Since my tools are still not here, and the power team also had the day off, I went sightseeing with the Adventure Crew (Colleen, Felicia and Diana). Why, you may ask, are they the Adventure Crew? Because they have Adventures every time they (we) try to go somewhere. I have not laughed so much in one day as I did today.

The other day, they tried to go to the Seiryuuju Temple, where there is a big Buddha statue. But they made a wrong turn, drove through a rice paddy, and ended up setting off an alarm when they arrived after closing but tried to use the restroom anyway. Very exciting, but I missed that part, since I was still at work. Today, we returned to the temple, and it was really neat:

The adventure came later, when we tried to go from the temple to Hirosaki Castle. There is a Japanese-speaking GPS in the rental car, but the AT had borrowed an English-speaking Garmin from one of the site guys, because it already has lots of places programmed into it. Great, right? Well… it was set for shortest route, and we clearly made some other mistake, too, because we ended up on a dirt road climbing a mountain in an apple orchard. When we gave up, turned around and went back to a road to try again, and re-entered the location, it sent us to somewhere 16 km away, located in an actual town, on paved roads. So it’s not at all clear where we were going. The Japanese GPS did have a shrine near where the English one was trying to send us. Maybe its the Apple Orchard Shrine. We will never know.

Once we got to the castle, it was pretty calm. Most of the castle itself is gone—only the watchtower remains—but the watchtower has a museum inside, and the bridges and gardens are gorgeous.

The castle was pretty close to Goshogawara, so we didn’t have far to drive. This is good, because the sun was setting. It was gorgeous behind the (dormant) volcano:

For dinner, we tried to go to a steakhouse that Felicia had been to before, but they were closed. We ended up going to another place Felicia had been to—Kirin—kind of a Japanese pub. The menu was like a diner—ten different cuisines, including mishmoshes of several. We ordered a ton of different things, some of which were great (edimame, cheese with tomatoes and corn) and some of which were not (a tofu dish, which Colleen was disappointed to discover also had pork). It was a lot of fun, and a lot of food—and the first time since I’ve been here that I have been to a restaurant where you take off your shoes and sit on the tatami on the floor. Nicely traditional. Also, cooked food was a lovely change from my all-sushi, all the time dinners lately. My Japanese is improving, which is dangerous—I still mostly don’t understand when people say things to me, and being able to be understood causes them to overestimate my capabilities. I still get to be the Official Speaker to People of the AT, though.

Tomorrow is back to work, though we agreed that I would drive. That will be a first—I hope it’s not foggy, since we are leaving at 5 AM!

(as usual, all my pictures are on Flickr)

Gallery - Where’s the remotest place on Earth? - Image 1 - New Scientist.

This is fantastically cool. You can get to almost anywhere 24 hours.

It, unsurprisingly, bears some resemblance to the picture of the Earth at night: Thanks, Astronomy Picture of the Day!

I think I’ve found my checklist for places around the world where I want to visit. http://curiousexpeditions.org/2007/09/alibrophiliacsloveletter1.html

This is where I’d fall. Very wet. (Click on the image to find out where you’d go.)

Thanks to BadAstronomy for the pointer!

There’s been too much complaining on this blog recently, at least from me. But I have good news! Finally, I can indulge my desire to watch Martian weather.

The Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera isn’t a scientific instrument—no pointing control, no focus adjustment, only “basic exposure controls”—but it was included on Mars Express to monitor the ejection of the Beagle 2 lander in December 2003. The camera performed well—the lander didn’t. In 2007, ESA turned the camera back on to capture low-resolution images of Mars, including some neat crescent shots and global images that the scientific instruments and other satellites aren’t positioned to capture. They did tests and focusing all throughout 2007, and the “Mars Webcam”, as it’s been nicknamed, went live today.

This is way cool. Also, it’s a live satellite that can be used to train ops engineers: “VMC activites are unique in that the camera is operated by the Flight Control Team, and not a team of scientists. This gives operations engineers, particularly junior members, a chance to learn and practice command generation, planning, and other skills normally done at the Science Operations Centre.”

This is going right up with the VolcanoCam(1) on my list of things to go in my virtual windowframe(2).

(1) OMG, the VolcanoCam is now in HD! I love the USDA Forest Service. (2)And thanks to Ryan Hoagland for putting up a website that I could link to when I wanted to explain what I meant by virtual window. Wherever and whomever you are, Ryan, you rock.

In most of the Denver area, there are no diners. There are Einstein’s Bagels, Village Inns, Dennys’, IHOPs, and so on. There are no chains smaller than large regional. There are few independent restaurants. As we drove last week from Denver to Kremmling, we saw many Starbucks and few local coffee shops. Boston is similar: lots of chains, though a few local businesses thrive. In New York, independent shops and restaurants are very common. There are certainly chains too, but enough independent restaurants that most people do business with them regularly. Why?

Most readers know that I’ve been looking for good diners in Boston for a long time. The Deluxe Town is nice, but its menu is thirty pages too short to really count. Now I think I’ve figured it out: big chains have figured out marketing and memetics enough to capture lots of market. But they can only be so dense before they overload people. A Starbucks every few blocks is one thing; heavier concentrations draw complaints. If there’s a McDonald’s on this block and a Burger King next block, people will be turned off to see a McDonald’s on the next block further. As a result, there’s a maximum concentration of each big chain.

Further, there’s only enough national population to support a certain number of national chains. When each of those are at their maximum sustainable density, but there’s still enough population to support more business, then something like the thriving diner culture I’m looking for comes into being. In New York, under the further influence of particular immigrant communities, that became diner culture itself. New York City is the densest population center in North America. The diner culture grew there and has spilled over into the surrounding suburbs.

As the number of supportable big chains increases, and as big chains diversify (each with a burger place, coffee/milkshake place, burrito place, etc.), they’ll find ways to pack more densely and attack the remaining diner space. They’ll also find ways to support more national chains. I don’t hold out much hope that the diners I love will come to Boston. But at the other end of the spectrum, Kremmling had no visible chain businesses. With only a thousand people, franchising doesn’t make sense: people do their own thing. The local coffee shop looked pretty good.

Over at Starts with a Bang! they have a fun game: Look at the pictures, and decide whether it is of Arizona or Mars. Click here for the pictures, scroll down for the answers I got all but three—this is hard!

Thanks to Carnival of Space #48

We’re in Los Angelas. Decoration here is strange. This is up a skylight.

The Marmalade cafe feels like what the Cheescake Factory is meant to imitate—without the compromises necessary for a chain.

Phone Picture