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.
here are some shots from 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!
Pictures from Thailand
So here are a bunch of photos from Thailand. In order, these are from Bangkok, Koh Lanta, Sukhothai, and Ayutthaya. The pictures look OK for the most part. I think the colors look a bit washed out, but I’m certainly no photographer and it’s just a point-and-shoot camera.
Again, these images are resized and watermarked. If you want a clean file, just let me know.
Enjoy!
Pictures from Korea
Here are a handful of pictures from my vacation in Korea. The weather is way too nice to be on the computer today, so I’ll keep this brief. These are pictures from Seoul and Gyeongju, in that order. I’ve watermarked these pictures with my website name; if you want a clean image or a full-resolution file, just let me know.
(We did not go to the Seoul Museum of Chicken Art, but there’s always next time.)
Successful Troubleshooting!
I just sorted out a very geeky problem I’ve been having, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. Prior to coming to Korea, I ordered myself an Asus EeePC 901. For the most part, it’s been a fantastic machine. My one complaint has been the wireless performance. It’s mostly OK at my apartment, but on the go it has a real hard time connecting to access points. If the signal strength is anything less than stellar, it’s just pretty flakey. It may be a linux-related driver issue; I’m not sure.
Regardless, I’d had enough, so I ordered an Intel 4965 AGN card prior to my parents’ visit. The original Ralink card used 2 antennas. The new Intel card had jacks for three. I’m pretty sure that three antennas are required for true 802.11N speed, but I haven’t done a lot of research on it. Something about MIMO (multiple input/multiple output) support. I thought 3 was probably better than 2, so I spent $5 and ordered one. I don’t use N networks now, but I figured I might in the future.
Ideally, I would have disassembled the machine and found a good location to stash the new antenna, but the wire was really short, and I didn’t want tear everything apart. I just stuck it under the (shielded) access panel. I knew this was a piss-poor location, but I figured that I wasn’t using wireless N anyways, so it probably didn’t matter.
I made this update right before going to Thailand. Everything seemed to be working well. The new card connected to networks faster than the stock card, battery life was better, and it seemed to do a better job with weak signals. I didn’t do a lot of testing, however.
I only used wireless a few times in Thailand, but things didn’t go well. The connection was laggy, and Skype had terrible delay or dropped calls. I blamed it lack of bandwidth, but the problems didn’t go away when I got home. Even on my (excellent) Korean connection, I had problems using Skype.
Tonight I tackled the problem. Ping showed terribly inconsistent latencies, and tons of duplicate packets. At first I blamed my crappy router, but my other laptop had no problems. Traceroute didn’t help narrow down the source of the problem.
I pulled the new wireless card and re-inserted the old card. Problem solved. This had me really frustrated, because the Intel card is pretty much brand new. I tried the Intel card again, but without the third antenna. Bingo! Low latencies and no dropped/duplicate packets.
I don’t know enough about the hardware or the wireless N specification to really understand this one, but it appears that the case shielding was messing up the third antenna, which caused the problems. I’ll watch it for a few days, but the problem seems resolved.
I love easy fixes. I suppose the moral is to do things right the first time, but methodical troubleshooting is critical when problems arise.
Dinner meetings
We’re back from Thailand. It was a great trip, and I have tons of pictures and lots to talk about. Look for updates soon. Also, we had a great time in Korea with my parents. Again, pictures and updates to come.
I hate to rant on my first post back, but there’s something I have to get off my chest. I hate dinner meetings.
Here’s the background: We got back to Gangneung on Friday and had to go to school on Monday. No classes, so we’re sitting at our desks and planning. We’re told sometime in the morning that we have a dinner meeting for the teachers that are moving to new schools. As far as I can gather, this happens about every semester. Teachers have to go to a new school at least every five years, to avoid stagnation and corruption, I guess.
Dinner meetings are pretty common; we have them for all sorts of reasons. This is maybe the 6th or 7th such meeting that we’ve had thus far. Here’s the scenario: Erin and I catch a cab to the beach. We sit down in a big room with all of the teachers from school, maybe 50 total. There’s no formal order to seating, but all the women sit on one side, and the men on the other. (Side note #1: the male teachers at school speak very little English and tend to ignore me.) I have the option of sitting awkwardly with the men, or sitting awkwardly with the women. I opt for the women, because I can sit with Erin, and because they speak English. I side as close too the men’s table as possible though. Regardless, this seems to be some sort of testosterone-related faux pas. Nobody wants to talk to me.
Side dishes come, then raw fish. (Side note #2: I can’t stand raw fish.) At some point, soju is brought out. The drinking begins. The men start drinking heavily, or at least pretending to. Same with the women. They pour water into shot glasses if they don’t want to drink soju. After a few drinks, both the women and the men are getting red-faced and giggly. I’m sitting awkwardly at a table.
A few more drinks, and the third course is served. Some kind of fish soup. Soju is still flowing. At this point, I get flagged over to a different table, where Erin is pounding beers with some of the younger female teachers. I join in, because company is nice. We have a couple drinks, but my head really isn’t in it.
Then the real fun starts. My co-teacher is one of the older male teachers, and seems to be the de-facto MC. He stands up and starts asking teachers to sing. Last time this happened, Erin and I got called up and performed a horrendous rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” for the teachers that were leaving. Thankfully, we were not called on. It should be noted that I have a terrible voice. I’d prefer not to demonstrate that fact publicly. I’m also not much of a drinker. Even if I were, no amount of rot-gut soju could make public singing a comfortable experience. NOT being called up was the best part of the evening.
After 20 or 30 minutes of singing, the group decides to move on…to a norebang. This translates to “singing room.” You guessed it…more singing! (A norebang is a building full of little rooms with screens and kareokee machines. Drinks and food are often served. It’s part of Korean culture that I do not understand at all.) At this point, Erin and I made our excuses and left with another teacher. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to be TOO much of a big deal.
As I’ve made clear, I really hate these meetings. It was better last semester, because one of the temp English teachers was a male who spoke excellent English. He made the whole situation a lot easier. It’s frustrating for me, because I’m pretty sure that if I drank a half-gallon of soju and generally acted foolish, I’d fit in much better. I’m certainly not saying that every teacher does this, but plenty do, and it drinking is a pretty big part of male bonding in Korea. It’s just really not my style.
Enough of my whining. We were able to escape the meeting after 2 and a half hours, which isn’t too bad. At least we avoided the norebang.
