Month: January 2014

Amsterdam Milestone

As expected, just about a midnight (nearly 9am Amsterdam time), Ivi sends email from AMS reporting a successful landing and great relief at being able to walk about.  Unfortunately, her econo class of travel did not provide laptop charging, so her MacBook was just about on its last legs, but she got off two messages, the last reporting her enjoyment of walking about and people-watching.  After a five-hour layover (!), Ivi should be reboarding for Ghana at about 5am our time, with an expected touchdown at Kotoke International in Accra at about noon today (7:55pm there) — where she hopes to grab some MacBook juice and local currency.  

Off to bed now.

Africa, The First Leg

Yesterday we bundled up and set off  for a sprint to Seattle.    First stop is at Deadman’s Pass where Mama is photographed in soft focus in keeping with the encroaching fog.  Ivi, riding shotgun documents the View Point.  At hour out of Seattle, (somewhere in “Twin Peaks” territory perhaps?), we get backed up with a truck through the guardrail.  

Finally at the motel, adjacent to the airport, we disembark and Ivi starts her final checklisting.  We make a dash to Trader Joe’s for last minute essentials.  Before retiring, she does a couple of selfies with her parents.

Arising early, we walk through the drizzle to the airport just to suss the place out.  Then we return for real, seeing that the Amsterdam flight is On Time.  Whereupon Ivi checks in, surrenders her irrelevant cellphone to her mother, weighs in, hits the TSA line and meets a jovial TSA guy.  

And the parents do the only thing they can, return to home.  More fog, rain, snow and slush, another truck over the embankment, but finally sun as we approach Oregon.  

Kim attends to Nik and Charlie, while Dad begins his Gmail vigil to see if word arrives upon an expected touchdown in Amsterdam a bit before midnight (PST).  Stay tuned.

Elena Shumilova Does It Right

Pets and children.  A realm of photography that I seldom pursue, and almost never can do well when I might try.

Sometimes I stumble upon someone who has it nailed.  While browsing through Flickr, I come upon one Elena Shumilova.  Turns out that she is a Russian  mother who takes pictures daily, mostly of her kids on her farm, using the first camera she got in 2012.   Take a look at this photostream.

It’s All About I/O

What we in the trenches of the computer industry wars have known *forever* is that the measure of a server’s performance is in its I/O (input – output processing speed and agility).  Turns out that may be the case with humans as well.

Now a study of the Journal of Topics in Cognitive Science suggests that older folk may take longer to process information because they have accumulated so much of it, not unlike the computer phenomenon.  Read more in this report.

Twenty-One!

Finally things settled down enough after Ivi’s phone stopped receiving barrages of text and voice congratulatory calls that we relaxed with a little time out for dogs, some gourmet chocolate & cream-cheese cupcakes, a nolstalgic game of Skip-Do and a bottle of wine. Tomorrow the Africa packing and planning resumes.

 

The Natural

Self-proclaiming herself to be a “natural”, Ivi reassured me in a jocular way that she could handle my camera while I was driving.   And I wanted to show her how I amused myself with windshield photography while riding shotgun on long family trips.  Her output, herewith:

I was so taken by the last image in the series — the overpass photo — that I posted a couple of post-processed variations on my photography blog.

Restaurant Tactics

I think it is safe to say that we have always been a food-centric household.  Increasingly so, ever since Ivi started regularly cooking from middle school times.  While she is on break between college terms, I have been returning home from work at noon and at day’s end to find that something new has again come out of her oven.   But once in a while we may eat out, and I know that Ivi explores local cuisine when she has a chance when school is in session.  For those times, here are some tips and recommendations that come our way from New York City food critic, Robert Sietsema.