Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Lots of doe plus a buck….

Out at Circle R today cruising along classic listening to the Meat Puppets Armed and Stupid:
No bodyPure scienceNo bodyPure essenceAnd the sun wants a place in the skyAs it spins all aroundAnd the rain thinks that it was only dreamingAs it kisses the ground

Out of the woods just in front of my pop out

1
2
3, 4, 5
6
7, 8 doe (“a deer a female deer”)


then a buck with quite a rack on him. They bounded up the hill with an exuberance I would be likely unable to muster at that time of the morning had my lot in this life been to care for 8 does.


Carpe Diem people,

boB






Sunday, December 26, 2010

Perfect Weather for a Boxing Day ski with Miss Sunset!


Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Cons

Rockin the Christmas Cons. Have a Grateful Day!


P866

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Christmas Jade Plant is decked. Better than Race Bannon's Jade (not quite)


P861

Friday, December 17, 2010

Some more of SF in a few pix and Jack’s street

First picture is on the way back from North Beach with longtime
friend/Geophysical Institute alumni DL. Hey hey Jack! Rest are from
taking a break in the late PM today, having some awesome slices at ZA
(awesome pizZA) and touring Russian Hill. Last day of the meeting
tomorrow and we have a poster in the AM.

Here’s a gallery of pictures.
SF Dec 2010

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Congratulations to Chey on her race this morning! #agu10 5 k

It was pleasure to share with Chey her first running race this
morning, the AGU 5 k. We got up early and went down to ATT park. The
race when up/down on the Embarcadero. Chey did a great job pacing
herself, coming back a few tens of second faster than out. With
running back and forth from the hotel she went over 8 k. Like
everything she does she gave it 110%. Pat and I are so lucky to have
such great kids.

Love you Chey well done!

Monday, December 13, 2010

...and a LONG overdue reunion with Big Dave!


Photo

(reminiscing about our journey via thumb to Alaska in a distant galaxy
a long time ago). Hope we can do it again this week as the Man is a
wine connoisseur.

Grateful day

Had it all today family, the land, the sea... and....


Sunday, December 12, 2010

Yesterday on the Ocean

What kind of better family time is talking hours of geology with Prof.
C. S. Sica explaining the melange of the Golden Gate Headlands, long
walks along the ocean and meeting the Milwaukee Brew Crew for dinner!
We had it all except for poor Cass who toils on papers at school.
Here's a few photos, a full album with some video (which I'll keep
updating for the trip) is here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Bob.Sica/SFDec2010. The video near the end
of the sets coming in by the Sutto baths is cool.

Today promises more excitement and weird rocks (did you check out the
serpentine formations, we got to break the stuff apart and boy is it
brittle and slimy. And to think at one points parts of it were deep
within Earth's mantle! But I digress). So this morning we will
continue and see some pillow lavas at the Marin Highlands.

PO,
boB


Saturday, December 11, 2010

Long day on the road but we made it to SF

Just a few pix to let you know we survived and arrived in SF and
putzed around the MLK Monument and the SFMOMA. Great meal and
Margaritas at Trotipisueno's. Tomorrow: "been so long since I've seen
the ocean; think I should".

And congratulations and welcome to our reality Baby Ben!
(Ben there bun that?)

PO,
boB


Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Pesto + microwave = MessTo!


P847

Don't try this at home kids, you should have heard the bang when Mrs Sica decided to microwave the plastic pesto container!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

I haven’t shovelled this much since my Western Civilization Course in 1st year

Guess this qualifies for the biggest snowfall I ever seen, don’t think we ever got this much in one go even when we lived in the Colorado Rockies. And we’re still supposed to get at least 10 cm overnight. Here’s the video evidence.



Let’s go snowshoeing tomorrow!


boB








SnowBound_Dec2010.m4v
Watch on Posterous


Monday, November 29, 2010

Why we like art, the Bern Bears face-off with the Joisey Tigers, Weather Report SWEET

Long day and physical/mental collapse loom so in new world order. 

On the run today I finally realize why art is different from science and why we like it.

Back to that, on the run it was snowy, first snow run of the year. Up river like Kurtz got to the Baren Park. SOB they do have bears here, in this tiered hillside with a moat at the bottom and a fence at the top 3 of the fabled Bears of Bern and this Tiger ate his hat, you weren't kidding KW. Mamma Brownie with 2 cubs having a grand old time doing the bear thing with a few gronking tourist and an old guy who didn't even slow down, I mean in Fairbanks this would be common place, PPPAATTTTT, where's the magnum that bar' is back in the yard again.

What does that have to do with art, simple cause I was on the run heading downriver, and got on these lonely snow covered trails in a flurry with the sun popping in and out and Weather Report Suite never sounding better (as if that could happen) and a pelican flew by (cold for a pelican I would have thought) and Crows (not my Crows, locals) crying.

And yeah and more Euro-dogs, one woman leading about a DOZEN dogs all well behaved, big doggy dogs and ALL off-lead, I ran right through them, wow.

So I thinking I'm happy and how it resonated with me and it all became clear in the moment people, about how similar happiness and resonance are. When it's good it is on and you know it. So I think what happens is we like different stimulus, whether art, music, food, whatever because we are all similar in the frequencies we experience, but all different in how these frequencies interact with us, you know, in the broad picture we experience the same frequency envelope but our uniqueness is in what grabs us in narrow little happy bands, like Jerry's guitar or running hard up the big hill home. And my frequencies peak (shift) to just slightly different places then yours. It is why are molecules are in a sense different and how they interact so we are just systems of these systems so I don't see that this is much of a stretch. These resonances are deeper then our conscious brain, which mucks up everything anyway by trying to explain, explain, explain.

No one tell Paul Harvey this, cause it is at the rest of the story and he might be dead anyway?

So Were-wolfs of London, Bears of Bern, Tiger of Tenafly, Mustangs of Western etc, I'm almost out of here. But this is Bern and this is where in 1905 as a young, probably considered eccentric kind of guy named Albert Einstein, who was as famous at the time as that mosquito you killed last July, was a patent clerk here, and he walked these same streets and realized if you ran with a mirror at the speed of light you couldn't see yourself in it and the rest is history.

So on the way to the meeting today we, I realized, I had resonated in the same place, only separated only by time. And yeah we had a good science chat as well at the Meeting!

"Winter grey and falling rain, we'll see summer come again,
Darkness falls and seasons change (gonna happen every time).
Same old friends the wind and rain, Summers fade and roses die,
You'll see summer come again, Like a song that's born to soar the sky."

boB



Photo

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Stereotypes

I love stereotypes. What I mean is a love when a stereotype is a
stereotype because it is correct. I'm particularly stoked tonight as I
think I got just about all of 'em out of my system in less than 6 hrs
in Switzerland.

In no particularly order.

Saw a St. Bernard (no barrel around neck; oh year Amy P a beagle too.
Also Euro dogs, hanging out in malls/trains/etc, hey that's one too).
None of the dogs were smoking.

Saw a Swiss Army knife store.

Saw Swiss Balls in a furniture store.

My hotel has Lindt and Tolberone bars. And Ricola (only one I missed
today was the guys with the long horns cause...)

On the train connecting gates at the Airport they projected on the
tunnel walls at one point a short video that had both a hot "Swiss
Miss" in the hot "Swiss Miss" outfit smiling and waving, plus a cow
moo'ing in the background. Would have made Mrs. Sica homesick.

General Euro stereotype: walking back from dinner saw a student
protest about who knows what, with the riot police in full kit
following them. Why I don't know, they were politely writing their
slogans in chalk.

Everything by the train tracks was tagged in Zurich, many with the F
word (en anglais).

Ikea, MacDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks (had a lunch in Zurich, 2
close to the hotel here), H&M (well they are Swedish).

Asked directions in a Swatch store.

etc.

PO,
boB

ps: torn between iPad or an 11" MBA? 15 min after getting off the
train in Bern I had 300 mb of 3G iPad data for $20 including a
microsim card. Try that with an Air!

ppss Chey, check out these Cons, an American icon how'd Switzerland
get all the leather/faux fur lined ones including the knee highs (see
photo).

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/pUa99K-JiT67gARU5gIAlg?feat=directlink&f...

BikeTopia


P839

People think bikes here. Way to go Bern!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Through this portal…


P831

…past you must. Zurich after find you.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

VPN for People with a Life

… where we do something a bit different and talk some tech


OK people, I’m stepping into some new ground here and doing so occasional tips, tricks and tech stuff I have learned. Not just computers, but bikes and anything else (like maybe even TF’s awesome place to get tires online). So today I’m starting with something I posted as a warning the other day and a few of you comment on, the latest in a line of threats one faces using open public wifi nets. This one, firesheep, can be easily downloaded, run by basically anyone and provides a graphical interface so you can jack peoples unsecure browsing session, like facebook. The post I read is this one from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2010/10/28/firesheep-vpns/.


Enough is enough so I bit the bullet and took some time to try to sort out this VPN stuff. Long story short, VPN allows you to get use an encrypted connection on an open network. First think I quickly concluded there were plenty of roll your own solutions possible and that I wasn’t going to have the time/effort level to do any of them myself. So I was going to go with a commercial service. The arrays of potential providers is huge, and I checked out a few of the bigger players, e.g. strongvpn (the biggest, baddest and most option rich, like trying to weed through godaddy to get a domain), hotspotvpn, purevpn and WiTopia. 


Here’s a list of urls for you: feed://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:bobsica/t:vpn


I spoke/chatted with several of the companies, and with vpn customer service seems to be important, they were all very willing to help me out. Prices range from a couple dollars to over $30 a month depending on what you want. For the purposes of what I wanted, security in public places, ability to use OpenVPN (best for laptop) but still getting decent PPTP vpn (what you have to use on an iOS device like a touch, iPhone or iPad) protection I went with WiTopia. I like paying for a year rather than by the month and $70 / 12 months looks like a good deal. I’m using iOS device plus a Macbook Pro: installation was a breeze. Connection worked instantly, I tried using IPs both in the States and Canada I got downloads faster than my local ISP. And BTW on you iDevice it works either on wifi or on 3G. Cool.


Verdict: I’m not willing to forego being the kind of loser who uses his laptop/iPad/iPhone everywhere, but I’m not longer willing to be an easy mark for a black-hat loser either. So I’m cool with the < $6/month I’m shelling out. Especially if I can get anyone else to play foursquare with me. :-)


Surf safe,


boB

Monday, November 1, 2010

"we nailed it" hell yeah Cody!


P816



Enjoyed watching the Grateful Giants getting 'er done tonight. Hail to The Freak!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

On the road again


P719

Mrs S & I did the Trisport brunch in Grim-town this morn, then some poking around Jacob, ON. Sadly we couldn't take Pat's new friend home to our garden (though we do have an emu egg shell, they're beautiful. I'm off to the CANDAC meeting in Halifax, stay tuned on the Purple Crow Lidar facebook page.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

OUAA Cross Country Championships


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKo72UIap4U?wmode=transparent]


Time is short but I wanted to get these pictures and video up before I get on a plane tomorrow for the CANDAC workshop in Halifax. Congratulations to the team for a great season and showing a lot of character on a tough course today.


Pappa Sica