Geeky Yet Waterproof

On Tuesday, July 15th 2008, I officially released the software I’ve been working on by myself for almost two full years. It’s called Sleep Blaster. And what is it? The first-ever Mac alarm clock that really turns off when you yell at it. That’s right. It uses either iTunes or computerized dynamite (you heard me) to wake you up. It will play the sound for a few seconds, then pause to listen for a few seconds, then play the sound for a few seconds, etc. If it hears you shout during the pause, it will stop the alarm!
And it doesn’t just wake you up — it can also put you to sleep either by playing iTunes for a set amount of time, or with its built-in ocean wave generator! (Which, by the way, isn’t a flat recording of ocean waves, but an algorithm for simulating the sound thereof.)
But there’s more still. How many times have you set your alarm for 8am, and at precisely 8pm, your alarm rings? If you’re like me, the answer is “a lot”. But with the advent of Sleep Blaster: no more. Sleep Blaster comes with a revolutionary Stupidity Prevention System (SPS), which warns you if it thinks you’re setting the alarm for an unlikely hour.

So, all this for $8 — roughly the price of a hamburger and fries. And how did the launch go? Well, the first day was pretty unexciting — as I expected. How are you supposed to get the word out to people? Apparently, by submitting it to the Apple downloads page. Because on the second day, it racked in FOURTY FIVE (45) downloads, and its first joyful purchase. And by the third day, I received my 2nd payment of $8, and the downloads count climbed to… 100? Nope. 200? Still nope. 515 downloads.

So as you can imagine, I’m pretty excited right now. If all works as according to my almighty plan, I’ll get enough sales from this to call it a Real Job™. And it will be one I enjoy mightily.

If you have a Mac running Leopard, you can download Sleep Blaster from the website.

DISCLAIMER: DUE TO A SUDDEN LACK OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS IN ROME, THE CAUSE OF WHICH BEING MY UNWILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR ANOTHER NIGHT OF INTERNET, THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN POSTED ONE (1) DAY LATE. SHOULD YOU SEE ME AT SWIM PRACTICE BEFORE YOU READ THIS, DON’T SUE ME.

Today, which marks three weeks of this trip, was our last day in Rome. We didn’t have time to see the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum Romanum like I said we would, but we saw a lot of other things. To be able to see all of Rome, I think the ideal amount of time to spend there would be, maybe… 78 years.

We walked to the Vatican (where the nearest bus stop is) and then rode one of those good ol’ Hop-On buses to the Piazza del Populo. The Piazza del Populo is a big plaza surrounded by buildings (including two churches), with an 80-foot obelisk in the middle.
Here we witnessed a situation that can only be unique to Europe: a man selling roasted chestnuts on the corner, with two people playing an accordion duet on the other side of the street, while a horse and carriage passed through the middle. If you ever catch a scene like this in Oregon, call me and I just might award you a sock monkey.

From the Piazzo, we walked a few blocks to the Spanish Steps, which is, in actuality, just a big set of stairs lined by flowers with a sign that says “Do Not Defecate”. But apparently it’s famous for the fact that it has been featured many times in movies as a meeting place in Rome.

A short walk from this was the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi Fountain is also a famous monument — it’s even been copied by Las Vegas. It is a huge stone fountain adorned by sculptures of deities, and legend has it that if you throw a coin in, you’ll return to Rome someday. (We threw in a coin.)

Our next stop was another well-known ancient landmark: the Pantheon. You probably know what the Pantheon is, but let me refresh your memory just in case:
Pantheon is Greek for “many gods”. As the name suggests, it was a temple for the worship of many gods. It is a large, round, stone building, with well-recognizable stone pillars outside the front supporting the entrance. The ceiling is dome-shaped, but there’s a big round hole right in the middle! When it rains, you don’t want to stand under the hole, but water will drain through smaller holes in the floor.
Although the Pantheon used to be a place to worship many gods, it has now been converted into a church. It’s strange seeing statues of saints and Roman gods in the same room…

After poking around the Pantheon for a while, we headed over to the Vatican to look through the Musei Vaticani — a huge museum containing ancient artifacts spanning thousands of years.
The first few rooms were full of ancient Roman statues. It was fun looking through these, because some of them we had seen before in pictures and textbooks — and these were the originals. There was one sculpture of Laocoon and his sons being dragged down by serpents, which Isa and I recognized immediately because there’s a picture of it in our Latin books!
It was also fun looking at all the busts of Roman noblemen, because you could tell whether or not the sculptor liked his model… Some looked like Greek gods, whereas others resembled primates.
Another cool thing we saw here was a very large, intricately carved sarcophagus, which turned out to be the tomb of St. Helena — Emperor Constantine’s mother.

After looking at these we went through the Etruscan-Italic room, which contained pre-Roman artifacts from the Etruscans — most of which were from around 700 BC. There was a lot of weaponry and armor, and even some ancient action-figures. One thing we noticed was that many of the helmets had some form of gruesome sword-shaped dent or terrible puncture hole on the back!

One of the most amazing things we saw at the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was built in the 15th century, and is famous because the whole ceiling is intricately painted by Michelangelo, and one wall contains his fresco The Last Judgement.
Because flashes of light can eventually destroy frescos, no photography at all is allowed in the Sistine Chapel. But every two minutes or so, some tourist who couldn’t follow rules would take an illegal photo, and all the guards would shout, “NO PHOTO!”. I was one of these tourists. Come on, if something says not to take photos, it must be really good, right? Well it was, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice a photo like this. At least I didn’t use flash, and I didn’t get caught!

We were at the Vatican for hours and hours trying to see everything there was to see, and by the end my legs were cramping up just from walking. When we came out, we trekked through the rain to a gelateria and then a buffet restaurant, to have our last supper in Rome.

Thus concluded our last day of this Mediterranean voyage. Rome was definitely my favorite place in the whole trip, with Casablanca second. I hope to come back here sometime (sooner, rather than later), and see the other 95% of Rome we didn’t even get to yet.
Since we’ve reached the end of this trip, I’m ready to disclose how many photos I took in the last three weeks: 1001. No, wait, that was the last three days!
OK, how many total? 4,230 photos and videos. I’m not kidding — that’s how much we saw in three weeks.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this travelogue series, because I sure had fun writing it. It’s going to be hard to get used to The Real World now… sort of like trying to get used to solid ground after being at sea for five days (I almost fell over several times, thinking the ground was still moving). But I suppose a few 5am swim practices will pound it back into me (should I walk out alive).
So, thank you for putting up with this ridiculously long posting, and I hope you’ll excuse me to go play Caesar III finish my Latin homework…

I can’t believe we’re actually in Rome. The civilization we’ve been studying for the past seven years, and now we’re at the center of it.

We went out to explore Rome early in the morning, and came back at about 8pm. We took the Hop-On busses intermittently with walking, and we saw a lot of amazing things today. We passed by the Castel Sant’Angelo at least three times, at which a battle scene took place in my dad’s book, The Fall of Rome.

The first places where we stopped were two very old churches. What was incredible was that at one of them, we saw the pillar at which Jesus was flogged.

When we were done looking around and being amazed with that, we briefly stopped by the former controlling center of civilization: the Roman Forum. Of course it’s all in ruins now, but there’s still a lot left. This was the first time I’d seen ancient Roman ruins that are actually in Rome, and it was stunning to see them in person. The ruins are not just in Rome — they were the heart of the known world!

But we didn’t stay long, because one of the most famous monuments ever was staring us right in the face: the Colosseum. We’ve all seen it a million times in movies and video games, but there’s nothing like seeing it in person. It feels unreal walking down a cobblestone street and seeing the great ruins right in front of you. There were even Roman soldiers wandering around, although a few of them were smoking cigarettes…
When, for four extra euros, we had instantly conquered the endless line to get in, we decided to take a guided tour of the inside. The wooden floor is no longer there, but what was underneath it remains: a series of stone corridors in which the gladiators and animals would wait their turn to kill or be killed. People now aren’t allowed in these former subterranean corridors, but you can go on any other of the four levels, including the top.
In ancient times, the wealthy citizens would sit near the bottom of the amphitheater, while the poorer ones would sit near the top. We saw the exact spot where the Caesars used to sit and watch — at the very bottom. I can understand why they call the top the “Nosebleed Section”, but I think they should call the very bottom just the “Blood Section”, because it’s so close to the action you could get splattered!

We spent two hours exploring the Colosseum, although it felt like 45 minutes. We could have stayed a lot longer, but when you’re in Rome for three days, you want to be able to see everything. So (after waiting half an hour for a non-existent bus), we walked half a mile to the Circus Maximus — the ancient hippodrome where public games would take place, and most importantly, the chariot races. It’s a massive venue that could accommodate 250,000+ spectators. Behind it you can see the imperial palace, and down inside you can see… joggers. You may remember a few days ago I said that Barcelona is “a mix of the old and the new”, but it’s nothing as extreme as Rome.

After marveling over this, we waited another 45 minutes for the tour bus (it turned out one had broken down, leaving only two operating in all of Rome), which we stayed on for a while until it started to get dark. Some of it was the same route we had taken before, but there’s just so much out there that we saw something new each time we passed by — including the actual place where Julius Caesar was murdered.

When dusk (and hunger) fell upon us, we sat outside a little restaurant and had pizza (I think I ate six pieces) and later gelato. Those dang Romans not only know how to rule the world, but they also know how to eat!
Tomorrow is our last day in Rome before we leave. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll be doing, but we’ll definitely tour the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum. Here comes another wave of 400+ photos…

Today our cruise ended in Civitavecchia, Italy, which is the most important seaport in Europe. We got up early thinking we had to leave the ship by 10am, but then it turned out our shuttle van wouldn’t arrive until 3pm. So we hung around for a few hours, saying goodbye to the observation deck, the hot tubs, and (most importantly!) the free food.
It took us about an hour to get to Rome from Civitavecchia. I was sleeping most of the time, and when I woke up, there was Castel Sant’ Angelo — the site of Hadrian’s tomb — right outside the van window!

When we got to the hotel, we spent just few minutes unpacking (and checking out the Roman internet, which is none too high tech), then we excitedly walked to the Vatican, which is only about half a mile away.
It’s hard to describe the Vatican, except by saying that it was even more astounding than the mosque at Casablanca. I’ve never seen stone carving on such a large scale. The statues of saints were more than twice as big as life size. There were huge paintings on the walls, which turned out to be mosaics — made of such fine stones that even from three feet away you almost can’t tell it’s a mosaic. There were tombs so big that they had a door at the base (but don’t ask me why anyone would need to go inside). Even the side chapels were as large as a normal sized church!
And the whole thing is in a gigantic plaza that can hold thousands of people. With all the magnificent stone architecture, it felt just like going back in time — well, except for the giant TV screen right in the middle.

After we got kicked out at 7pm (the closing time), we set out to get lost find a street pizza place to have a light — and Italian — dinner. Of course, in Rome, pizzerias are scattered on every block like coffee shops in Seattle. So we just picked the closest one, and all had delicious pizza from its country of origin.

Tomorrow I think we’ll be going on a tour of archaeological Rome — the Colosseum, the Forum, the Castel Sant’ Angelo, etc. I’m more excited right now than I have been for any other city we’ve seen on this trip! But I guess this means I have to actually start doing my Latin homework…

Yesterday, we landed in Casablanca, Morocco. And almost as soon as we stepped off the ship, we were ambushed by a horde of omni-lingual taxi drivers! So after some haggling, a driver was touring us around Casablanca in a taxi. Some of the things we saw were the US Embassy, and the house where Bush stays when he’s in Casablanca.
Then we made our first stop, at the Mosque. I had never seen a stone building this big before. But that wasn’t all… The Mosque was in an enormous plaza. I mean the kind of enormous where you’re walking and nothing around you seems to move any closer or farther. It has to be big, in order to support three million people worshiping Allah.

We made a few more stops, including a “beach” and carpet/souvenir shop.

After our taxi tour, we went to the huge bazaar to experience the real Morocco. And wow, did we ever. It was just like you see in the movies… people selling everything from fish, to camel-leather poofs, to $1 pirated movies. You don’t make eye contact with any of the sellers unless you plan to buy something from them, or they’ll be following you around until you flee the country.
One such seller was a boy of maybe 17 or 18 (who later turned out to be 24), who confronted us with, “You must come to the shop of my father! We have everything Americans will like.” We brushed him off, saying we’d come later, then escaped down a side-alley. But before three minutes had gone by, there he was again, right in front of us! “Why you no come to the shop of my daddy?? You follow me! I take you there!”
So we had no choice but to follow him to “the shop of his father”. And sure enough, it did have everything… slippers, spices, camels, and everything in between.
As soon as we stepped in the shop, they were all — the boy (whose name was Yessin), his father, and his uncle — fitting us with Moroccan slippers and shirts. And before we had time to consent to anything, they had put it all in a bag and were going to the checkout! We took out some of the things we didn’t need, but I ended up buying a pair Moroccan slippers made of camel-leather (which seem like they’ll last for about ever), and Isa and my mom bought some other things of the sort.

After all this, we were hungry so we set out to find lunch. As we were looking for a place to eat, we stopped to look at an interesting (raw) meat display outside a restaurant. There was a suspicious platter of pink slimy objects. These elicited the quote of the day: “Are those brains, or just intestines?”

They were brains.

When we had all stuffed ourselves with delicious fish, sausage, fish, french fries, and fish, we went back to the bazaar to look around some more. And almost as soon as we had stepped through the stone archway, there was Yessin again! He quickly learned that we were there to see more of the bazaar, so he joyfully asked us if we wanted a tour. We agreed, and he called over his friend, Hamid. It turned out that Hamid (whom we guessed was about 21, but later revealed that he was in fact 28), specializes in touring foreigners around Old Medina, which is the old part of the Casablanca.
I don’t know what exactly our shipmates did on the official tour, but I’m pretty sure our tour was better. Hamid and Yessin showed us around the bazaar and Old Medina for about an hour, and during that hour we saw many things worthy of National Geographic. We went into a bakery and saw people making bread — in a real fire oven in the wall. We saw people selling camel meat still on the bone. Live chickens in a cage. Crates of fish sitting out in the open. Old women on the side of the street making embroidery with their old fashioned sewing machines. Piles of garbage on every corner… it seemed there were no garbage cans, so people just put all their garbage in a pile.
While we were walking, we started talking with the two Arabs about languages. Hamid was telling us about how he learns new languages from tourists, and I asked if he speaks Portuguese. He responded, “Eh, just a little bit…”, and then started talking in Portuguese as fast as, well, a Portuguese. I only understood the first half, which was “I can’t speak Portuguese very well”, and the rest was too fast for me to catch. When they say Moroccans speak every language, it’s true.

After we had pretty much seen everything of Old Medina, the tour came to an end and it was time to head back to the ship. Our guides asked for a tip of 20 euros each, which was kind of expensive, but it was worth it for what we got. If we had tried to find our way around alone… well, let me just say that the streets were purposely made to be confusing, to help protect against enemies!

Tomorrow we arrive in Barcelona for another day in Spain. I don’t know what I’m doing still writing at 1:30am, since we have to get up at 7 tomorrow! But if I’m still alive, expect to hear from me again soon.

Today Tito Randy took us on a 1½ hour driving tour of NYC. It was really cool just to be in New York, since the last time I had been there was when I was four.
I know it’s a little ridiculous to tell people, “I was in New York for two hours!”, but we saw a lot of famous things while we were there.
We drove by Central Park, where it is said I took my first steps. Then, we paid homage to the amazing Apple Flagship Store, which is made of glass, titanium, and wood. We also saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which looked just like something out of 15th-century France.
On our way back to the apartment, we passed by the Rockefeller Building, as well as getting attacked by an army of taxis!

In the afternoon, we packed up and boarded the ship. It’s huge — there are two pools, and many jacuzzis. We can eat as much as we could possibly want without paying a nickel, although the internet is 10 cents per minute, and that’s with the crew member discount! (Sorry if I can’t post an entry everyday, but I’ve heard there’s a library with free wifi in Bermuda…) However, despite what you think, that’s amazingly cheap. Because the phone charges are $7.50 per minute.

After a few hours, there was a mandatory emergency drill, which was basically a lesson on how to use the life vests.
But even if there is an emergency, I don’t think we’ll have the same problem the Titanic did regarding lack of life boats, because these boats are enormous! They even have a roof and windows — except for the crew life boats, which look like some sort of White Water SuperJet&trad; from Disneyland.
When the drill was done however, as everyone was filing back to their rooms still wearing the life jackets, two elderly ladies fell down the stairs and landed on each other. This kept Grandpa Dan busy for the rest of the afternoon, because he’s the ship doctor.

By the time the ship embarked, we were were already several hours late. As Captain Hans explained (to everyone’s amusement), they had to load spare engine parts onto the ship, but the truck carrying the parts first broke down in Georgia, then was lost in Manhattan, and had to hire a taxi to lead him to the ship!
But when we finally did start to move, the view was well worth the extra wait; it was dark, and all the New York lights were in full force. We even passed by the Statue of Liberty, which I hadn’t seen since I was TWO.

I’d much love to post more photos, but I fear the internet wouldn’t be very happy with me. As such, please accept these humble representations of the awesome sights we’ve seen so far.
Unless sooner, expect to hear from me from Bermuda!

After a long flight and several delays, we’re on the East Coast. We flew into Newark, NJ, then some relatives picked us up and drove us to Manhattan, where we’re staying the night in their apartment.
Before we settled down, we took z brief driving tour of Midtown. We also walked around Times Square for about 10 minutes. It felt just like being in a movie! But one thing was different from what I expected… I thought we would be trampled by busy people as soon as we stepped out of the car. As it turned out, everyone was acting even more like tourists than we were! People looking up in awe, cameras flashing, standing under the “No Standing” sign… we fit right in!

Tomorrow morning we’re going to (try to) get up early so we can tour some more of the city, before we board the ship at 2pm. Until then, over and out!

Times Square

The Empire State Building

Exactly what I’m thinking!

On Thursday, my geek life was made anew. In other words, my black MacBook arrived.

With a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a 250GB hard drive, I cannot justly describe the difference in speed, power, and sleekness from my old PowerBook G4, so all I will say is this: HOLY AWESOME, BATMAN!

My trusty Powerbook, which has served me well, was diagnosed (by yours truly) with cancer of the hard drive. The data is safe (thanks to Time Machine), but the drive will eventually have to be amputated. Fortunately, being a computer, it’s slightly easier to cure than were it human.

This infirmity can be looked upon in a positive light, however. For one thing, the hard drive can be replaced with a larger one (80GB is much too small these days). But most of all…

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*MAKE A WISH*
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*JUST KIDDING, I REALLY DO DESPISE THOSE EMAILS*
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I ordered a MacBook today. Yes, not only did I empty my bank account, I blew a 20 foot hole into the ground. But for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB memory, a 250GB hard drive, and an Apple logo in the sleek black polycarbonate shell, it’s worth it.