A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
A few weeks ago I told you about Judith, the woman who lost her camera in a National Park in Hawaii that was found but not returned.
In a follow-up to that story, apparently the family has come around and restored balance to the universe by returning her camera. Here are Judith’s details of the case.
As an aside, The National Post ran an interesting story about this lost camera incident.
Update: her lost camera blog no longer exists. (http://lostcamera.blogspot.com/2006/03/delighted.html)
It’s my birthday and it’s a good one. I’m coming home to the cold snow tomorrow—Mexico was fun while it lasted.
This morning we hooked up with a bus for a day trip to Sayulita. Sayulita is a great place to go for beginners to learn to surf because of the fairly low, consistent waves that move in over a large shallow bay.
This was my first time trying to surf and I certainly am not that great at it. I did alright getting through the waves. I was alright the few times I found myself in front of nice rolling wave , but I can see that it would take a lot of practice to get really good at it.
I think my biggest problem was knowing where to go to catch the good waves. I didn’t want to crowd the group of people that seemed to know what they were doing, but at the same time, there was a reason they were all grouped by the tall breaking waves.
After a couple hours I had my fill of surfing and just spent some time laying under a canopy, and enjoyed some time walking up and down the beach.
When we caught our bus home, we had some excitement play out right before our eyes. While stopped at a traffic light, we noticed a rather fat and shirtless American chasing a smiling Mexican with the very clear intent to cause him bodily harm. The Mexican was wearing a green shirt and seemed to be laughing that this guy was so mad at him. (I have no idea what started everything off). There was another American guy that jumped out of a Volkswagen beetle who swung and missed the guy in the green. Suddenly a second Mexican jumped on the second American, pinning him to the ground and feeding him punches. The fight was really on.
Some other Mexicans jumped in from off the street to try and break things up but that only lasted for a moment. The original Mexican in the green shirt was still laughing and running backwards away from the fat American, whom was swinging wildly and tripping himself as he pursued.
It looked like things might be simmered down when the Americans were just walking slowly toward the guy in the green and the other Mexican´s from the street were trying to calm them down. The American pretended to swing at the guy in green but then instead smoked the guy that was trying to calm him down, right in the mouth.
That guy took off back into a nearby shop to get his bearings, but then started back out after the American’s, this time with a collection of friends who didn’t seem as interested in just breaking up the fight.
The two Americans realized that right about that moment was a very good time to turn their tails and run.
We didn’t see much else. The bus kept going but pretty soon we saw a police truck race along past us with its lights flashing. In the back sat a police officer and the Mexican wearing the green shirt. He didn’t seem to be smiling so brightly anymore.
Last night, just as something fill the evening, we decided to take in a movie. There didn’t seem to be anything that jumped out at me, but then Drew started tossing the idea around about going to see Munich.
At first I was slightly sceptical, just because I didn’t want to go through the gory details of the 1972 terrorist massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. But what I didn’t know is that while the terrorist attack is a key part of the film, the story is really about the people that go after those involved and bring them to justice one-by-one, and really it’s about so much more than that, but I won’t go into too many details.
It’s such a powerful and memorable movie—in my opinion (for what it’s worth) Munich is Stephen Spielberg’s most gripping film (aside from, of course, Schindler’s List). I’m not usually much for action films, but when it comes to political thrillers like this one, I can’t put a strong enough recommendation on it. In my opinion, this is a must see for everyone old enough to understand the mature content.
On Sunday we really cut it close making our plane. We only gave ourselves about 15 minutes of extra time assuming everything else went according to plan, which would have been fine except for a couple of mix-ups like Trev forgetting his runners. Not to mention he also forgot that Drew moved about a year ago and hence he accidentally went to Drew’s old house putting us slightly behind schedule for the road.
Once we got on our way things were pretty uneventful, but there was a near disaster when Forgetful Jones Wallace forgot to pick up his wallet on the other side of security which might have resulted in a missed flight due to no ID. I have been thanking my lucky stars that I haven’t yet done anything particularly embarrassing or potentially trip ending but remember the week is young. Anyway it’s all good and we are having lots of fun in the sun.
Today we hired a charter to take us to a couple of different villas up the coast and had fun snorkeling as well as hiking around on a couple of different beaches. The boat ride was really a blast. All of a sudden Drew was hit with a wave of nausea and began a not so friendly reunion with his breakfast on the port side. He looked in quite a bit of discomfort so I didn’t think it would have been right to document it in pictures. However I´m pretty sure Steve and/or Trev got a photo.
While Drew was just kind of taking it easy we were learning that it’s the manta ray mating season right now. There are lots and lots of large and small manta rays scouting the area looking for action. We were amazed to see one giant manta ray breach the water completely. Steve and Trev hopped in to get a closer look and I captured a photo with the manta as one of its fins came up out of the water. When I jumped in myself I was too late they were long gone.
When we got to town, we lounged around a bit, I picked up some stomach settling pills for Drew and eventually we hiked up to see a waterfall. Unfortunately when we got there we discovered it was pretty dry. Apparently they are on the verge of a water shortage in the village and so there isn’t a lot left over for the river, but despite that, it was still a nice hike.
We had dinner on the beach, enjoyed the weather and scenery for awhile and then and headed back into town.
I’m having a great time here in Mexico. We’re keeping extremely busy going to the beach and lounging around.
Today we hit up El Eden and the Preditor Set restaurant. I’ll have some good stories to tell when I have more time.
In the meantime—my Mexico 2006 flickr set.
For my birthday, coming up in a week from today, my mom got me a new digital SLR camera! I’m still learning all the settings, but I’m loving every minute of it.
It’s a Nikon D70s. I also got a few accessories for it, including a polarizing filter, a camera bag, and a 1gb memory card.
I’m a little hesitant to take it with me on my trip to Mexico, but I got it a week before my birthday so I could do just that. I’ll be watching it like a hawk; at the same time I think it will be worth it.
Here are 12 winter photos I took with my new camera.
I love Malcalm Gladwell’s writing and reading an ESPN interview with him only helps to reinforce my impression of him—he’s brilliant.
This week’s exchange is with Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author of “Blink” and “Tipping Point” as well as the longtime cleanup hitter for the New Yorker. You would never think that the most successful nonfiction writer alive would double as a huge sports fan… but he does. So I couldn’t resist the chance to exchange e-mails with him intermittently over the past six weeks.
Check out “Curious Guy: Malcalm Gladwell”, part I and part II.
I’ve been working on a hockey fan site for the Halifax Mooseheads—http://halifaxherd.ca. When I started, I was a little worried that I might be overdoing it with the amount of red and black that I was putting in the design, but I think it actually turned out quite nicely.
Not only did I come up with a standards compliant design that fit with the motif he was looking for, but I also set him up with a copy Word Press so that he is now completely in control of his content. WordPress is great because of the amount of customization available through plugins (and brute coding—if you’re into that sort of thing). WordPress also makes it extremely easy for updating and modifying your site. It’s hard to believe something so valuable is available as a free download. Sometimes the free choice, is the best choice.
The site owner still has a couple of things he’d like me to help him with, but Moose Crossing is up and running and (in my opinion) it looks pretty sweet. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.
“Susan thinks she could be a DM. She was like, ‘how hard can it be? You just have to tell the story’. phfff. She has no idea.”