Ann vs. Jason

By Jason

Our last post included our very first video blog on YouTube. I decided to edit together some behind-the-scenes footage so you can see all the hard work that goes into video blogging.

Also, last weekend we drove up to Berkeley to check out the Botanical Gardens there. The big attraction is the Giant Corpse Flower, or titan arum. It’s so named because when it blooms it smells like rotting meat in order to attract the flies that pollinate it.

We missed the full bloom, but if you leaned over and took a whiff you got the idea.

Here’s Ann in the South African area of the garden

Here are some Easter lily cactus flowers:

Ann is smelling the Lily of the Nile:

This is a red hot poker flower from South Africa:

This myrtle from the Mediterranean area reminded us of Greece:

This is a marsh mallow plant – marshmallows used to be flavored with an extract from its root.  Now they’re just made up of corn syrup and whatnot.

By: Ann and Jason

We just got our webcam all set up with Skype. If you have a webcam, please let us know so we can add you to our contact list and such.

If you’re getting this update via email, you can see the video by following this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmCgdbdEww

By: Ann

Thank you to all the people that have been sending gifts.  We’re now trying to figure out a way to fit things in our little condo.  On Friday we received a pack n play, but there was no return address.  It was probably that way because Babies R Us shipped it in its original box instead of the Babies R Us box due to its size.  We’d love to acknowledge and thank whoever sent it to us, but we are unable to.  Let us know if you are the one who gave us this wonderful gift.  Thanks!

Oh, we got our webcam(s) working, with the exception of 2 things, 1) the webcam that we actually bought works well with my Mac laptop, but my laptop decided to clunk out last night, and 2) there is a built in webcam with Jason’s work laptop, so we might use that until my laptop is fixed.  To all of the people who received a webcam from us, we’ll go over how to hook it up and install the software next weekend with you.  It only works with Windows XP or Vista, which is why we can’t use Jason’s computer.  But, with some poking and prodding, it works well with my laptop…when my laptop is working.  Once we have everything set, we’ll be able to post videos of ourselves on the website.  This will be useful for all of you who have been begging and pleading to see my buddha belly in action.

By Jason

This will be a relatively quick update, at least compared to some of my recent photo overload posts.  Last weekend was the July Fourth holiday weekend so we went down to San Jose for the fetsival there.  We got to see some great Japanese taiko drumming:

And Ann was very, very excited to get some funnel cake.  Almost too excited…

We had dinner with some folks from work and checked out the working difference engine at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.  It’s very cool – Charles Babbage designed the machine in the 1800s but was never able to complete construction.  A museum in London decided to see if they could build on using materials available during his time, and this is the result.

It requires an operator to turn a crank, and prints results on paper at the other end.

The machine uses the difference method to calculate the values of polynomial equations.  For example, if you needed to solve x^3 – 2x^2 +5x – 7 for various values of x, you would solve it for x=1, x=2, etc and set the gears at the correct values.  The machine will then calculate for x=4, x=5, as far up as you need to go.

One other thing happened this week – Apple release the new version of the iPhone along with the new firmware for current iPhones.  That means you can install new applications and do all kind of cool things with the phone you couldn’t do before.  Ann has been even more geeked out about than me.  Here she is, dozed off with the iPhone still in her hands.  It was too cute to pass up.

In the last post, I talked about a hike up the Yosemite Falls trail.  Yosemite is a very large park so it’s impossible to see the whole thing in one weekend.  We decided to drive through the park, take a couple of stops on the way, and make a quick visit to Mono Lake on the other side.

Our first stop past the village  was at Olmstead Point.  This boulder is glacial till – a stone deposited when the glacier that polished these granite mountains retreated.

This small tree seems to grow right out of the surface of the rock.  The granite here has fracture joints that are wide enough for roots to take hold.  In the distance you can see the other side of Half Dome.

The next stop was a Tenaya Lake.  The water here was amazingly blue and clear – the lake is over 8000 feet above sea level and is fed by snowmelt from the surrounding mountains.

Here I am on the shore.  You can see there’s still some snow patches in the mountains behind me.

Our next stop (after lunch) was at Mono Lake.  It’s a salt lake on the other side of the Sierras in the dry Mono Basin.  This is the closest I’ve ever been to a real desert.  You can see the Sierras in the distance in this photo.

The strange limestone rock formation you see here is called tufa.  Mono Lake is famous for the bizarre landscape created by the tufa.

Tufa on the edge of the lake.  They formed when fresh groundwater seeped up through the salty, alkaline lake.  Minerals in the freshwater reacted with the salt water to form calcium carbonate.  These rocks grew from the bottom up.

Mono Lake is really amazing – the tufa form really improbable, Suessian shapes.

You can see a male egret in this photo (click to see larger versions).  There are no fish in Mono Lake, but it’s a great place to keep a nest away from predators.  This egret flies miles each day to catch fish and bring them back.

Here we are in a famous spot where a photo from one of Pink Floyd’s albums was shot.

A little ways down the beach is another spot with sand tufa.  These are formed the same way as the other tufa but in sandier areas of the lake.

They aren’t as tall, but the sand tufa form these cathedral-like shapes on the shore.

You can see the cannels where the freshwater traveled up, forming the tufa.  These are extremely fragile and will be inundated as the lake level beings to rise.

There are many more photos of tufa in the photoset on Flickr.