San Diego (part II)

Ok the Work is over, time for the fun to begin. San Diego as i have said before is beautifully but it is also a weird city. All along the streets in standard news paper boxes where you would expect to see a copy of the new york times you instead get treated to porn. Yes that is correct you and purchase quasi-porn mags on the street. The city seems like a cross between Vancouver and Mexico, although never having been to Mexico i must go by what i have seen on TV. Some people are really nice and others are crazy (won't comment on which trait comes from which city). People honk there horn for any reason especially if an ambulance is blocking there way.

Two other strange things. First off there was a diagonal cross walk by the hostel. Very nice feature. First North/south traffic, then east/west, and finally all pedestrians and you can walk anywhere when you get the lite. I definatly think it's a better way of doing things, this way pedestrians and traffic never bother each other. Second there was a hooters resteraunt that said hooters-clams on the sign. We though this was amusing.

The day the conference ended a bunch of us went to Coronado, it's a peninusla shelters the bay/harbour from the ocean. It was a nice place but pretty commercial. At the ferrie dock there where several small businesses including one that sells items from Scotland. You know all the major family crest and tartans, spotted dick in a can as well as the ever elusive coffee crisp bar ( bet you didn't know that was sottish). We waked to the ocean side where the beach was and that was a real treat. Sand stretched for many kilometers in both directions. It was the consistency of flower, so fine you barely know you where walking on it and if it got wet it became hard like concrete.

On Monday a bunch of us went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. Now generally when you are in the states and it says world famous it actually means US famous and we didn't bother to look at the rest of the world to see if there is any better which there indefinatly allways is. That is except for the Zoo, it relay is world class. We spent all day there and i saw a bunch of cool looking animals. The place is huge, we spent 5 hours to see everything, defiantly worth the trip. Animals of note where:

• Pandas: It's like there trained to look cute. The put on a show just sitting there eating their bamboo.
  
• Bearcat: if you have ever played WC 4 you would know why i had to get a picture of a bearcat.
• monkey eating Eagle: Long story behind this one, needless to say it's a bird big enough to pick monkies from the trees.
• Komodo Dragon: never though I would get to see one of these in person.
• Gorilla: apparently the previous day a person was making fun of a gorilla in the pen and it charged the glass breaking the first layer trying to get to him. DON'T PISS OFF GORILLAS!!

After the zoo we wandered around balboa park. Not sure why it's called that but it had a lot of museums in it and all the buildings where impressive, check out my photos to see some of them.

The next day I went to visit the Cabrillo National Monument, he is the guy that explored most of the southern west coast of north America. I is on a peninsula that overlooks the harbor and the rest of the city. It was a spectacular view as it is well above sea level. I went on a hike along the cliffs. You can really see the desert environment there. Lizards where constantly crossing my path and i got several good pictures of them. It was nice to get out of the city and hit some nature trails to see another side to California.

That night we went to see a baseball game. The game ran 2-0, nothing happened. At one point something was going to happen then it didn't. It was all over in less than 2 h. Im never going to watch baseball again in my life, to quote Homer.

It was more boreing than church.

The next day i awoke nice and early to catch my plane home. My only regret was that I could not find the Duty Free shop on my way home. I was planning on picking up some cheep Scotch but I seemed to be thwarted at every turn.

Im tired and don't want to write any more so bring on the question.

New Winds, Little Changes

In the last 4 to 5 weeks I have taken 3 trips. First Was my friend pauls wedding. I had a greate time but got little work done. When i got back I had to really work to get ready for the conference in San Diego I went too last week. I really did not have time to unpack from the first trip before the second. Then when I get back, a day later I headed off into Geribauldi Provincial park to hike to Elfin Lakes. It has been a busy time and much has been left undone, including a very messy room. Today I tried to fix some of that.

My web page has been finaly updated. A bigger front page, Cosmetic changes to my web comic section and 4 new photo albums have been added. Take a look when you have a chance, I like the changes.

The trip to Elfin Lakes was fun. It's an 11 km hike into the mountains. we camped overnight and did some stargazing to celebrate the World Year of Physics. Pics have been poasted. There where 7 of us and after hiking there and back i can barely walk today.

Part II to my San Diago trip should be up tomorow.

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Also 5 point to anyone who can tell me the source of the 2
new MIDI's on my web site WITHOUT looking at the
source code.

San Diego (Part I)

Ok so I attended the CAM conference over the past week.

Ah that I had access to a computer to write about my trip to San Diego. It would be so much easier but now i must write after the fact as information slowly leeks out of my brain. I will make this a 2 parter to spare you the huge post it could be.

San Diego has a climet very much like Vancouver, not nearly as hot as you would think, what makes it more of a desert is the lack of all the rain Vancouver is blessed with. A Vancouver with no rain, a paradise in anyones eyes.

I stayed downtown at the local hosteling International youth hostel. Nice place, only cost me $144 American for 6 nights. I shared a room with 10 people, and the window faced a very noisy street but i had ear plugs and after the first night was too tried from the day to have a problem sleeping.

The Conference was grate. the first day we had a bunch of student talks in the morning and then some talks on the state of education in Canada, US and Mexico. Here is a summary. Profs suck at teaching, The US is dumb and wants to be smart, Canada is small and wants to be big and Mexico is still trying to figure out this whole university thing.

The second day we had a talk from the president of the university of California. Apparently he could not come Friday because the Governator was visiting his lab. He gave a pretty good talk about his life and such, I liked it. Then we had student talks, they ran over as usual so that our 3h poster session became a 2h poster session and i needed to fit lunch in there some where. I caught lunch at place that makes wood fired pizzas, they where expensive but they make the best pizza i have ever hand in my life there. i ended up eating there 3 times over the 6 days. After an hour i went back to stand buy my poster, I talked to some people in my field about what i was doing and what they where doing and everything was good. Then more student talks, including two particularly good ones about modeling radiation dosages in patients with prostate cancer. Remember when irradiating the prostate you have to be careful with the rectum.

That night we went on a dinner cruse around the harbor. I had steak and it was tasty alghtough it didn't taste like Canadian stake. The guy i was sitting beside said they where probably corn instead of grain fed. He was form Saskatchewan so I will defer to his knowledge on that. I got some good pictures and had some good drinks. We all went out to a bar afterwards, cant remember it's name but i believe there was music and more drinking. You would be surprised how crazy Physicists can get when they drink. we wern't to crazy this particular night but we can be.

Day 3 more student talks. people really need to understand how to time a talk, when they say 10 min with questions you can't go on for 15 min. We had 9 talks to get through and i'm not sitting there if each one is 15 min then questions, it's just painfully. In the afternoon we heard carrier advice from lots of people about lots of carriers, or that is what I was hoping for. In actuality it was a bunch of American telling us not to study abroad cause it will destroy your carrier prospects and publish as many papers as possible so you can get a nice job as a researcher. After a final good buy we parted ways and my vacation began, but more on that next time.

Back In Vancouver

Well I'm back in the big city. The vacation was nice, not entirely relaxing but nice. My friends wedding went off without a problem. The ceremony was very nice and more importantly not long and drawn out. Just the right length, 20 min. The reception was excellent, well any time I get to have prim rib i'm happy but this time was extra special. I got to hang around with my old friends for a while and came to realize just how much I miss everyone from back home. That was the initial reason for crating this blog, to stay in touch with people from back home. When i first created it you had to register to post comments and as a result i found out i have several people who read but don't comment because they think they can't.

Well you can so say something!

I arrived to find that my Ncsoft prize pack had finally arrived. Along with the games listed in the previous posting about the contest i also received an auto assault hat (black with red flames) and an auto assault car kit with a flash light, tire pressure gage and pen in it. I have listened to the Mutator CD. It pretty good, instrumental dance with tribal rythmes in it. I have also started up a guild wars character.

Guild wars is a fun game, it's not as expansive as most other MMO's and it does not have all the bells and Whistles like crafting but it is free so that makes up for it. Actually for an MMO with no subscription fee it is pretty impressive, kind of like a grander version of Diablo with lots of other people.

I am going to a conference in San Diego on the 18^th. It is the Canadian American Mexican Graduate Conference (CAM). It is a conference for graduate students only. A place to meet students from all over north America and see what research is going on in different labs around the world. I am presenting a poster on my and some of my labs research in Oxides. This is mostly just preliminary findings and experimental methods, I don't have enough to present any major discoveries yet. I received a travel award from CAP (Canadian Assosication of Physicists) of $750 Canadian to pay for the trip so it is relay costing me very little. I am taking 2 days after the conference to travel and sight see, I am going to check out their world famous zoo on my last day. I haven't been to a zoo in many years.

Of MUD and Men

Many years ago in my early days of computing me and my friends used to hang around the BBS’s. Ah I can still remember the day I upgraded my 2800 baud modem to a 14.4 kbps. Those bulletin board pages would load up so fast I though I would never need anything faster in my life. To be that young again.

We Navigated the different Bulletin Boards for several reasons. First off was trying to find phone numbers to the infamous Warez boards where we could download software. It was funny we never did anything with it just downloaded it and left it on our computers. I guess it was a young geeky way of rebelling, Ooooo we where doing something illegal. I think the culmination of my hacker carrier was the downloading of a program that could hide viruses in regular files. Big deal I had no viruses I just had the program, I was really to chicken to actually keep a virus on my computer for fear of infecting my self. I was just satisfied in the knowledge that I could do it if I wanted to and left it at that.

The other thing me and my friends did on these boards was play MUD’s. Old text based BBS games. The first massively multi player games made. To be truthfully a MUD is a multi user dungeon and only described one type of game we played, one called Legend of the Red Dragon. But before I get to that lets talk about the first type of game I played, One called Barren Realms. In it you goal was to create and build a kingdom. You populated it with peasants, built an army and attacked other kingdoms (players). It was turn based with a turn being a day so you only had to connect once a day to check on your kingdom and launch attacks on your opponents. Years later I got hooked on several similar games made to be played on the Internet, once called Utopia and another called Plantation. Ah the nostalgia, I had a lot of fun with that game, it was
one of the first times I was able to play with other people in a giant world and was well before anyone of use had even heard of the Internet.

Now on to the important one the MUD, Legend of the Red Dragon. In it you created a character, fought evil monsters, welded mystical powers and all that other stuff you expect from an RPG except for the first time ever you could kill other character controlled by people. You could sent them mail, start romances and generate strong rivalries. Once a day all the BBS’s would connect to one another and exchange data so you could even attack people on different servers. You simply chose someone to attack and at midnight they would resolve the combat. I still remember the huge server wars we used to have me and my friends. Well all this old tech network gaming was brought back to my memory by a site pointed out to me on a forum I visited. Someone has ported LoRD to the Internet under the name Legend of the Green Dragon, LoRD is apparently still trademarked. So if you feel like some old time nostalgic gaming start a new character and come meet me online. Name is the Shepard Extion.

Hope to see you there.