Archive for June, 2007

Basashi 馬刺

Sat, Jun 30th, 2007  |   Food, Musings 2 Comments

basashiWith all the places I go and the people I meet, from time-to-time it’s inevitable that I’ll find myself in a situation with food that I “must try”, even though all things being equal, I’d probably rather not.

A few nights ago, I was taken out by some very nice people to a restaurant that serves one thing, and one thing only…horse meat. The cuisine is from an area in southern Japan known as Kumamoto. The restaurant, called Haruya, is in a part of Tokyo known as Yotsuya, on a street filled with places to eat and drink.

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Yokohama Chinatown

Sun, Jun 24th, 2007  |   Musings, Places, Adventures No Comments

chinatownI was wandering through Chinatown in Yokohama the other day to kill some time, and a thought occurred to me. This has to be the cleanest, and most expensive, Chinatown in the world.

As an example, a nice lady with a stand in front of one of the many elegant restaurants was selling lychees, which I happen to really like, at the “bargain” price of Yen 3,150 for 30 lychees. That works out to about US$25.50, or 85 cents per lychee.

Yikes! You can get a whole pile of them in many places in Southeast Asia for that price. Needless to say, I passed on that particular bargain.
lychee
And of course, the plush, clean interior decor of the restaurants, including the one I went into, seemed somewhat out of sync with the status quo of other Chinatowns around the world I’ve been to.

Baby Manta Died

Fri, Jun 22nd, 2007  |   Marine Life 4 Comments

The first manta born in captivity had died. Apparenty, the father abused the baby manta by chasing it around, harassing it and slamming into the little ray, inflicting injuries. No one knows the reason for this behaviour.

Live Manta Birth in Captivity

Sun, Jun 17th, 2007  |   Marine Life, Video, Multimedia 11 Comments

Video of the world’s first live birth of a manta in captivity. Healthy baby female, about 1.9 metres across, born at the Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. Video is from a TBS news broadcast. (They appear to have deleted the page with the video)

The video file is 1.7 MB. Click the graphic below and wait for the quicktime file to load.

Note: A few people have had problems viewing the quicktime file. Others have not. I have no idea why. In any case, if you can’t view the embedded file, click below the graphic to download an mp4 file which should play in Quicktime, iTunes and on your iPod.


iPod iPod version (1.7 MB)

Apple Takes a Bite

Tue, Jun 12th, 2007  |   Funny Stuff 2 Comments

This is a screenshot from cnet news, with an embedded video of Steve Jobs announcing OS X Leopard at WWDC yesterday. The caption for the video reads:

    Jobs takes jab at Vista
    At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, CEO Steve Jobs takes a swipe at Microsoft by announcing Leopard is being released in different versions–all at the same price.

(If I have to explain why this is hysterical, it’s no longer funny.)

To add insult to injury, note the sponsorship of the video by Microsoft. :-)

pasta

To be fair, the sponsorship video that precedes the main video rotates among different advertisers. It just happened to be Microsoft’s turn when I viewed the page. Think they got their money’s worth?

Sea Lion Screen Saver

Mon, Jun 11th, 2007  |   Marine Life, Video, Multimedia 2 Comments

I put together a screen saver with some of the images from my sea lion trip earlier this year. It only works on Macs, so if you’ve got a Mac and would like a sea lion screen saver, right click here to download (4.8 MB file). Just double-click the file to open and install.

Of Cartilage and Con Artists

Fri, Jun 8th, 2007  |   Environment, Food, Musings No Comments

One of the things that really gets to me is con artists who try to dupe innocent people by concocting some obscenely stupid story to fool people into spending money on silly (or worse, sometimes harmful) products or services. For some reason, the marine world seems to attract more than its fair share of these shysters.

One of the perpetual scams has been the notion that since sharks don’t get cancer, then ingesting shark cartilage will ward off cancer and/ or save you if you already have cancer. “Health food” stores around the world peddle the stuff, with helpful, but ignorant, sales people touting the magical healing properties of shark cartilage supplements. (See article I wrote earlier about this.)

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Dog Dialogue

Thu, Jun 7th, 2007  |   Musings 5 Comments

pastaI communicate with my dog all the time. We make eye contact, use hand (and paw) signals, and even talk to each other.

I know it sounds silly, and many people believe that non-human animals can’t communicate the way we do, but surely anyone who’s ever had a pet dog understands what I mean?

Like most effective communication, our rapport has built-up over many years, and the vocabulary of words, gestures and facial expressions we use has become increasingly complex. We started with simple people-dog stuff like “No!” and “Sit”, and gradually progressed to the ability to communicate in sentences, and even anticipate one another’s actions.

We use some English, some Japanese, some of both together. For example, here’s a partial list of words and short commands (English and Japanese as applicable) Pasta understands:

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Podcast: A Very Selfish Octopus

Sun, Jun 3rd, 2007  |   Marine Life, Video, Multimedia 5 Comments

With all the travelling and general chaos of life, it took me a while to put together another animated slideshow/ podcast from my recent trip to the Lembeh Strait.

This one is about an octopus I came across early one morning, when a few dive guides and I went exploring relatively undived areas. Four of us spent 50 minutes seeing absolutely nothing. In fact, two of the guides were already sitting back on the boat by the time I got back around the 50-minute mark.


iPod iPod version (20 MB)

Then, the guide I was with, Lembeh Strait veteran Wilson, spotted an octopus in a bottle. Anyone who’s been to Lembeh knows that octopuses in bottles are really common, so normally, I probably would’ve passed this one by. But after 50 minutes of zippo, I stopped for a look. And a good thing I did.

I then spent the next 50 minutes being entertained by this rather pugnacious cephalopod, who actually reached out, grabbed my dome port and tried to push me away.

I’m not an easily offended person, but this was just downright rude! Anyway, as it turned out, the octopus had a perfectly logical and rational reason for being unsociable.

Click on the video above to find out why the octopus was being so grumpy (it might take some time for your browser to download and play the file), or subscribe to my podcast via iTunes here to download the file for your iPod and automatically get updated whenever I put one of these together. Enjoy!

Power of the Net: Podcasts

Sat, Jun 2nd, 2007  |   Musings, Video, Multimedia 1 Comment

If you’ve been following my blog for the past month or two, you can see that I’ve stretched the limits of my coding capabilities (actually, I have none) and managed to put together a few podcasts and have them broadcast via Apple iTunes, as well as post them to my blog.

What exactly is a podcast? Not being a tech person, I’m not sure if there’s an official definition. But the way I look at it, podcasts are a way for anyone with access to the net to broadcast words, images, voice, video and any combination thereof to the rest of the world.

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Interview: Nautica Magazine

Fri, Jun 1st, 2007  |   Articles, Interviews 1 Comment

This is an interview I did with a magazine called Nautica in Croatia. How cool is that?!

I don’t know how many people reading this will understand Croatian, but I had to post this anyway. Upon seeing this, one smart a** I know said, “I understand as much as I normally do of your articles.” Hah, hah. Very amusing.

Right click here to download the PDF file (232 kB). There were actually more pages just with photos, but this is the cool part with my answers in Croatian.

And by the way, there is apparently good diving in Croatia. Maybe that’s where I have to visit next…