Cayo Largo Part V: Underwater Critters

In Cayo Largo Part IV I described our trip to Iguana Island, which was the first part of our day excursion.  In this post I will describe the second part of that trip: snorkeling and wading in the shallows around virgin islands.

After visiting the Iguana Island, our boat set out for a shallow coral bed for some snorkeling.  Despite the shallowness of the water (I would guess it wasn't deeper than twenty feet anywhere nearby, although depths are notoriously difficult to judge in clear water), we were still a fair ways away from the coast of Cayo Largo.  It was amazing the difference this made; whereas the water directly off the coast, as described in Part II and Part III, was characterized by fine white sand and fish almost the same colour, here the sea was full of fauna in a myriad of colours.

The coral was predominantly yellow-green to yellow-brown, but there were occasional outcroppings of beautiful reds and purples.

A piece of purple coral (click to enlarge)

I should also mention that I found underwater photography to be quite challenging.  Light levels and clarity of the image are much more difficult to control and one is undergoing almost constant motion from the waves and currents.  Even more challenging is the fact that goggles prevent the use of the viewfinder for targeting the camera.  Although, as with most digital cameras, our underwater camera also has a screen which is used more often for aim anyway, the bright sunlight at the surface would generally make the screen unreadable, and thus a large number of our pictures were taken blindly.

Despite photographic difficulties, though, the material we had to work with helped make up for it.  There were (I think) four types of fish who swarmed around the boat to feed off the hull and any scraps which fell in the water (Manuel was making lunch and discarded unwanted bits off the side.  I don't know how healthy that is for the wildlife, but he and the captain seemed to think it was perfectly normal).  Two of the fish were black with blue highlights, and I am only identifying them as separate based on their distinct fin structures.  The other two fish were much lighter in colour.  One species had vertical black stripes and the other a horizontal yellow stripe down its side.  All four seemed perfectly happy to intermix, and you can see them in the two photos I took.  You can also see one of the dark fish species cleaning off the underside of the boat in a video I took, and another video of Sarah swimming amongst the fish schools (sorry for the shakiness of the camera).  If anyone can identify the species of the fish, please let me know (either in the comments or send me an email).
UPDATE: Thanks to studentjohn's comment, I now have an idea as to the identities of three of the four fish.  The big blue and black fellow in the first image appears to be some sort of triggerfish , while the vertically striped fish are sergeant majors (I actually feel kind of silly about not recognizing that), and the fish with a horizontal yellow stripe are yellowtail snappers.

Swarm of schooling fish (click to enlarge)

Another shot of the fish swarm (click to enlarge)

 Although these four fish seemed to be the predominate denizens of the area, there were still many other species of fish to be found.  I have also included a couple of my favourite pictures of these fish.  As with the others, if anyone can help identify the species, let me know.

A really happy looking fish (click to enlarge)

A small multi-coloured fish (click to enlarge)

After snorkeling we were given lunch which consisted of a delicious Cuban lobster dish with rice, buns, and fruit.  The final part of the excursion after lunch was a trip out to a small group of uninhabited virgin islands.  These were quite beautiful and scenic, with many conch and small fish in the shallows around them.  One of the passengers on our boat reported spotting a small crocodile, but Sarah and I were unable to find it.

A view on the beach of the islands (click to enlarge)

There was quite an expansive region of shallows between some of the islands in which the ocean was never much deeper than the knees.  Here we discovered several excellent starfish.  Even more excitingly, several rays were also zipping through the water.  The rays moved quite fast, and so were rather difficult to photograph.  It would seem that whenever I gave the camera to Sarah, the rays would swim tantalizingly close to my legs, only to skitter off to Sarah as soon as she had given the camera back to me.  After numerous failed tries, Sarah finally managed to get a couple photos.  As with the fish above, if anyone can identify the type of ray, please let me know.

Starfish in the shallows (click to enlarge)

The full sting ray swimming away.  Unfortunately the water was a little cloudy, most likely due to us churning up sand as we chased the rays (click to enlarge)

This was the best picture we managed to take of the ray's face (click to enlarge)

After we had our fill of sloshing about in the shallows, we got back on the boat and were taken back to the marina on Cayo Largo.  We were reunited with our shoes, and a bus took us back to our resort.  The next part deals with the many birds we spotted.

Cayo Largo, Part IV: Island Critters

In the middle of our vacation, Sarah and I went on a day-long boat excursion. In Cayo Largo Part III, I had promised to put up pictures and videos from the snorkeling we did while on the excursion, but I had forgotten that I first needed to put up a post about the first part of our excursion: Iguana Island. As always, click on the images for a larger size.

Our excursion started early in the morning. A bus picked us up at our resort and, after brief stops at a few other hotels to pick up some more people, drove everyone to the marina. We had arranged our excursion with the small catamaran option, meaning eight passengers and two crewmen. The captain was a short and lean man with wrinkled, leathery skin befitting a Cuban sea-captain. He sported mustache that was also quite fitting, and was very particular about the rule that no shoes were to be worn on the boat. I don't think the captain spoke a word of English, and aside from a few brief pantomimed conversations spent most of the trip stoically scanning the horizon oblivious to his small cargo of tourists.

Manuel, the first-mate, was young and jovial, and spent most of his time organizing our entertainment. Language was a bit of an issue - four of the other passengers were French-Canadian who had moderate Spanish (and Manuel appeared to be more comfortable with French than English), so they had no problem. However, the other two passengers were a Russian couple with no Spanish and only moderate English at best. I tried my best to help translate, but considering that I was already only getting about half of what Manuel said since his English explanations tended to be a bewildering blend of French, English, and Spanish, I really have to wonder how much managed to get passed along. In the end communication was not really all that vital since we mostly just had to keep our shoes off and watch the early morning sun track across the water.

After a brief trip, we arrived at our first destination of the day: Iguana Island. It is a small rocky island not far from Cayo Largo. As soon as we disembarked we were greeted by dozens of iguanas. Since it was still somewhat early in the morning most were content to simply bask in the sun, but there were a few who were curious about the ranks of tourists unloading on their island.

An iguana basking on the rocks.

One of the largest (and hungriest) iguanas we saw.

Although the massive numbers of iguanas were exciting enough, we quickly discovered that Iguana Island was also inhabited by another type of creature as well. There were several hutias ambling about on the island, seemingly perfectly at home with their reptilian compatriots. There are actually several species of hutia endemic to Cuba, so I am not sure which type were on the island.

A hutia hanging out in a shady patch.

A hutia and an iguana coexisting.

Finally, here is a short of video of one of the hutias walking about. The audio track was mostly just wind on the camera's microphone, so I cut it out entirely (so if you can't hear anything, don't worry; your speakers are probably still working just fine).

The next installment will finally get to the underwater critters from our snorkeling trip.

Brief Personal Update

It has been far too long since I was actively writing. Thesis work has really ramped up over the past few months, and that has crowded out most other activities. Now that it comes time to actually write the thesis, however, I find I am out of writing practice and could use the exercise of drafting something regularly. I have also used the blogging break to begin accumulating anew a mental list of trivialities on which I would like to opine, and I have even found myself mentally composing prose while on the bus or at the gym. This had, for whatever reason, largely stopped during my many months of writer's block, so I am hoping that the reappearance of my inner monologue bodes well for the future.

2011 was a rather big year for me. I got married to a wonderful woman at the end of the summer, and toward the end of the year we bought and moved into a new condominium. We are greatly enjoying the new space (especially our cat, Klein, who now has dozens of excellent locations to lounge in the sun). The year was not without its challenges (such as administrative mix-ups over funding and some health issues), but it was nevertheless a fairly monumental one. Perhaps some stories from it will find their way up here in addition to my other planned expositions.

News

So, I have left my blog fallow again for an extended stretch. Part of that is because the new academic semester has started with a rush (along with a week-long stretch of the flu that didn't help), but another part is that my personal life has had some important developments as well. This weekend I asked Sarah to marry me, and she said yes. So, that is my big news, and that means I have another big non-blog project starting up... helping to plan a wedding!

Cayo Largo, Part III: More Beach Critters

In Cayo Largo, Part II I ended with my first successful fish pictures off the tip of the Playa Sirena peninsula. I had also mentioned that there were some massive starfish, but the depth and bareness of the sand makes it difficult to appreciate their size. I took some much better starfish pictures which will appear in a later part. During our snorkeling about, though, Sarah did borrow the camera to grab a photo of me showing off my snorkel prowess (and I'm a critter too).

Snorkeling about (click for larger size).

The next day we took the train again, only this time we got off at Playa Paraiso. On the southern edge of Playa Paraiso is a whole series of quite extensive tide pools which we decided to investigate. The pools were surprisingly deep, although far too gooey to make snorkeling desirable. Large swathes of the pool edges were covered with snails, and Sarah's practiced critter eye managed to spot a couple of snail shells that were not exactly what they seemed.


As far as wild invertebrates go, hermit crabs are some of the safest and easiest to pick up and play with (provided you spot them). Their claws are largely ineffectual (at least with crabs of the size that we found), and they don't move very quickly. We did manage to spot what looked like a horseshoe crab, but it was a very fast invertebrate and disappeared long before I could get the camera ready.

The tide pools were also large enough to house a number of fish. Although the water was not nearly as clear as the open ocean, I still managed to grab my only underwater shots of the trumpetfish that we found all along the beaches (once we learned to look out for them).

Trumpetfish in the tide pools at Playa Paraiso (click for larger size).

The next day we had our last big beach adventure when we wandered south about three quarters of a kilometer down the beach from our resort looking for a stretch of coral. En-route we discovered a patch of rocks covered in swift scuttling crabs. We spent a few minutes trying to grab a video showing off how the crabs moved from crevice to crevice, but they never quite cooperated for getting a good video. I did manage to snag a decent photograph, though, of one crab that decided it was comfortable enough in its current crevice.

Crab hiding under the lip of a rock along Playa Blanca (click for larger size).

Once we got to the beach with the coral we broke out the snorkel gear and headed into the water. Although the depth didn't drop off with the same extreme slope of the tip of the Playa Sirena peninsula, it did get appreciably deep much faster than the beach in front of our resort and the main beach at Playa Sirena and Playa Paraiso. The coral was a small patch nestled at the base of a rocky shelf. Although it was far more exciting than anything we had previously encountered, there still wasn't a lot of colour or fish swarms about. I was very excited to spot my first 'tropical' fish: the banded butterflyfish (not that the other fish weren't tropical, but the butterflyfish had the stripes that always come to mind when thinking of tropical fish).

Banded Butterflyfish near small coral patch off Playa Blanca (click for larger size).

Our best snorkeling was yet to come, though, from our boat excursion the next day. That, however, means it doesn't count as beach anymore, and will thus be covered in the next installment.

Cayo Largo, Part II: Beach Critters

In Cayo Largo Part I I talked about many of the exciting critters that Sarah and I discovered on the resort grounds. Of course, going to a tropical ocean paradise means some ocean exploration is in order, and so we bought ourselves a pair of snorkel sets before we left. The beach in front of our resort, adequately described by the resort name of Playa Blanca, was a beautiful strip of dazzling white sand. While providing lovely scenery and an excellent place to relax or take a casual ocean dip, the pristine water and sand didn't leave much to see through the goggles.

The beach at the Playa Blanca resort (click for larger size).

Our first attempt to find some interesting snorkeling was a trip north along the beach towards a strip of rocks. We decided to go north because we figured the rocks might provide a better sea creature habitat than the plain sand. It turned out, however, that the life supported by the rocks was mainly an extremely slippery gooey green covering. Combined with a strong surf, we ended up getting knocked around and dunked a few times but never did find anything worth putting on the goggles and flippers. Our trip up and back down the beach also involved far more middle-aged man-parts than either of us would have liked, as we discovered that the stretch of beach just beyond the resort was the designated nude beach. I don't know why, but by and large all nude beaches I have seen seem to be nearly exclusively occupied by middle-aged (and older) men. Perhaps the breeze is nice, but I would worry about the possibility of a very painful sunburn.

After our disappointing opening-day trek up the beach, the same helpful couple who told us about the iguana pointed out a few possible places for us to explore: the eastern side of the peninsula that formed the south-western-most beach of Playa Sirena and a small coral reef at the next resort to the south of ours (we had clearly picked the wrong direction to travel on the beach).

Armed with new knowledge of where to go and the promise of seeing giant starfish, we set off the next morning to Playa Sirena. Looking at a map of Cayo Largo you can see in the southwest a pair of beaches called Playa Sirena and Playa Paraiso. These two beaches are common beaches for all visitors to the island - there are no resorts on the beaches, and 'trains' are provided to transport visitors from the resorts to the beaches. I put train in quotations because it is in fact a little car designed to look like a train engine that pulls a set of passenger cars. There were two main trains: one had cars that had rickety roofs while the second pulled a set of uncovered cars. Although the roofs were nice for keeping the hot sun off, they also creaked, squealed, and swayed disconcertingly like they were about to give up and collapse. By far the oddest thing about the trains, though, was that we took them four times in total (out and back once to each beach), and never once did we complete the trip on the train we initially boarded (often we would even have to transfer between the trains multiple times). One of our transfers had a clear and legitimate reason, as the brake line between the second and third car burst, which meant the last two cars no longer had brakes. However, the other three times seemed to be completely random - we would would be riding along when we would suddenly pull over, wait a few minutes in the blistering sun, and then the other train would pull up. Our driver would leap out and gesture wildly at us, and everyone would disembark and transfer trains. Still, the trains were a free service, so one shouldn't complain too much about operating mysteries.

Train car providing transportation to Playa Sirena and Playa Paraiso (click for larger size).

Once we arrived at Playa Sirena we spotted what I felt to be the most upsetting institution on Cayo Largo: swim with the dolphins. I recognize the thrill of interacting with dolphins (one of my favourite memories from my childhood was of swimming with dolphins in the ocean off of New Zealand), but the health of the dolphins needs to factor into any setup. These dolphins were held in a fairly small pen along a stretch of shore, and a significant portion of the pen looked like it was only about knee-deep.

Dolphins performing in their much too small looking pen (click for larger size).

Walking past the dolphins, however, we got to the undeveloped side of the Playa Sirena peninsula. The flora and fauna started off fairly gooey, from tiny underwater forests of algae to small pulsating lumps of jelly on the sand, with the most colourful collection clustered on the rotting stumps of an ancient dock that jutted from the ankle-deep water.

Assorted underwater growth on an old dock pylon (click for larger size).

Although gooey tropical marine life is certainly more exciting than the algae we find in Canada, the conch that Sarah pulled out of the water shortly thereafter was far more exciting. It was also the feistiest conch I've ever seen, wildly flailing about with its foot.


Not long after we put the conch back in the water we reached the tip of the peninsula. We spotted a number of other people in the water snorkeling, so figured there must be something to see. The shore on this part of the peninsula was quite different from the main beaches since the depth dropped quite quickly after only a brief stretch of shallow water, which was fairly convenient for snorkeling. Although the sea floor wasn't covered with bright coral, sporadic vegetation shared the sand with some impressively large starfish and an immense conch. A number of different fish were also swimming about, although they were all a translucent milky white colour that made them quite difficult to pick out. However, when I ended up in the middle of a small school I finally had a chance to catch a few pictures of fish.

White fish off the coast of the Playa Sirena peninsula. If anyone can identify the species, it would be much appreciated (click for larger size).

Continue reading: Part III: More Beach Critters

Cayo Largo, Part I: The Resort Ground Critters

About a month ago, Sarah and I went on a trip to Cayo Largo, a beautiful little resort island off the coast of Cuba. Part of what makes Cayo Largo such an interesting place to visit is that there are no permanent residents of the island; everyone who works on the island only spends a few weeks rotation at a time. Most of the island remains undeveloped and wild, particularly the northern half. While such a situation sparked a number of resort reviews that gave only mediocre results due to guest boredom, it meant that Cayo Largo was a perfect destination for us. We weren't going to hang out in Latin night clubs, we were going to relax and explore beautiful tropical flora and fauna. The resort that Sarah and I stayed at was called Hotel Playa Blanca, and from what we saw it was definitely one of the nicest on the island. Oddly enough, another common complaint in both reviews and even from some of the guests we talked to was that the food was nothing special, but we found it to actually be quite enjoyable. There was always a lovely selection of fresh fruit, and the cooked dishes usually had a fascinating assortment of root vegetables.

We arrived in the middle of the night at the tiny airport located on the island, and got shuffled off to various buses going to the different resorts. Despite it being the wee hours of the morning the heat was intense and the humidity oppressive. Our bus also had an adorable little boy who was clearly confused by all this traveling, and, after being told by his parents that he was in Cuba now, loudly announced that he didn't like Cuba because Cuba "had no food". According to his logic, he was hungry for a snack and, since his parents weren't able to give him one at the moment, this meant the whole country must be devoid of food. We spotted him happily playing around the resort a few days later, so I believe he eventually got his snack and learned that Cuba did, in fact, have food.

Our first day was spent mostly exploring the grounds around the hotel. Even just strolling along the path, however, we spotted a host of critter holes littering the grounds and a huge number of anoles basking on the rocks and vegetation. Although we took a number of photographs of the anoles, they were by far the most impressive when showing off their dewlaps. I managed to catch a pair mating, which led to an impressive display of the male's bright orange and yellow dewlap (either in an attempt to frighten me off, or as part of the mating ritual - apparently dewlaps are used for both). Towards the end of the week, Sarah managed to catch one also giving a dewlap display, so I have included that picture here as well.

An anole mating pair, with the male showing off his impressively coloured dewlap (click to see full-size)

Anole partially displaying his dewlap (click to see full-size)

After wandering around snapping pictures of the anoles, we discovered who was making all the holes: land crabs! Although most of the crabs spent their time underground during the day and barely ventured beyond the threshold of their burrows in the evening, we ran into one intrepid explorer scavenging one of the restaurant floors for food just before noon. After we started showing some interest in him, he put up his claws and got into a scuttling stand-off with Sarah (she got a few successful pokes on his back without getting pinched) before finally escaping in a bed of vegetation.

Scavenging crab looking for a fight (click to see full-size)

Scavenging crab got away (click to see full-size)

The resort also included a band of fairly scraggly cats running around (probably feral - they were pretty skittish when it came to people) which we gradually spotted over the course of the week. Probably the most exciting on-resort creature, however, was the resident iguana. Despite our wandering through most of the resort that first morning, we did not discover him until the second day after getting a tip from some return guests (a very nice couple who we ran into multiple times).

The iguana starting to escape, but deciding the effort to get off the path was just too much (click to see full-size)

The iguana lived underneath one of the resort villas, and here he was hanging out just outside his hole (click to see full-size)

Here is my favourite photograph of our iguana friend (click to see full-size)

We ended up visiting the iguana every day after we found him. Although I am not sure he appreciated our visits, he was just so interesting that Sarah insisted we go see if he was out having a bask. He never quite warmed up to us the way Sarah thought he should have, but he grudgingly seemed to put up with our gawking.

Sarah sneaking up on our iguana friend (click to see full-size)

Continue Reading: Part II: Beach Critters

Distraction of Cuteness

I thought I would put up a personal note this evening relating one of the massive distractions that has shown up and disrupted my planned work schedule: Sarah and I adopted a kitten over the weekend. Whether or not I would have actually gotten work done in her absence might be debatable, but she is a legitimately adorable distraction.

Her name is Klein, which means both "little" in German (and she is quite little, at least for now!) and is also the surname of the brilliant mathematician Felix Klein (there was already a Felix the Cat, so we figured there should be a Klein the Kitty). We adopted her through a local program called Animal Rescue Krew.

Although hanging out with Klein is wonderful for all the reasons that pets are wonderful, it is also quite exciting to watch her development. She has only been with us since Sunday morning, but already there is a marked improvement in her coordination. When we first brought her home she found the lack of traction on our parquet floor baffling, and slipped into walls and furniture on numerous occasions. This evening, though, she has already adapted and now uses the sliding motion in her pounce. I spent about a half hour dangling a little stuffed mouse in the air and she only snagged my hand instead of the mouse a single time. Her motor learning is remarkably impressive.

Welcome to your new home, kitty.

Big Decisions

Things are probably going to be slow around here this week (and belatedly, last week) as I contemplate my impending return to graduate school - decisions have to be made about where I am going to go and who I am going to work with. Of course, there is the possibility that the stress of decision making will produce a flurry of activity borne from a desperate desire to procrastinate... but that cannot be guaranteed.

Jargon

My blogcation* was a little longer and more complete than I had initially planned, as I failed to get around to my planned 'TWOTI' posts and even ended up missing a week of quotations (some mid-week quotations will go up tomorrow, never fear), so I apologize for that. I had an excellent holiday, though, and now it is time to get back to being productive.

Now that I am a month and a half into my job as a research assistant at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, I am starting to settle into a routine and feel the inklings of productivity in my work. The research focus of my lab is far more clinical than anything I have ever worked with before, and this has made the learning curve rather steep. Even when I was doing EEG research a year and a half ago I was still investigating the limits of information available within the EEG signal. This meant that our research was more an exercise in data mining and scientific computing than one in neurophysiology. My current lab, however, performs research on three well defined pathological conditions: stroke, metastatic brain tumours, and multiple sclerosis (MS). Thus, when it comes to reading papers and learning analytical techniques I am suddenly faced with a sea of new terms describing the various disease pathologies.

Any drastic shift in research focus tends to be accompanied by an uncomfortable slew of new terms. The daunting volume of complicated unknown words can be quite discouraging. Likewise, it is often disparaged by the ignorant as one of the 'faults' of science (usually with phrases like, "Those elitist scientists fancying up their work with hard to understand jargon just so they sound more important"). While not at all a novel idea, it is well worth pointing out on the occasion that jargon is a necessary evil resulting from the fractal nature of knowledge. The more closely you look at any field, the more subtle aspects are revealed that require new descriptors and manners of discussion.

I have immense respect for accomplished scientific communicators like Isaac Asimov and Richard Dawkins, but their profound talent is a result not of their ability to avoid jargon. Rather, they deftly weave scientific terms into the narrative, making them accessbile with only marginal effort. After all, it is not as though 'phenotype' and 'fitness function' are terms only bandied about by amateur biologists and laymen, but they are terms used prolifically throughout many of Dawkins' popular biology books where they enhance rather than obfuscate the discussion. Thus, while I will likely continue to bemoan the unpleasant task of wading through medical terms like juxtacortical lesions, immunohistochemistry, and some worse ones which I am currently failing to even recall, the fact remains that those terms have important meanings and I'm going to have to just settle down and learn them.


* I know it is tacky to invent words with 'blog' in them, but oh well. I assume I will need future vacations from blogging, so I might as well start tossing a term around. Doing so in the post on jargon seemed to be fitting.

Blog Vacation

I know it wasn't too long ago that I declared a blog vacation, but when it comes to this blog I am my own boss, so I am taking another one. It shall last two weeks.

I have a new job (well, two weeks old at this point, but it is keeping me pretty tired), some personal projects, and teacher training starting up on the weekends, so things are going to be pretty busy in the next couple of weeks. I will continue posting weekly quotations and, when something strikes my fancy, This Week on the Internet (TWOTI) posts (so be sure to still check back at least Monday and Friday, or just use the subscribe buttons), but other than that things should be pretty sparse (and Computing Intelligence will also be taking a break).

While you take a break from reading my blog, I invite you to ponder how the Dog Gone machine manages to avoid picking up dirt and other debris:

Personal Update

Between starting a new job and going to the symphony today, I'm too tired to do a quotations set, so that will have to wait until the middle of the week. It looks like my primary task for at least the next little while will be analyzing MRI images and marking white matter lesions. Since the lab also works a lot with CT scans, it looks like I'm going to have to expand my knowledge repertoire of neural imaging.

Having a job with a commute is an interesting change. While rush hour on the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, for those not in the area) is not a very fun time, I am certainly going to make significantly more progress on my "books I plan to read" list. I let Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish jump the queue at the end of last week, and I am already over halfway through. Although I probably won't put up a book review of everything I read (after all, reviews are most exciting when they are either excellent or awful. If I have the misfortune to read a string of mediocre books, that is no reason to bore you too), you can probably expect a review of this one by next week.

Title Change, New Blog, and Twitter

There are some rather profound upheavals of my internet presence tonight. I have launched a new wordpress blog: Computing Intelligence. There I will try to put up a post a week discussing some aspect of my research and educational life that I have either been working on or thinking a lot about. Since one cannot have two blogs with the same name, this blog has been renamed to Computing Ignorance. Here I will continue to haphazardly (and, most likely, much more often) post on all the other topics that you are used to reading about (politics, weekly quotations, puzzles, and that sort of thing).

Additionally, I am also making an effort to use Twitter (where you can find me as CaldenWloka).

Banff National Park

My vacation is steadily drawing to a close (I return to Toronto on Thursday, at which point it will be time to start trying to find a job, finish my outstanding report from my summer research, continue my summer research, and return to blogging proper with the promised columns on computability and complexity and Pawelzik's talk summary, among other things). Before things get back to normal, however, I wanted to take another opportunity to post some images from my time out here in western Canada. I probably won't get another chance to visit the area for at least a year, and I am going to miss the mountains. These three images are taken from my family's trip to Banff National Park, one of the most beautiful places in the world (of course, I am rather partial to the Canadian Rockies in general). As always, please click on the images to see them full-sized.

The town of Banff as seen from the lookout point on Sulphur Mountain. It was a wonderfully clear day for taking pictures. Banff is actually quite a fascinating town, being both the town with the highest elevation and the first (and largest) incorporated town existing within a Canadian national park. Its existence within the Banff National Park leads to obvious environmental concerns and subsequent policy decisions, including a restriction on the number of permanent residents allowed.

The famous (and absolutely amazing) initial view of Lake Louise that a visitor is greeted with. Fed by the Victoria glacier, Lake Louise takes on many of the brilliant hues that can be found throughout the waters in Banff National Park thanks to the glacial flour suspended in the water.

A Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep ewe, this lady was part of a small herd in Kootenay National Park (which we drove through on our way up to Banff) just outside of the town of Radium.

Royal Tyrrell Museum Pictures

In response to my last post, BeamStalk made a request for pictures from the Tyrrell Museum itself (and not just the badlands around it). Like many museums, it is hard for pictures to capture the experience of actually being there and looking at the exhibits, but I will attempt to oblige with a couple of the pictures that I did take. Please ignore my incredible dorkiness that mars what would otherwise be perfectly reasonable dinosaur museum pictures...

Badlands and Geek-towns

As I have mentioned, I am currently in my hometown of Creston, British Columbia, visiting my family. The last couple days, however, were spent traveling into Alberta to pick up my girlfriend, who is coming out for a week to visit my family as well, from Calgary. Despite the fact that it is a fairly extensive six hour drive from Creston to Calgary, many of my childhood memories center around some of the attractions in the area, and going there to pick up my girlfriend therefore provided a nice opportunity to show them off to her. It also gave me an opportunity to visit my good friend Cornucrapia (obviously not his real name, but since he maintains loose anonymity on the internet, I shall respect his wishes), who lives in Calgary.

First off, my mom and I drove to Calgary Saturday night (I don't drive in Toronto, so having someone else along to share in the driving was a big help). I spent the night on Cornucrapia's couch, and then we headed out to the airport the next morning to collect my girlfriend. Despite her jet-lag, we set off for Drumheller, Alberta, straight from the airport. If you have not heard of Drumheller (which, if you are not a western Canadian or die-hard dinosaur fan, is most likely), it is situated in the Alberta badlands and is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. If you have never been to a region of badlands terrain, they are quite fascinating and I recommend going. I have included a picture (which I recommend clicking on to see at full size), but even that fails to fully capture the entire vista which surrounds you.
For those who do not remember, I have mentioned before that I spent most of my early childhood obsessed with dinosaurs. Thus, the Tyrrell Museum was one of my favourite places to go, and, despite it being an additional two hours north of Calgary (and thus just shy of an eight hour drive from my hometown), between grandparents, parents, and family friends I had managed to finagle five visits to the place before the age of ten. Shortly thereafter, however, my family moved to Pennsylvania, and I have not had an opportunity to return prior to this past weekend. I was thus a little giddy about the trip. I think my expectations were therefore a little out of proportion (it wasn't quite the magical land of endless dinosaur displays that I had remembered), but it is still a fantastic museum devoted to paleontology, and the surrounding backdrop of the badlands makes it well worth a trip if you are ever in the Calgary area. In addition to the Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller also includes attractions like Reptile World, where you can see a wide variety of reptiles and amphibians on display, as well as get an opportunity to hold a friendly boa constrictor.

While Drumheller can perhaps be considered a geeky place to have been a childhood dream destination, it cannot hold a candle to the geekiness which was our detour on the drive back to Creston after spending Sunday night in Calgary. Unfortunately, Cornucrapia was unable to come on this exciting detour, as we dropped him off Sunday evening. However, my mom, girlfriend, and I all got to experience the extraordinary geekiness which is Vulcan, Alberta.
Rather than simply smile at the fact that their town shares a name with Spock's father's race, residents of Vulcan have gone above and beyond in capitalizing upon the name to create a wholly bizarre tourist experience. Driving across endless fields of Albertan prairie, what at first appears to be a typical prairie town pops into existence. Once the buildings emerge from behind the heat waves and coalesce into a focused image, however, one is able to spot the giant Enterprise statue standing in front of the likewise named Enterprise Family Restaurant, which itself sits in front of a space-bubble style building that serves as both the Vulcan and District Chamber of Commerce as well as the Vulcan Association for Science and Trek.
Inside the Vulcan Association for Science and Trek building, you are greeted by a friendly staff, an astonishing array of Star Trek themed merchandise, and a $10 per use virtual reality game (we opted not to try the game, though if any of my readers do try it, you will have to let me know if we were missing out or not). Perhaps more impressive than the virtual reality game and the merchandise, however, was the room full of Star Trek memorabilia gifted to the town by a Calgarian collector. With a wall of Star Trek action figures (all in their original packaging!), a large number of full-sized cardboard cutouts, a fairly extensive uniform wardrobe (which were free to try on and take pictures - you better believe we did that!), and so many other items it is hard to remember them all, it was overwhelming, impressive, and a little bit creepy all at the same time. If you are a huge Star Trek fan, a trip to Vulcan might be a fascinating vacation destination. While I don't think I am a big enough Star Trek fan to have made the trip if it had not been merely a small detour on our way back to Creston, I still find it charming that such a place exists.

End of Blog Vacation and New Toys

I think my blog vacation is coming to an end. It was a nice break, but it is time to plough back into being a productive writer. Of course, being that I am ending my vacation on a Friday (and the fact that weekends are inevitably light traffic days for blogs), it will still likely be light posting for the next two days before we properly get back into the swing of things around here.

One exciting recent development is that I bought some new toys today. The first is a 1 TB external harddrive. While an entire terabyte of space seems excessive, the price difference between 1 TB and 320 GB was surprisingly small, so I figured I might as well get the terabyte and back up both my desktop and my laptop. The acquisition of an external harddrive in order to save off the data from my laptop was necessitated by my desire to switch the computer over to a Linux machine... I am so thoroughly unimpressed with Windows Vista that enough is enough and I'm switching to Linux.

The second toy I got is a new digital camera. My old camera is from my first year of university (back in the days of being an engineering student), so it is getting on six years old now. Over the course of its life it has started to develop some annoying quirks (you have to tilt the coverslide just right to make it turn on or off) as well as the fact that it lacked some functionality that I always wished it had (namely, the ability to take videos that are longer than 12 seconds and have sound - I specifically asked the salesman if it took videos with sound, and he said yes. It turns out he lied), so I think it was time for a replacement. The new camera is technically my birthday present from my parents*, and I have to say that I am rather pleased. It is a Canon PowerShot SX200, and packs a surprising amount of functionality into its relatively small frame. While not as tiny as many of the cameras available these days, it makes a happy medium between functionality (it has 12x optical zoom, for example), portability, and ease of use. To test it out, I took a couple of quick shots of the CN Tower from my apartment balcony (one without zoom and the second on maximum zoom). I was rather impressed.

Picture of the CN Tower without zoom.

Picture of the CN Tower on full zoom

*For the record, my birthday is actually in the spring. Also, I believe this is the first year in the last two or three that I have actually gotten a birthday present (not to fault my parents - every year they ask what I want for my birthday as it approaches, I shrug and say I will get back to them, and then forget all about it. When I do actually get a present, though, it tends to be something rather nice (like a digital camera), so I think it balances out in the end). I think the reason birthdays are like this with my family (gift giving is fairly sporadic) is because of how spread out we are. With my parents on the other side of the country (and Canada is a big country to be on the other side of) and both my sisters living in South America, it gets rather hard to do gifts. Excitingly, though, my whole family is going to be together in a couple weeks when I go back to BC.

"What's in a name?"

In a recent comment, Regan asked if I could explain what my pseudonym 'Mozglubov' means. It is a cobbling together of two Russian words, 'mozg' which means 'brain' and 'lubov' which means 'love' (so, the name literally means 'brain-love'). I picked it as a pseudonym when I started this blog for a number of reasons: it is distinctive, I enjoy messing around with Russian words, but most of all because it was tongue-in-cheek. That last bit requires some explanation.

As anyone who knows me or has been reading this blog for a while has likely noticed, I find the brain and how it functions to be a fascinating subject. Understanding how a collection of electrochemical interactions in a distributed network of cells is able to compute the complex behavioural and cognitive life found throughout the animal kingdom is not only a wonderful puzzle, it also provides a beautiful source of inspiration for reproducing similar capabilities in artificial systems (whether you are talking about a physical robot or software operating in a virtual world). While this blog itself might meander all over the place in terms of subject matter, my fascination with the study of intelligence and subsequent desire to share what I learned on the matter is what motivated me to start writing here. Having said all of that, one of the things that really bothered me as I began devouring books on neuroscience was that the vast majority of people writing about the brain seemed to consistently fawn obsequiously over it to a degree that I felt was counterproductive. If you set out to explore a subject that you feel is so complex it can never be properly explored, there is a good chance you will let yourself be confounded. The reverence shown for the brain, of course, also tended to also be exclusively held for only the human brain (something which annoys me, too, and which I have previously gone on about at some length).

Since it seemed like an unofficial rule that to write about the brain required at least an adoring introductory passage paying homage to how wonderful, complex, and magical the human brain is, I figured I would just get it over with and include such genuflection within my very name (albeit hidden within the Russian language). Mozglubov, therefore, is my own private joke about the neuroscience field.

Göttingen in Review

As my time in Göttingen draws to a close, I thought I would give a recap of some the highlights (both good and bad). Life is continually escalating up on the hectic scale, so I'm not sure what the schedule is going to be like around here. I have the most recent puzzle solutions to post sometime before the end of the week (so get any remaining solutions in!), and I might expound a bit to serve as some random stress relief, but other than that I should be getting stuff done in the real world.

Scariest Moment (Intellectual): Being asked during my talk by the head of the research group why our method was unable to predict the phase response of a multi-source network.
Most Relieving Moment (Intellectual): Realising (after not too long a moment of deliberation) that the multiplicity of the zero eigenvalue in a multi-source network was greater than one (thus solving the conundrum of the aforementioned moment).
Stupidest Moment: Crashing a borrowed bike into a brick wall.
Smartest Moment: Understanding and then explaining the transient response of a reciprocally coupled network to my Ph.D. student collaborator (who spent most of the summer having to explain everything to me).
Scariest Moment (Physical): Not realising my landlady had forgotten to turn the oil off after she showed me how to use the heater in my room and subsequently lighting the oil a little while later. The accumulated oil began to boil (a state which turns a slow-burning liquid into an explosive vapour), resulting in an hour of terror as the heater rumbled and shook and I wondered if I was about to blow up my bedroom (thankfully, it did not blow up).
Most Satisfying Moment (Physical): Driving a well-placed shot through the narrow window in the opponents' goal during the Ph.D.-night soccer match and thereby winning back a small portion of honour for my country's (admittedly justifiably) much maligned soccer prowess.
Most Annoyed Moment: Discovering my landlady had disconnected the internet without any forewarning (this actually requires some explanation... she inexplicably decided she wanted to move a few weeks after I arrived (while I suppose it is a possibility, I am fairly sure this had nothing to do with me). So, I said it was fine if she had to start moving things out, but I would appreciate a warning if she had to move anything that I also used. The only thing that seemed to happen with was the dishwasher). My annoyance over the loss of the internet is closely followed by my annoyance over the disappearance of the washing machine the week before (also as part of my landlady's move, and also without any warning).
Most Indebted Moment: Being generously lent a bicycle for a month and a half simply so it "wouldn't have to just sit there" while its owner was off on a trip (Carsten, if for some reason you ever read this, I'm sorry for crashing your bike into a brick wall).
Most Stressful Moment: Realising I have only a day left to finish my final report, cram in some studying for my exams, pack, and tie up every other loose end I have left.
Most Stress-Mitigating Moment: Realising I have only a day left before I fly back to Canada and get to see my girlfriend again.

Personal Aside

My imminent departure from Göttingen and return to Toronto suddenly seems much closer this side of the weekend than on Friday... While I have a variety of planned posts, most of them are only partially finished (or only exist right now in my head) and must yield to more pressing concerns such as writing my final research report covering what I've done here at the Max Planck Institute and studying for the exams that are awaiting me in Toronto. While I do find blog maintenance a good tool of procrastination/relaxation between bouts of work, my mental moods do tend to get more unstable and my writing more sporadic when under stress. Thus, I warn you that updates might not flow very smoothly over the next two and a half weeks, but there will likely be the occasional flurry of snippets.