Tasmania Half Way

I’ve been in Tasmania for about half of my 4-month stay, and apparently even people who rarely use the internet read my blog and are curious about what I’ve been up to. I’ve been mostly focusing on my Flickr Photostream, rather than writing, as far as my uploads to the parts of the web that have my name on them.

I arrived in Tassie on October 24^th, a Wednesday; due to the International Date Line the Tuesday was swallowed by a time rift (or something, I am not an astrophysicist). I am told I will get that day back when I return to North America on February 22. It’s a day spent crammed into a metal tube flinging itself at high speed through the atmosphere, so I’m not sure I want it back.

There are some interesting holidays in Tasmania. The Thursday, day after I landed, was an official Holiday for the southern half of the state, to coincide with the first full day of the Royal Hobart Show, a kind of agricultural fair / cultural event that spans about three-and-a-half days in late October every year. For the first time this year, they held a “Circle Work” event, a cultural experience I knew I couldn’t miss.

Circle Work is local parlance for “paddock bashing”, or driving one’s car in circles with lots of dust and noise. At the Show, it was an organized competition, giving me my first real taste of Tassie administration styles (i.e. pretty laisez-faire). Essentially, each competitor had to drive a ute (more on that in a moment), for 1 minute in a defined area. They gained points for each full circle completed, double points for figure-8s, and bonus points for “style” and “crowd reaction”. As one competitor put it during the pre-event interview, 

“Normally I try to keep the back wheels behind the front, but here I guess I’ll try it the other way around”. 

And much sliding and engine over-revving ensued.

An ute is a distinctly Australian thing. It includes vehicles that a North American would call a pick-up truck, but there’s a category difference, too – what a Gringo would call “something like an El Camino” or a “car-truck mashup” is also, and definitively, an ute. It’s short for “utility”, obviously, and essentially means any four-wheeled vehicle with a bed or tray at the back. The last North American utes were the Chevy El Camino and the Ford Ranchero, both of which ceased production some time in the 1980s, while here in Australia the Oz subsidiaries of those corporations, Holden (for GM) and Ford Australia have continued to refine the designs and compete fiercely in the large domestic market. There’s even a race series based around the versions of these vehicles fitted with V8 engines, and an origin myth that claims the ute is an invention of Ford Australia, circa 1930.

I set out to purchase a distinctly, stereotypically Australian vehicle so I could continue my Sunday Drives here in Tassie. I set my budget to $5000 (the Canadian and Australian dollars don’t typically stray far from 1:1 to each other) and started digging through Gumtree, the local equivalent of Kijiji in Canada. Strangely, Holden Commodore utes (the “SS” and related forms) are not available at that budget – older Holden utes, sometimes advertised as “project” or “ran when I parked it” (or the dreaded codewords* “Needs new battery”) sell for less than $1000, and newer utes, newer than about 2000, go for $7000 and up, but almost nothing appears in the $3500-$5500 range. On the other hand, there’s usually a range of Ford Falcon utes in that price range, covering model years from the mid 90s up to the early 2000s. I emailed a few sellers, heard back from one, took it for a test drive, and bought it.

* “Needs new battery” is a code phrase for “Many, many features of this vehicle are heavily damaged or neglected, to the point it would cost several times the value of this vehicle to effect all of the necessary repairs.” The dead battery is just the icing on the rusty cake, because it’s ridiculously easy to replace a dead car battery, and costs about the same regardless of the vehicle. If you’re trying to sell a car that legitimately only needs a new battery (and nothing else), you’d replace the battery before posting the ad.

Since then, I’ve been using my ute to continue my Sunday Drives, visiting the Tasman Peninsula...

 

...the Gordon River dam...

...the Tasmanian Midlands...

 

...Southeast Cape, southernmost point of the island of Tasmania* and the furthest south I’ve ever been in my life...

...the Tasmanian Highlands...

...and the Styx River.

 

* The various Wikipedia and other articles that describe the furthest-whatever of various parts of the Earth bend to national and international politics as well as the rulings of such bodies as the International Union of Geological Sciences. The State of Tasmania includes a few islands further south than Southeast Cape, and administers points even further south, such as Macquarie Island.

I’m having a great time exploring Tassie.

Today is Christmas Eve, which seems an auspicious time to pay some attention to the blog. Also, I depart tomorrow for my long-sort-of-planned Tour of Tasmania, as the stretch of time between Christmas and New Year’s is the only longer-than-a-weekend break I have here, making it ideal for a longer trip. In fact, this will be my first trip away from my rented basement in Hobart for a night, I’m actually going for 5 nights.

The plan is thus:

 

I intend to spend Christmas evening on the beach, somewhere in Freycinet National Park. Then, up the east coast of Tasmania to Mount William NP, stopping in at Douglas-Aspley to check it off the list. Thursday will be a longer drive along the northern coast of Tasmania, stopping in at Narawntapu NP and Rocky Cape NP before finding a motel/hotel/B&B/whatever in or near Wynyard. Then it’s into the wilderness, camping near Corrina (there’s a ferry!) and near Strahan on the west coast before the final 300km run back to Hobart on Sunday.

Merry Christmas!

SoloPro Autocross Weekend

This weekend I was a student in a pair of 1-day classes offered by SoloPro Driving School LLC; the "Intro" and the "Comp" classes. These classes teach the fundamentals and some more advanced techniques for autocross driving, built around a formula of one-on-one instruction and lots of seat time, practicing maneuvers and concepts. Each session included two runs through a short course, with an instructor in the passenger seat. Then, two runs as the passenger while the instructor drives my car. Finally, two more runs with me driving, and the instructor as passenger. This worked very well, providing a good mix of instruction in theory ("You want to get closer to that first cone"), with demonstrations of technique ("Do you see how I'm aiming right at that double cone?"), and a final chance to apply this new knowledge almost immediately.

Overall, I was very pleased with the classes. I had to wake up brutally early on both days of the weekend, and spend much of my day standing in a shadeless parking lot, working as a course marshall while other students had their turns, getting sunburnt, but it was great fun and the quality of instruction was top-notch. For less than the price of a new set of tires, I gained a giant amount of skill, without any risk of changing my competition classing.

I didn't have much opportunity to take pictures, but I snapped a few. The set is on my Flickr page.

Book Club: God's Hotel

Book Club: God's Hotel 

Dr. Victoria Sweet, 2012 

Riverhead Books, Penguin Group USA 

New York, New York, USA 

I was sent this book to read and review by an agent of the publisher. An email arrived unexpectedly in my inbox, and once I got over my "it's spam" suspicions (wholy unfounded), I contacted the publisher and agreed to the terms. The terms were, essentially, "you liked The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, we thought you'd like this, too. Do with it as you will!" How could I say no to that? The book arrived a few days later. I like free shipping, I like free stuff by free shipping even better! 

Dr. Sweet describes her 20-year career (possibly ongoing) at a facility in the greater San Franciso area named Laguna Honda. It is a hospital, but it has several interesting differences from other American hospitals. Mainly, it is a long-term facility, with many or most of its patients not expected to be discharged at all. This is in contrast to how other American hospitals are described, which receive money for admitting patients but not for looking after them for days or weeks, so they have a strong incentive to discharge patients as rapidly as possible. 

I was sent an uncorrected proof, which appears to be different from the final, published version in a few minor respects. For example, the endnotes are not indicated in the main text at all (presumably the final version includes numbers in either superscript or subscript), and in the endnote section there are no page numbers, just "Page 00." for every endnote. Also, the one diagram in the book, used to illustrate Hildegard's framework for premodern medicine, a system based on fours (four elements – Earth, Air, Water, Fire; four humors – blood, phlegm, bile, melancholia; four qualities – hot, cold, wet, dry; and so forth), is missing, with an empty rectangle on page 182. I was warned by the agent of the publisher that page numbers might change in the final published version, so I won't dwell on specific pages in this Book Club. 

As far as a review of the book, in my opinion God's Hotel is very good, written in a spare but not minimalist style with effective use of metaphors; I found it an absorbing and well-paced read. Dr. Sweet has much to say about the state and practice of modern medicine, at least in the United States, and covers a broad spectrum including psychological and chronic illnesses as well as the many links between chronic disabling illness, mental illness, and poverty. She also incorporates the history of medicine well into her descriptions of both the how and the why of major trends and features of her hospital, using specific case studies. Her case studies show her caring for the individual patients, painting a picture of a dedicated doctor who must make difficult decisions and understands the difficult decisions made by others including her patients and the administrative staff at the hospital. 

The unique feature of this book, besides the story of Laguna Honda, is Dr. Sweet's pursuit and acheivement of a PhD. in the History of Medicine, focusing on the writings of a single individual, a medieval nun named Hildegard of Bingen. So, Dr. Sweet is a PhD / MD but unlike most such massively educated individuals (I've met a handful of people with such certifications) her PhD is not in Biochemistry or Physiology or Radiography or other Natural and Applied Science fields, it is in History. This clearly informs her writing, and seems to inform her medical practice in useful ways, too. 

The book includes many meditations on the utility of ancient knowledge in modern medicine. This is where I expected the book to dive into quackery and the utter nonsense of "Alternative Medicine", but other than a few missed opportunities to emphasize the harm done by practitioners of bullshit and a misattribution of Homeopathy as medieval (it's not – Homeopathy was invented by a raving madman, Samuel Hahnemann, in the late 18th century), Dr. Sweet clearly stays inside the bounds of reality. She makes a clear point about extracting those things that other perspectives on health and medicine can add to modern practice, and leaving behind those things that would subtract. Her overarching theme of "slow medicine", with the metaphor of the body as a garden to be tended rather than a machine to be fixed, is good, and I think it could be added to modern medical practice without need to replace anything that modern medicine is (spectacularly) good at. As I said above, her studies of the History of Medicine inform and improve her medical practice without interfering or inhibiting her use of modern diagnostic and treatment techniques when appropriate. 

To summarize, God's Hotel is a very good book. It is full of information and ideas about a great many subjects, with very interesting anecdotes throughout. It's the kind of book I could pick up and read straight through, or nibble on over a few days. I ended up doing a bit of both as I read this book, initially reading a chapter at a time but spending about four hours just plowing through the middle sections one day, as well.

Driving to Montreal

Tomorrow, at a time of day I normally try to pretend does not exist, I will leave my home in Saskatoon and begin my drive to Montreal. I plan to take three days to drive the approximately 3200 km, which may be a bit ambitious so I've given myself almost a full buffer day. I'm going to be at the icebreaker opening reception at 7:00pm on Friday in Montreal at the APECS pre-conference workshop; if I drive as long tomorrow and Wednesday as I hope to, I'll arrive in Montreal in the late afternoon or early evening of Thursday. If I get more tired than I expect or experience other delays, I can spend Thursday night somewhere a few hundred kilometres west of Montreal and have a leisurely drive into the city mid-day on Friday. I'll be staying with a friend of a friend on Rue St. Denis, which I have been told is exactly the part of town I should most want to be in to experience Montreal at its best.

But first, a series of long drives.

Day 1: Saskatoon to Kenora, ON. 1047 km according to Google. If things go extra-well, I might push it the extra 140 km to Dryden, where the Husky station is a truck stop with restaurant. I love Husky restaurants, especially for breakfast.

Day 2: Kenora, ON to Cochrane, ON, via Highway 11, 1200 km. I'm trying to stay north as much as possible, I have no reason to dive south towards Toronto and southern Ontario. Again, if things go very well, I'll try to push it to Kirkland Lake. Obviously this is more feasible if Day 1 makes it to Dryden.

Day 3: Cochrane, ON to Montreal, QC, via Quebec 117, 868 km. The shortest day of the three, because I want to arrive in Montreal at some polite time to meet the person I will be staying with. I'll be tired, but if I drove 1000 km on the third day I'd show up completely exhausted from the road, and make a poor first impression. Hence my desire to push longer on Day 1 and Day 2.

The whole trip eastwards, covering something close to 1/2 the width of the North American continent.

Going home will be a different route, I'm planning a Sunday Drive out of Montreal (there are ferries across the St. Laurence! One is about 80km downstream from Montreal!) and a weekend at the family cottage between Ottawa and Kingston in eastern Ontario. I'll be in less of a hurry going home, and I'd like to explore the south shore of Lake Superior by driving along the upper Michigan peninsula.

Manuscript: Exists!

I am feeling rather tired, but pretty good, for I have reached my goal for this week. I now have a manuscript, a proto-scientific-paper. It's still a long way from submission to the journal, it lacks references, acknowledgements, some formatting clean-up, the attention and approval of my co-authors, and other things – heck, it doesn't yet have a proper title! But it does have an Introduction, Methods & Materials, Results, and Discussion, in proper English sentences and paragraphs. The vast majority of the words are in the places they're going to end up in the finished product, and anyways the core ideas and story are certainly in place. There are also four figures with complete figure captions, and a pile of statistical tests buried under cryptic mentions of p-values and such.

Considering this was little more than a pile of data scraped into a single Excel file on Tuesday afternoon, and less than that a week ago, I'm feeling pretty good about this. Beyond the utility of getting something DONE, the more short-term accomplishment of giving me something to talk about in Montreal in two weeks has also been achieved. My talk at that conference (Thursday, April 26, in the afternoon) doesn't yet exist at all, but I now have a pretty good idea of what the main figures are going to look like and what I'm going to be saying.

Monday Rant: UPS

About a week ago, I bought a new computer from a company in Calgary. They shipped it almost to me by UPS. UPS has never successfully delivered anything to me. Unlike other couriers, UPS company policies are all perverse when applied to residential delivery. They take as long to get an item off the truck and into a depot where it can be retrieved as they do to carry the item hundreds or thousands of kilometres. They only deliver during business hours, and the depot is open fewer hours in a week than an average bank. The website lies about the hours of the depot, which is located far away from anything in an industrial zone in Saskatoon.

The computer I bought arrived Friday, while I was not at home (of course). They gave it to my neighbour, a person I've never met. She hasn't been home since Friday, apparently, and still has it. I'm not worried about her, but it's annoying that UPS let her sign for it. I called and filed a complaint, which was less than satisfactory; the computer voice that speaks to me before I can talk to a real person informed me I can request the second attempt at delivery be with a neighbour. But in the follow-up call from the local depot I was informed it was company policy to ask a neighbour to accept the package, even on the first delivery attempt.

I don't actually care what UPS corporate policy is, I don't expect them to change at all because of my experiences. I want the ability to specify DO NOT SEND UPS when I buy something on-line - I will gladly pay more (and wait longer) for a different carrier. I've received packages carried by Fedex, Canada Post, Purolator, and DHL, and never had the kinds of problems I've had with UPS.

Monday Rant: Soundbites

I do not like soundbites. I do not like trying to compress a complex idea down to a simple statement. A paragraph is not enough to convey a description of my work, or my hobby, or any other significant portion of my life; never mind a single sentence.

I was invited to submit a "Frostbyte" to the organizers of the Montreal 2012 IPY conference that I will be attending in April. I tried to put together my 60-seconds of self-promotion, but failed; that taste in my mouth is familiar, it tastes like faillure. This is a small thing, in many ways (of course). I spent perhaps an hour, maybe an hour and a half in total working on my Frostbyte, with about 60 seconds of me talking and a handful of pictures to accompany. But, listening again to my audio, I realized I was talking too fast (anyone who knows me is currently nodding their heads at this news), but there was no part of what I was saying I could delete and retain a coherent, useful description of the work I will present, in 900 seconds rather than 60, on April 26. So I deleted the files.

If the organizers choose to berate me at the conference for not participating, I'll be able to brush them off. My work and my skill sets are not suited to such little blitherings.