) of what it’s like to sit in a small metal tube and be depth-charged that you’ll find. Both are interesting books by interesting people in similar times, but both are different enough to be more than worth reading…

To try to get an understanding of submarines from the German side, there’s Memoirs, by Karl Donitz, commander of the wolf packs for Hitler. Personally, I found it very dry and not very engaging, and somewhat self-serving. Better for trying to understand the german submarine strategy would be Operation Drumbeat by historian Michael gannon, which attempts to show the impact of the German attacks on American shipping off of the east coast during 1942.

A differing view of Operation Drumbeat comes from Clay Blair, however. For those with a strong interest (and some background in submarine ops — I certainly would’t start with these books) in this field should check out his two books:

Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942 and Hitler’s U-Boat War: The Hunted, 1942-1945. A combnied 1700 pages, Blair analyzes the German Submarine operations from the start of war in 1939 to the end of German involvement. Using both US and German records, Blair pieces together the history and strategy of the German U-boats, discussing where the wolf-pack strategy came from, the impact of Operation Drumbeat and other operations, and goes into great detail (sometimes almost excruciatingly so), chronologically discussion every submarine, every mission, every battle, and where available, even down to every torpedo used. He evaluates military records to assign kills, both by and of submarines, and what each boat and captain accomplished.

The data presented can be very overwhelming — I spent over six months intermittently working through the books. The overall picture, however, is a scary one of one country (Germany), clearly unable to keep up with the production of it’s larger enemies (Britain, Russia and the US, and it’s clear that even before the US was officially in the war, that Germany understood the inevitable). While struggling to meet it’s own production goals, Germany saw the submarine corps as a key resource to starving Britain and Russia of needed supplies, and as a terror vehicle to attempt to keep the US population convinced it needs to stay out of the war.

Ultimately, it was a losing proposition. Allied losses were horrible early on, but as the allies figured out how to defense against the submarines, the wolf packs were forced to innovate, move further away from support lines and into more difficult waters. Fascinating stuff, but to be honest — you have to really be interested to make it through both books. I found myself drawn into it, however, in an almost horrified way.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Blair books was the insight just how important the Commander of the submarine was. There isn’t likely a boat in the service where the caliber of the Commander and how he interfaces with his crew is crucial: literally, life and death. A Commander has to be tactically sharp and fearless, but at the same time, cautious and not foolhardy. To be successful, a submarine has to take risks. Take the wrong risk, or guess wrong, and you have a dead submarine, and a dead crew. Succeess in that narrow band between too careful (and off to a day job) and dead requires a bit of a cowboy mentality (because once you head off on patrol, you’re on your own), but at the same time, a knowledge and gut feeling for when to draw the line and not cross it.

Living conditions in any submarine are, in a word, cramped. But living conditions in a German U-boat were horrendous. There’s no better way to bring this home than to grab a copy of Das Boot. I strongly recommend watching it in german with subtitles, it adds a different and scary aura to the film. It catches the gritty reality of the wolf pack wonderfully, and will likely leave you horribly depressed.

It might well be the best single introduction to submarine warfare there is. and it’ll guarantee you’ll never, ever understand what makes people crawl into one of those machines and go sailing off to war (or die).

On the other hand, don’t waste your time with the excrable U-571 factually bogus, dramatically biased and simply not very well done, it’s more a testiment of what happens to a good film (Das Boot) when the Hollywood Marketing machine gets done with it. You’re better off spending your time watching re-runs of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.