May 2003 Archives

Bought the latest issue of "2600" and am trying out some DVD-ripping. There's this cewl article that shows how to do it, using three freeware utilities. The article was a response to some company which had bundled these freeware apps, and was charging people for the distribution.


So my first rip/burn was a failure. I was doing "A Better Tomorrow", trying to get it onto a VCD. Something went wrong, though, and I deleted the whole thing.


My second attempt was "Rounders", but I left the subtitling on, and now I've got a 1200Mb MPEG with subtitles. Oh well....

Got some pictures developed from the Cuba trip. So here's a tip -- don't get those "disposable cameras". While they may have good film in them, the camera's terrible. And I'm so used to using a digital cam now, I miss being able to discard the bad-looking photos. Now I'm stuck with some blurry, oversaturated, and just plain dumb pics.


Phil came up with this neat idea. Since we were in a different province than last year (Cayo-Coco vs. Trinidad), we figured to try a different province every year. I thought this might be kinda cewl, until I saw a map of Cuba, and there are over 13 provinces. We'll be doing this for quite some time to come.

Nice day today, but still a little cold for doing anything outside. Besides, it looks like rain anyway. Still, I was out on the balcony, cleaning up and planting the herbs I picked up from my dad yesterday. I'm going to get some new plants from the Home Despot. Can't wait for the nice weather, so I can start enjoying the balcony again.


Maybe pick up a new video card too.





My mom doesn't like the shaved head, the beard colour, the earrings, the fact that I don't tell her about my love life. But she was happy to see me anyway.


And she thinks my car's too dusty.

I want to borrow some words from the late Carl Sagan. Click on the image to get an idea of how small we are in the universe.





It was Carl Sagan's idea to turn Voyager's camera back toward the planet that launched the spacecraft in order to reveal to that planet's inhabitants their "true circumstance and condition." After much resistance, Dr. Sagan prevailed, and on February 14, 1990, from a distance of 6.4 billion kilometers, Voyager 1 captured this image of our Earth. Here the entire world fills only 0.12 pixel and appears as a tiny crescent of light. The apparent rays of light are not sunbeams, but scattering off the camera's optics, a result of pointing it so close to the Sun. Now one of the most famous images ever taken from space, this humbling perspective of our beloved home is a part of Dr. Sagan's invaluable legacy.


Text from Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, Random House, 1994
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.


The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.


Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.


The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.


It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Going to take the red pill tonight. A sneak preview is showing at the Galaxy at 10:00pm.

Finished the following books in Cuba.

• Jack Kerouac - Desolation Angels
  
• Virgilio Piñera - René's Flesh
  

This place is quite fantastic. One of the things I'd like to do in the future is to visit without going to a resort; staying at a ranch or a small hotel, or a B & B. Something not so phony as all this.

Pretty much finished Kerouac's Desolation Angels this afternoon. I'm in the lobby bar, drinking and reading. It's been pretty nice here -- average temperature is about 28-31, but windy, so it doesn't feel very hot. The mosquitos are really biting down here, and the resort's got a tractor driving around in the morning, blowing insecticide fog on the lagoon and around the resort perimeter. Unlike at the Brisas last year, the closest town is Morón, about 90 minutes away. So there's not much to do outside of the resort, save for paid excursions. We're pretty much trapped here under a brief haze of DDT. Luckily the wind blows everything over to the Tryp resort, down the road.

There's this terrific lunch place at Mélia: an open-air thatched roof hall with an enormous barbecue pit. Last night (Cuban Day or something), there were about six roasted pigs and an ocean of seafood to be had. It's kind of disheartening being a vegetarian in Cuba, although there are still many different things for you to eat. Unfortunately, at this BBQ, the best you can get is spaghetti with butter, unless you choose from the salad or desert bars.

Lobby Bar - we've just returned from almost getting killed in a boating accident on the Jungle Tour. There are two kinds of people: Drivers, and people who can only play "Blood Wake". Phil is the latter, and agrees that he should never be called upon to pilot any water craft.

I, myself, took a little while to get into it (quoting Han Solo on several occasions). I eventually picked up the skill, and was zooming around like a mini-James Bond villain. I'd do it again anytime. We were piloting a small fibreglass speedboat, and we had several problems, including a stalled engine, getting tangled up in the marsh, and almost capsizing. It was awesome.

The most terrifying moment was perhaps when we were just getting released from the dock, trying to pilot through the shallow channel, I hear Phil pushing the throttle on FULL, saying "so it drives opposite of a car?" Immediately after that, we were pulling foliage out of our teeth, and getting a tow from the nice Cuban gentlemen. It took two other boats to pull ours free.

Phil and I are sitting in the lobby bar, waiting for the bus to take us on the "Jungle Tour" excursion. This is where you get to drive your own speedboat around in the marshes of Cayo Coco. It's only for about 2 hours, but promises to be a nice diversion from all the drinking.

Last night we caught up with a couple from Halifax and an Irish couple from outside Dublin. Despite being in their 50s, these guys got pretty boisterous after a good amount of drinking. I personally like to hang with the 20-something crowd, as these older couples only ever talk about their kids, and couple-related things, such as mortgages and RRSPs. Angela and Tony (the Irish couple) kept up this clever banter and argued so much, you wondered "who's the boss"? Seriously. Angela and Tony. Angela kept remarking how much I reminded her of her son. She then commented on how kids these days always wanted tattoos and piercings and crazy-coloured hair. I refused comment, but was shocked when she said her son was 19. I took this as a compliment.

The food in Cuba is uninspired. This is the second resort I've been to and the food hasn't improved, despite the increase in the "Star Rating", which means little more in reality than how many services are available. I wouldn't be surprised if all the hospitality people came from the same school -- Phil likens it to the "Canadian Tire model". You go to any Canadian Tire in any city and the stuff is exactly the same. The layouts may change, but the quality of the items do not improve, even between the richest and poorest neighbourhoods. Suffice to say, the food tastes "flat". There's nothing else I can put my finger on. It's all good, but there's simply nothing striking about it. To help out, I've brought along some of my favourite Japanese pepper spice. Thin bottle -- you can get it at any Sushi restaurant that has sundries available for sale.

Coffee at the lobby bar is good, but each cup is made from their espresso machine. There is no cream, only UHT milk, and it's often steamed. If you go to the buffet restaurant, you get a whole pot of coffee, and a small pot of milk for your table. This is a real treat if you're eating alone.

This is the first time (I've noticed) that you can get tequila in Cuba. Remember that this isn't Mexico, and rum is the official drink here. What's more amazing is that you can get things like Canadian Club, and some really good premium stuff too (for more money, of course). Rumour has it, the El Senador also has Clamato juice too.

I'm sitting in the lobby bar at Mélia Cayo Coco with Phil, drinking cervézas and smoking cigarillos. This is the second full day in Cuba and we're tired from walking up the beach and exploring some strange Cuban "ruins" in the noon day sun.

These "ruins" appeared to be partially completed commercial buildings, maybe a future expansion of the resort, which had fallen into disrepair. There were broken cinder blocks and exposed re-bars in unpoured foundations. If you took the horses out for a ride, you'd be able to skirt past this place, after crossing an enormous flat area, covered with tire tracks, where drivers were doing doughnut circles in the sand. We got sunburned, bitten by bugs, and I got a very sharp burr caught between my toes. This thing was so sharp that it cut my fingers when I tried to extract it. Phil got a good picture of me hopping up and down on one leg, suffering in the sun.

There are internet kiosks available in the lobby. They are running Windows 98 and some kiosk software. The best internet connection you can get around here is 33.6 kbps, and I'm not that patient. Besides -- at this time, my web server is down.

Going to do some reading while down in parts sunny. Picked up a couple of titles from Gabriella at Moody Blues. Here's a short list:

• Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathingin Las Vegas
  
• Reinaldo Arenas - Farewell to the Sea: A novel of Cuba
  
• Virgilio Piñera - René's Flesh
  
• Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan
  

Found this the other day while biking around downtown Waterloo. Looks like someone snuck in at night and setup a little shopping cart sculpture. There were about 10 or 11 carts in all, and it was likely pulled down when the stores began to open. Nonetheless, a valiant attempt at urban art. Kudos to those brave guerillas.