Tales from the Loonybin

Day 3: The Sacred Valley–This entry was written on May 11, 2006
On Wednesday, we took a tour of the Sacred Valley, with all of hte little mountain towns and farming communities and the many Incan ruins scattered all around. It was pretty amazing.

We started out by driving down into the Pisac valley. After hiking around some ruins for a bit, we wandered around the Pisac market. This market is clearly aimed squarely at the tourists, with all kinds of knick-knacks and other souvenirs.

We then drove to lunch at this former hacienda. It was amazingly peaceful, with green grass all around, birds chirping, and the soft sounds of wind rustling through the leaves.

After lunch, we drove to Ollantaytambo, one of the oldest Incan towns left intact that is still in active use today. It’s also the site of an Incan palace, whose construction was halted before it was completed. It was really quite fascinating to get to look at all the stonework.

Day 2: Cusco–This entry was written on May 10, 2006
We got up early Tuesday morning and flew to Cusco. Cusco was the capital of the Incan empire and still boasts one of Peru’s strongest cities. I was expecting a back-woods tourist town, and, although it is a tourist town, it also has a thriving population of 400k in the city itself, and many more in the vicinity. Thus, to call Cusco a tourist town is much like calling Boston a college town.

After arriving in town, we met with our facilitator, who took us to our hotel and introduced us to our guide, Omar. Over some coca tea, we discussed the plan for our hike along the trail, went over some basics, and made arrangements for a tour of Cusco. We saw so much that it’s hard to remember everything.

We first visited Koricancha, the cite of an ancient Incan temple on top of which the Spanish had built a monastery. Up until 1950, it was presumed that the temple had been completely destroyed, but after an earthquake razed the monastery, the remains of temple were exposed underneath. Although much of the temple was indeed destroyed by the Spanish, some of the interior rooms and foundation withstood both the Spanish and quake. The sanctuaries inside were amazingly built–the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Moon, and the Temple of hte Stars.

Afterwards, we visited the main cathedral, just off the Plaza de Armas in Cusco. The chapels and rectories inside were truly amazing. There was so much gold leaf and silver everywhere–stolen from the Incas and melted down by the Spanish. We also saw the Black Christ, but I can’t remember the historical significance.

Next, we visited Sacsayhuaman, another ancient temple that is so magnificent that it must be seen. The walls are constructed like a 3D jigsaw puzzle, with pieves the perfectly interlock to millimeter precision, and with stones that weigh as much as 120 tons … and which were quarries 3km away! Those Incas were crazy!

Our guide really is great. When Isabel expressed an interest in Alpaca wool, he took us to one of the reputable dealers–actually, the outlet for an Alpaca wholesaler–who taught us all about the natural dyes and how to tell real baby alpaca from the synthetics or blends or not-so-baby-alpaca. Hint: you can’t trust the label. As we entered the store, Omar emphasised to us that, whatever happens, we should not feel in any way obligated or pressured to buy. We, of course, did buy. I found this great scarf that I think Becky will enjoy.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I started feeling pretty sick. I’m not sure if it was the effects of the altitude sickness, since I was feeling a bit queasy when we were in Lima, along the coast. The symptoms of altitude sickness resemble the symptoms of the flu, so it really could have been either. Cusco is at about 11k feet, so my body was probably not ready for the thinner air. After having to explain to the poor waitress that my food was delicious (I assume it would have been) and that I just wasn’t hungry, I went back to the hotel and took some anti-nausea medicine. By morning, I felt much better.

I just returned this past week from a two week vacation in Peru.  Every day for the next two weeks, I’ll post my observations from the trip.  Today I’ll post the first in the series.

Day 1: Lima –This entry was written on May 8, 2006.
Lima is an amazing city.  We’re staying in the hotel Jose Antonio, in the Mira Flores neighborhood.  It’s a fairly new neighborhood with lots of shopping and and active mall along the ocean.  It has a really nice character to it, although the mall is a bit touristy, what with a KFC and a Pizza Hut mixed in with the variety of shops.  Nonetheless, the ocean and the fog and the Spanish-influenced architecture strongly remind me of home.

We took a tour of the city in the afternoon.  Seeing some of the various neighborhoods, Lima is a remarkable city.  It’s 9 million people spread out in 42 neighborhoods, spanning 40 by 20 miles.  Some of the neighborhoods are quite nice, with a real middle or even upper class feel to them.  Others are quite a bit more sketchy, with a shanty town on the hillside the looks like it would keep the red cross busy for years of even a small earthquake.

We also visited an old Franciscan monastery, which has been opened to the public.  It has a fantastic outer cloister with a beautifully kept garden in it.  Everything was so ornately decorated, from the wood carvings on the ceilings and furniture to the frescoes and murals on the walls.  Underneath, we visited the catacombs, where many of the Spanish colonialists were buried.  Their bones were neatly arranged for the tourists, but the concepts behind them were authentic–pits full of bones of buried bodies in pit after pit, cavern after cavern.  When one filled up, it was sealed off and another used.  Some individual pits went 30 feet deep!  It was like something out of Diablo!

For lunch, we went to this restaurant called Alfresco, with the most amazing octopus dish.  The tentacles were perfectly blanched, then seasoned with cumin, rosemary, and olive oil, and grilled to perfection. It was quite possibly the best seafood that I have ever had–in the Bay Area, Seattle, or in New England.

With all of the travel I’ve been doing lately, I haven’t had a chance to update the Mail.app Attachment Scanner Plugin with its new translation support. Thanks to the help of several generous translators, the plugin will now look for English and French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish words to indicate a possibly missing attachment, depending on the Mac OS X language preference.

Thank you so much to all of the people who have made this support possible!

Apple and Nike today announced a brilliant idea: integrate the iPod with a sensor in one’s running shoes. As you run, the sensor in the shoes detects your pace, distance run, timing, and even calories burned. It relays that data to your iPod, which can then display that data on screen, or synchronize it with your Mac for historical purposes. It’s a great idea — as people run, they often listen to music. Furthermore, the extra feedback can provide an added motivation for those who sometimes need a little extra nudge to workout.

But, the integration is incomplete. Although the system will support the notion of a “power song,” a song the runner can select to give him or herself an extra boost, it does not actually integrate any of the pacing data with the music selection. During our introductory course to the PhD program, I designed such an interface. At the start of the workout, the runner inputs a target pace. As the runner exceeds the pace, the system selects music with a slower beat. As the runner slows, the system selects music with a higher pace. Alternatively, a non-verbal “pulse” can convey a similar sense, without having to superimpose an annoying “Your pace is seven-fifteen” voice-over on the music. I know I’d certainly love to see such a “smart-shuffle” feature added.

I recently returned from CHI 2006 in Montréal. CHI is the conference on human-computer interaction, with thousands of academics and practitioners alike swarming in attendance.

As always, the CHI experience is mostly about the networking — meeting with the many colleagues and peers scattered about at different universities and labs. If, for no other reason, CHI was a tremendous success. As for the technical program, however, there really was no session in particular that blew me away. Nonetheless, there were a few that intrigued me and gave me some ideas.

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