Category Archives: california

Canyon Creek Lakes, Trinity Alps, Northern California

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Above Lower Canyon Creek Lake looking South

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

We continued our labor day tradition of meeting our great friends in Weaverville, CA and then hiking in to the Trinity Alps Wilderness along the trail up to the Canyon Creek Lakes.    We camp about 4 miles in and then hike into the lakes the next day which is another 4 miles.    It’s a fantastic trip with the kind of scenery you find pretty much only in Northern California – sweeping mountain vistas, smooth granite outcrops and peaks, pristine mountain lakes, streams, and waterfalls.    Azure blues and deep greens and a star filled sky complete with the recent meteor shower.   It doesn’t get much better than that and the Trinity Alps are one of my favorite places in the whole world.

One really cool addition to the experience this year was looking at the hike through Google Earth, where by tilting the imagery you can really get a neat feel for the vistas along the actual hike.     We also found some photos of our first trip in to the Canyon Creek Lakes some 22 years ago. The scenery had not changed but … um … I think we have

Canyon Creek Contemplations

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This morning I woke up along Canyon Creek in Trinity Alps Wilderness of Northern California. This is a great hike we’ve done several times, and I’ll get the pix up tomorrow. We had some fun conversations at camp and around the fire as several meteors streaked across the magnificent night sky:

I think Chem trail conspiracy notions are silly, but they came up:
Chem Trails – nice description of the issues

Star and Moon motion
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970518.html

Mercury

Wow, and the $2000 EPA cleanup of broken flourescent bulb is really quite a story , and one very related to Mercury. In that story evil Fox news notes what appears to be a real environmental disconnect between advocacy for using compact flourescents and the dangers that will be caused by the ones that get broken and go to landfills. I remain confused about this. In fact I just broke one on the porch last week and had *no idea at all* about special cleanup needed, so I hope we all live.

Google Earth and Maps has some neat imagery of Canyon Creek Lakes area. If you don’t have Google earth it’s quite an amazing and free application to visualize cities and trails. Maps does not need download but Google Earth is a fanastic and free download.

Here’s the NYT article about life being a computer simulation

Here is Kurzweil’s AI site for updates on the singularity and conscious computing. It reads a bit sillier than it should based on his scientific and history “credentials” and the fact many AI folks think conscious computing is only 1-2 decades away.

Here’s my take on two neat AI projects

Chips and Human Neuron Salsa … and this related item just in from Israel IMHO the intersection of human brains and computing will initiate the most profound societal transformation in history.

And then again, maybe it’ll just let us watch TV in our heads, which would be pretty cool too.

Google Party Mountain View – yummy buffet goodness

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Google Party Mountain View – yummy buffet goodness

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

The buffet at the Google Party is always great and this year was no exception with pulled pork, hot dogs and burgers and other delicous things including candy and ice cream booths. They don’t skimp on wine or beer either. Thanks Google!

Now, about that Adsense revenue share….

Search Engine Strategies – Google Party

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Day one of the four day SES conference is wrapping up although a lot of the conference action takes place at restaurants and bars after hours.   I think for most people the highlight of SES is the huge Google Party which will be held tomorrow night at the Googleplex in Mountain View.   “Meet the Engineers” is one of only a handful of times each year when you can talk directly to a large number of people on the Google search team – the other is WebmasterWorld’s “PubCon”  in Las Vegas.

One thing I learned today is the Google’s Marissa Mayer is an expert in Artificial Intelligence (yikes – ValleyWag says Marissa IS an Artificial Intelligence!), and I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to ask a few questions tomorrow after her keynote about where she sees Google’s AI efforts heading over the next 5-10 years.  Larry Page was recently quoted as suggesting that a human-like thinking “algorithm” could well be cracked fairly soon, and Google is one of the places where this type of innovation might actually take place.  That said, based on my talk with Matt Cutts a few years back I don’t think AI as a search driver is a Google priority.  I was surprised then to hear that Matt felt quality AI driven search was still many years away.    Google has to maintain a practical edge to things so they probably can’t put a huge effort behind a “conscious computing” effort, though I get the idea from Kurzweil’s book that a Googley “massively parallel” info architecture may be more likely to bring consicousness to a machine than, for example, the IBM Blue Gene style supercomputer.

Blogs covering or writing about the SES Search Conference

Session coverage roundup from Barry at Search Engine Land

Search Engine Strategies

Pligg for sale, Searchmob, and Arabian Horse Breeding

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TechCrunch reports that Pligg is up for sale.   The clone of the Digg project was a great way to easily and effectively set up a user community where people could submit, review, and rank articles.    John Battelle used it nicely over at SearchMob  in an attempt to enhance his excellent search news coverage at Search Blog.

Unfortunately at SearchMob it seemed to me that the reviews became more of a breeding ground for SEO tactics than a clearinghouse for quality search news.    Several participants would primarily list stories at their own sites that were referencing *other* source stories.   This is not necessarily bad but I found at SearchMob that only a fraction of the stories were “high quality”.    That said I’m not a big fan of Digg either because my interests still don’t seem to match the normal onliner demographic very well.

Pligg may not be the best example of how to make money on Web 2.0 because it was an open project and an advanced concept used by tech-savvy folks more than mainstream people.   Mainstream is where the numbers are and therefore, usually, where the money is.   Still, Pligg had buzz, traffic, and a community.   This should be enough to do well enough to keep building the project.   It’s possible the owners really *could* keep running the site and quit their jobs but want to try for a big payoff now while VC money is still flowing briskly into startups.   In fact this makes a lot of sense and if true it means my analysis here is probably flawed – ie they are selling at opportune time rather than for the stated reasons of “too busy to run it”.

Pligg’s founders suggest that they are selling because they have real jobs and don’t have time to manage the growing and thriving Pligg community.    I find this very interesting because they clearly have done Web 2.0 “right” – they created a useful service, got lots of people actively involved and developing for it, and have a powerful community of users.   So why can’t they quit their jobs and just work on Pligg and rake in lots of money?    Don Dodge’s mini-analysis of some time ago has part of the answer.   Even most VC funded startups don’t appear to return enough for the average VC to break even on the investment.    If true this is a really provocative notion – rich people are funding companies and losing money.   Like Arabian Horse breeding or Casino gambling it may be that playing the startup game is so enjoyable – and the potential deceptive enough for many wealthy folks that they continue to fund companies that, on average, will only return a portion of their investment over time.   Are Startups , on average, a bad investment?

Mission San Luis Rey, California

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Mission San Luis Rey, California

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
I really enjoyed our visit to the San Diego area. The Mission San Luis Rey was beautiful and historically very interesting.

From their information panels with minor editing by me:

San Luis Rey was the 18th in the line old California Missions. Founded by Father Lasuen in 1798, San Luis Rey soon became the largest of all the California Missions. Father Peyri, builder of San Luis Rey, remained at the Mission for 34 years and saw it prosper. Afer the mission was taken from the Padres it became a ruin. Restoration has taken place in recent times and continues today. Much of the former Glory of San Luis Rey as “King of the Missions” can still be seen today.

… and so it can! This is only about 10 minutes off Highway 101 at Newport Beach, CA. Drop by In and Out Burger for a great lunch on the way back on to California Highway 101.

Kit Carson, famous pioneer scout, led Gen. Kearny’s “dragoons” and camped at San Luis Rey in December of 1846.