Long Beach vacation day 2
Sunday October 11, 2009.
Today I tried to catch up with some of the Victoria tourism I had planned. The two main items on my itinerary for today were the Butchart Gardens and the Butterfly Gardens right next door.
Butchart Gardens was smaller than I remember, but then I was a lot smaller last time I was there. Rewarding though, and I got some good pictures, but too many to upload over the wireless from where I am right now; I’ll post them to the gallery after I return home.
Butterfly Gardens was a bit of a disappointment, but only because I’ve recently been to the Vancouver Aquarium, which also has butterflies on exhibit. Butterfly Garden had two or three species not represented at VanAqua, but that’s not enough to get me excited about it.
After that I went to Russell Books; I missed them yesterday, but luckily they were also open today. Got there about an hour before closing, but they’ve got so much stuff I could spend a whole afternoon browsing. Did come away with:
- “The Art of Science Fiction” by Frank Kelly Freas
- “Revolutionary” by S. Andrew Swann
- “Engines of Creation” by K. Eric Drexler
- “The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil
- “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan
That last is a second copy; I’m currently reading this book, and it has a sufficient combination of rarity and value that I picked up a second copy to give to someone. I don’t know who I’m going to give it to yet (speak up if you want it), but I think it’s a must-read for anyone who has trouble drawing the line between fact and fiction or between science and faith, or for anyone who interacts with people who have those troubles.
By then it was supper time so I met up with Mike and we went out to a local color joint called John’s Place and had a good meal and chat, then went to look at a few nighttime sights before calling it a day.
Today’s GPS track, with internal foot-tour detail of the Butchart Gardens:
[gmap type=”satellite” width=”80%” zoom=”auto” center=”files” file=’__UPLOAD__/2009/10/20091011.kmz’]
Long Beach vacation day 1
Saturday October 10, 2009:
Today is the first day of my much-anticipated trip to Long Beach. Though actually I’m first going to Victoria to chill with some homies and do some commerce and rubbernecking I didn’t get to last time.
I had originally planned to hit the awesome Ooh La La confectionary for some treats to take to the beach with me, and then maybe also visit Miniature World, Russell Books and one of the naval museums in Victoria.
Alas, twas not to be. Yesterday one of the larger ferries doing the Vancouver->Victoria run suffered a fire in a backup generator and was taken out of service for repairs. That plus this being a long weekend resulted in this:
Thankfully Mike gave me a heads-up that it might be busy, so I skipped breakfast and went right to the ferry terminal in the morning. I arrived at Tsawassen at about 9:20am and was told that I might get on the noon boat, but more likely would be on the 1pm boat. So I settled in for a four-hour wait; walked around a bit, had a snack and did some reading.
Noon came and went with no movement in my lane. The 1pm boat caused some movement but I didn’t get on. That was a bit of a miff, because the missing boat left a gap in the schedule and the next one wouldn’t be until 3pm. Tired of reading, I broke out the laptop and was going to blog furiously, but I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the local WAP after connecting. So I just did some hacking on one of my projects instead. Books and laptops are a great boon to the bored.
Finally got on the 3pm boat. Arrived in Victoria around 5:30pm, which was too late to do any of the things I wanted to do; everything closes at an unreasonable time here.
Went to Mike & Kate’s pad and had delicious homemade chicken korma. Caught up with same, met and adored the family pets, and called it a night.
(nb: I wasn’t able to get the wireless working at Mike’s place either, which is why I’m a few days behind in blogging this trip.)
Today’s GPS track:
[gmap type=”satellite” width=”80%” zoom=”auto” center=”files” file=’__UPLOAD__/2009/10/20091010.kmz’]
Wow that looks fake!
Water ripples as seen from the (docked) ferry at Tswassen on Saturday. I’ve often thought that procedural noise water textures in video games etc look fake, but they look an awful lot like this sometimes. So I guess they are accurate for some values of water.
Syntactic sugar: C# ‘var’ keyword
Learned this recently. In .NET 3.5, you can substitute ‘var’ for any type name that can be determined at compile time. So instead of typing (for example):
1 | Dictionary<MyKeyType, MyValueType> foo = new Dictionary<MyKeyType, MyValueType>(); |
I can instead just type:
1 | var foo = new Dictionary<MyKeyType, MyValueType>(); |
This isn’t the same thing as making ‘foo’ be of type object; foo is still strongly typed. You just don’t have to enter the type twice.
It’s a minor thing, but type names can get long in C#, especially if you use generics, and I like anything that reduces redundant code entry.
Comparative Donutology: Lee’s result
As we all know, science long ago determined that Tim Horton’s represents the pinnacle of donut evolution. But a key component of science is its openness to new evidence. Recently I have heard rumors of two local donutters that some say are superior to Timmy’s. I must investigate – for Science!
This weekend I tried Lee’s Donuts, the lesser of the two claimants. I had a chocolate glazed and a double chocolate – my two standards back when I used to eat donuts more than occasionally.
Conclusion: Inferior. Lee’s donuts are good – perhaps even on par with Country Style – but they’re nowhere near as good as Timmy’s.
I’ll report back when I get a chance to follow up on the other claimant.
