Photos from our Australia trip

Here's a collection of photos from our trip. Even if you've been following along on Ben's blog, this is a bigger (but not too overwhelming) and slightly more organized set.

As you know, we had a great time and can't wait to go back!

Australian Vacation: The Trip Home

After an unknown number of hours of travel, Shira and I finally made it back to the good 'ol US of A.

Murphy's law was present in pretty much every part of the trip...

• The only cab company in Canberra was having some sort of system problem that made dispatching cabs way more difficult than usual. When we finally got a cab, we drove to the airport listening to the exasperated dispatcher trying to get the cabs to do what she wanted, with little luck.
• We arrived in Canberra and were put on an earlier flight - like we had hoped. They were even nice enough to put us on a flight due to board in 5 minutes (something that would never happen here in the US). When we got to the gate, we realized that she had told us we were on the earlier flight, but gave us boarding passes for our original flight that left in 2 hours. They were kind enough to sort it out at the ticket counter and call down to the baggage department to re-route our luggage (something else they probably wouldn't have done in the US).
• When we got off the airplane in San Fran, Shira set her watch to what she thought was the local time, based on the "map" they show you for 14 hours and what the flight attendant announced to the airplane when we landed.
• When we arrived at the gate to take off from San Fran we noticed that the board wasn't lit up. When we asked about it, they told us that the flight had left on time - about an hour ago. Oh crap. Turns out, the flight attendant and the map on the airplane was what was wrong. We dutifully set our watches to an hour off. When the customer agent rep suggested that it was our fault, not United's that we had the wrong time, Shira nearly took her head off. Luckily, we were able to get on the next flight by waiting on the standby list.
• When landing at Dulles after a gazillion hour of traveling, we spent an hour and a half on the ground, first waiting for a gate, then waiting for a flag person to direct us to the open gate that was waiting for us to be led to it.
• Because of the late hour, the weather and all the delays, there were way too few cabs for way too many passengers (about 200 cabs running instead of the usual 700). We ended up sharing a cab with 2 other people and debated with the cab driver how unfair it was that he was charging us as though he had just dropped us off and was not getting three fares for the work of one trip.

With all that said - the flights were painless and we made it home, which is the most important thing.

All in all, a super vacation.

Caption Me (Australian Version)

As seen in Canberra Australia, not far from this classic statue.

On the Road in Australia

They drive on the left side in Australia. Did this little fact keep my wife off the roads? Of course not! Here's a short clip of her demonstrating her skills...

Music by Astral Navigations - Driving when I shouldn't E.P.. Shot with my Canon SD630 and edited on the business center's computer with Windows Movie Maker.

Australian Vacation: Rare plants and a travel buddy

Today, on my walk over to the Australian National Botanic Gardens, I noticed another obvious tourist who was examining a map. I commented that she look like me over the last few days - and from there we struck up a conversation.

Turns out, I had just met Nicole from Switzerland. She was on a 3 month (yes, month) backpacking trip around Australia. She had no official plans that day, so we made our way over to the Botanic Gardens together.

To steal an Aussie phrase, this all turned out to be heaps (or, if you prefer stacks) of fun. I got to see odd plants and trees and learn about how Americans are workaholics compared to the easy going Swiss.

It was neat hearing about how she planned and executed a solo trip around a country which isn't her native language. It took a year of planning and 1 month in Melbourne at a language school to get prepared. Then she ventured all through Australia, mostly on the cheap.

Here are some snapshots from the gardens. Including one of Nicole (see, I'm not making her up...) next to some particularly rare specimen:

Australian Vacation: A view from the lake

The above shot is actually my first attempt to stitch together a bunch of shots to make a panoramic photo. It worked out OK, though there clearly some blemishes in the photo. Still, I think it's a reasonable first attempt.

The photo is of Lake Burley Griffin which is located in Canberra. The lake is actually man made, and was created in 1963.

I find that date hard to believe because it shows just how new the capital is. Aren't things like the capital of a country supposed to be hundreds of years old? Guess not.

To created the above photo I used hugin and autopano - two cool applications that work some serious image voodoo to automatically stitch together photos. And they are both free.

Australian Vacation: Kangroo Hunting

On our way back from dinner last night, we asked the cab driver if he could suggest any places where we might see kangaroos in the wild. Around here, kangaroos are a lot like deer are in the US - they are a nusiance and a hazard to people and cars. Oh, and both can be found on various menus.

One big difference between kangaroos and deer - kangaroos can attack and hurt you, while deer simply scamper off.

The cab driver didn't just tell us about where we can find them, but drove us around a bit till we found this group of 'roos. It took us about 10 minutes to find these guys.

While searching for kangaroos the can driver took us to the top of a hill overlooking Canberra. I don't think the photo does the area justice - it really was impressive by night.

Australian Vacation: Telstra Tower Run

This morning I decided I would take a quick morning run over to Telsa Telstra Tower, the highest point in Canberra, Australia.

I estimated it would be about a 3 mile run there, and I figured the final push up the hill couldn't be that bad.

I was off by about 2 miles - it was a 5 mile run there, 2 miles of which were all up hill. Oh well, I survived and the views were worth the pain.

Caption Me (Australian Version)

Caption Me

As seen in an outdoor shopping plaza in Canberra, Australia.

Australian Vacation: Getting to know the capital

Today I took an overview tour of Canberra, the capital of Australia. The city was planned by Walter Burley Griffin, who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. The tour guide claimed that Walter was inspired by Washington, DC, and I believe it. As the photo above shows, there's a road which connects the War Memorial to the parliament house which has the same basic feel as the reflecting pool.

Speaking of the War Memorial, I should mention that it's a fantastic site to see. When I hear war memorial, I think about the Vietnam Wall in DC and the like. Touching stuff, but not something you can spend a whole lot of time at without getting it. When they say war memorial here, they mean a museum filled with World War I and World War II artifacts and lots of stories. It's remarkable stuff.

I can see why the tour guide claimed "it's the most popular museum in Australia, full stop."

The tour also took me to parliament house, where I got a tour of the House and Senate (terms and a concept they borrowed directly from our system, thank you very much). The big take away here was that Australians are required to vote. There's like a $70 fine for not voting. As a result, they get like 96% voter turnout at their elections.

Can you imagine if we made voting mandatory in the US? No doubt people would be protesting for their right to not vote.

I snapped this photo of past prime minister Sir John Gorton, as he's dressed pretty much the way I'd imagined an Aussie PM would dress. Kinda business casual for the job.

Tomorrow I hope to go back to some of the sites I saw today for a bit more detail.

Australia: More boats and a change of venue

Here are some photos from the National Maritime Museum. We ran out of time yesterday to see everything, so I went back this morning for a more in depth look.

I'm sorry, but any museum that features a boat made completely from beer cans automatically becomes cool in my book.

Here's Shira in front of her favorite part of the museum. Oh wait, this was the only part she saw today.

As a well balanced married couple, we know there are times when we need to do things together, and we know there are times we need to do things apart. In this case, spending a few hours looking at a museum we had already been to once just wasn't up Shira's alley. We did this one apart. Anyone wanna guess what Shira did while I perused the galleries?

This is us in the Sydney airport preparing to head out to Canberra to continue our vacation there. In the photo we are about to start watching a DVD of House, my favorite mystery show on TV. I also consider it to be the closest thing to a programming show on TV, as the entire episode is spent in the debugging process (whiteboard included!).

We landed in Canberra without a problem and so far all we've done is eaten and settled in. Tomorrow, the real fun begins.

Australia Vacation: More Sydney

Today, as part of our Australian vacation, we spent more time hanging out around Sydney. They have a really impressive market they hold on the weekends that made for some good browsing and shopping. We also made it to the National Maritime Museum. This was fun because we got to tour a destroyer (the HMS Vampire) and a sub (the HMS Advance).

Shira puts up with me and lets me tour these navy ships, even though they all pretty much look alike. But, I have to say I love to poke my way through them. Let's face it, my inner 10 year old just thinks this stuff is so cool. And as a computer guy, I just love to marvel at the fact that these ships were built without the help of a CAD program. Heck, just to think they managed to get the ship built without lots of MS Project or Excel documents blows my mind.

We had surprisingly good meals today as we managed to discover a really yummy pancake house and a totally out of the way sushi place which had a curious selection of vegetarian rolls.

And the weather? Hot and sunny. I hear there's a drought going on in the country - I'm awfully sorry about that, though it's making for excellent tourist weather.

Netcat Hack: Checking on mail status

While on vacation I've been keeping half-an-eye on my work e-mail by making use of the portable version of Thunderbird. So far, it has worked fantastically. I simply plug in my thumb drive to whatever computer I'm near, and click send and recieve and poof, I've got my e-mail.

Most of the e-mail messages I delete to get them out of the way from the stuff I actually want to read.

Then, this morning I had a terrifying thought: when I delete e-mail, it's not being put into the trash. That's kinda strange. What if it's actually deleting it off the server?! That is, I get back to the office and check to find out I've cleared out all my e-mail accidentally. Though part of me would love this, the other part didn't like this one bit.

So, what to do? Well, it occured to me, I can easily check on the status of my POP account by making use of netcat. By using netcat and skipping a mail client, I know that I'll be able to check on the exact status of my inbox, versus what a mail client wants to show me.

The next time I was near a computer, I plugged in my thumb drive, opened up a command prompt and ran the commands:

nc <pop-mail-server-name.com> 110
USER <username>
PASS <password>
LIST

Sure enough, all 500+ messages were there, just like I had hoped. Whew.

Australia: A bit of history

I had previously heard that Australia started off as a penal colony, but didn't know any of the details. Well, today, got the full scoop. I did this by perusing the Hyde Parks Barracks Museum.

The museum, as the name suggests, is housed in a barracks that used to be the residence for convicts way back when. In fact, the relatively small building held at least 600 convicts, and perhaps lots more. They have recreate the sleeping conditions upstairs by hanging hammocs up again. They even let you kick back and imagine what the prisonors must have felt like. Kinda spooky stuff.

So, yes, it's true - Australia started off as a penal colony. And here's the thing - while some of the convicts were really bad people, there were lots of criminals who did nothing more than steal a sheep or have a forged 1 pound note. Of course, at the time, these crimes could have gotten you the death penalty, so being sent off to Australia wasn't all that bad.

The museum lists a bunch of the convicts names and crimes. I had to feel at least a little bad for the guy who was sandwiched between the follow who had commited manslaughter and the guy who was in for house robbery. I feel bad, because his crime was "stealing a cap." Man that's tough justice. And yet, with all that tough love, I doubt the crime rate went down (though I don't know this for a fact). Can we learn anything from this?

After the museum Shira and I made a bit of a cullinary discovery: a vegetarian Thai restaruant. We were both pleased by this find. The food was OK (I'm not sure our choices were great ones), and I was just glad to be able to order veggie sausage.

Finally, here's the obligatory picture of us at the harbor, in the sunshine. Yes, it's another gorgeous day here.

Man I could get used to this vacation thing...

Bushwacking in the Outback

Today's Australian vacation activity was hiking in the outback and catching some of the sights that the Blue Mountains had to offer.

My photos simply can't do the scenery justice - it's like out of a picture book. Surprisingly (at least to me, anyway), we spent a good amount of time today in hiking around a rain forest. Who knew Australia had rain forests?

And here's a food tip...

Today at lunch we asked about what kind of pizza the snack shop was selling. "Crocodile" the clerk responded. We foolishly expected that to be some sort of euphemism for something like chicken and avocado pizza. When we asked what was on it, there was a pause for a second and then he replied, "crocodile." Oh, we'll pass, we said.

And when you see a kangaroo burger on the menu, that isn't some kids menu humor, they mean, just what they say. Apparently kangaroo meat is considered good stuff around here.

We did find one all veggie deli type place today named Zenergy - which was really tasty. Though, overall, we haven't been blow away with the food here. I think that's more our bad luck in choosing places than their bad offerings.

And the weather? We got a few thundershowers, but luckily, one happened while we we were eating and another while we were on the train. The other time spent hiking was all blue skies.

Kangaroos, Koalas and Dingos, On My

Today, Shira and I made the trip out to Featherdale Wildlife Park. It was a great way to see lots of Australian wildlife - from Kangroos to exotic birds. The park was more liberal than most zoos we've been to, allowing you to freely interact with the kangroos and other animals.

Reall cool stuff. A must see if you make it out here.

Oh, and should I mention that the weather was perfect again today? It was. Gosh, I could get used to this vacation thing.

Australian Vacation: Sydney

Shira and I are finishing up our first day in Australia, and we spent it touring around Sydney. It was loads of fun. Sydney turns out to be a really accessible city, as we were able to both walk it and make use of a ferry.

The city has a really western feel to it. If you ignore the accents and the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road, you really would think you were in some random city in the US.

Oh, and did I mention that it was sunny and like 75 degrees here?

Here are some random snapshot I took today - plenty more to come at the end of the trip.

Test from Shira's Ericsson.

Testing...

Update: Cool, Shira's ancient Ericsson T610 is still in working order. When I'm going to be in a place where I can't take advantage of the Sidekick's data plan, I like to switch to the T610. It's tiny and has a reasonable feature set consider it's age. And while the camera sucks, it's not much worse than the than the Sidekick's.

Serious Fun

Tonight we celebrated the holiday of Purim at shul by putting on a Purim Shpiel and reading the Magilla. The Purim Spiel, a festive play, gave the adults a chance to goof around, and entertain both kids and fellow adults alike.

Let's face it, anytime you can get your Rabbi into a red wig, you know you're in for a good time. Seriously, the cast of characters put on a terrificly funny play and it made for a superb evening.

Chag Sameach!

Very Hush Hush

Earlier today I had a need to e-mail someone a bunch of passwords. I'm not usually the paranoid type, but even I think that it can be a bit sketchy sending root passwords through e-mail. So, what's a guy to do?

Well, the obvious answer is encrypt them. But, the problem with most basic encryption schemes is you need to share with the other party the secret password to unlock the encrypted file. That kind of defeats the purpose, as you end up sending the password over e-mail, or IM, or through your wiretapped phone.

But, it turns out there's a much better way. That is, use public/private key encryption. This stuff is nothing short of magic of the coolest kind. Here's what you do: you send me your public key, which is totally public information. In fact, you want to publish your public key all over the place.

I then use your public key to encrypt a message for you. I then send you the message. Now, the only person on the planet who can decrypt that message is the you, using your private key.

Even myself, who created the encrypted message, can't decrypt it. It's a one-way kinda thing.

I'm sorry, but I just happen to think that's so cool that you can do that. It seems to defy all logic that you can use something completely public to make something totally private.

Anyway, it turns out that you can easily get the software to do this form of encryption. One well respected implementation of it is Gnu Privacy Guard.

GPG is industrial grade stuff, too. It's not unusual to have programs like Quicken that claim to encrypt files, yet you can buy a shareware program for $30 to "instantly recover lost or forgotten passwords." Sure, yeah, encrypted.

GPG also supports the idea of digitally signing documents. By signing a document you give people a way to verify not a single byte in the message has changed.

Check out this howto out to get started. You'll be feeling like a crypto-hacker in no time.

And here's my public key. Feel free to send me an encrypted message to make sure your setup works.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Cygwin)
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=aVoF
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Performance Tuning

No, this isn't a post about how you can make your database run faster, or how you can reduce your Garbage Collection times. I'll leave those posts for another day.

Nope, this a post about a improving your car's performance.

A friend of ours just added a public face to his already existing tuning business for vehicles. He specializes in Chevrolet trucks and the like.

The service he offers is neat because it's all done via the mail. He ships you a computer to hook up into your car, and then you ship it back to him with the data it's collected. It's kinda like Net Flix in that leverages the awesome power of the US mail service.

Too bad we no longer own Chevy's, or I'd have to give the service a try myself.