Easter Island

I was on Easter Island (and then Peru) for a few days in June.

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is just a speck in the Pacific, 14 miles wide, and it’s 2,200 miles from mainland Chile, making it the most remote place on Earth. The island is volcanic, and the landscape is extinct volcanoes and craters. The population is about 7,800 people, mostly in the island's one town, Hanga Roa.

The island is famous for its hundreds of giant head statues, moai, which represent or contain spiritual power of the Rapa Nui people’s ancestors. The moai were carved from about 1100 to 1680 AD.

Almost all of the statues are made from soft stone from one quarry on the side of the Rano Raraku crater. There are still many statues at the quarry, incomplete or never delivered to their final destination. Those quarry heads were my favorites.

Late in the island's history, a strange "bird man" cult replaced the ancestor religion on the island. Each year champions (hopu) would compete to "collect the first sooty tern egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui [the main island] and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo." (Wikipedia.) The sponsor of the winning champion would become the island’s leader for the year. "The race was very dangerous and many hopu were killed by sharks, by drowning, or by falling from cliff faces..."

My pics are Motu Nui, the Rano Kau volcano, the Orongo village, and a bird man petroglyph. To parse the petroglyph, compare it to the diagrams here.

Animals - horses, cows, dogs, cats, chickens - pretty much roam free on the island. A guide told me it was because the island was so small, there was really no place they could run off to. :) Here are some horses grazing in Hanga Roa’s colorful cemetery.

Last, some views of the Pacific.

Silicon Valley Comic Con 2018

Pictures from Silicon Valley Comic Con 2018.

The high point for me was seeing the panel discussion with Michael Moorcock (creator of the classic fantasy antihero Elric) and his book signing.

Gen Con 2017, Eclipse

I went to Gen Con again this year with comrades Rob, Karen, Art, Lou, and Terry for Gen Con’s 50th anniversary. By coincidence, the eclipse this year was the day after the conference, and visible from Rob and Karen’s hometown, and I went home with them to see it.

Here’s the vendors' exhibit hall. My picture doesn’t show how busy it was - it was a crush most of the time.

My favorite costumes this year were “Not Stan Lee” and this creepy Joker.

We got up at the crack of dawn every morning to play D&D at 8:00 a.m. Here we’re fighting swashbucklers in a warehouse that we accidentally set on fire. :O

There were retrospective panels for the 50th anniversary. Here’s one with the D&D 5th edition authors Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford, in the middle. They graciously signed my Player’s Handbook.

The D&D 3rd edition authors also did a panel. My picture shows (from right to left) Jonathan Tweet, Skip Williams, Monte Cook, and Rich Baker. The moderator was Peter Adkison, on the far left. Adkison was Wizards of the Coast CEO when D&D 3.0 and Magic: The Gathering were created, and now owns Gen Con. The authors also signed my 3.0 Player’s Handbook from the day.

It was a good year for schwag. By continually pestering some Dungeon Masters, with Rob’s Twitter skills, and with some running, we were able to get some rare promo copies of the new “Lost Tales of Myth Drannor” book. We also found some nice fezzes - here we are playing in our new fezzes with our favorite DM John.

The conference and the hotels sold out early. Here’s (I guess) a gamer without a room sleeping outside the conference center around 7:00 a.m.

We spied the St. Louis arch driving to Rob and Karen's.

Here are Rob and Karen watching the eclipse - the second picture shows the darkness during totality. During totality, the sun just appeared as a bluish flame-like corona around the black disk of the moon, which was astounding.

Laguna Seca

Last weekend I went to the Ferrari Challenge at Laguna Seca, with friends/teammates Jason and Prateek.

Here are some of the cars lined up on the straightaway.  A sign gave their speed as they exited the straightaway, typically 130-140 MPH. Here’s a video.

The "corkscrew" is the most unique feature of the track at Laguna Seca; Wikipedia calls it "...one of the motorsport world's most challenging turns, due to the drop in elevation as well as its blind crest and apex on the uphill approach," and we did see one car get turned around on it. Here are the cars going through it, and here's a video.

We also got to see a lot of new and classic Ferraris, and the garage tents where mechanics worked on the cars.

Trump is a dangerously stupid, racist, sexist, fascist liar: part 1

Donald Trump is a dangerously stupid, racist, sexist, fascist liar. Republicans control Congress and the Supreme Court is split, so it’s on the public to stand up to Trump. So, get out and join the anti-Trump protests.

Here are some pictures of protests around the San Francisco Bay Area since Trump's inauguration.

The NoWallNoBan protest in San Francisco's Civic Center, February 4, marched "against Donald Trump's racist and exclusionary Executive Orders."

The NoWallNoBan protest at Sunnyvale City Hall, February 12, marched "against the racist and exclusionary ban on Muslims along with the bigotry targeted towards Latino, BLM, women, LGBTQ and all other affected minorities under the new administration.""

"Not My President Day" protest in San Jose, on Presidents' Day (February 20).

Tech Stands Up's Pi Day Rally advocated for "inclusion, diversity, and civil liberties" in the face of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

March for Science Silicon Valley was April 22, and marched from San Jose City Hall to Silicon Valley Comic Con :) at the convention center. The "goal was to promote evidence-based policy in the public's best interest."

The People's Climate March and Rally Santa Cruz edition, April 29, marched for climate action "on the 100th day of Trump’s presidency," from San Lorenzo Park to downtown.

On April 15, I also joined the counter protest against a white nationalist Trump rally in Berkeley. Unlike the other protests here, there were both anti-Trump and pro-Trump factions there, and both sides came to fight. I captured some of the chaos on video here.