I haven’t found anything worthy of a post in recent months, so I thought I’d just post a little summary of events, so everyone knows that I’m still here.

Obviously the big news around the water cooler is the economy, associated credit crunch and bailouts. Like everyone else, my portfolio has gone down the toilet - I think I’m down about 100K this year, but I’m not panicking. I’m a firm believer in investing for the long term and the market will return to previous levels, even if it takes a while. Hopefully all the stock I am buying whilst prices are at record lows will give me a few hundred percent return in the long run. I’m more worried about the credit crunch, and not being able to get good financing to refinance our house in a couple of years. Well, there’s time yet.

I’ve been spending a lot of time writing my novel. I’m about 45% through and have already built up a big sheaf of notes for items to edit on the 2nd draft. I need to pull my finger out and get on with it, since I have the possibility of a couple of agents for whom my work should be perfect for.

Whilst my ship building takes a back seat for the present, I’ve been learning photography. It’s a scary thing when you take that camera off of full automatic. I’ve taken a few classes and been on a couple of photoshoots and my technique and results are already greatly improved. You can see my latest results. I have a whole bunch of projects and books I’d like to undertake with my camera, but one thing at a time. Currently I am using a Nikon D40 with a stock 18-55 lens. I recently bought a decently solid tripod so I can try shots with slower shutter speeds, e.g. star trails or blurring waterfalls. The next major purchase will be a 2nd lens with some zoom capability, probably a 24-200.

Here are a selection of photos from our recent travels on the Yucatan Peninsular.

Bookmark this url since over time we will be uploading a lot more photos to Flickr. Enjoy!

Yesterday we got back from a wonderful week on the Yucatan peninsular, on the gulf coast of Mexico. We purposely left it late in the year, knowing that summer months are both very crowded with beach-goers, and the weather very hot and sticky. It being hurricane season, we spent a lot of time monitoring the storms moving through the Caribbean, and while we were in Cancun we caught the very edge of Hurricane Ike (cat 2). It gave us moderate winds and a couple of deluges of rain, but we actually enjoyed the light overcast; it kept the temperatures very enjoyable in the low 90’s.

This was our first time at an all inclusive resort (The Sun Palace, which we can recommend), and we felt very spoilt having as much free food and drink as we wanted. Sitting by the pool, we only had to ask a waiter to deliver yet another Mojito or Marguerita. The mini bar in our room actually had full-size bottles of spirits with dispensers! No over-priced miniature bottles here. There’s definitely something to be said for splashing about in the infinity pool, one foot from the beach. and about 20 feet from the ocean. Heaven! I had fully intended to go parasailing, but after the first day the high winds grounded all the operators. Somehow we never got around to kayaking either.

The highlight of our week was three days out in the “jungle” visiting various ruins. Our first trip was of course to the famous Chichen Itza, one of the seven new wonders of the world. Unbelievable! The ruins were spectacular and extremely well restored from the jungle that once overran them. You aren’t allowed to climb the pyramid any more, but when we visited Coba, I climbed the 300′ pyramid there. which is actually the highest in the Yucatan. What a view! Nothing but trees in all directions. Our final ruins-trip was to Tulum, a trading settlement right on the edge of the Caribbean; and the water was the most magical shade of blue you could imagine.

Photos will be available soon for perusal. I’ll post again when they are available.

I’ve had my new iPhone 3G for almost a week now and I totally love it. It’s easy to carry in your pocket and works flawlessly. I’m particularly impressed with the way the applications work together, and don’t under-estimate the usefulness of the GPS, even if it doesn’t do full turn-by-turn directions yet.

Here’s an example. I have an app from the app store that helps the undecided amongst of us to pick somewhere to eat. Well first off, it bases its suggestions on your local position, then, once you have selected a restaurant, in a single click you can read reviews, phone for reservations, or click on the address to locate it on a Google map. One more click and you have instant directions from where you are to where you need to go. And if you are still unsure of the route, your location will highlight on the map as you drive, making it instantly clear when you need to make that turn; although use a passenger for this please - no gawking at the map whilst you drive.

Sure, the skeptical amongst you might say, I can google all that. Indeed you can, but using the large-font, easy-to-read iPhone screens are much easier than a web browser on any smart phone. Further, there isn’t any typing into the browser navbar or Google search box, just selecting from carefully presented choices. Another example is the dedicated eBay iPhone app: Night and day easier than using the eBay web site.

I think such context-sensitive menu selections and application presentation is going to replace the dumb, already archaic browser methodology.

And onto gas prices. I was actually pleased when prices recently soared to $4.70 a gallon at the pump. What, am I an idiot? No.. I just like to think I think longer term than a lot of folks. Witness how such prices began to turn large SUV drivers into pariahs, increased sales of hybrids, increased ridesharing and use of public transport, and generally forced us to consider our driving options more intelligently. So I was very dismayed when prices dropped back don to their current $4.00, here in California. It’s business as usual for SUV drivers, and “gee, we don’t have to think about saving fuel or alternative energy anymore”.

If I had my way I’d hike gas up to $8 a gallon. What am I nuts? No. We have to feel the pain. We have to feel compelled, cornered even, into changing our future energy usage and generation. We aren’t moving fast enough on our own initiative, so we obviously need to feel a boot up our backsides. Americans seem to work best in a crisis situation - you don’t do to well when the easy route lures you like a devil on your shoulder. “Go on, take the Hummer, $4 isn’t that bad! Fuel came down didn’t it, so there isn’t a gas shortage after all. Yeah, drill in ANWR.” Unfortunately this sweet-talking little devil is drowning out the angel (I always picture a mini Al Gore) on our other shoulder: “Buy a hybrid. Invest in alternative energy. Write your congressman to combat oil industry lobbyists.”

Draining every oil reserve we can get to, no matter what the cost (dollar and environment), is short-term thinking. We should be thinking our way into the future with renewable energy sources, whilst we still have a habitable planet to drill on.

After a year and a half of us trying to sell our old house, we finally did so, a little while ago. What a huge relief that is. Although we had decent renters looking after the house, our costs exceeded the rent and in 18 months we have chewed through a substantial chunk of savings. At points it was touch and go if we would have to foreclose on the property, as millions of other pour folks have been forced to do; but in the end we got through safely, and at last the house is sold.

Never again shall we take equity out of a house to buy a new one, without selling the old one first, although in our defence, everyone was doing it and we weren’t to know that the market would take its biggest plunge in decades.

It’s a relief to have just one mortgage again instead of 3!

Is Doomsday upon us? Is the world ramping up its natural disasters? Is climate spiraling out of control? Is the world economy on the brink of collapse?

Recent media coverage would have us believe such things, with an astonishing variety of “end-of-the-world” what-if documentaries. Great floods, asteroid collisions, supervolcano erupting, polar shift, polar flip, hot-house Earth, methane bubbling up from the ocean floor, melting of the icecaps leading to rising sea levels and sunken cities… Phew. I hope they don’t all happen at once!

It is in human nature to believe that our own generation is “special”, and to be witness to the End of Days, Armageddon, Revelations, Doomsday, (insert your biblical disaster here), yet somehow the human species, despite its numerous and destructive flaws, continues to cling on and advance. One could argue that we are NOT actually advancing, but that’s another topic.

There has been considerable press lately about 2012, the latest of a long line of dates for the end of the world. This date, Dec 21st 2012, to be exact, I think, heralds mostly from the cycling of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which cycles every 5000 years or so. Most other prophecies relating to 2o12 have latched on to the Mayan calendar in some form or another. Is there any truth in this? Well, actually we WILL be around to find out, but don’t hold your breath. Prophets have come and gone with great regularity. There are a few facts worth considering though:

2012 is the year of the next Solar Maximum, which is expected to be a particularly violent one, and may cause power blackouts and communication disruptions. Further, at the rate the polar icecaps are melting (considerably faster than we predicted), we may face large scale melting and associated sea level rises before 2012. This is going to put a lot of cities around the world underwater and create over a billion refugees, something we have never seen before. Our rising cost of oil crisis may come to a head before 2012, having a destructive effect on the US, and later the world,’s economy. It is true that we are long overdue for a supervolcano eruption, and the huge caldera of Yellowstone Park has been swelling over the last decade or two. We are also overdue for both a magnetic pole flip, and a physical polar wobble.

I think the smartest thing is to plan for the worst, expect the best (as technology races to our aid), and look forward to “nothing to see - move along” being the order of the day in 2012. See you in 2013.

Some good books:
2012 Predictions
Egypt Code
Gaia
Revenge of Gaia - Earth’s climate crisis

Six months after the wildfires of 2007, I took some photos of how the landscape is recovering. Yesterday we went hiking at the Blue Sky Ecological Reserve east of Poway, and saw significant evidence of the huge Witch Fire. (The largest red area on that map)

Most of the grassland had re-grown but the trees that survived the fire were black and dead. As you can see from these photos, greenery is finally returning to the trees, a stark contrast to the blackened trunks. It was chilling to see trees with green foliage on top and black, leafless branches below.

Take a look at this teaser video of Spaceship Two, presumably put together by or on behalf of Virgin Galactic. That looks like incredible fun and maybe closest that I might get to orbit in my lifetime, unless we accelerate our manned spaceflight projects. Not sure why you need those whacky helmets though.

Cynic that I am, I notice that they glossed over two major problems with the flight demonstrated in that promo video. First off, where are the barf bags? Take a bunch of landlubbers into a weightless condition, and then rotate the spaceship so as to mess up their sense of up and down, and the first thing they are going to do is hurl! No meals provided on this flight, I’d hazard. Secondly, it’s all very well to tap your wristwatch when it is time to take your seats ready for “deorbit”, but we are assuming that our aforementioned sick-encrusted travelers are going to have the coordination to get themselves back to their seat in a timely manner. “Hey man, get your butt out of my face!” It may not go as smoothly as that video portrayed.

Seriously though, I am sure both these issues have been addressed by the so-called “vomit comets”, those aircraft that fly steep climbs and descents to simulate weightlessness, so I hope that Sir Dicky Branson’s VP of Space Travel has taken a ride or two to become familiar with the awkward sensations his customers are going to experience. I for one applaud Virgin, Scaled Composites, and the other board members on their radical venture that is, if I may use a horrible sci-fi cliche, “light-years ahead of everyone else”.

See you in orbit.

Hello. As mentioned earlier this month, I have a new mountaineering blog. Check it out.