New York, New York

Greetings from Manhattan. It's my first trip back since a 7th grade field trip in 1983, and it's Christina's first visit. (Boy, they don't make field trips like they used to, do they?) Yesterday, we dropped the animals off at the kennel, and then drove up to the Philly area to have lunch with our friends Cheryl and Jon, and their son Noah. Then we drove up to Piscataway, where we spent last night.

This morning we got up and headed to Liberty State Park in New Jersey, where we caught the ferry to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Ellis Island was OK, but since neither of us felt a real personal connection, we cut short the audio tour when it started to get repetitive and headed to Liberty Island. The one good thing I can say about the weather is that the rain kept things from being too crowded. That's the Statue of Liberty there -- really it is.
There's Christina with the original torch.

After touring the statue -- another World Heritage Site off (or on) our list -- we parked the car at a PATH station, took the train into Manhattan, and caught a cab to our hotel. Our hotel is really nice -- it was completely renovated last year. We've got a flat-screen TV, a mini-fridge...all the mod cons. After a little relaxation, we headed out for some sight-seeing and dinner. There's Christina in Times Square...

...and there she is after our dinner at the Carnegie Deli. She was quite full after half a sandwich...I made a pig of myself and finished mine off. I won't need to eat for days.

On our walk back to the hotel, we saw various NYC icons like the Ed Sullivan Theater, where David Letterman tapes his show.

Renovations

We (and by we I mean mostly Christina) have done a lot of work on the house this year. Now we're at the point where we can relax and enjoy it. See below pictures of our living room and dining room.


I'm reclining in that chair right now!

Hey from the UK

I've flown into London a bunch of times (I have 5 Heathrow stamps in my not-yet 3-year-old passport), but every other time it's been on a transatlantic flight. My flight from Cologne yesterday was on a small plane (regional jet) which came into Heathrow nice and low (it also came in from the East). So we were treated to a nice view of London, which I realized as soon as I heard the camera (or phone or Palm or whatever) of the guy behind me taking pictures. I took a couple myself -- this is what I think is a nice view of the Thames from the north. Can you spot any landmarks?



I can! There, that's the London Eye.

Pictures from a Go Game

Here are some pictures from the Cherry Blossom Tournament taken by my third opponent. (I'm playing black here.)


My opening wasn't too bad...because of my bad experiences having groups killed in the first two games, I took a conservative approach, opting for enclosures rather than approaching my opponent's corners. In general, this is not a bad approach, but in retrospect this was a mistake for me. It's not the way I usually play, so I ended up in an unfamiliar configuration.

I think the second picture shows where things started to go wrong. I haven't really staked out any additional territory. I have broken up White's territory on the left, and I'm starting to make some territory on the top, but in the mean time, White has made some solid territory on the left.

The third picture shows that I have made some territory along the bottom, but not as much as White did on the right.

In the fourth picture, I've conceded too much of the right to White. He's built up a solid territory there that's going to prove the difference in the game.

The fifth picture shows an abortive invasion I made on the right, but it was really too late at this point.

In the end, White had about 80 points on the right, which is about as much as I had in all of my territory combined. We didn't even bother to count the final score. Looking back, I am not as displeased as I was at the time. I did a few nice things in the game. I like the way I broke up the territory on the left, and I did a decent job of building territory -- just not enough.

Final Tally

Well, the NCAA tourney is over, and it's time for one final evaluation of my picks. I ended up with 87 points out of a possible 168, good for #34,429 in the Yahoo! tournament picks. That's the 97% percentile...surprising me by improving from last weekend. I guess picking UCLA to lose the championship game was worth a lot. Too bad I didn't join a real pool this year...

A Splash of Cologne

Greetings from Cologne (or Köln, if you prefer). My flight got in late yesterday, so I didn't have as much time for sightseeing as I had hoped. My main goal was to see the Cologne Cathedral, a World Heritage Site. The parts that you have to pay to see were open until 6 pm yesterday, so I headed over there with about 2 hours to spare. Once I got there, I realized that these parts (the tower and treasury) weren't the impressive parts, and I had no great interest in them. The interior of the cathedral itself was quite impressive, but I couldn't wander around because there were services going on. I'll probably try to stop by today or tomorrow. The cathedral was built to house the bones of the Three Magi. It was started in 1248, but not completed until 1880. Unlike other cathedrals that took a long time to build, they managed to stick to the original Gothic plan.



I sat outside the Cathedral and enjoyed some falafel before going in.





From the conference reception, the cathedral is the dominant sight in the city. Unfortunately, someone decided to build an ugly building in front of it. The Cathedral is the one major pre-war structure. Allegedly, Allied bombers spared it so they could use it as a landmark to find the city. I've heard that story about other sights in other cities that were spared bombing, so I'm a little built skeptical.

How Do I Rate?

Greetings from Germany! It's my first time here (besides the Frankfurt airport) since '72. I had hoped to post some pictures, but while I brought my camera to the Internet cafe, I appear to have left the cord back in the hotel room. Sigh. Hopefully I'll remember to download the pictures to the laptop tonight so I can upload them tomorrow.

Recently, I told you of my (mis)adventures in the Cherry Blossom Go Tournament, which I entered as a 15 kyu. I said, "My understanding of the ratings is that I will be bumped down from 15 kyu to something worse...17?" Well, the new ratings are out and guess what -- I'm a 17 kyu (closer to 18 than 16). To a certain extent these ratings are nonsensical -- since I lost all my games (and since the score of the game doesn't get reported), for all the rating system knows, I'm really a 35 kyu who resigned all my games. But it takes the (reasonable) assumption that people are probably somewhere near their first guess. So "17 kyu" is the answer to the question of, "What's the most likely rating of someone who enters as a 15 kyu and loses all of his games?" So I have a starting point for next month's tournament, which I hope to enter.

Final Four

Well, well, well. My picks are doing better than I expected. Going into the Final Four, I'm in the 92nd percentile on the Yahoo! picks. My high water mark was actually after Saturday's games, when I was in the 95th percentile. Going into Sunday's games, I had teams alive in both games -- the favorites, in fact. Oh, well. I'm probably only going to fall further unless GMU beats UCLA in the title game. But I feel pretty good, overall. I'll have to check from Germany to see what happens, though...my flight takes off about 20 minutes before tip-off. Maybe the captain will put the game on Channel 9.

Watching the Wheels

My father has a letter to the editor in today's Arizona Daily Star.

Cherry Bomb

All the time I've lived in this area, I had never been to the Cherry Blossom Festival...until Saturday. I still haven't gone to see the cherry blossoms, however. As mentioned previously, I signed up for a go tournament -- the Cherry Blossom Tournament.

After discussions with players at the local club, I entered as a 15 kyu. This seemed a little bit ambitious, as I am only a 21 kyu online. Nevertheless, it seemed better to enter at a better ranking than I deserved, and lose all my games than enter at too weak of a rating and consequently take home a prize.

Well, good thing I felt that way, because I ended the day 0-4. 15 kyu was too ambitious, but not incredibly so. In fact, it looked like I won the last game by 2 points until I reminded my opponent that she got 7.5 points komi (compensation), so she won by 5.5. If I had entered as a 16 kyu, she would have only gotten 0.5 komi, so I would have won by 1.5. So 16 kyu would have had me as 1-3, and 17 kyu would have given me multi-stone handicaps against the same players (or no handicap against weaker players)...

My understanding of the ratings is that I will be bumped down from 15 kyu to something worse...17? I don't know. So I may enter a tournament in May at that level and try to bring my rating back up again. I figure eventually I'll find my level, then each game should be at least an even proposition...better than that if I'm improving. So I guess I'll just wait a week or two for the results to post and see where my ranking ends up.

How'm I doin'?

Well, I posted my tourney picks the other day. After the first weekend, let's evaluate. How am I doing? Surprisingly well, I think.

The easiest gauge of how I'm doing is versus other people picking games at Yahoo! In their Pick 'Em stats, I am in the 76th percentile. That's the top quartile!

I suffered a major setback when Iowa, one of my Final Four picks, went out in the first round, but other than that did decently. I'm doing the best in the Minneapolis bracket, where I picked 10 out of 12 games correctly, including Georgetown's upset of Ohio State. I think I only picked 2 other upsets correctly.

But what matters is that I'm in decent shape going forward. I have a maximum possible points of 155/192. Looking at the top 3 on Yahoo! right now, they have 157, 153 and 181. (None of them had George Mason, either.) So I could be right up there at the end. Probably not, but we'll see.

By the way, one of the top Yahoo! pick sets is entitled, "Jay Hawks? More Like Dumb Hawks". Earlier in the weekend, this was, "Jay Hawks? More Like Gay Hawks", which I believe was against Yahoo!'s terms and conditions. I wonder if Yahoo! changed it themselves, made the user change it, or whether the user just wised up.

Greetings from South Carolina

I'm currently in the Hampton Inn Greenville/Travelers Rest which features this sign:

I'm down here for my annual visit to the SERMON conference. This year it's being held at Furman University. Today after the talks, I walked around the Furman Lake, which is really quite lovely.

Bracketology.

Read 'em and weep.

Go: February in Review

Wow...I haven't been posting much lately. In fact, my "January in Review" post was only two posts ago.

Anyway, despite a brief drop into 25 kyu territory, I ended the month basically up 2 kyu, at 22 kyu. This is pretty much my all-time high, so yay for me.

Highlights of the month were a victory over an American 19-kyu (with me getting 5 stones), a victory over Ben -- then 25 kyu, giving 2 stones, and a victory over a British 24-kyu player in an even game. The last victory was when my opponent ran out of time, but I felt I was getting the better of the game.

Lowlights were losses to a pair of Germans (on the same day)...one a 16 kyu who beat me despite giving me 7 stones, and one a 25 kyu who beat me with my giving a 2-stone handicap.

I dropped to 0-5 in the Dragon Tourney 2006 with a loss in an even game to a Dutch 19-kyu player. (I was actually 0-4 at the end of January, not 0-3 as I reported.) That leaves 3 games to go. Two of my opponents haven't moved in over a month, which is annoying. The other game should finish up pretty soon.

For the month, I was 9-5 in 19x19 games. I was 8-8 in 13x13 games and 0-1 in my lone 9x9 game.

In the real world, I've signed up for a tournament in a couple of weeks -- but it looks like I should save that for a later post.

Call Me Diamond Jon?

In my continuing quest to achieve "elite" status with Hilton, I finally made it to diamond level. This has a few advantages over my previous gold level. I get a 50% bonus on points (as opposed to 25%), better treatment at European Hiltons (so I hear), and perhaps most importantly, no blackout dates on award stays.

Hilton recently implemented a "rolling" qualification method for their elite levels. It boils down to a requirement of posting 60 or more nights in 13 months. A key here is the word "posting." If you stay on the last day of a month, your stay won't post until the following month. But because Hilton gives you 13 months instead of 12, you can't really complain to them.

I ended up posting 60 nights between February 2005 and this month. I added it up, and that comes from 19 nights in the UK, 14 nights in San Diego, 10 nights in Minnesota, 6 nights in Paris, 6 nights in San Juan, 2 nights in South Carolina, and one night each in Louisiana, New York, and Maryland.

Maryland? Yes, Maryland. I knew I needed one last night to qualify for Diamond, so last weekend, Ben, Martin and I braved the snowstorm for an evening of gaming at the Embassy Suites BWI. A week later, the stay posted, and voila, I was diamond.

I don't expect to see much difference in upcoming stays -- the 50% point bonus will be nice, but right now I've got Hilton points coming out of my ears. The lack of blackout dates will be very handy when Christina and I plan our next vacation -- I will just need to secure free plane tickets, and then away we go. And I'm looking forward to seeing if the new status scores me some upgrades when I go to Europe in April.

Go: January in Review

To pace myself on my Go updates, and because the rating graphs naturally break into month, I'm switching to monthly updates of my Go ranking. I started January in the low 22 kyu range, briefly dropped to 25 kyu, before bouncing back to low 23 kyu. Actually, that bounceback happened on Feb. 1, so I'm not sure how this graph is drawn. Not counting that last win, I was 8-12 in rated games in January, which accounted for the rating drop. My best two wins were a very close win on an even game versus a French 21-kyu player, and a 9-handicap game versus an American 13-kyu player. The 13-kyu player actually resigned the game after making a mistake, but suggested I was playing much better than my rank. Of course, that would not explain my worst loss, an even game versus a Belgian 25-kyu.

I'm 0-3 in the Dragon Tourney, which is unfortunate. I hope not to get completely shut out, which I think would be good, given that I am the lowest ranked player in my pool.

All in all, the drop of a kyu or so in January wasn't too bad. I had climbed fairly rapidly at the end of last year, and I'm happy to see I'm still hanging out in the low twenties. My goal is to maintain this and make a push for the teens (aka DDK). Once that happens, I get to change my description for "beginner" to "advanced beginner".

I have a bunch of Go books to read right now that look really helpful. I've discovered, however, that when I'm casting about for something to read, it's easier to pick up a science fiction book than one of the Go books, which are almost like textbooks. So I'll probably slow down on the science fiction and turn more to the Go books.

Comment

Well, a couple of weeks after I turned off comments on new posts, I received my first comment in quite some time. This has inspired me to return comments, at least for now. I have the comments set up as moderated, so I shouldn't have the problems I had before with spam or obscenities.

Live from Del Mar

Christina has a new post describing our trip-in-progress.

The F-Car

Greetings from San Diego, where we're driving around in a surprisingly nice Ford Fusion. The Ford Fusion runs really quietly, has leather seats, and even comes with a V-6. But that's not the car that inspired this post.

The car in question was some sort of Pontiac. When Avis dropped us off at our car (no going to the counter for me!), I went to the driver's side to locate the trunk release. I noticed a rather significant scratch running along most of the length of the car. My first thought was to make sure the damage was noted on the rental agreement. My second thought was, "Hey, that's a word..." The F-word, in fact.

We scooted to the counter and indicated that I wasn't looking to make quite so bold of a statement when I showed up for the meetings tomorrow. The counter guy was very shocked and expressed his opinion that people who damage cars should be treated like horse thieves. OK. Anyway, I have no complaints with the car we ended up with. In past years, I've gotten a convertible, but it's a little cold for it this time of year. The sun roof does just as well.

NTN update

It's been almost two years since I gave an NTN update. Last time I checked, I was at #18 on the Santa Fe Cafe's National Trivia Network rankings.

Now I'm up to #17, but it's not through playing a lot. More likely, someone ahead of me switched to another location. I played for the first time in a while last Sunday at Joe Senser's in Bloomington. I did pretty well, even making it into that site's top 10 for the month.

No Comment

I've turned off comments on this blog. I set them up a year and a half ago and only received a handful -- mostly spam or anonymous obnoxious comments. I set the comments as moderated to discourage the latter, but recently I have received no comments. It clutters up the look of the blog a little bit, so bye-bye comments.

In general, if you have anything to say to me, feel free to e-mail me. I'm happy to post feedback, but it appears to be an unusual enough event to merit perhaps its own post.

Mahabalipuram

I promised last month to share my pictures from Mahabalipuram in India. Here ya go.

The first picture is from a set of monuments known as "Five Rathas". It was worth the price of admission ($5 for foreigners) to get away from the very agressive vendors trying to sell stone carvings, postcards and copies of the Kama Sutra ("very wicky-wicky", one assured me).



The second set of monuments we saw was the "Shore Temple". I especially liked this one for its setting on the Indian Ocean.



The final set included the "Descent of the Ganges", which is apparently the world's largest bas-relief. Like all of these stone carvings, it dates from approximately the seventh century AD.



Near the Descent of the Ganges is a rock known as "Butterball." It was placed there by Krishna as a prank.

Nebula update

When I last checked in with my Nebula-reading project, I had read 22 out of 41 novels. On our recent trip to Arizona, I read 2 more.

1977: Gateway

This first book in the Heechee series is one of the best that I've read recently. The structure of the book alternates between chapters in which the protagonist, older, looks back on his adventures in conversations with a robot psychiatrist and chapters in which he recounts the adventures themselves. Hmm, which chapters do you think work better?

Where Pohl shines in this novel is the unique world he has created. In the next century or two, humankind has discovered the remains of an ancient civilization -- the Heechee. Furthermore, we have discovered their interstellar, faster-than-light spaceships -- but we don't really know how to steer them. So "prospectors" go out on missions to unknown, and likely deadly, destinations in search of Heechee technology.

Good stuff!

1995: The Terminal Experiment

Reading Robert J. Sawyer's other work helped convince me of problems with the Hugo process. Since I was happier with the Nebulas I was surprised to see one of his novels on this list.

I will give the Nebulas this -- they gave the award to a 2-star book rather than a 1-star one. But, man, this guy can't write as well as he thinks he can.

"Pseudo was about fifty, and as slim as the Leafs' chances in the Stanley Cup."

Not so good stuff.

Go Up, Go Down

After a shaky start, my December go experience turned out rather well. I finished 18 more games in the rest of December -- I'll skip the game-by-game recap. I was 14-4, although two of the wins were in unrated games and two were in games that didn't count because the opponent never showed back up after the first 4 stones were placed.
So 10-4 in rated games was enough to send me briefly to the heights of 22 kyu.



I am, however, 2-4 in 2006, with all the games rated. These losses included three that should have been close to even for a 25kyu player. As a result, I'm now hanging on the upper edges of 25 kyu myself.

The new year also brought the start of Dragon Tourney 2006, an on-line tournament that I had forgotten I signed up for. I'm the lowest rated player in my bracket. It's a reduced-handicap tournament, so I find myself at a little bit of a disadvantage in most of the games. (Conversely, losses will affect my rating less and wins more.)

I brought some go books out here to Arizona to read on vacation, but I've mostly been sticking with science fiction so far. I guess if I want to get back to 22 kyu, I should probably crack the books open.

Wiki Wiki Spoils the Tzatziki

I want to say a few words about the Wikipedia phenomenon, but first a few words about the difficulty of coming up with an good, original blog post title. (Here, clearly, I went for original over good.)

My first thought when writing about Wikipedia and the whole wiki phenomenon was to make a reference to the Will Smith version of the song "Wild Wild West", in which he repeats something which sounds a lot like "Wiki Wiki Wild." However, googling "Wiki Wiki Wild" shows me quite a number of people have thought of that reference before.

Instead, I went for the obscure. Learning that wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for "quick", I thought of a sign I had seen on my ride from the Chennai airport to my hotel.



Hurry, quick, same thing -- right? I only needed a food word to rhyme with wiki. After a while, I came up with tzatziki. See -- this blogging thing isn't as easy as you might think.

Anyway, I've recently become interested in the 'wiki' phenomenon. For those of you not familiar with it, the basic idea is a web site that anybody can edit. The most well-known one is Wikipedia, which is an on-line encyclopedia. There are other, similar, sites, such as Wikinews. The one that intrigues me the most is Wikitravel. I love travel guidebooks, but I think there's a lot to be said for the energy of web surfers in keeping things up-to-date and in detailing obscure locations.

The main beef I have with the wiki sites is that anybody can edit it. You don't generally even need an account. So if you visited the site between 6:17 and 6:19 PM on January 3rd, you saw this version of the page, which proclaimed, "He is a complete asshat."

The fact that a quick-reacting wikipedian reverted to a previous version in 2 minutes is good evidence for why Wikipedia works better than I thought it would. On the other hand, contributing to Wikipedia seems to involve a lot of patrolling for vandalism.

Because I want to learn about this new "technology", I've been playing around with Wikipedia and Wikitravel. I think the latter will hold my interest more in the long term. I have had some fun updating Wikipedia's Redskins pages, but I am not too interested in disputes about whether or not "Coach Janky Spanky" is "encycolopedic".

I'm going to try adding my 2006 travel experiences to Wikitravel. For example, last night we went to Nonna Maria's Pizza for dinner to celebrate my mother's birthday, and I added that restaurant to the skeletal Arizona page. Eventually, there may be a more specific page to move that to.

I'll probably have more to say about the wiki phenomenon in coming weeks.

World of Wonders

An organization called "The New 7 Wonders Foundation" has produced a "short list" of 21 candidates for a new list of seven wonders of the world. They're taking votes this year, and will announce the winners on January 1, 1997. From that list, here are my seven choices. I'm not wedded to these, but I gave it a little bit of thought.

• Christ Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
  
• Colosseum, Rome
  
• Great Wall, China
  
• Pyramids, Giza
  
• Statue of Liberty, New York
  
• Stonehenge, England
  
• Taj Mahal, India
  

I tried to stay away from ruins that are mostly interesting just because they're "ruins." Still, four of these sites are ruins. Stonehenge looks back to some of the earliest civilization. The Pyramids are a classic...I figure if you can survive from the original list, you deserve to stay on. The Colosseum and the Great Wall serve as representatives of two of the great civilizations of ancient times. In more modern times, the Taj Mahal is a stunning piece of architecture that combines Muslim and Hindu influences. Finally, the Statue of Liberty and Christ Redeemer capture what we do these days: build really big things to represent ideas -- in this case, freedom and religion, two ideas that have been at the center of human thought the past few decades.

What are your top 7? Feel free to comment below.

And I feel compelled to mention I've only seen 4 of the 21 candidates, which probably does not leave me 100% qualified to judge.

Tips for successful blogging

My friend Martin has started up his own blog recently, and in his honor, I offer the following tip:

1. If you don't have anything to blog about, link to somebody else's blog.

More tips as events warrant.

This Week in Go: A Series of Unfortunate Events

My prediction last week that my Go rating would drop to 25 kyu before it hit 23 kyu came to pass. (Well at least the part about 25 kyu.) After I typed that, I lost six games in a row, for a total losing streak of seven. (The graph above represents the month of December to date.)

I started out by losing an even game to an American 21 kyu player. Because of the difference in rating, that didn't hurt me too much. Then I lost a 5-handicap game to a Dutch 15-kyu player. The handicap was not enough to account for the difference in ratings, so again, I lost less than 20% of a kyu. I dropped a 13x13 game to Ben. The handicap I had given him (based on our ratings at the time the game started) was probably too high -- I'm not that much better than him. The smaller board kept the ratings bleeding to a minimum.

I had started a bunch of games when I headed to India -- I needed something to pass the time. The first of those that finished was an even game I lost to a Swedish 21-kyu player. Again, the rating difference kept the loss to 20% of a kyu. The next loss -- a 3-handicap game to Ben -- hurt the most. I was up by around 50 points near the end of the game. If I had just played r10 with move 202 (instead of passing), I would have won easily. Instead, I lost by 28. Sigh. I then lost again to the aforementioned American 21 kyu (now a 20 kyu). The widening gap led to a loss of only 7% of a kyu for this even game.

The second "Indian game" that concluded was a 3-handicap game against a Japanese 27 kyu. At this point, the ratings difference was less than 2 kyu -- yet I had given him 3 stones. Thanks to a late invasion, I won by only 2 points! My reward was a whopping 58% of a kyu -- that uptick you see at the end of the graph.

My experience represents a nice feature of the rating system. In some sense, it's self-correcting. A 20 kyu who loses 10 even games to 20 kyu won't find himself dropped by the same amount each time. After a while, he'll drop to 21 kyu, 22 kyu, and the rating system will see these as reasonable losses and punish him less.

I have a few upcoming games I know I will win, and a few I know I will lose...so I don't know what to expect, except more volatility!

This week in Nebulas

Last week, I told you I had read 19 Nebula award-winning novels. It turns out that wasn't actually accurate, but I am now up to 22. Here are the additions to my list.

1974: The Dispossessed

The Dispossessed represents some of the best of what this Nebula project has given me -- the opportunity to read science fiction books that address deeper themes than run-of-the-mill airport fiction.

The novel's protagonist, a physicist, lives in an almost 200-year-old anarchist society that has been exiled to a planet's moon. The moon is a harsh society, but the anarchists have developed cooperative methods which allow them to survive, but not thrive. The physicist finds that even anarchistic societies find ways of wielding power, and he eventually finds himself unable to pursue his groundbreaking work on his home world. He becomes the first anarchist to leave for the main planet, where he is welcomed with open arms. But nothing is clear-cut in this novel, and he eventually becomes suspicious of his hosts' motives.

Le Guin, in fact, uses the different societies to examine the ambiguities and compromises inherent in any political system. The novel's subtitle is "An Ambiguous Utopia," and it's even ambiguous to which society this refers. Furthermore, I was pleased that none of it came across as thinly-veiled allegory for Earth societies, although the Cold War themes seemed stronger as the book progressed.

1980: Timescape

Sometimes, however, the Nebula project has led me to above-average, if ultimately forgettable fiction, like Timescape. How do I know that it is forgettable? I started reading this without remembering that I had read it before. Unfortunately, by that time, all of my other books were in my luggage, which I had left at my hotel after checking out (my flight home wasn't scheduled to leave until after 1 in the morning). So I re-read it. Until very late in the book, I didn't remember how it turned out. I blame that -- well, in addition to a poor long-term memory -- on a twist ending that doesn't really flow from the rest of the book.

1988: Falling Free

I enjoyed Falling Free more than Timescape, but it is probably closer to that in terms of weight than The Dispossessed. It's the story of some genetically-engineered humans with arms where their legs should be, and the corporation that treats them like disposable property. They, of course, have an inevitable fight for freedom, which is kind of fun, but fairly predictable.

So I've now read 22 Nebula novels. I have two more checked out from the library, although one is due tomorrow (despite Christina having checked it out on my behalf last week -- some sort of interlibrary loan issue). I should be able to renew it and push my total up by the end of the year.

World Heritage: Year In Review

2005 is drawing to a close, so I decided to update my World Heritage page with the sites I visited this year.

I made it to five more sites, starting in February, when Christina and I went to Paris. Paris itself is a World Heritage site, for a number of reasons, including the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, both of which we toured. (Christina made it to Versailles, but I was stuck in conferences and unable to join her.)

The first three quarters of this year were busy, but not from a World Heritage perspective. In October, however, we took a vacation to San Juan, Puerto Rico, whose Spanish fortifications constitute a World Heritage site.
In November, we spent two weeks in England, which allowed us to visit two more sites -- Blenheim Palace and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Those are the ninth and tenth UK sites I've visited -- over one third of my total sites. You'd think the US would be top of the list, but I've made about twelve visits to the UK since '93 and really enjoyed touring it. The US is a little bit harder to tour around -- and we have six fewer sites.

My final World Heritage site of the year was Mahabalipuram, which I visited during my recent trip to India. (More pictures to follow.) These approximately 1300-year-old sculptures were some of the farthest away sites I've visited, but oddly reminded me of some Mayan ruins.

I've now seen 29 sites -- less than four percent of the total. They're adding sites faster than I can see them. So unlike my Nebula project, the end is not only not in sight, it is absolutely impossible. (Until I become fabulously rich and spend several years doing nothing but globetrotting to these sites, I suppose.)

Movin' on Up

As previously mentioned, I am learning the game of Go. It's a very complex and intricate game, despite its simple rules.

One of the attractions of the game is having a clear ranking system. The top amateur players are dan (pronounced "dahn") ranks. These roughly correspond to "greater than black-belt" ranks in martial arts. They range from 1 dan all the way up to 6 dan. (Professional ranks are confusingly also dan, although a professional 1 dan is better than an amateur 6 dan -- most of the time.)

Below the dan ranks are the kyu ranks. 1 kyu is the top sub-dan rank, and the higher the number, the worse the player. Different on-line ranking systems have different upper limits -- I've seen 22 kyu to 35 kyu. My favorite go server puts the most novice players at 30 kyu.

One of the great things about Go is how easily it can be handicapped between players of different abilities. For every difference in rank, a player gives (or gets) roughly 1 handicap stone. So a 2-dan player would give a 4-kyu player 5 stones handicap, a 24-kyu player would get 3 stones from a 21-kyu player, etc. (Beyond 9 stones, the difference in rank is generally too great to handicap properly.)

I probably should have started out as a 30 kyu player, but based on my reading of the instructions, I set myself at 27 kyu. As you can see from the graph below, it took a couple of months of losing games for me to end up at 30 kyu. Fortunately, my stay there lasted less than half a day. Ever since then, I've been climbing, if unsteadily. Right now, I'm 24 kyu.

These ratings are based on the results of games versus other players on-line. They fluctuate as I win and lose. One of my biggest jumps came when as a 28 kyu, I beat a 26-kyu player. My biggest drop came when as a 27 kyu, I lost to a 29-kyu player. These ups and downs diminish as time goes on, and the server gets a more definite idea of my ranking. They also depend on the handicap in the game. If a 25 kyu beats a 20 kyu, but has gotten a 5 handicap -- that's expected, so the drop is not as great as if it were an even game.

As of today, I'm 24 kyu. On the one hand, I'm happy -- that's definitely much better than where I started. On the other hand, I've put a lot of effort into trying to get better, and still haven't moved beyond the "beginner" ranks. "Beginner...is usually thought of as 20k or weaker."




I just started up a bunch of games...almost 20 in the past week. So my rating will fluctuate even more in the coming weeks. Hopefully more up than down -- eventually. I can already see several games in which I am in clear jeopardy, so I fully expect to see 25 kyu again before I hit 23 kyu. So I'll play some more games, read some books, and try to get better.

Recommended for You: Lead Poisoning

So I'm going through my Amazon.com "Recommended for You" list ("New Releases" section), and I come across this gem. "Recalled Item: Old Century Dread Pirate" is its name, and call me crazy, but any product with "recalled item" in its name doesn't seem the most promising. Sure enough, "Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. " "Hazard: The surface coating and the metal in the ships contain lead and pose a risk of lead poisoning to young children."

Thanks, Amazon! For trying to poison me! (Or technically speaking, any young children who may visit my house.)

Although, you know, the game does look kind of cool... Maybe it's available on eBay.

(Bonus nerd content: one of the Amazon.com reviewers who recommends the game is Tracy Hickman, one of the original Dragonlance authors.)

Nebula update

About a year and a half ago, I announced my project of reading all of the Nebula-award winning novels.

At the time, I had read 11 out of 40 award-winning novels. There are now 41 novels. I read the 1973 award winner, Rendevous with Rama, in Spring 2004. I read the 1996 winner, Slow River, and the 1997 winner, The Moon and the Sun, earlier this year. (I guess I never blogged them.) Both of them required me to request the Anne Arundel Public Library's only copy...it's kind of sad that less than 10 years after winning one of science fiction's most prestigious awards, these books are fairly difficult to track down. I read the 1999 award winner, Parable of the Talents, during Fall 2004. I read the 2000 winner, Darwin's Radio, last summer. I read the 2001 winner, The Quantum Rose this past winter. I read the 2003 winner, The Speed of Dark, in Spring 2004. I read the 2004 winner, Paladin of Souls, this past October.

So where does this leave me?

1. 1965: Dune, Frank Herbert
   
2. 1970: Ringworld, Larry Niven
3. 1973: Rendevous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
   
4. 1975: The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
   
5. 1984: Neuromancer, William Gibson
   
6. 1985: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
   
7. 1986: Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
   
8. 1992: Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
   
9. 1993: Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
   
10. 1994: Moving Mars, Greg Bear
11. 1996: Slow River, Nicola Griffith
12. 1997: The Moon and the Sun, Vonda N. McIntyre
    
13. 1998: Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman
14. 1999: Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler
15. 2000: Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear
16. 2001: The Quantum Rose, Catherine Asaro
17. 2002: American Gods, Neil Gaiman
18. 2003: The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon
19. 2004: Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

So that's 19 out of 41. The last six I've read have all been written by women. Hmm. And I now have read the last 9 winners. Part of what I've been doing is working my way backwards -- partly because those books are easier to find, and partly to see what's current in the SF world. I have the 1995 winner on hold at the library, and I have the 1974, 1980 and 1988 winners checked out right now.

One thing that holds me back from some of the other is my aforementioned need to read series in order. The 1983 winner, Startide Rising, is a sequel to a book called Sundiver, which I read yesterday. At the time, I couldn't remember which one won the Nebula, and which one was the first...Brin kept referring to past events, and I wondered if it was a gentle reminder of the events of a previous book. I guess not.

(It may amuse you to know that when I spell-checked this I had misspelled "library's" as "libary's". Blogger's spell checker suggested "Liberace.")

Moores Creek National Battlefield

We went down to Wilmington, NC, for Thanksgiving to spend it with Christina's sister's family. On Friday, it was time to leave the house and get a little bit of culture and education. So we headed 20 minutes north to Moores Creek National Battlefield, scene of an important Revolutionary War victory in 1776.



The victory helped wipe out British influence in North Carolina. It was neat seeing some lesser known, but important, pieces of American history. They had a mile-long trail with some monuments on it that made for a nice autumn walk.

Pseudoprime.com Pseudoephedrine PSA

Recently, many retailers have started "voluntarily" placing Sudafed and its generic equivalents (pseudoephedrine) behind pharmacy counters in response to a patchwork of state laws. Maryland (as far as I know) doesn't have any such laws, but national retailers who want a uniform policy have forced me to deal with this issue.

The reason for these laws is that pseudoephedrine is a key ingredient in the production of "meth". Despite the fact that in Maryland "meth" is a lesser "problem" than "congestion", I resigned myself to dealing with this annoyance.

What I hadn't realized is that I would be dealing with a "bait and switch". When I was at Safeway today, I noticed something called "Sudafed PE" (and a generic "nasal decongestant PE"). I assumed it stood for PseudoEphedrine -- the people who make Sudafed might want to market different products, and so push pseudoephedrine down to a "type" of Sudafed.

Then I noticed some laminated cards that I could take to the register if I wanted real pseudoephedrine. I initially thought it was a dosage issue, but it turns out companies have been pushing phenylephrine as a pseudoephedrine replacement, although it "might not be as effective or long-lasting".

I've long been concerned that drug companies sell over-the-counter medication based on the symptoms that it treats ("cold medicine") rather than the ingredients. So people without a cough end up ingesting cough suppressant. Now the active ingredient in a common drug is being replaced, and I bet 90% of consumers don't know what's going on.

Boy, are there going to be some disappointed meth lab owners when they finally get around to reading the label.

Speed Museums

I've noticed some of the recent pictures from this weblog are missing. I can put them back, but some of that will require me to get home and grab stuff from my laptop.

In the mean time, enjoy these images from the Sunday before last. There are all sorts of sights in London that the guidebooks will tell you that you should take the whole day to see -- the National Gallery and British Museum are two of them.



In conclusion, yes, you would be better off taking a whole day at either of these places. But England is expensive these days -- doubly so since time is money. So if you find yourself with a few hours in London, don't be afraid to hit the highlights.
We set out to prove the guidebooks wrong. We had a few hours before we planned to leave London, and we decided to take in a few of the sights.

The National Gallery actually lent itself well to that sort of sightseeing. It gives out a map with the "highlights". Van Gogh's Sunflowers? Check. Cezanne's Bathers? Check. Seurat's Bathers? Check. Monet's Bathers? Check. (I think. All the bathers ran together after a while.)


Then it was off to the British Museum. Christina, in particular, wanted to see the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone. The Assyrian stuff was also pretty neat, though.

Testing E-mail Gateway

I noticed that the last few weblog posts aren't going out to the e-mail list, so I changed a few settings. If this goes out, consider it a reminder that you can check recent postings at http://www.pseudoprime.com/weblog.html

Kew!

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm here at my sister-in-law's in Wilmington, NC. I've set up their wireless network and have finally found time to blog from their living room.

When we were in England a couple of weeks ago...well, I guess it was about a week and a half ago that we spent time in London. We stayed at the Hilton London Metropole, where we stayed last time, and went to the Kew Botanic Gardens, another World Heritage Site.



The gardens are the oldest and some of the largest botanical gardens in the world. We took a 40-minute tram tour to get an overview.



The Gardens are currently hosting an installation by Dale Chihuly of blown glass art. We liked the way they blended with the gardens.



They had a lot of interesting very old plants. The British, after all, went all over the world a couple hundred years ago and grabbed stuff that interested them. The gardens are an interesting imperial legacy -- though these days, much more devoted to conservation.

By the Time We Got to Woodstock...

Greetings from the UK. We got here on Saturday night -- we took a day flight, a first for me. After a night at an airport hotel, we had Sunday for some sightseeing. We headed for Woodstock, specifically Blenheim Palace. It's another World Heritage Site. To quote UNESCO,

"Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, stands in a romantic park created by the famous landscape gardener 'Capability' Brown. It was presented by the English nation to John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in recognition of his victory in 1704 over French and Bavarian troops. Built between 1705 and 1722 and characterized by an eclectic style and a return to national roots, it is a perfect example of an 18th-century princely dwelling."

That seems a little thin justification for a World Heritage Site. It's a very nice house. The most exciting thing that every happened there was Winston Churchill's birth. (His grandfather was the 7th Duke.) There was a nice exhibit on him.

You can tell I'm still a little zoned from the flight in that picture. I thought maybe the day flight would help with the jetlag, but now I'm not so sure.