By Choice, Man!

There and Back Again

2009-02-04T00:14:00.005-09:00

Back from Oregon, and had a great time! I was down there for work in the Hillsboro area, and spent some time visiting my friends Doug and Lori, who just opened a restaurant in Hood River.

They're doing great! I'm very happy for them. They opened the Sawtooth Roadhouse, which has great, creative, but solidly delicious food and should definitely be visited if you're in the area.

Doug and I had a great time hanging out at the North Oak Brasserie bar one night with owner Mike Caldwell for a great conversation about food ingredients, wine-making techniques and Sarah Palin, of all things. It was amazing to me how many Palin fans there are in Oregon. The discussion outside of Palin really gave me some ideas about experimenting with processes for racking, controlling sediment, etc. in future wine batches.

Upon returning, I realized the domain name for my blog had expired. Ha! Oh well, that's what you get for ignoring it for so long. Anyway, that's been fixed.

This winter has been pretty crazy. Anchorage had a bad cold snap over December/January, and I had some pipes freeze over New Year. Kitchen faucets, and then one of the heating zones. I'm so thankful nothing burst, but it took a long time and a lot of energy to keep the house warm and the pipes thawed. My latest gas bill (for a 2600 sq. ft. house) was $450. Yeah. That would be the work it took to keep the house up to temp with only a subset of the heating zones working - it meant my boiler had to keep going full time every day for a few days.

This winter has been consumed by home improvement projects focusing on insulation. I've been crawling around up in the roof and in my storage crawlspace improving the heat retention. My house is an older one, and it's amazing how energy-inefficient it is. Simple improvements are making a huge difference.

Speaking of homes, I was able to tag along with Doug while he, Lori and a general contractor did a home inspection on a prospective purchase. The house was from the '40s, I believe, and it was great to talk and learn about the house. That's really interesting stuff to me.

Right now I guess we're all a little worried about the volcano, Mt. Redoubt, blowing its top sometime soon. Ash is really annoying. I'm sure we could all do without that, but it is cool nonetheless. But yeah, here's hoping the wind blows the ash out to sea.

Studs on the Bike, Finally!

2008-11-17T00:39:00.004-09:00

Put my studded tires on the bike tonight, finally! There was swearing in the garage this eve.

We really haven't had much snow in Anchorage so far this winter, but in the last week we've got enough to convince me that it's time to get the studded tires on.

My winter tires are SO tight for my wheels. It is literally painful to put them on. Imagine me on the ground in a UFC-style battle with these things - screams, things thrown, tire levers flying at rapid speed towards my eyes. Good grief! Anyway, I don't know what you were taught when you were a kid about getting tires back on after fixing a flat, but so hard is my heart towards these things that for that last stubborn eight inches, I press the edge of my shoe against the tire bead (literally standing on the tire) and ratchet the wheel towards the ground, prying the thing around the rim. Yeah, not very gentle, but whatever - it gets the job done.

Record Collecting

2008-11-15T15:56:00.008-09:00

A year or two ago I was sitting at my kitchen table staring at my record player on the floor a few feet away, amidst a tangle of power cords and speaker wire, and decided I needed some furniture or something.

I find media cabinets very boring, whether they're boxy or curvy. I started thinking about what else I could do to get the player off the floor and keep everything a little more 'neat'.

Maybe it was the music I was listening to at the time - my mind was leaning towards something industrial but clean. Could I connect everything with pipes? Hide all the wires? I started sketching out some ideas, and the more I ran with it, the more I liked it. I could hook everything to this free-standing frame of pipes, so the speakers, record player and amplifier were all "piped" together with no cords visible anywhere.

It all worked great! I used black steel pipe and fittings and ran all the power cords and speaker wires inside the pipes.

A record player is by definition a more physically interactive piece of stereo equipment than most, and I wanted this design to keep that in mind. For instance, standing in front of it, the speakers and amplifier are all angled slightly upwards towards your ears and eyes. So, changing the record, starting it, etc, you're in the perfect position to also adjust volume, tone, etc, and get a good stereo experience from the placement of the speakers.

I originally started this post to talk about some records I recently found online, which have taken me years to find. I'll post more on this later. I haven't yet received them in the mail, so maybe I shouldn't jinx it all. :)

New Toys!

2008-09-10T20:37:00.003-08:00

I just got my new ASUS eee pc 1000h in the mail today. I really love it already. It's exactlyy what I was wanting. In fact, I'm writing this post on it right now.

The Eee PC (pronounced simply "ePC") is what's known as a "netbook". It's a small formfactor laptop meant for surfing the web, managing email, using Office, google apps, video conferencing. Basically everything except heavy lifting (don't do games, development, photoshop/premiere).

So it's really about personal convenience. No need to drag a full size laptop around anymore when your needs are simple. I was joking with a friend the other night that I probably have a Pavlovian reaction to opening up my Dell laptop - it saps my enthusiasm because I so associate it with work.

I think this little guy weighs about three pounds, or a little over. It has built in wireless - I turned it on, downloaded Chrome and Firefox, Google Desktop, and iTunes and I'm off to the races. I took a photo with my camera of the laptop, took the SD card out and popped it right into the SD slot built into the computer, and uploaded the photo above. It's really just very handy. Great for casually taking notes and writing, too.

I was a little worried about the small size of this netbook at first. My hands are probably larger than most, but I find the keyboard very comfortable. I touch type, and am not slowed down by the size at all. The display is 1024 pixels wide, so you don't really sacrifice much when it comes to web browsing. It is only 600 pixels in height, which makes Chrome a great browser for this device, since it has minimal clutter in the way of toolbars, etc. The computer also has a webcam built in, which I haven't used yet.

Well, I named my eee (which stands for Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play) pc Cerberus - the mythical three-headed dog. I think it fits well. This is a great device - no buyers remorse at all, especially because it's so cheap compared to most laptops.

End of the Summer

2008-09-07T12:41:00.006-08:00

Well, Summer's coming to an end, and I finally have time to post something new. I didn't get out kayaking much this year - one of my kayaking buddies had a baby girl in March, which of course has commanded his attention, and Doug & Lori started up a restaurant down in Hood River, Oregon, called the SawTooth Roadhouse. I'm really hoping to get down there and check it out sometime in October.

So, I've spent the summer working on my kayak, fixing the gelcoat, adding some new decklines, and doing some internal surgery on it. I'll be down in Homer kayaking this month at least.

Mark and I finally bottled the wine we started in April. Since then, we've made another couple batches. I think the first will be ready to drink in another three months. We just bottled the second batch last Friday.

In the meantime, I've been considering doing a batch of mead. Because of an unusually cold summer, I hear the Alaskan honey supply has been decimated this year, but I probably shouldn't be using premium ingredients for a first batch anyway. Mead takes a long time to age, so the sooner I start the better.

I also cut a ridge-vent into my roof this summer. Nothing says committed like taking a circular saw to your roof and cutting out a two inch gap along the length of it. This was one of two major goals I had for the house this summer, so am very happy to have it finished.

I ran my first 10-k race this summer as well. I didn't win, but I had a great time running it with a few other friends.

Well, that's it for now. More as life unfolds.

Vicissitudes

2008-06-10T00:19:00.002-08:00

This last weekend I drove over 900 miles. This covered almost all of the highways in Alaska, including the Glenn Highway, the Parks Highway, the Richardson Highway and the Seward Highway. Circumstances bringing me to Fairbanks were not ideal, but it was an occasion of family togetherness, fellowship and reflection. I saw family friends I hadn't seen in many, many years. This felt really good, and I really enjoyed spending time with my own family up North. This was the first time I remember all of us being together up there since I was a kid.

This time of the year, the sun is up 24 hours a day in that part of Alaska. The sky gets a little pink and orange, but doesn't seem to truly set before it starts getting light again. It's pretty neat to be driving at 1:30am in broad daylight. I saw five moose (plus one calf) over the course of the weekend, and about twenty rabbits alongside one section of the road. One of the moose was running at full clip alongside the road just behind a row of trees.

By chance, I ran into an old friend of mine, Jacob, at a gas station along the highway. He was driving up from Valdez to Wasilla with his girlfriend to do some mountain biking, and to visit his brother. Both of us happening to be on the road traveling, we spent some time remembering (and laughing) about a time we were driving in his Geo along the Richardson Highway, hydroplaned, and did over a 360 spinning off the road near Paxson Lodge, blowing a tire and missing a collision with a large sign by mere feet that could have dramatically changed our lives for the worse. Jeez, we were lucky back then in so many ways.

My friend Doug and I kayaked down Portage Creek again on Sunday. The water volume was higher than the previous week which made it a little more fun. Kite-boarders and wind surfers were out on Turnagain arm riding the waves.

The Subaru held up well -- a notable accomplishment after $3,000 in recent surgical repairs - struts, brakes, (devilish) electrical work, engine hoisted out, blah, blah blah. Odometer is now at 135k and I expect it will still be carrying kayaks, bikes, cargo boxes, people and gear around Alaska and Canada for at least another 70k miles.

A New Boat's Maiden Voyage!

2008-06-02T02:26:00.005-08:00

This summer has been busy! Last week I got my new creek boat in - a LiquidLogic Remix 79! For its maiden voyage, I took it down Portage Creek, about an hour South of Anchorage.

The trip consisted of a drive along Turnagain Arm, a paddle down five miles of river, and a bike ride of about six miles.

Wildlife was abundant. As I paddled down the creek, I saw a moose with a calf that was very, very young along shore. I also got to watch a beaver work its magic on a tree for about fifteen minutes. Ducks acted as guides down the stream. Aside from a bit of rain, I couldn't have asked for anything better - taking my time, smelling the fresh green forest, hanging out with the woodland aminals.

I had parked up at the lake, and launched there at the mouth of the creek. I kayaked south to a point where I had chained my bike to tree around my expected take-out point. When I had arrived at the take-out, I chained the boat to the tree and biked back up the road (about six miles) to the car.

In the photo to the left, you can see that I had started to pile some sticks over the boat to try and break up its profile when I took this picture. The color just screams that it doesn't belong in the forest, and I have to confess a little bit of paranoia about theft being so close to the highway. Anyway, the photo links to the few photos I took along the trip.

Practice at the Lake

2008-06-01T00:46:00.008-08:00

On Sunday, Dale and I went down to a local lake (Taku) to practice skills. He took the Pygmy he built last fall and I brought my shiny Remix 79.

The Pygmy is just a beautiful boat and Dale has an incredible sense of balance in it already. We went over wet exits, self rescue with a paddle float, practiced a standard T-rescue, a scoop re-entry, a "yank" rescue, and a lie-back re-entry rescue. We worked on some forward paddling techniques, sweep stroke, low bracing and sculling. I can't wait to see that boat out on the ocean.

So many of the techniques I learned from Tom, I had to hear a thousand times before what he said and what I did physically "clicked". I'm sure Dale will have a fun future meditating on the subtle forms of good paddling technique. Heck, it's a constant opportunity for improvement for me. I remember Tom saying once that before you can roll, you need to be comfortable being upside down underwater. Heh.

Talk about times I'm glad I wear a drysuit - check out this video of the long leech on the bottom of the boat:

Wikipedia says "[they] will nurture their young, providing food, transport, and protection, which is unusual behavior in an invertebrate."

First Sea Kayaking Trip of 2008

2008-05-06T16:39:00.003-08:00

In early May, Doug and I went down to Homer to spend a few days with Tom during his "Ride the Tide" class. There were thirteen people this year, more than I've ever seen out there. We worked on skills, a few rescue refreshers and during the strong tide in the lagoon, practiced some rescues and towing in strong current. A good time was had, but the cost of gas has made everything more costly. The ride down to homer (200 miles or so), the water taxi across the K-Bay and back. Wow. We'll see how this affects future trips.

New in the Garage

2008-04-30T06:00:00.005-08:00

This is a Vaper 11-amp right-angle polisher, and it's my buddy.

Two themes for today:
1) The Value of Humility
2) Right Tool for the Right Job

The Value of Humility
I like being humble. I feel encouraged and illuminated after a session of listening to an experienced hand. When they're enthusiastic about a skill which they've spent years working with, and I'm new to the game, the rewards are practical and somewhat "archtypically satisfying".
Yesterday, I was down at the local CarQuest shop talking to an older guy about finishing gelcoat, and really enjoyed soaking up the knowledge about tips, tricks, and principles. It's definitely helped me with my kayak work, and has saved me a lot of time and potential frustration.

The Right Tool for the Right Job
I don't know how many times I've learned this lesson, but I'm completely open to having more gear in the garage. Having to buy another tool is like having to open another Christmas present. Seriously, I spent a while using the random orbital sander with rubbing compound on the gelcoat of my boat hull, and didn't get anywhere. The ROS has high RPMs but not much torque. A right-angle polisher has suitably low RPMs and enough torque to keep them steady when applying downward pressure to your material. Further, the handle sticking out the side lets you apply this pressure steadily while letting the machine do most of the work. Yet another case where the right tool saves time, energy, and frustration.

Wine Update

2008-04-28T22:43:00.002-08:00

We checked the specific gravity of the wine - this tells us how far along the fermentation process is. The process started five days ago after we added the yeast.

Today, the specific gravity of Mark's amarone was at 1.012, low enough to add additional sugar to the mix. The amarone is a sweeter wine, and we must have added about three cups of sugar. In this photo, Mark is mixing the sugar into the fermenting juice. Amarone comes out with a distinctly soft, raisiny flavor and a powerful dose of alcohol. It's a bit two sweet for my taste, frankly.

The Montepulciano was about as far along in the fermentation process, but doesn't need the sugar. I'll give it a day or two more before racking it. It's coming along, pretty neat and somewhat odoriferous.

Summer? Denied!

2008-04-26T13:54:00.007-08:00

Is it possible to have a freak snowstorm in Alaska? Well, here in Anchorage we were hurtling towards summer at a breakneck pace - a week of 50-55 degree temperatures, trees starting to bud, pussy willows starting to appear (see previous post). Then BAM! 12 inches of snow on Friday. It's winter all over again. It was exciting. :)

Actually, for the past several years it seems that we have one big snowstorm in the Spring. This time it came in April. It smelled like one of the first days of Winter, which if you don't know about that, it's nice. Plus it's staying light out until about 9:30 or later, and a few of my friends remarked that it was neat to see the heavy snow in the daylight on a weekday. During the winter, if you're keeping regular office hours, it may be dark when you go to work, and dark when you come home. Drives some people nuts, but you'd be surprised how many more people I know that have more trouble with endless light than endless darkness. The light messes with their sleep schedule more, which can have a big impact on you, chemically.

Making Wine To Celebrate Summer

2008-04-24T23:33:00.003-08:00

This week we started a wine making process using kits we picked up at a local brewery supply shop. Mark selected an Amarone, and I selected a Montepulciano. This should take a few weeks of "activity" and about six months of aging. So.. get ready for some Christmas wine. :)

I posted a few photos on Picasa, and will post more as we go. Our boss lent us some of his equipment for our first run, though if this works I can't imagine not getting my own set of equipment.

The kits are made by a company called Winexpert. We've already called them up with questions, and I have to say that they're absolutely great about helping you out. They're happy to take questions and share advice. When you call, you actually get "real" people.

Having tried some of this already, I can attest to the wine being of good quality. Is it comparable to the best Duckhorn Merlot? Not really. Is it better than Australian kangaroo-themed wine? Absolutely and by far. What I've had is good stuff, so as long as we don't mess it up, we should have about 12 gallons of good wine at the end of this for the cost of our time and about $260. That works out to about $4.50 a bottle, which is a killer deal.

The wine is supposed to be in good shape when aged for six months, and will improve up to three years. We'll see how that goes. Right now the wine is sitting in a room fermenting. Nice!

Monopod Improvement

2008-04-24T10:19:00.005-08:00

Philip has posted a few images of the kayak camera monopod he made.

This is really awesome! Thanks for crediting my post on the idea, Phil, but you made some great modifications - adding lanyards to connect the monopod to the boat, and a detachable lanyard to connect the camera to the monopod. Very good improvements!! I've actually lost my camera overboard before, but was very lucky in that it happened close to shore during high tide. :)

Last summer I was connecting my camera with a lanyard to the rigging of my boat, but I like your idea far better and will probably implement this summer.

Also of note is that Phil is using a Discover XL (yay!) from Northwest Kayaks. This is the same boat I (ab)use, so that was neat to see. He has a lot of other modifications documented on his flickr site including a solar panel kit. Notably, to accomodate mounting a sail, he had installed the Scotty Flush Mount for the monopod perpendicular to my arrangement to handle this particular type of stress. This is a great idea. I haven't ever tried putting a sail on the boat, but I'm sure it's fun.

Objectively, I think this is the most versitile way to install the mount, and have to confess that I obsessed over this decision for a little while when putting mine in. Were I to do it over, I might go with this functional configuration.

Kayak Gelcoat Repair

2008-04-23T22:51:00.004-08:00

I've been spending the month of April doing some repair work on the hull of my kayak. I've uploaded some photos to a Picasa album, and will add comments on most of them regarding the process and lessons learned. This is a work in progress, and I will be updating until complete.

Some of the challenges of doing this in April include the temperature - 40 degrees during the day - which makes the curing process a little harder.

Summer is Approaching

2008-04-23T22:12:00.006-08:00

I've been spending time in the pool doing skills refinement for the past few months with Alaska Kayak School. Very Nice! It's really advantageous to be practicing the basics over and over with a BCU coach. At the last session, a lot of what my coach has been telling me over and over again finally made it into muscle memory. It's very much an "ah-ha" type of moment when a series of motions gels in a new, elegant, 'correct' way.

This Sunday I'll be spending another four hours in the pool, and then during the first weekend in May, I'll be going on my first camping trip of the summer. Can't wait - It'll be a bit cold, and I'll have to spend next week washing/prepping all my gear.

I did get Gordon Brown's book, Sea Kayak: A Manual For Intermediate & Advanced Sea Kayakers, a couple months ago. Very good book - there's a lot of knowledge and experience packed into the book, covering everything from paddling technique to navigation, weather, and reading the water.

Beer-Battered Halibut

2008-02-04T23:56:00.001-09:00

On Sunday, I fried up some great halibut caught last Spring. I made a pretty simple batter out of Newcastle Brown Ale, with some chili powder and paprika.

I didn't have any tartar sauce so made up some myself. This was a little awkward as I didn't have any mayonnaise. I was thinking about making some mayonnaise up really quick, but decided this was starting to get annoying. I did have Miracle Whip, after all. Wait- it gets worse!

I didn't have any pickle relish, or onions. Well, I was about to use Branston Pickle until the last minute I remembered I had some sweet gherkins. I diced these up with some green onion. I think Miracle Whip is basically mayonnaise with vinegar, and it took a while to mellow out that wangy taste. I did a reasonably good job by just stirring in more lemon juice. This muted out the miracle whip taste, and in the end it worked as a halfway respectable tartar sauce.

This tasted great! Halibut is easy to overcook when frying, so if you make sure the fish is completely thawed before frying you'll be doing yourself a favor. We really enjoyed the final product.

2008-01-19T14:04:00.001-09:00

I've posted three videos that were taken this summer during my trip from Whittier to Seward, Alaska. This was the first trip on which I had used the monopod / camera mount I built for my sea kayak. This was a proof of concept essentially, and for me it demonstrated the value I had hoped to get out of using a boat-mounted monopod.

In the past, I had found that it was pretty difficult to take video of some of the more interesting moments in sea kayaking. When the going starts to get threatening, few people in their right mind are willing to let go of their paddle to hold a camera. This is what drove my desire to get the camera mount installed on the kayak.

The three videos I posted are some of the more interesting ones from the trip. As mentioned in other posts, my lessons learned from this proof of concept were that the monopod as built did not threaten my ability to paddle aggressively or brace effectively. In hindsight, I could have used it in more threatening situations comfortably. Also, video takes a lot of memory, which is why I would recommend using a waterproof camera like the Optio W30 which can make use of high capacity SDHC cards.

My approach to video will probably similar to my approach to photos - take a bunch, and a few will be good. Hopefully in 2008 I'll be able to take a lot of video, piece scenes of each together and have something really good to show for it.

Learning is fun!

2008-01-16T22:14:00.001-09:00

Learning is fun, especially when your school is on the water. Here are a few photos of a sunset during a sea kayak trip two summers ago in Halibut Cove, outside Homer, Alaska.
Tom Pogson, who runs Alaska Kayak School, is the closest thing I have to a kayaking sensei. We worked in the tidal rips, practiced edging, paddling refinement, navigation and rescues. We all had a very fun time.
This was in May of 2006, and there was still frost appearing on the roof of my tent in the morning. It was cold, and I was thankful that I had brought a sock for my sleeping bag.
Needless to say, we wore some heavy fleece under the drysuit. This kept us nice and warm while trying to rodeo back into a kayak in 51-degree water. This last summer, we were out again on a similar trip and practiced rescues in fast current. Skills refinement and practicing rescues are activites that you can never be too proud to engage in.

Powerline Pass by Mountain Bike

2008-01-15T01:10:00.000-09:00

I'm posting links to a few albums from the summer. This one is from a bike trip my friend Josh and I took over Powerline Pass. This trail runs from Anchorage to Indian. It's an easy trail for most of the trip, with a wicked climb approaching the pass and then a super-steep downhill switchback coming down the other side.

It's a really beautiful trip - really enjoyable for a sunny weekend afternoon. It basically ends at a bar in Indian where you can get a burger and a beer while waiting for a friend to come pick you up. Alternatively, I guess you could ride the highway back to town, but with the traffic and exhaust, that's not my cup of tea.

During this trip, Josh's tire blew out, and I dented my wheel a bit. That was
probably a function of us goofing off in some rock fields. Josh had an extra tube, so it wasn't serious. Reminds one to bring appropriate gear though..

Pie-eyed

2008-01-14T00:50:00.000-09:00

Tonight was Pie night. We made an awesome lemon meringue pie, which is probably my favorite kind of pie. Making the prebaked crust resulted in a do-over, but aside from a couple lost hours, it all went well. Pie is delish.

Gordon Brown's New Book

2008-01-04T01:46:00.001-09:00

My friend told me about Gordon Brown's book, Sea Kayak: A Manual for Intermediate and Advanced Sea Kayakers, today. This was published about a year ago, but it's all new to me. Brown is a level 5 BCU coach living in Scotland - that's kinda like Alaska. heh. Seriously, I'm expecting a great read here.

I've ordered a copy, so considering the super-cheap shipping I paid for, I may get my paws on it late next week. The cover looks cool, I'm really eager to see what's inside!

Geoffrey Canada

2008-01-02T23:32:00.000-09:00

This link will shortly have the video of Charlie Rose's conversation with Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone. This was a great conversation about education in America, one of the best conversations we're likely to hear in the public forum on education in the next year, sad as I am to say that. This is certainly one of Charlie Rose's best interviews in a long time.

Along with Joel Kline's interview, you can sit back and hear a double-header of refreshing thought on American education. If we're lucky, you and I will elect a president that will take Mr. Canada's and Mr. Kline's points to heart.

Speaking of good conversations, another one was on TV this week that was also very thought-provoking. I can't find a link to it anywhere on the Internet, but I'm speaking of the interview with Dr. Obery Hendricks on Tony Brown's Journal.

Dr. Hendricks wrote a book entitled The Politics of Jesus. The book explores the historic social context of Jesus' message, and argues that it is at once misinterpreted by the dominant Christian institutions and especially relevant today. I have ordered a copy at my local B&N store, and look forward to reading it. I'm not sure I'll agree with everything he's writing, but I'm anxious to read what sounds like a very compelling book.

Week at the Movies

2008-01-02T01:54:00.001-09:00

I've seen a few movies in the last couple weeks. Let's take 'em from the top:

I Am Legend
This was a good movie, especially if you go with a friend who appreciates a good vampire/Armageddon flick. However, the real value of this movie is that it may convince you to read the book by the same name. Let me tell you: the book is of course better, more profound in plot, denouement, and climax than the movie, and has a completely different ending. The movie is a pretty lame injustice by comparison.

Charlie Wilson's War
Awesome movie. Go see. Ignoring the fact that I'm always happy to see Philip Seymour Hoffman getting more work, this is a relevant film, an exciting movie, and I wanted it to be longer than it was. 'nuff said. I'm almost tempted to read the book by the same name, but not quite.

Juno
Great movie, destined to be a classic in the spirit of Ghost World, Napoleon Dynamite, and Little Miss Sunshine. Bonus points for use of the Mott the Hoople song, All the Young Dudes. This is a great comedy/drama to watch with friends.

The Darjeeling Limited
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is easily one of my favorite movies. Its calm humor just leaves me in stitches. The Darjeeling Limited is a very different sort of movie, but you can tell the artist behind it is the same. The themes of parent-child relationships, alienation, and actualization remain in the crosshairs here, and the comedy style is like more food from the same great restaurant. However, while Life Aquatic was a spoof of sorts, The Darjeeling Limited is a drama and stands completely on its own. The characters are rich, the soundtrack is another wonder, the dialog and humor are in touch. Life Aquatic may have sent you away snickering, and this movie will send you away reflecting.

That's about it. Next movie I'm looking forward to: Cloverfield

Camera for Kayaking

2008-01-02T00:19:00.001-09:00

Okay, Christmas has come and gone, but I recently saw that Pentax has come out with an update to what had become my favorite camera for kayaking: the Pentax Optio W30.

These little cameras are great for the kayaker. They're small, are waterproof, and shoot very decent pictures. I really became convinced of their quality this summer - the manufacturer's recommendations for the W10 state 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes. I happened to drop my w10 overboard near shore during an 18-foot tide. About four hours later, I found my camera about twelve feet below the high-tide mark and it powered right up with a happy chirp and took a photo. This was in Alaskan waters in May, mind you.

The one gripe I have about this camera is that the controls are exceedingly difficult to operate if you have gloves on (even low profile ones such as the NRS Hydroskins).

I may just have to buy this, or the probably soon to be released W40 (The E,M and A40s are already out). The W30 doesn't have a faster shutter speed than the W10, but it does support higher ISO sensitivities and has a higher resolution ccd. Also, it supports SDHC cards, so it will support 8GB+ cards. This is important for video. These cameras are great for video, btw, as they shoot continuously until the card runs dry.