The Pond, 2010 edition
Since Erin and I are both back in East Lansing this winter, it’s time for another round of pond pictures.
For those that don’t know the story, this is a pond that Erin and I discovered while living in the university apartments. These were older buildings, next to the express-way and the train tracks. There was a surprising amount of swampy, wooded land near-by, and it made for fun exploring when we were bored.
The pond itself is shaped like two perfect rectangles; I’m assuming it was a borrow pit left from the construction of the express-way. If you’re curious, you can see it on Google Maps.
This was our first trip this year. It was a beautiful day for a walk, and I wanted to check the ice conditions. I looks like there’s enough ice for skating, but the surface is pretty rough. We’ll need to get a patch cleared off and see if it smooths out.
Here are some pictures:
Pictures from Bangladesh
Here are two galleries of photos from Bangladesh. I’ll do a longer write-up later, but I’ve got lessons to plan right now. Enjoy!
Back from Bangladesh
There’s been a lot happening lately. To summarize quickly:
- Regular classes ended the middle of July. After that, I taught two weeks of half-day “camps”. The first week was for students. The second was for general (non-English) teachers and people from the community. Both weeks were much easier than I’d expected.
- The first week of August, Erin and I taught classes at a teacher-certification course in Gangneung. Our topic was “Listening and Speaking Activities”. We didn’t really know what that mean, and neither did our students. It went alright, but was surprisingly stressful. We were well-paid, however. The extra money from this week completely paid for our trip to Bangladesh
- We went to Bangladesh! This was a hell of a trip. We were only there for nine days, to attend a friend’s wedding. It was quite an experience. I won’t go into details now, but look for a longer update (with pictures) tomorrow.
Our time here is winding down quickly, and we’ve got lots to do. Packages must get shipped home, paperwork must be filled out, the apartment needs to be cleaned, and eventually we’ll have packing to do. We’ve also got one more week of teaching, and some additional grad school work to accomplish before we leave.
We’re both pretty excited for the next step.
Photo Failure
I really did carry my camera for most of the last week, I just haven’t taken the time to sort and upload the photos yet. I’ve been finalizing the curriculum for a week-long vacation class, finishing lesson planning for summer camps, sorting out a visa for Bangladesh, and applying for work back home. There’s only so much time I can spend in front of a screen.
I’ll try to get pictures up ASAP.
A Wednesday Walk
Our year here is winding down, and I’m wishing I’d taken more photos. Lately, I’ve been trying to do just that, but as much as I like taking pictures, I hate lugging a camera around.
For the next seven days, I will attempt to post at least a few pictures every day. This will force me to carry a camera. In return, I get the narcissistic pleasure of people viewing my pictures. (Also, it should make my mother happy, as she always wants to see photos.)
Without further ado, here is a walk along the river on a Wednesday evening:
Mureung Valley
This weekend we took an amazing hike up Mureung Valley, near Donghae (about 45 minutes south of Gangneung).
Hiking is pretty popular in Korea, especially in Gangwondo. Every weekend, the parks fill up with people, and quite often a “hike” is actually filing up a big stone staircase in a line with hundreds of other people. Not exactly my idea of a good time.
If you get off the official path a bit, things are completely different. After walking up the path for about 20 minutes, we dropped down onto the river bed and rock-hopped upstream. There were a few people sunning themselves or having picnics, but we walked a few minutes upstream and had the whole river to ourselves.
We spent the day swimming in the river and lounging on the rocks. In the evening, a few more people showed up, and we set up camp. We pitched tents, cooked some food, and drank some beer. We hiked back down on Sunday, after more swimming and lunch.
I wish I’d known about the valley sooner, but I’ll definitely return before we leave.
Here are some photos. Also, I’m looking for feedback on the new photo system. I’ve wanted a Lightbox script of some sort to overlay my photos and display captions. Some of them run really slowly on my server, but I think I’ve found one that works. I’m still tweaking things, but let me know what you think.
a plug for CrunchBang Linux
CrunchBang Linux is awesome!
I don’t typically blog about the day-to-day geekiness involved in maintaining our small fleet of computers, but I have to recommend this distribution. It’s been on my laptop for about 36 hours, and I absolutely love it.
Our current network consists of:
- My Asus EeePC 901. It’s running Ubuntu 8.04. We use it for Skype, occasional browsing/productivity, and as a portable machine.
- Erin’s Dell E6400. This is her primary machine, and it’s running Ubuntu 9.04. It usually lives in the bedroom, but has been known to move around the apartment.
- Erin’s ancient Dell 600m. It’s connected to the TV. It has no working screen, wireless card, battery, PC slot, or USB ports, so it’s not good for much else. It’s running Windows XP, as the S-Video out doesn’t work under Linux.
- My Dell E1505. This is my primary machine, and it lives on the desk, connected to a couple external drives. It’s on pretty much 24/7, and gets used for just about everything. It serves files to all the other machines and functions as a desktop. This is the computer that’s now running CrunchBang.
I recently installed Ubuntu 9.04 on my Dell, but I just wasn’t pleased. It felt bloated and slow. To be fair, this machine runs an FTP server, a Samba file server and a DAAP server in addition to the usual desktop apps including Firefox, Skype, and a busy bittorrent client. It’s about 4 years old, and it was feeling sluggish. I’ve been meaning to set up an internet jukebox of some sort, maybe Jinzora, but that means adding a webserver and database to the mix. It was time for a lighter-weight OS.
Enter Crunchbang Linux. It’s built from a minimal Ubuntu installation, but without all of the bulk of full-fledged Ubuntu. You still get apt for package management and the very robust Gnome network tools. It uses the Openbox window manager, which is amazingly fast and configurable. The rest of the installed applications are an excellent compromise between features and speed.
Installation was a breeze, and I haven’t had a single problem. Lately I’ve felt that Ubuntu is focusing more and more on eyecandy and flashy new features, and I’m just not that interested. I’m tired of spending hours trimming the fat from the distro. So far, crunchbang performs impressively. Memory and CPU usage are lower, and everything feels snappier.
This isn’t a distribution for everyone. It requires some comfort with the terminal and configuration files, but it’s surprisingly easy. If you’re looking for a lightweight alternative to Ubuntu, I highly recommend it.
And just to prove that lightweight doesn’t mean ugly, check out a couple screenshots:
Tension on the peninsula (but I’m not losing sleep yet)
The latest news cycle regarding Korea has been a bit worrisome. In case you missed it, this week North Korea tested a nuclear bomb, test-fired a few short-range missiles, and threatened to attack the U.S. or South Korea. In response, the U.S. and South Korea have raised their alert level. These are only the most recent in a long string of events that have strained inter-Korean relations. In 2009, North Korea has test fired a long-range missile, threatened passenger jets, and discarded recent peace agreements with the South.
It all sounds pretty bad, but with North Korea it’s hard to know when to worry. I suppose you could say their behaviour is predictably erratic. They increase tension, then back down. They concede, then renege on agreements. In 2006, they detonated their first nuclear device. Then in 2007, they agreed to shut nuclear facilities used to refine weapons-grade fuel (in exchange for shipments of oil). Pyongyang then proceeded to miss a string of deadlines under the agreement, eventually barring inspectors. So maybe the most recent events are simply business as usual: plutonium-based brinkmanship, with minor concessions to come.
But maybe there is cause for worry. As I mentioned, the news in recent months has been consistently bad. The North has been ratcheting up regional tension, and the Lee administration in Seoul has taken a hard stance toward the North. They have reversed the policies of the previous administration, opting for a more confrontational tone.
I’m not that concerned, however. Nobody here seems panicked, although from the general chatter of ex-pats and Koreans alike, nobody is comfortable either. Thankfully, the Korean Missile Crisis is still a few years off. When newspapers discuss a nuclear detonation and a missile test on the same page, people get pretty jumpy. I hope everyone reads this slowly, so there’s no confusion: North Korea does not have nuclear-tipped ICBMs ready to fire.
This isn’t a huge relief. The real barrier to developing nuclear arms is acquiring enough fissile material. It requires an active nuclear reactor or thousands of centrifuges to refine weapons-grade fuel. Neither of those routes is exactly subtle. Unfortunately, North Korea has the fuel. At this point, building a crude bomb isn’t all that challenging.
Building a compact bomb and the necessary missile system to deliver it is a lot trickier, however. Both tests of their multi-stage missile, the Taepodong-2, have failed. Their first nuclear test was extremely low-yield. While atmospheric tests revealed radiation, the small size of the blast suggests a misfire of some sort. The most recent detonation was much larger, but they are still at least a few years from having a significant nuclear deterrent.
I’ve got no solutions to this problem, but I’m willing to relax and let the experts handle it. It does give me one more reason to question our invasion of Iraq, however. I’m no advocate of pre-emptive war, but if the U.S. needed to force a regime change for security and humanitarian reasons, maybe Iraq was the wrong target. If we continue on the present course, our options will be a lot more limited in a few years.
Pictures - Weekend in Hyeonri
Our friend Jose lives in Hyeonri, a rural village near Inje. This was a long weekend for us, so we spent Friday and Saturday night with him. We went whitewater rafting on Saturday and took a nice hike Sunday morning.
It’s a gorgeous place. Here are some pictures:
Pictures - Gangneung Cherry Blossom Festival
These pictures are from April 10. Erin and I rode our bikes to Gyeongpo Lake to check out the cherry blossom festival. Enjoy!
