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So, I liked the little critters so much that I decided to go ahead and buy some more Hexbugs for myself.

The first one I had was Bravo and these are called Alpha and Delta. Since I have three, I hope to collect two more and have the entire collection. That way, I can probably make them fight amongst themselves.

(Does anyone else think that they are called Hexbugs but there are only five of them? They do have six legs, though.)

And for some reason, these things remind me of those Replicator bugs from Stargate SG-1.

Washington Post has an article on how the SAT averages decline to lowest scores in years. Apparently, it’s the lowest since 1999.

And then there are idiots like Miss South Carolina Teen USA who blabber utter rubbish. Worse yet, people even pay attention to her. You are eighteen, for cryin’ out loud. When we were eighteen, I remember trying to solve 600 Calculus problems over the weekend and trying to work out physics problems in I.E. Irodov. And I was just an above-average student.

Ironically enough, Time has an interesting article about the failure of the US educational system to properly deal with gifted students.

No child left behind? What nonsense. Leave behind those that are not interested, those that are not capable and those that are callous enough to not care. You should be more worried about ignoring those that are ahead because they are the ones who are going to solve world hunger, take humanity to space and come up with the next big thing.

We should have a system that encourages the best and the brightest, and raises the bars of achievement for everyone to what the best and the brightest achieve. Lowering the bar to the worst performer just so that they can graduate high-school does not mean a thing. If all you are after is a piece of paper that says that you graduated high-school, you are defeating the very purpose of education.

Encourage the brightest. Raise the standard of education. Make over-achievement the norm. Challenge children and do not be afraid to fail those that lack the necessary skills, but that does not mean you should not educate them. If they cannot solve calculus problems by 11th grade, do not take calculus off the list but teach them until they understand. And then, promote them to the next grade.

And maybe some day — some day — we will have a society that does not reward idiots.

This Sunday, my parents, Lana and I went to the Cincinnati Zoo. It’s apparently one of the country’s top five zoos, but our experience there definitely did not reflect that claim.

First of all, we had trouble finding the place – the signs were wrong, and we kept going around in circles until we decided to finally stop at one of the entrances. I walked in and talked to a woman at the office, who then agreed to open up that gate and let us through.

Once inside, we realized a couple of things. First of all, the layout of the zoo was not particularly straightforward. Secondly, a lot of the animals were off the exhibit or were big disappointments. They did have a wide variety of themes and there were some very interesting animals, but we were still a tad disappointed at the fact that a lot of the animals that we were interested in were unavailable.

On top of that, they did not even have some of the more famous animals available – and I felt quite bad for some of the ones that were indeed being displayed. For instance, they had the Polar Bear out at when the weather was 100 F outside. The poor animal was panting and trying to cool itself off in the water, but I imagine that the water and the land itself would be so warm for it to rest inside. That was just plain cruel.

Anyway, here are some interesting pictures of the zoo from the visit. Enjoy.

…anything is possible. I simply love these ads. The McKay one takes the (cheese!) cake.

I finally got around to watching the film adaptation of Stardust. And given how much of a fan I am of Neil Gaiman’s work, I was not disappointed by the adaptation.

While I usually tend to be rather particular about adaptations of books that I like, this was a rare exception. The movie did take a couple of artistic liberties in differing from the book, but it felt like it was only adding to the spirit of the book. At the end of the day, Stardust is a fairytale (albeit for adults), and I thought that the movie portrayed that incredibly well.

And it was indeed quite a fairytale – a very funny one at that. The witticisms and the quips were hilarious, and I especially found Robert De Niro’s character to be extremely funny. The eclectic mix of characters was just perfect.

It was a rare mix of fantasy, romance (and funny romance at that – even the mushy parts kept cracking the audience up), comedy, adventure, action and suspense. Even for someone who had re-read the book at least a dozen times in the past few years, some parts caught me off guard.

This movie was perhaps the best movie I have seen all summer, and all year. And for those interested in watching this movie, I would strongly recommend that you read the book version of Stardust first – trust me, it is worth it.

After all, what is life is not a fairytale, hmm?

Meet the newest member of our family! Lana just got me a new Hexbug toy as a random gift.

Hexbugs are fun little robotic bugs that can sense the surroundings through their antennas and find their way around. Not only that, but when you make a loud noise, they can hear and react to the noise. This lets you control where they go. Interesting little buggers!

As someone spends a fair bit of time outdoors, I understand the importance of maps. So, here are a few sources maps that I find quite useful.

National Geographic

One of the great sources of quality black and white maps is National Geographic’s Xpedition. It provides PDFs of maps in vector format that can pretty much be zoomed into whatever resolution you want (of course, it does not contain much detail). And while it is made with kids and education in mind, it is extremely useful, especially when you are planning on venturing into areas totally unknown to you.

Secondly, also from National Geographic is their MapMachine. I would highly recommend MapMachine over traditional map sources if you are going to unknown places (say, the Arctic circle). Its satellite imagery and resolution is far better than what other sources provide (e.g. Google or Yahoo! maps). For instance, look at the results for a fairly middle-of-nowhere place — Barrow, Alaska — for Google Maps and for NG MapMachine.

National Geographic MapMachine map of Barrow, AK

Google Maps map of Barrow, AK

See the nice little frozen arctic and the frozen polar ice cap to the North? That’s what’s missing from Google Maps. Plenty of such small details go a long way in helping you understand what’s out there. Now, Google Earth is also quite similar.

Google Earth map of Barrow, AK

Now don’t get me wrong – I like Google’s traditional offerings for urban locales, but they aren’t the very best for places that are “out there”, so to speak.

Another excellent source of maps is National Geographic’s Topo, which is quite good. If you are a subscriber to the Adventure magazine, they do give the software away for free every once in a while, with some free trails and maps. You can also find several such maps online, or can buy them off NG. Usually, if you hang out in the right outdoorsy forums, you can find someone willing to give you their map collection for free. These usually tend to be very region specific, though.

University of Texas

For physical geographical maps at a slightly higher level of abstraction, I would strongly recommend University of Texas Libraries’ Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. It is quite detailed and extremely useful. They have maps of various regions (oceanic, polar, historic, political etc.) as well as the more traditional maps.

They also have a lot of their maps in PDF formats, which is an extremely big plus. On the other hands, some of the older maps are lacking in resolution, which is rather unfortunate.

USGS

The United States Geological Survey has some of the best maps in the world. You can browse a lot of their maps in their online library, or buy their physical maps at the USGS store.

If you are looking to downloading their maps, I would recommend using the USGS Map Locator and Downloader utility. Just enter the name of the place and you can find the list of maps available. Be warned, though – in some of the more remote places, you will find maps that are quite old (e.g. 50s and 70s).

GIS Tools

How can one talk about maps and GIS without mentioning ArcView? ESRI has some of the best GIS software and maps in the world. While their stuff is mostly for commercial/academic usage, it is totally worth its weight in gold.

But it must be mentioned that unless you are quite serious about what you do and genuinely use a lot of GIS applications and data, this will be an overkill for most people. On the other hand, the ArcGIS Explorer is a free version that you could use for personal purposes.

ArcView Explorer map of Barrow, AK

They also have several other “free” tools that you could use to play around with GIS data.

The other company worth looking at is MapTech. They also have some very good navigational and topographic products – although a lot of them seem geared towards sailors and aviators. Often times, you can see them using materials and data from ESRI and USGS for a lot of what they offer.

Atlases & Books

Of course, I still have some fantastic Atlases with me, mostly by National Geographic or by other companies. Most of these use USGS data in unique ways. Lonely Planet also has some good maps on occasion, but their maps aren’t very good for the serious outdoor enthusiast.

At the end of the day, maps are very personal things — once you are used to a particular style and way of doing things, you tend to prefer maps to be in that style. Having used National Geographic maps for most of my trips and ventures, I rather like them.

On the other hand, let me just say that maps are only as good as the navigator. If your navigation and path-finding skills aren’t particularly great, even the best map in the world cannot help you.

Get a good compass and learn to find your way using a compass and a map — once you have that learnt, the rest will automatically follow.

Well, I thought the instructions were rather boring. Improvisations are fun, especially with Lego.

I love the cold. I love snow and ice. I hate hot weather with a passion. And I have been to parts of the world where thermometers do not mean much (mostly because they would crack and break, of course).

Given this and my penchant for adventure, I had given my name for an expedition to the Arctic. I was put on the waiting list since it was quite obviously an expedition that was much in demand. What more, it was in the winter — just who wouldn’t want to be in the Arctic in the winter, with the Northern Lights, polar bears and the simply gorgeous weather with all that snow?

So, last evening I get a call from the Earth Watch Institute telling me that a position had opened up in the expedition and asking me if I would be interested in going. The only downside of course would be that it would put me back by a good chunk of money (you know, all that equipment and doing things up there costs money).

And here I am, with my snowy dilemma. To freeze or not to freeze? At the end of the whole thing, it would be about two weeks out there and I would be more than a few dollars poorer.

On the other hand, I get to go to a place where few people have been. The downside of course is the age old conundrum between desirability and affordability, as Akshay puts it.

So, my dear readers. Do I spend money to spend days out in the snow, at -50 c, freeze my sorry ass, work on some interesting but tiring stuff, watch the northern lights but wake up at unearthly hours — or do I just give in and hope that something else comes along in the future?

After spending my time sleeping in bivy sacks on my climbing trips, I finally decided to get myself a cheap-but-good tent for regular short climbs.

It’s a 7×7 foot Swiss Gear three-person, three-season dome tent. I do need to get some soft-shell spray-on to waterproof the tent before I take it out.

And the moment I got back home from work, I couldn’t resist putting it together to see what it looks like and snap up a couple of pictures. So far, I’m impressed, especially considering the price that I paid for it!

And oh, it looks a tad weird because I put it together on the concrete. So, the tent could not stretch out on the floor (which would have been possible on the ground by driving stakes through the base). But despite that, it seems to be a pretty good investment.

I’m a happy camper!