Random Developments

Last weekend I decided to “go for a walk” in the Dandenong Ranges; after studying the map for a while I decided to follow the Western Trail, which connects the Mount Dandenong Observatory to the Upper Ferntree Gully picnic grounds. This decision was based mostly on the fact that there is public transport within easy reach from both ends of the trail…

The Western Trail is a “notional” trail… you won’t actually find any signs using this name anywhere in the park. It is just a series of connecting tracks and roads that, properly followed, will take you from one end to the other (there are a few signposts with large “W” signs and arrows, but not enough that one would be able to use them as a guide) through a scenic and enjoyable path — not necessarily the most direct one.

I started by taking the train from the city to Croydon, then a bus to Mount Dandenong (line 688, Croydon to Olinda via Ridge Road). The bus dropped me by the track that leads up to the observatory; it’s a 1.5km walk, heading mostly up, through the Kyeema Track (named after the DC-2 “Kyeema” plane that crashed there almost exactly 70 years ago, on 25/10/1938). I stayed on the top for some 15 minutes, then headed back the way I came, following the same track back to the starting point and continuing south following the signs to Burke’s Lookout, then continuing on the same track after the lookout. That connects to Zig-Zag Track (so named for reasons that will be obvious to anyone following it) near a TV transmitter, and then to Channel 10 Track, which soon after becomes Dandenong Creek Track. This will take you through a very “ferny” area, humid and dark in places, a bit slippery in others and heading very steeply down in many others. If it has rained recently, use shoes with a good grip.

Track junctions and connections are not usually signed, nor is it always all that obvious which way to go; a map is required, a compass helps a lot and a GPS receiver helps even more… I suggest picking up the “Walking and Driving Tracks” map at the Observatory, although if you’re planning on doing this walk you should have it already by the time you get there.

Dandenong Creek Track ends in a T-junction with Basin-Olinda Road, and at this point it’s not clear what is the right way to go; the map indicates that one should simply cross the road and continue straight ahead, but there is no obvious track there. There is a narrow track starting to the right of one of those “W” signposts, and that is what I followed, but I’m not sure it was the right thing to do: the map shows the correct track connecting to School Track at Range Road, and the one I took did not. I ended up diverging from the map indication at this point by following Range Road west to Bradley Track (there is no sign there; it’s the last track on the left before you hit a gate), following it to the end (careful at the junction with Basin-Olinda Road, you need to stay on the track and not take the road) and rejoining the Trail further south at Old Coach Road, a bit to the west from what is shown on the map. Old Coach Road is identified as Horse Trail on signs at this point; they change to Old Coach Road further down, where it widens and is open to traffic (not that you’re likely to see any cars, mind you).

From this point on the track is a bit simpler: from Old Coach Road you turn left at Ferndale Road (ignore the sign saying “Road Closed”), which ends at the Mountain Highway; follow the highway to the east for about 100m as it turns south, then cross it (carefully!) to follow Alpine Road to the south; it’s the first junction on that side of the road and it’s not open to cars. Follow Alpine Road all the way to Janesdell Ave. (no sign there either; it’s a sharp turn to the right in a place where you can’t continue ahead; it doesn’t look like an avenue at all, it’s just a track), then follow that all the way to Mt Erin Road and that will lead you naturally to the One Tree Hill picnic grounds, which is a good place for a long rest considering that in the last few kilometres you climbed almost two hundred metres. After that you will head down Kokoda Memorial Trail (follow the signs, it’s easy to find) and simply follow the track to the train station.

A full map of the trail I followed is here; you will notice a few places where I went back the way I came, or even did a full circle back to an earlier location, and all that was caused by the lack of signs on the tracks. It seems to me that this trail may be a bit easier to follow if you start from the south, as the signs are better if you’re going that way and you’re less likely to get lost. However, that involves starting with the Thousand Steps up to One Tree Hill, which will get you tired right away, and ending with a very steep ascent up Mount Dandenong at a time when you will definitely be tired…

A few weeks ago I found out about a very nice Firefox extension called Read It Later. It allows one to easily save links in a list to be read later: you get a “check mark” on the address bar that you can simply click on to save the page you’re looking at (much like the star used to bookmark a page). You can also right-click on a link to save it directly from the context menu. More importantly, you can sync the list between different browser installations (say, home and work) and you can also access the list from anywhere by going directly to the website (they even have an iPhone interface) or via an RSS feed.

As I said, I liked it straight away and started using it; it’s very convenient. There’s only one problem: it assumes that, even though you don’t have time to read something now, you will have time later. I’ve been finding out that this is not necessarily the case, as the size of my list has been growing almost monotonically since. I guess I need to cut down on my reading ambitions.

A few months ago, I wrote that I was looking for a new camera and that I was reading about several DSLR models. I eventually chose one of them, and during a recent trip to the USA I bought a Sony A200. It’s a 10.1 MP camera, based on the old Minolta line that was acquired by Sony a few years back, and it came with a 18-70mm zoom lens. It has a number of very good features (image stabilisation, dynamic range optimisation etc.), and I have to say that I’m very happy with it so far.

More recently — two weeks ago — I received an e-mail from Canon Australia asking me whether I’d like to give their new camera a shot; they’re apparently reaching out to Australian bloggers and they saw my article about my search for the perfect camera. I thought their offer sounded interesting, and last week I received a box containing a shiny (well, black) new Canon EOS1000D for me to play with for three months (tip to Canon: next time you might want to send a memory card with the camera). This model is known in the USA as the Rebel XS.

So, for the next few months I will be using this new camera and writing about my experiences. Keep in mind that I am not a professional photographer, nor do I have a lot of experience with digital SLR cameras - therefore, I’ll be mostly offering “consumer” opinions and comparing it to my A200 (and I guess that is ok, since neither of these cameras actually targets professionals and — I think — they are more or less in the same range). The EOS1000D is also a 10.1 MP camera, and the one I received came with the standard lens kit it is sold with — that is, an 18-55mm lens with auto-focus and image stabilisation.

Also, for the record, I’m not being paid anything by Canon; my agreement with them states that I have to disclose the fact that I’ve been approached by them and that I’m using a camera they sent me (which I’m doing right now), but it does not dictate what, if anything, I should write about it.

First impressions:

• it’s light; very light, compared with A200, and that does make a difference after a few hours carrying a camera around (the EOS1000D weighs 500g with the battery and no lens, against 636g for the A200). However, that also gives an impression of fragility (and that is exacerbated a bit by the texture of the camera body, in fact)
• the manual is much better than the one that came with the Sony, but the user interface in the camera is a bit less intuitive for the first-time user
• there are several options for image quality, but you can’t use the highest (finest) JPEG setting or record RAW images if you’re using the camera in full-auto mode or any of what Canon calls “basic modes” (macro, landscape, portrait etc.); this is a bit annoying
• this model includes “live view”, the ability to use the LCD screen to frame pictures before shooting (that is not a common feature for SLRs), but I haven’t tried using it seriously yet
• the PC software that came with the camera and starts up when it is connected, CameraWindow, claims that the EOS1000D is not a supported model, which is a bit strange; also, the drivers don’t quite expose the camera to Windows as a simple disk device, and that makes it a bit harder to operate than it should be, in my opinion (another piece of software that was included, EOS Utility, did work properly)

I will definitely have more to write about after I go out with the camera a few times and play a bit more with it, so expect more posts in the near future…

Still on the road - Alice to Kings Canyon

When we last saw our intrepid traveller, he was taking the northern fork of the road, following Namatjira Drive to the west, on the way to Kings Canyon via Glen Helen Gorge.

Namatjira Drive “hugs” the McDonnell Ranges, which means that it goes through a slightly less dry area of the red centre; the rain that falls on the Ranges flows onto the adjacent terrain and provides enough water for a fairly decent vegetation cover. One side effect of this is that almost everything that is built around that area has to take into account the possibility of rain and the consequent flash floods. This is very visible on the road, in fact: every few kilometres, one will see a sign saying “DIP” and the road will, well, dip. That’s where the water will go through when it rains. (One will occasionally see signs such as “So-and-so Creek” followed by a dip on the road — not a bridge, as one might expect, as the so-called creek will be dry most of the time)

The section of the road before the fork was reasonably deserted; I saw cars going the other way, but not very often — say, once every 5 to 10 minutes. Every single person who drove by me waved; I guess that’s what one does when there is limited human contact. The following section was even more deserted, if that’s possible (and, yes, people would still wave).

And this is a good thing: the view is so beautiful that one can’t help but look away from the road with an alarming frequency. The colours, the mountains, even the vegetation, everything was different from what I’m used to, and very beautiful. I stopped several times on the side of the road to take pictures, and every single time I saw many, many animal tracks on the dust. Not many tire tracks (but a disturbing number of beer cans and cartons), and almost no roadkill — I guess not many people drive through there at night (the insurance on my rental car specifically forbade driving from sunset to sunrise outside urban areas).

There are several turn-outs on the road leading to local attractions, usually towards the mountains. I didn’t have time to go to all of them, but I did stop at one: Serpentine Gorge. I have to say that I almost gave up soon after I left the road, as the track leading there was unsealed and, honestly, not very good. The gorge is some 6km away from the main road, and it’s a beautiful place, with a good parking area and wide, marked walking tracks to the gorge and to a lookout located high on the hills. When I arrived, I found two tour vans already parked there, and some 20 backpacks simply lying on the ground of the parking area — with not a soul around. I did see the tour group later, coming back from the gorge while I walked in the other direction. Very trusting people, apparently.

I tried following the track up to the lookout, but had to give up because it was quite a steep and rough climb; I stopped when I reached a sign pointing straight up where I couldn’t discern anything remotely resembling a track. I had a good view from there anyway… and then I went back down and toward the gorge, which is beautiful — it’s quite a contrast, in fact, to find what amounts to a small lake in the middle of all that dryness.

Other notes from this road:

• I didn’t see any native animals other than birds, but I did see cattle crossing the road in front of me (plenty of time to stop, though — it is a very straight road)
• what I didn’t have time to stop for was a big piece of rubber that detached from a truck tyre and that was on the middle of the road just after a blind dip/curve; I drove over it doing about 90 (the speed limit is 110km/h), but it wasn’t a problem for the car (I did stop to drag that off the road)
• didn’t see any police cars either
• but I did see many signs delimiting aboriginal areas and indicating that alcohol and pornography are prohibited there (I can understand alcohol, but pornography?)
• there’s not a single petrol station between Alice Springs and Glen Helen Gorge; that’s why everyone says that, in the Northern Territory, you should refuel your car at every opportunity…

The “good” portion of the road ends in Glen Helen Gorge, which is another gorgeous (ha, ha) place about which I’ll write in the next instalment.

Isn’t it amazing how time flies? It’s been almost three months since I went on holidays, and I guess it’s time to concede that I probably won’t write much about them. Still, people have been asking for pictures and stories… well, ok then.

The short version, for those without much time (or interest): in early June I flew to Alice Springs, drove from there to Uluru and back, then flew back home; some of the pictures of this trip are here. A few days later I flew to New York, spent 10 days there just walking around and looking at cool things; a very raw set of photos is here (no descriptions, not much editing, ordered by date taken); then I flew to Las Vegas, where I spent three days having fun at the Amazing Meeting (photos here - also unedited, and frankly a bit boring), then came back home.

Now, for a bit more detail…

Alice Springs

I still find it a bit strange that this is a town of just over 20,000 people. Still, it’s the largest human settlement in central Australia, and when you’re flying there you can see why: it’s just a big desert all around. The city is in an area that is slightly less dry than average, thanks to the McDonnell Ranges just north and west of there, but it’s still very, very dry. Even though the very green lawns all around town can make you think otherwise.

But, really, it’s just a regular city. It does seem to survive mostly on tourism, and mostly thanks to people stopping by on the way to Uluru: there is a very large industry dedicated to offering cheap accomodation, desert tours and other traveller needs (such as Internet access). Other than that, Alice’s strongest claim to fame is the Todd River (picture), which cuts right through the city. True, it’s dry most of the time, but they seem to like it (one week after this picture was taken it reportedly was flowing, due to heavy rain just outside of town).

I didn’t do much in Alice; I arrived there late in a Saturday afternoon, and the city seems to close down at four on Saturdays. So, I just picked the car up, walked a bit around the city centre, bought some supplies and rested a bit so I could wake up at dawn the next morning to take the road.

On the road - Alice to Kings Canyon

There are two roads you can follow to go from Alice Springs to Kings Canyon. To take the first one, you go south on the same road that would take you to Adelaide if you drove long enough (Stuart Highway), then after some 160km you turn west on Lasseter Highway, which will take you to Uluru if you drive long enough. After some 100km you turn north on Luritja Road and drive some 150km more, and you’re there. This is a long but easy path, sealed all the way through and with (relatively) lots of traffic (so, if you car breaks down, someone will stop to help soon enough).

The other option is to drive straight west out of Alice Springs on Larapinta Drive, and just keep going. The road forks after a while, and you can choose between staying on Larapinta Drive to go through Hermannsburg, a traditional German town, or taking Namatjira Drive to stay close to the mountains and drive through Glen Helen and other similarly scenic places. Whichever path you take, the roads rejoin and eventually turn south and lead you straight into Kings Canyon after a bit over 300km… some 200 of which are unsealed. It’s not exactly a comfortable drive, and I wouldn’t recommend doing it without a four wheel drive vehicle (or after rain), and you do need to buy a permit ($2.20) as you’ll be driving through aboriginal land, and you’re not going to see much traffic in either direction at any time. Still, when it was time to choose, “I took the one less travelled by”… but I’ll write more about it next time.

I’ve been back in Melbourne since Tuesday, and by now I’m almost fully recovered from the jet lag and the very long flights. Pictures are forthcoming.

Some quick random notes about the US:

• the last time I went there was in 1999; lots of things changed since them, and they seem to have become a bit too paranoid about security (not that this is news to anyone); going through security checkpoints in airports is hell
• that said, going through immigration on arrival was a breeze, and everyone was very polite
• I fully expected free wi-fi to be much more prevalent than it actually is; in NY, you can find free access points in some parks (I used the one on Bryant Park, behind the public library) and in Apple stores, but in not many other places (paid wi-fi is everywhere, though)
• also not news, but… Las Vegas is unbelievably hot in summer; the average summer day there is about as hot as the hottest days in Melbourne
• the number of weird people per square km is much higher in the US than in Australia; the best one I’ve seen was a guy walking down the street with a cat sitting on the top of his head (and yes, I have a picture)
• I’ve met Adam Savage; that was very cool

More details soon.

I’m officially on holidays; no work for the next four weeks.

And I’ll start travelling tomorrow morning; I’ll fly to Alice Springs, and from there I’ll spend the next five days driving around the red centre, to Uluru and back. I’ll be twittering my progress (mobile phone coverage allowing), and my current position will be displayed on the small map here on the right. Which is reproduced here:

for the benefit of those reading this via RSS (click the image for a larger version).

I probably won’t post much over the next few weeks, but I may have pictures in about a week or so (and certainly at the end of June, when I come back).

So, I’m planning to buy a digital SLR camera in the near future. I currently use a film SLR which is almost 10 years old (a Minolta Maxxum 300si) and a digital point-and-shoot that is almost as old (an Olympus D200Z, I think). I’ve been doing a lot of research online to try to decide which camera to buy, and herein lies the problem.

The fact is, there is an amazing amount of information available about all models on the market. There are manufacturer brochures, specs, reviews, owners’ comments, side-by-side comparisons, “walk-throughs”, videos, audio recordings etc. etc. etc. But the problem is that there is way too much information. I have now read enough material that I would almost be able to write the user’s manual for the Canon EOS400D, the Nikon D60 or the Sony A100, and I’m nowhere near actually deciding for one of them. (At least I narrowed it down to these three models — plus the Sony A200, which is the almost identical twin to the A100, only two years younger)

The Nikon seems very good, but the auto-focus depends on the lens being able to do it, so the lenses are more expensive and the selection is a bit more limited. The Canon is, by far, the most popular of them, and it’s almost the “default” starting DSLR camera out there, but it is a 2006 model (its younger sister, the EOS450D, seems to be a bit too much for what I want) and the lenses included with the camera are universally described as crappy (yes, I can always buy the body only and get decent lenses separately, but this brings the price up). The Sony is, at its heart, an updated Minolta, and in fact it can use any Minolta lens (and I do have a Minolta); in fact, I can’t think of anything bad about the Sony models, but I’ve read much less about them than about the others, so I might have some surprises later. If no surprises show up, I am leaning towards an A200…

In the US, before each episode of Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie ask people never to try at home what they’re going do in the show (in Australia this warning is not shown, for some reason).

This is why. (and this is the episode I’m talking about) (this one too)

This weekend I went for a walk in the Sherbrooke Forest, part of the Dandenong Ranges National Park. I followed a track described in the book 150 Walks in Victoria, by Tyrone Thomas and Andrew Close, and everything went fairly well.

To get to the track, I took the train to Belgrave and, from the station, walked approximately 1km (uphill) on Old Monbulk Road to the gates of the park. From there, I followed the trail in a clockwise direction, first north up to Grant’s Picnic Grounds (close to Monbulk Rd and “infested” with cockatoos trying to get food from the families eating there), then approximately south-east on Lyrebird Walk, continuing south on Neumann Track then south, and later west, on Paddy’s Track leading to an apparently unnamed track going west from a clearing known as Jack the Miners back to the starting point. A map of this path is here, including some pictures I took on the way (more pictures at my Flickr page).

The length of the path is around 6.3km, with some significant vertical movement as well; the first leg of the track leads steadily up, while the southward leg goes a bit up and then steeply down. The final few hundred metres go steeply up and reduced my average speed significantly…

This was also the first “field test” of the GPS unit I bought (and mentioned here), a Magellan eXplorist 400. It did very well (as the map linked to above shows), but I did find a few things out:

• the “trip odometer”, which should tell me how far I’ve moved, is either very inaccurate or using the wrong units; at the end of the track it was showing “4.0km”, while the recorded route was actually 6.31km long (which equals 3.92 miles…); this is definitely not good
• when you turn the device on, it takes around 60 seconds to lock to the satellites and get your initial position; that’s normal and more or less unavoidable because of the way the satellites transmit data; however, if you are moving — however slowly —, it seems the device won’t reliably find the satellites after any amount of time; this is not very good, but I can live with that (after it finds your initial position, it can be moved with no problems; also, being inside a backpack is not a problem)
• it won’t find the satellites from inside a train; I’m honestly curious about how it will perform inside a car
• marking positions is a very easy and quick process, but “typing” using that on-screen keyboard and mini-joystick is a pain

I really like GPS; it’s one of the cooler “general use” technologies out there.

GPS is the closest thing we have to a worldwide information network. Granted, it doesn’t really give you that much information: it will tell you where you are and what time it is (assuming you know your time zone), but nothing else. And, ok, it doesn’t really work indoors and accuracy is not great in urban areas (because of shadows and reflections caused by buildings), but it’s still very cool. Think about it: I can be (almost) anywhere in the world and a small handheld device will be able to tell me, in just a few seconds, exactly where I am using only information from a constellation of satellites flying overhead, unseen and ignored by most people. Fifty years ago this would be the stuff of sci-fi.

The reason I’m mentioning this is that I recently bought a handheld GPS receiver, and I spent a few hours playing with it yesterday. The reason for that is that I’ve recently started engaging in bushwalking (or “hiking” for those outside Australia and NZ) with the Melbourne Bushwalkers. After my first somewhat “serious” walk, in the area of the Lorne waterfalls (about 13km downhill in the rain…), I tried to identify the path the group followed on a map and failed miserably. So, I thought “wouldn’t it be nice to be able to record the track so I could, later, trace it on a map?”. Well, a GPS receiver is a good way of doing that.

The model I bought is a Magellan eXplorist 400. It’s a discontinued model, but it is fairly decent and there’s a healthy market of new units on eBay for very good prices. It can track up to 12 satellites and will use ground-based (WAAS) and satellite-based (EGNOS) auxiliary signals to increase accuracy where available; none of those are available in Australia, alas. It has a grayscale LCD display with a reddish (amber?) backlight and can display fairly detailed background maps (it won’t give you address-based directions or convert addresses to positions without additional software), and it uses SD cards as additional memory to record tracks, routes, points of interest and maps. It’s also fully waterproof (full immersion of up to 1m for up to 30 minutes), which is great for rainy days… And it comes with a USB cable to upload and download data from/to a computer.

I haven’t yet used it “in the field”, so I can’t talk much about it’s performance there; I hope to remedy this soon enough. I can’t talk about battery durability either, for now. I did try to use it in central Melbourne yesterday, with sort of mixed results… it does well in areas that are somewhat open, but “canyon-like” streets (with tall buildings on both sides) are usually blind spots (I wonder how it does in real canyons…). I uploaded the track log to Google Earth, generated a KML file and made a public Google Map from it, which is here; the recorded path is in a barely-visible light blue, and it actually covers about half of the path I followed; I guess it lost the signal in the other areas. The receiver was inside my backpack, which may also not be the best possible position for it.

I will be using it in future walks (and in a trip to remote areas later this year, where I plan to use GPS data to geotag the pictures I’ll take — and to not get lost, also), and I’ll write about how it does later on.

G’day Mate: tomorrow’s Internet, today. Courtesy of Google Australia.

By the way, the theme of Google’s jokes today seems to be “time travel”. Speaking of which, someone in today’s Buzz Out Loud was complaining that, because April 1st starts early in Australia, they were seeing jokes on 31 March. Well, spare a tought for the Australians who will only see the American jokes on 02 April, waaaay too late for them to be funny.

And this has got to be a joke: Sydney’s stressed brains are shrinking, says the ABC. “Stress from high house prices and sporting failures is shrinking Sydneysiders’ brains, compared to those of their counterparts in Melbourne”. Well, I knew I had picked the right city!

Best Seinfeld episode ever: The Marine Biologist. Best Friends episode ever: The One With All The Haste (but not with Channel Ten’s cuts). Best McGyver episode ever: Hell Week (close second: Ugly Duckling). Just thought I’d say it.

In 1987, the American ABC network started broadcasting a show created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, of The Bedford Falls Company, with music by W. G. “Snuffy” Walden. “thirtysomething” (not capitalised) was a drama dealing with the lives of, well, thirty-somethings: the main characters are Michael and Hope Steadman, interfaith couple (he is Jewish, she’s Christian) with two kids; other characters include Elliot, who works with Michael in advertising; Michael’s sister Melissa; Elliot’s wife Nancy, who develops cancer later in the series; Michael’s former roommate Gary, who dates Melissa but then marries Susannah and later dies in a car crash, just as Nancy recovers from cancer; and a few others. It was a show about real life without being about anything in particular; it’s sort of a drama version of Seinfeld. It was very well received by critics and public, and aired for four seasons (85 episodes in total); it also won one Golden Globe and several Emmys.

I first heard about this show in the early 90s, and I first watched an episode in 1996 or 1997, when a cable network in the US was showing repeats every night. I really enjoyed it, despite the fact that I wasn’t then in my 30s (I am now). This is one show I would like to buy in DVD, but it’s not legally available (there are a few illegal versions that you can buy on the net, but they’re not cheap and the quality — so I’m told — is very poor). Apparently there’s a company now working in restoring the original film stock used in the series and converting it to digital formats, which might be a first step towards releasing a set of DVDs…

A few years later, in 1994, the same ABC network started broadcasting another show created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, with music by W. G. “Snuffy” Walden. “My So-Called Life” wasn’t too different from “thirtysomething”, but it focused on another period of life: the high school years. The main character is Angela (brilliantly played by Claire Danes), who is in the process of finding her place in life — as are most teenagers at this time of their lives. We also get to know Brian, the geeky neighbour who’s in love with Angela; Jordan, the not-so-smart handsome guy Angela’s in love with; Rayanne, the party girl; Rickie, the latino bisexual friend of Rayanne’s (and later Angela’s); Graham and Patty, Angela’s parents, also going through interesting changes; and many others. This show was also loved by critics, and had (still has, in fact) a huge and amazingly dedicated following. Not huge enough for ABC (or maybe not huge enough at the time), as the show ran for only one season of 19 episodes. It still managed to win a Golden Globe that year (for Claire Danes).

Once again, when I first watched this show (probably in 1995) I was not in the right age bracket. Still, I fell in love with the show. I could see myself as Brian, and the way Angela showed the indecision of the teenage years was very convincing; it was beautiful. And the parts of the plot involving her parents were sort of a “fortysomething” embedded in the middle of the show. I used to have all the episodes in VHS (recorded from MTV, oddly enough), but those are long gone… I do have the soundtrack CD, though (as I do for “thirtysomething”).

Not long after, in 1996, ABC did it again with “Relativity”, another Herskovitz/Zwick show with soundtrack by Mr Walden. This one was about two twentysomethings who meet in Italy, fall in love and continue their relationship after they get back to the US; it dealt mostly with family relationships and the interaction between the relatives of the main characters. It was also short-lived: despite a large fan following, it was cancelled after 17 episodes. In 1999, the trio had a bit more luck, as their new series, “Once and Again”, had three full seasons, with a total of 63 episodes. I have to say that I watched the first few episodes of “Relativity” and didn’t like it that much, and I’ve never watched a full episode of “Once and Again”… it’s in my list for the future, though.

Which finally takes me to the point of this post. Last month, NBC aired in the US the first episode of a new series by Herskovitz and Zwick, “quarterlife” (once again, no capitals). It is a peculiar series, as it was first shown online: starting last November, short episodes were released every few days, and NBC “stitched” them together to show them as a regular 48-minute TV episode. It is about a group of twenty-somethings; the main character, Dylan, is a hopeful writer who works for a women’s magazine and keeps a video blog where she talks about her life and her friends. All other characters are somehow artistically inclined (a dancer, two film producers etc.), and the website of the series actually acts as a social network for artists. I’m not sure how it did online, but it didn’t work too well for NBC: they cancelled the show after airing a single episode (of a total of six that were produced; the other five were aired, all together, on cable a few days ago, and everything is still available online).

My impression of that first episode was that it showed some promise, but it was probably trying to hard to be “cool”. I don’t know why the ratings were so low as they were, though; it was not a particularly bad show, and I don’t think everyone had watched it online already. Sadly, we’ll never see whether it would deliver a good result… at the end of the day, Herskovitz and Zwick (and their company) have a track record of producing TV of great quality, which doesn’t always attracts that much of an audience as one would expect. Their shows are always very close to real life and real situations, and they make you think, and feel for (and with) the characters. That’s not something you see every day.

I’m pretty sure the Oscar ceremony shown on Channel 9 was “abridged”. I don’t remember seeing the award for best foreign language film, and I’m 100% sure the award for best documentary short was not shown (in fact, I think the award for best documentary feature was only shown because one of the winners is Australian) — the rather sudden appearance of Tom Hanks on the stage was a give away. Also, there wasn’t any mention of the scientific and engineering awards ceremony; they usually show a short clip during the main ceremony.

If “Duck Power Cleaner” kills 99.9% of the germs, it also selectively breeds the strongest 0.1% of the germs. Think about it.

I’ve yet to find a cat that sits as passively as the one in the ad while that Revolution anti-flea medication is applied. They don’t like the smell of the product and they’re not very fond of cold, wet products being applied on the back of their necks.

There were reports in the news recently about findings by researchers at the University of Copenhagen that show that all people with blue eyes share a single ancestor. This ancestor was supposedly the first person to express a gene mutation responsible for producing blue eyes; he or she lived in eastern Europe (probably around what’s Ukraine today) between 6 and 10 thousand years ago and all persons living today who have pure blue eyes (as opposed to blue eyes with brown spots/rings) are related through him/her.

Well, I have blue eyes (so do Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz; hi there, cousins!), and I mentioned this report to my wife; she asked “how do they know that?”. I started to answer something about looking at genetic details and then I realised… I didn’t really know. So I went after this information.

Looking for this on the net I found many copies of the same press release, with small changes here and there. It took me a while to find a link to the original article with the research results, and I have to say that it’s not an easy read for someone (like me) who is not a researcher in the area. Still, a few things were somewhat clear, and merging information from the article and from the press release I think I understand how they came to their conclusions.

So, the answer to “how do they know?” is, they actually don’t: they assume this is what happened, with a very high degree of confidence, due to what they found in the genes of the people they’ve surveyed.

Basically, the “normal” eye colour for human beings is brown; up to the moment when the blue-eye mutation first occurred, everybody had brown eyes. There’s a large degree of variation in the gene that codes for brown eyes, which indicates that it’s an “old” gene (in fact, it is shared with many other mammal species with brown/yellow eyes — other primates, cows, cats etc.). This also has the effect of introducing large variations in the actual colour of the eye (from pure brown to very dark brown almost black, to hazel, to blue with brown spots. to blue with brown ring around the pupil, to grey, to green — yes, green eyes are a variation of brown), due to differences in the amount of melanin in the iris.

People with blue eyes, on the other hand, display almost no variation in the gene coding for eye colour (and, hence, in the amount of melanin in the iris); they (well, we) all display the exact same mutation in the same location of the same gene, which causes an iris almost devoid of melanin. This indicates that the mutation is very recent and, at the same time, point to what the authors refer to as a “common founder” mutation - that is, a mutation that spread from a single person. As far as I could tell from the article, the date and geographical location of the original mutation is determined from the prevalence of the mutation in current populations and our knowledge of human migrations in the last 10,000 years.

Interestingly, the article does mention that the very high frequency of blue-eyed individuals in some areas of the globe (say, Scandinavia) indicates that this is a trait that is positively selected; that is, blue-eyed individuals have historically had a better reproductive success, at least in these areas (and this makes it harder to calculate the age of the original mutation). The reason for that advantage is not clear; it could be related to vitamin D absorption in high latitudes, or even to sexual selection (blue-eyed people being more successful in attracting partners). Your guess is as good as mine (and the authors’).

So, here it is; that how they know that.