inside Alan's cluttered head
family
My family
Converting miniDV movies into MP4
0
8 years
When I was a kid, the state of the art for home movies was 8mm film. My parents had a movie camera that used a film cartridge that contained a 16mm film strip. They would insert the cartridge one way and record a few minutes of film, and then flip the cartridge over and record another few minutes. To develop the film, the processing company would open the film cartridge and split the long reel of 16mm wide film into two reels of 8mm wide film. They only took 25 reels of film over a span of 12 years. Back in 2012, I found a place that would convert the movies to DVD, and I kept an MP4 version on my computer, and I gave copies to everyone in my family. It was pretty awesome.
By the time my kids came along, the world had moved to videotape, and we were just moving from analog to digital. We went top-of-the-line with a Sony MiniDV (NTSC) recorder. The NTSC DV video files record 720×480 pixels at 30fps… far from the 1080p videos that you’d shoot on your iPhone today, but pretty hot for 2001. Like my parents, we ended up recording 20 MiniDV tapes over a period of 12 years, although our tapes were 60 minutes each instead of about 5.
This is the story of converting those tapes to a modern video format.
My 20 tapes sat on a shelf for several years, and then in 2012 I finally had the tools needed to copy the raw digital DV files to a computer hard disk. I used a tool called “dvgrab” on a laptop that had a FireWire connector. One side effect of dvgrab was that it saved every scene in a separate timestamped file. This turned out to be quite fortunate. When I was done, I had 250GB of raw DV files on an external hard drive. Unfortunately, I did not have enough disk space to do any processing on these files, so this external USB hard disk sat on a shelf for five years.
In 2017 I re-discovered this USB hard disk, and I decided to finish the job. I wanted to encode them in MP4 format, and I wanted them to be separated into “episodes” (such as “2003 beach”, “4th birthday”, “zoo” and so on).
The first step was to divide the 5000+ separate scene files into folders for episodes. I started with a script that looked at the timestamps in the filenames, and it moved them into folders based on that. This got me 90% of the way there. Here’s the script. It used a single variable for the “gap” in time that would mean a break to the next episode.
#!/bin/bash
GAP=$((60*90))
previous_timestamp=0
for x in $(ls -1 ALL/dvgrab-20*.dv | sort) ; do
oldfolder=$(dirname $x)
file=$(basename $x)
# dvgrab-2011.02.12_19-04-58.dv
year=${file:7:4}
mon=${file:12:2}
day=${file:15:2}
hour=${file:18:2}
min=${file:21:2}
sec=${file:24:2}
timestamp=$(date +%s -d "$year-$mon-$day $hour:$min:$sec")
if [[ $(( $timestamp - $previous_timestamp )) -gt $GAP ]] ; then
newfolder=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S" -d "@$timestamp")
mkdir $newfolder
fi
mv -v "$x" "$newfolder/$file"
previous_timestamp=$timestamp
done
After I had the scenes grouped into episodes, I did an initial encoding of the entire thing. This ran overnight, but it could go unattended. The basic process was to concatenate the DV files and the use “ffmpeg” to encode the episode into an MP4 file. I used the following script to do this in a loop.
I ran this script many times, and it over time I tweaked the ffmpeg options to get a better output. This is the final cut.
#!/bin/bash
TMP="/tmp/encode"
srcdir="/media/alan/sandisk248GB/MINIDV"
destdir="/home/alan/media/videos/minidv"
wildcard="20*" # directories starting with a date from 2001 onwards
ffopts=""
# FILTERS
ffopts="$ffopts -vf yadif" # de-interlacing
# VIDEO ENCODING OPTIONS
ffopts="$ffopts -vcodec libx264"
ffopts="$ffopts -preset medium" # balance encoding speed vs compression ratio
ffopts="$ffopts -profile:v main -level 3.0 " # compatibility, see https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264
ffopts="$ffopts -pix_fmt yuv420p" # pixel format of MiniDV is yuv411, x264 supports yuv420
ffopts="$ffopts -crf 23" # The constant quality setting. Higher value = less quality, smaller file. Lower = better quality, bigger file. Sane values are [18 - 24]
ffopts="$ffopts -x264-params ref=4"
# AUDIO ENCODING OPTIONS
ffopts="$ffopts -acodec aac"
ffopts="$ffopts -ac 2 -ar 24000 -ab 80k" # 2 channels, 24k sample rate, 80k bitrate
# GENERIC OPTIONS
ffopts="$ffopts -movflags faststart" # Run a second pass moving the index (moov atom) to the beginning of the file.
for folder in $(cd $srcdir ; ls -1d $wildcard) ; do
echo ; echo ; echo ; echo ; date ; echo $folder ; echo
# do not overwrite existing files
if [[ ! -f $destdir/$folder.mp4 ]] ; then
mkdir $TMP 2> /dev/null
cat $srcdir/$folder/*.dv >> $TMP/$folder.dv
ffmpeg -i $TMP/$folder.dv $ffopts $destdir/$folder.mp4
rm -frv $TMP
else
ls -l $destdir/$folder.mp4
fi
done
The next step was the most time-consuming (but fun) part. I wanted to curate all of the “episodes” to make sure that they each contained a single subject in its entirety. I found a few variations:
- A single file contained two subjects: this happened if two things occurred without a 90-minute “gap” between them.
- A single episode spanned two files: this happened when there was a 90-minute “gap” in the action
- A lead-in or fade-out that fell outside of the main timespan of the episode: this happened if I had taped an intro graphic (usually I just wrote on an index card and taped a few seconds of that) the day before an event, or if I started the next event by fading out the last image from the previous event.
- Occasionally, a single DV file needed to be split into two. Although dvgrab usually broke scenes into files of their own, sometimes it would concatenate two scenes.
- There were a few scenes that needed to be deleted: mis-takes, “blank filler” at the end of a tape, and so on.
To do this curation step, I loaded up “VLC” video player with a playlist of all of the episodes, and I simply watched them at 4x speed. I’d skip through predictable bits, and pay very close attention to the beginning and end of each episode. When I found something wonky, like a fade-out in its own separate directory, or a fade-out at the beginning of the next episode, I would find that DV file in the original directories and move it to the proper one.
When I was done, I simply deleted the MP4 files ran the encoding script again.
I noticed that the files would not play on my iPhone, and so I spent some time tweaking the ffmpeg options and re-encoding a few files (I limited it by changing the “wildcard” variable). Once I found the right options, I changed the wildcard back, deleted the MP4 files, and re-ran the encoder over all of the files again.
When it was all over, I ended up with 349 “episode” files in MP4 format, taking up 9.2 GB of disk space (much less than the 250 GB of the original DV files).
Duck Patrol
1
On my way home today, I stopped by our neighborhood gas station to fill up the tank. As I was leaving, I noticed a mother duck and four ducklings walking along the curb of the shopping center driveway. They were making a lot of noise. The mother was cluck-cluck-clicking, and the ducklings were cheep-cheep-cheeping.
They were standing pretty close to a storm drain. Then a car came whizzing by and one of the ducklings jumped into the storm drain! I went over to the storm drain and found six ducklings at the bottom!
So I rushed home and recruited Audrey and Sydney, who were eager to help. We got some buckets and brooms and some rope and went back to the shopping center. By that time, a couple of other people were gathered around, and they said they had called the Cary Police.
We went ahead and lifted the storm drain grate and one lady climbed in, carrying a bucket. One by one, she lured them close and plucked them up and into the bucket!
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The Policeman finally showed up, and we went looking for the mother duck and the other three ducklings. They could’ve been in the woods or near one of the storm drains. We finally spotted them in the pond across the street.
So we carried our bucket to the pond. When we got close, the mother heard the ducklings cheeping and she ran over to us. Sydney laid the bucket down sideways in the grass and we all backed away. The mother duck ran to us, quacking like crazy, and all of the ducklings started cheeping even louder. The mother went to the bucket and then escorted them all down the grass and into the pond. And then they swam away in a tight formation, all nine babies clinging closely behind the mother.
Sydney said that it was the best day ever!
First Performance
0
This weekend was a first for me. I performed a simple ukulele song on a stage with an audience. The song was “Princess Poopooly” and the venue was the C.F.Martin guitar company tent at the IBMA World of Bluegrass street festival.
I’ll admit, “Princess Poopooly” is not a bluegrass song… it’s a silly Hawaiian tune. But the kind folks at the Martin tent invited any and all to come up on stage and show their stuff. Play a song, get a T-shirt.
The performance itself was underwhelming. I’ve never worked with mics before, so it was a little constraining to sit behind two: one for me and one for my ukulele. Halfway through my song, the uke mic dropped out of the stand and into my lap, which led to the most-remembered line of my act: “whoops!” The kids laughed and repeated that one over and over.
This was the realization of a promise I made to myself at last year’s World of Bluegrass festival. After watching a bunch of other folks step up and play (including both of my daughters), I decided that it was time to pick up an instrument myself and learn.
Big thanks to the folks in the audience who cheered me on.
iFamily
0
11 years
Like many families, we have accumulated several iPhones and iPods over the years. My wife and I have new iPhones, and we upgrade every so often, and our kids inherit our older phones. So we’ve encountered that age-old question: how should we manage the Apple IDs for all of these devices?
At first, we followed the simple approach — just leave the older devices associated with our Apple IDs. It makes some things easier. For example, the kids don’t have to re-buy the games that you bought over the last few years.
But when you share Apple IDs for all services, things get weird quickly. I started seeing my daughter’s iMessage conversations on my phone. If anyone in the family changed an account setting on any of the apps that use Apple IDs, we’d get a flood of notifications about the change, and the change would usually propagate to the other devices against our intentions. It felt like a very unstable equilibrium. Just as I’d get everything working right, something would upset the balance.
The thing that finally persuaded me to look at alternative setups was when I tried to set up “Find My Friends” so we could see where the others were. It did not want to let me track my daughter, because it thought she and I were the same user.
So I read a few discussions and articles about the different strategies for setting up Apple IDs for a family. They explained how Apple IDs work, and showed how to manage them. Some highlights:
- Creating an E-mail Account and Apple ID for your Child – Apple IDs are simple
- Moving from a shared iCloud to individual accounts – How to change your iCloud account on the phone
- Multiple Apple IDs and iOS devices in a Family – Simple list of Apple ID services (the basis for my bullet list below)
- How many Apple IDs should your family have? – Detailed list of services that use Apple IDs
OUR FAMILY’S STRATEGY
Everyone in our family now has a unique email address and their own Apple ID. My Apple ID is associated with a credit card, but theirs are just simple accounts. These can easily be set up at http://appleid.apple.com/.
Technically, since the kids are young, I have an Apple ID that they use. The contact info is mine. But the point is that each person has a unique identifier for their devices, and each one is tied to a unique email address.
The key to making this work is this sometimes-overlooked fact about how the Apple ecosystem works: a single device can use different Apple IDs for different purposes.
So in our family:
- iTunes Store – use Daddy’s ID
- iMessage – use your own
- FaceTime – use your own
- iCloud* – use your own
- Game Center – use your own
Note that iCloud is a biggie. It includes Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari, Find My iPhone, Documents and Data, Photo Stream and Backups.
I’m not really sure how the iCloud Mail and Calendar stuff works, because we don’t use them. I host my own mail and calendar services on a Linux server, and that stuff works great with the iPhones. We have separate email addresses on several domains. And we have some shared calendars and some individual calendars.
Our family’s new setup puts some sanity back in the system. I know that my iMessages will only show up on my phone and Mac. I can call my kids using FaceTime without it getting confused, trying to call myself. I see my contacts, and my kids don’t. But we each get to use the games and other apps that we have bought as a family. And we can each use “Find my Friends” to keep track of where everyone is.
A WORD ABOUT EMAIL ADDRESSES VS APPLE IDS
I’m going to dive just a little deeper here, because I discovered something else in the transition that might help someone else.
Since I run my own mail server, I tend to use very specialized addresses for any kind of service that I sign up for. That way, I can sort all of my bills into a “bills” folder that I don’t have to see until it’s time to pay bills. Or if one vendor starts sending me too much junk, I can remove that one email address/alias and that stuff disappears forever.
Following this strategy, our Apple IDs are actually specially-made alias addresses in the form itunes-(name)@(ourdomain).com. But since we want to use our real email addresses for stuff like FaceTime and iMessage, we need to associate our real email addresses with these new Apple IDs. On that appleid.apple.com site, there’s a little form where you can associate all of your other email addresses to the Apple ID.
However, since we were migrating from a single Apple ID, I had to remove the kids’ preferred email addresses from my Apple ID before it would let me add them to their Apple IDs. This is very easily done on the appleid.apple.com site. However, if you just try to add the email address to the new Apple ID directly using the phone menus, it just sits there with a spinny star saying “verifying”, and it never actually sends the verification email.
So my advice is to manage your Apple IDs using the web site, http://appleid.apple.com/.
Summer Vacation in Canada
0The girls are out of school for their summer break, and so we spent a week in Canada.
Normally, the thought of driving 800 miles (12-16 hours) does not appeal to me, so we decided to break up the drive into shorter sprints. On the way up, stopped overnight in Pittsburgh, and on the way down, Hershey.
The drive up was nice. We passed by Pilot Mountain, and later by the Boy Scout Jamboree near Beckley WV, then the New River Gorge Bridge, and we finally stopped in Pittsburgh. We took the funicular (inclined) train to the overlook at Mount Washington.
The next morning, we headed north to Erie PA. At first, we looked across the water and mistook the Presque Isle State Park peninsula for Canada… but that can’t be… Lake Erie had to be bigger than that. So we drove out onto the peninsula and determined that no, you can not see Canada from Erie. It’s 24 miles from Presque Isle to Long Point (Ontario), and you can typically only see about 3 miles from the shore. You’d have to be about 120 above the water level to see 24 miles across the lake. (If you’re interested, here is a good article explaining why). Finally, we headed northeast to Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
The two shores of Niagara Falls are very different from each other. Most of the New York side is a beautiful state park. But once you venture off of park land, the neighboring property is low-rent commercial. So we hopped back in the car and went across “Rainbow Bridge” to Canada.
Here, we discovered two things. First, our car GPS does not know about Canadian roads. Second, our AT&T mobile data service does not work in Canada (it WILL still work within sight of New York).
We spent two days in Niagara Falls. We bought a ticket package the include the Maid of the Mist boat tour, a behind-the-falls tour, the butterfly house and a cable car ride across the whirlpool.
One thing that is very interesting, but that we did not see, is the power generation on both sides of the river. I learned from the Ontario Power Generation web site (and from Wikipedia) that there are a bunch of massive tunnels that divert up to two thirds of the water away from the falls and into power generating stations. All of this water diversion is done in a way that maintains the beauty of the falls for visitors, while also reducing erosion and generating very cheap electricity. This is worth a deep dive on the web, if you’re interested.
From Niagara, we headed north into “no cellular data coverage area” and on to Toronto. Without maps on our GPS or our phones, we had to navigate “old school”. (By the way, we found that Foong’s Virgin Mobile phone continued to work deep into Canada, and only stopped when she closed the navigation app and restarted it, so I am guessing that it only does “authentication” when that particular data session starts). We drove up to Toronto and met our niece, who just graduated from the University of Toronto. She showed us around the UT campus.
Since we had good luck with the Niagara Falls multi-pass, we did the same thing in Toronto with their City Pass. This gave us admission to Casa Loma, the Ontario Science Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the Toronto Zoo and the CN tower.
Casa Loma was interesting, sort of Toronto’s version of the Biltmore House, I suppose. To me, the most fascinating part was learning about the rise and fall of Sir Henry Pellatt, who got very rich by having the right idea at the right time, but who then mismanaged his fortune until his unfinished estate was broke.
The Ontario Science Centre was fantastic, and totally impossible to fully absorb in a single day. The exhibits had enough depth that they needed some study to appreciate. We spent a good deal of time in the display of video game history; I enjoyed showing the girls all of the games that I grew up with, from the (1972) Magnavox Odyssey to the Atari 2600 and console games that I played at the local Putt Putt arcade. Later, we explored exhibits on everything from friction to resonance, along with stations for craft-building and some really cool interactive kinetic art. Note to self — next time, allocate AT LEAST a complete day for the Ontario Science Centre. There was so much great stuff to see, we left with a curious mixture of excitement and disappointment.
The CN Tower was about what you’d expect… a nice view. But we discovered that there’s not much to eat in that area, outside of the CN Tower café.
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) contained miles and miles of historical artifacts, seemingly arranged in random order. If I could have, I would have exchanged my time at the ROM for more time at the Science Centre.
We completed our stay in Toronto with a visit to the zoo, a sprawling park filled with all types of animals. This was definitely a first class zoo. The highlight, of course, was the panda exhibit. Between the ROM and the zoo, I think I wore through an entire pair of sneakers.
There were other side trips along the way that left impressions on us. One of them was dinner at the Gourmet Malaysia, a meal intended to please momma. The service was lousy (they forgot my order entirely), and Pad Thai was probably the worst I’ve had, but the real redeeming quality was the host, Yummy Tan, and his karaoke show. The girls each performed a song (“Skyscraper” and “Fireflies”) in front of a mostly disinterested audience of old Asian folks. It was thrilling.
Our trip home was broken up just like the trip up, with a stop about halfway, this time in Hershey PA. We took the so-called “factory tour”. But this was no factory… there is no factory here… sugar costs too much in the US to produce candy here. The candy is made in Mexico. But Hershey still has a presence in that town, and their animatronics ride and expansive gift shop made a good enough excuse to stop there for the night. Just don’t go expecting to see a factory.
We also stopped at Skyline Caverns in Front Royal VA. It was pretty typical of caverns, which is to say, it’s pretty cool to see.
We thoroughly enjoyed our week-long vacation in Canada, including the trips up and back.
Rush Concert
1I saw my first rock concert in November 1986… Journey, Greensboro. But that is another story.
A year later, my second concert was Rush in Charlotte. My friends and I drove down from NC State to see their “Hold Your Fire” tour. An excellent show, and one that left a memorable impression.
Shortly after the show, the band announced more tour dates, including one at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, just a few hundred feet from my dorm room! So my friends and I got tickets for that one, too. On the day of the show, I won 2nd row tickets from our campus radio station, WKNC. We were so close, I felt like I could high-five Geddy Lee.
Fast forward 25 years, and now I have a family. I don’t listen to classic rock that much, but I do try to raise my kids right, teaching them to pick out the important bands like Rush or Van Halen just from their style. My older daughter has a good ear for that sort of thing, but my younger one simply guesses the same names for every song: Beatles, Prince, Van Halen. Prince?? Really?
Last night, Rush came to PNC Arena in Raleigh as part of their Clockwork Angels tour, and I brought the family to see these legends of rock-n-roll. We were not quite “high-five” close, but we had great seats — 18th row beside the stage (on Geddy Lee’s side, of course).
For a bunch of 60-year-olds, the trio put on a great show. Geddy Lee couldn’t hit the high notes that he could in the 80’s, but that did not slow them down at all.
The stage was decorated in a steampunk theme, with lots of mechanical gear, and even a popcorn machine (at one point, a stagehand snuck on stage and grabbed some popcorn).
The show was divided into three sets: two halves and a so-called “encore”.
The first set was mostly from Moving Pictures, Signals, Power Windows, and Hold Your Fire (1981-1987). This was the Rush that I came to see.
The second set dove into a lot of new stuff from the last 10 years that I am not really familiar with. It was enjoyable, but not epic. They spiced up this part of the show, first with a hard-rockin’ string ensemble backup, and then later with some surprise pyrotechnics. Towards the end of this set, Sydney actually drifted off to sleep… at a rock concert.
They finished up with an encore set of classics from Moving Pictures and 2112.
Play List
Set One
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Set Two
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Encore:
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News & Observer photos
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Halloween – traffic light costume
0
12 years
Last year, at the neighborhood Halloween party, one of the kids had dressed up as a traffic light. He simply wore all black, and he had three cardboard circles attached to his front. Audrey saw that boy’s costume and got to thinking… could we build one with real lights?
This is what we came up with.
Front
Back
Putting it together
We had the entire year to think about it. Sometime in the summer, we actually started planning. I knew that we could do the controls, but I was not so confident about the power or how to drive several LEDs.
The controller was easy. We have been using Arduinos for several projects, and I had ordered a few “nano” boards, which are about the size of a stick of gum. We plugged one into a solderless prototyping board. We used five of the Arduino’s outputs for our five lights: red, yellow, green, “WALK” (white) and “DONT WALK” (orange). We ordered super-bright colored LEDs from DealExtreme in Hong Kong.
The hard part was figuring out how to power several LEDs at the same time. I discovered a web site called “ledcalc.com” that showed us how to arrange the LEDs in several serial strings wired to each other in parallel. And after taking a few measurements, we figure out what the voltage drop on each LED was and we estimated how much current to push through each LED. This suggested that we should use a higher voltage than I normally would use to just power the Arduino. We chose 8 NiMH rechargeable AA batteries for 9.6 volts.
The LED calculator suggested that for red, yellow and orange, we should plug the LEDs in strings of 4 with a small resistor at the end. We wanted 8 LEDs for each color, so that meant we’d plug two strings of 4 LEDs together in parallel.
Since the “forward voltage” (voltage drop) across the white and green LEDs was higher, we ended up using strings of 3 LEDs for those. Fortunately, they were so bright that the fewer LEDs made no difference in overall brightness.
Now came the tricky part. We wanted the LEDs to run at 9.6 volts, but the Arduino runs at 5 volts. That meant we needed to use a transistor on each output to switch the higher-voltage LED strings on and off. We were able to figure out how to do this by looking at an Arduino experiment book. Below, you can see how one 5V output line from the Arduino can be used to switch 9.6V through a bank of LEDs.
During our tests, we found that after a while (a pretty long while), the white and green LEDs got very dim while the others stayed normal brightness. We decided that the battery had drained and the voltage had dropped just enough to make driving the three higher-voltage LEDs too hard. Doing a little bit of back-of-the-napkin math tells why. The white and green LEDs each have a 2.5V drop… times three LEDs and that means you have to have at least 7.5V to run them at all in series. The other color LEDs each dropped 1.75V, for a total of 7.0V. That means the white and green lights will poop out 0.5V earlier than the other colors will.
As a quick fix, we replaced the 1.2 volt NiMH rechargeable batteries with 1.5 volt alkaline batteries, making our total supply voltage a bit higher, a full 12 volts. This kept all of the LEDs bright all night. A quick estimate suggested we might get two or more DAYS worth of operation from a single set of batteries. But after watching them dim earlier, I decided to take a spare set of batteries with us while we went trick-or-treating, and I kept a close eye on the white and green LED brightness.
The big night
Halloween was a big hit. Everyone got a chuckle out of the costume, especially when Audrey turned around and they could see the WALK and DONT WALK signs.
Here is a photo of the Audrey in her stop light costume, Syndey as an Oompa Loompa and me as Harry Potter.
The Happy Crabby
0
12 years
In 2009, we got a hermit crab named “Peek-a-boo”. We kept him in a plastic shoebox-sized container with creek sand in the bottom and holes drilled in the lid. He seemed to enjoy his new home, and we enjoyed his company. But some time in the winter, he died.
This turned into an annual tradition. Peek-a-boo was followed by Boo and Sprinkle in 2010, Flicker in 2011, and Blink and Barney in 2012. Some of our crabs only stayed with us a short while; others lived through the winter, but not much longer.
I wanted to know how we could take better care of them, so in 2011, we replaced the plastic box with a small glass terrarium with a glass lid. I suspected that they were getting too cold in the winter, but when I read about crabs, I found that humidity might have been a factor. I know our house gets very dry in the winter.
Oregon Scientific hygrometer
It was time to find measure the temperature and humidity inside the cage.
I thought about buying a simple hygrometer. We have one in our hallway . But I wanted to keep a long-running log of temperature and humidity over time.
So I decided to build an Arduino-based crab cage monitor.
The Happy Crabby
I would use an Arduino UNO to control the overall flow. I wanted to add the following peripherals:
- temperature/humidity sensor – I chose one based on the SHT11 sensor: see Adafruit or the one I got.
- real-time clock – Adafruit has a breakout board for $9.
- SD card slot – Adafruit has a breakout board for $15.
- LCD display – Adafruit has a 20×4 character LCD for $18 and an I2C-to-LCD driver board for $10.
- Relays to turn on/off a heater or light – I have not added this yet.
- Some buttons for a simple UI – I have not added this yet.
Drivers
The first thing I had to do was write some software to read the temperature and humidity from the SHT11 board. The documentation claimed that it was an I2C device, which should have made it very easy. I knew all about I2C from when I worked at Ericsson. A lot of peripherals used an I2C interface. It’s a simple two-wire protocol where you can just wiggle two output lines in a specific order to send signals to the devices. It turns out that the SHT11 is mostly I2C, but it has a strange quirk that I had to code around.
Hardware Planning
After I was receiving real temperature and humidity readings from the SHT11, I had to start allocating Arduino I/O pins to the peripherals. I made a spreadsheet to keep track of the pins. Some pins on the Arduino have special alternate uses, so I made a note of them there. Since I was working on a prototyping board, I kept changing stuff, and when I did I’d just create a new spreadsheet column. In some configurations, I did not have enough pins… specifically, if I did not use the I2C-to-LCD board, I had to allocate most of my pins to simply driving the LCD display. In other configurations, I had plenty of pins left over.
What I ended up with was this:
| PIN | FEATURES | MY USE |
|---|---|---|
| D0 | RX | serial (future: for Bluetooth) |
| D1 | TX | serial (future: for Bluetooth) |
| D2 | relay (future: to control a relay) | |
| D3 | PWM | |
| D4 | ||
| D5 | PWM | |
| D6 | PWM | |
| D7 | ||
| D8 | bit-banged I2C-SDA for T/H | |
| D9 | PWM | bit-banged I2C-SCK for T/H |
| D10 | PWM or SPI-SS | SPI-SS for SD card |
| D11 | PWM or SPI-MOSI | SPI-MOSI for SD card |
| D12 | SPI-MISO | SPI-MISO for SD card |
| D13 | LED, SPI-SCK | SPI-SCK for SD card |
| A0 | (future) keyboard | |
| A1 | ||
| A2 | ||
| A3 | ||
| A4 | SDA | I2C-SDA for RTC and LCD |
| A5 | SCK | I2C-SCK for RTC and LCD |
Software and Integration
I wrote a simple program that takes a temperature and humidity reading, reads the current time, appends a line to a CSV file on the SD card, and updates the LCD display. Then it sleeps for a minute and does it all over again.
For a long while, we ran the Happy Crabby on the prototype board, with wires hanging out all over.
The Happy Crabby.
The display, up close.
What we learned
We ran in this configuration for a long time. We had been thinking that we would eventually add a relay to control either a heat lamp or a terrarium heater pad. But after taking measurements for several months, we decided that temperature was nearly as much of a problem in our house as humidity.
So we kept an eye on the humidity and we rearranged the inside of the cage, dumping a few inches of moist sand into the bottom. They like to dig tunnels and hide, especially when they are molting. Overall, they seem to be healthier now that the cage is not so dry, and they are less stressed because they have a place to hide.
Almost a year after we originally started taking measurements, we decided that our design was OK enough to make “permanent”. So we bought a “shield” board and soldered all of the pieces down. I made sure that all of the pieces still plug together, in case we feel like changing it down the road. It looks a little nicer without all of the rats nest of wires, and it’s a lot less likely to get messed up if somebody bumps it.
The component boards.
Fully assembled.
Resources
Source code that we wrote for this project can be found on github.
We’re going to Hogwarts!
3Our family just returned from a trip to Florida.
My wife and I had been planning to take a family vacation in October during our kids’ “track out”, the three-week break between the first and second quarters of school. Since the kids (and their dad) have been reading the Harry Potter books, we thought it would be fun to visit the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at Universal Studios. But we did not want to tell the kids about it until we had made firm plans.
We picked our week to go, and I arranged for time off at work. And then, a week before our vacation, we got news that we would need to attend a funeral in Georgia. Rather than make that long drive twice, once for the funeral and then again the next week for our vacation, we hastily moved our vacation up a week. Since the kids still did not know about our vacation plans yet, we decided to keep it a secret. We told them to pack for the funeral, and we quietly packed an extra suitcase for them.
They were so good… stuck at a boring funeral with a bunch of boring old grownups, and yet they behaved so well.
After the funeral, a bunch of extended family went out to a restaurant. While we were there, we presented them with a mysterious letter.
It read:
Dear Misses Audrey and Sydney Porter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Orlando campus.
This special Autumn Session will take place during the week of October the 8th through the 12th. There is no need to send an Owl as we already know that you are planning to attend. All necessary materials will be provided for you.
Yours Sincerely
Minerva McGonnagall
Deputy Headmistress
So we left the restaurant and headed south for Orlando!
Although the theme of the trip was Harry Potter and Hogwarts, it was really only a small portion of our week. We spent two days at Universal Studios (one day at the Islands of Adventure and one day at the studio park), one day at Sea World, and two days at Disney World (one day at the Magic Kingdom and one day at EPCOT).
We’re going to Hogwarts!
We had a blast at all of the parks. But since the motivation behind going was to see the Harry Potter park, I want to go into a little detail about that one section of Universal Studios “Islands of Adventure” park.
I was surprised at how little of the Harry Potter theme’s potential was actually developed by Universal. For example, they have a Hogwarts Express train engine, but only as a photo backdrop. I had somehow imagined more exploration of the castle, but I suppose the parks (other than EPCOT) are not really into exploration as much as they are into moving people in a controlled manner through queues and rides. That being said, we still thoroughly enjoyed the Wizarding World experience.
The “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey” ride was excellent, an “experience ride” where your family-sized cart shakes and wobbles from screen to screen in a 4½ minute ride around Hogwarts. We also enjoyed the smaller roller coaster, the “Flight of the Hippogriff“, which was perfect for the average HP-reading kid (the ride was a mere 60 seconds, beginning-to-end). We chose to pass on the “Dragon Challenge“, a pretty serious-looking double roller coaster. We ate lunch at the Three Broomsticks pub and bought Butterbeer and Pumpkin Juice from a street vendor.
We also shopped at the three shops:
- Filch’s Emporium of Confiscated Goods
- Honeydukes / Zonko’s
- Ollivanders / Owl Post / Dervish and Banges
I was a little disappointed in the souvenir selections. I was kind of hoping to find a Hogwarts coffee mug… you know… all of the other dads at work have NC State and UNC mugs. But the selection was pretty lousy, so I passed. The shirts were all pretty much very expensive and tacky-looking T-shirts, nothing that I would ever wear — how about a nice golf shirt with a Hogwarts crest on it, for muggle dads? I did buy an over-priced deck of cards, but when I got home, I was disappointed to find that it contained only 14 characters from the movies, not 54. That is, the same Dumbledore picture is on all four aces, same Harry on all four kings, and so on (Fred and George are the jokers).
There were lots of Gryffindor and Slytherin items, but very few Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff items, just some crest patches, pins and lanyards. You see, lots of fans choose a favorite house to root for. It was important for us to find some Hufflepuff stuff, since at my daughter’s school, the four core teachers each lead a house, and they actually hold a sorting ceremony to assign the students to houses. But there was not much for us to choose from. (As I write this, I see that there are more items on Universal’s online store than we saw in the on-site shops, and there is more balance among the four houses).
So, we were not so tempted to part with our galleons and sickles at the shops.
The other 4½ days
The rest of Universal’s Islands of Adventure was pretty nice. The kids liked the Spider Man experience ride and the Dr Seuss area. At Universal Studios, we focused on the experience rides like The Simpsons, Men in Black and Despicable Me, and skipped the live shows (we should’ve skipped ET, considering the long wait). Sea World had some great shows, with lots of trained animals of every kind. The Disney Magic Kingdom was like visiting an old friend (October is a strange month to visit though, because at night the park transitions to a lively Halloween party, and day guests have to leave). EPCOT, as always, struck a nice balance between “rides” and “exploring”.
We had a great week in Florida, and we thoroughly enjoyed each of the parks. But both girls agree that the Universal Islands of Adventure was their favorite… because of Harry Potter, of course. Their mother preferred Sea World, and I am split between the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT.
Vacation in Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia & China
0We try to visit our relatives in Malaysia about every two years. We were due a visit, and so we picked our December/January “track out” (school holiday) to make the trip.
We left right after Christmas, which presents its own challenges. But once we settled into our seats for the 16-hour flight from Detroit to Hong Kong, we left our holiday thoughts at home, and prepared for a whistle-stop tour across Asia.
Hong Kong
Our first stop was Hong Kong, where Foong’s sister Kim lives. Once again, we were impressed with their living quarters, a 700 sq ft 3-bedroom apartment on the 35th floor. Each time I visit, I wonder how I would go about “thinning out” enough to live in a place like that. Foong and I slept on the floor of their office/study/guestroom, with my feet touching one wall and my arm touching the opposite wall over my head. It was a tight squeeze for the two of us. The girls slept in their cousin’s bunk bed.
On Thursday morning, we had breakfast with a friend, Benjamin, who we knew from NC State University. We learned that Benjamin would be book-ending our trip, since he had just gotten a new job in Shanghai, and we would see him again in three weeks. Weird!
We spent most of Thursday touring a small island in Hong Kong called Cheung Chau. Getting there was half of the fun, since we had to go into downtown, and then take a ferry from Victoria Harbor to Cheung Chau. Once on the island, we rented bicycles and explored the beaches, the waterfront shops, and a rocky peninsula that even features a cave tunnel!
Macau
Our visit to Hong Kong was terribly short. On Friday, we boarded a “Turbo Jet” hydrofoil boat that took us to Macao. This weekend get-away was a convergence of three sisters and their families: our family from America, Kim’s family from Hong Kong, and Kit’s family from Shanghai. We spent most of Friday afternoon exploring the old area of town, the ruins of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a museum of Macau history. That night, we went to the new casino area to see a show called “The House of Dancing Water” (which was remeniscent of shows like Cirque du Soliel). Then we walked around the Venetian Casino, which looks exactly like the one in Las Vegas.
Saturday was New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, Sydney felt sick, and so she and I stayed in the hotel — she rested and I posted photos to our online photo gallery. Everyone else went to the Macau Tower, a sky-needle-like observation tower. The three kids, Audrey and Emily and John, walked on the “Skywalk”, a platform with no handrail, 764 feet over the city! (They were wearing harnesses). Then they visited a Panda zoo. We met again in the evening, where Foong took over the nurse duty with Sydney, and the rest of us went to downtown Macau for dinner and to see the New Year’s Eve celebration. We returned to the hotel in time to celebrate 2012 together.
Malaysia
On Sunday, said goodbye to Macao and boarded a plane for Malaysia. Thankfully, Sydney was feeling better for the trip. When we arrived, we had some time to relax at our in-laws’ house. In what seems to be the custom whenever I visit, I helped them install a new wireless router (the power lines there are noisy, and they have frequent thunderstorms, and so their electronics devices tend to get zapped fairly often). I set up their new router, and I took a lot of notes, sensing that I might be doing it again on our next visit.
On Monday, we just hung around their home town, Seremban. We had breakfast at their local neighborhood food court, and we visited Foong’s brother’s furniture store. We visited a few stores, but we really didn’t have any shopping to do. We were just soaking the place in.
Tuesday was also a nice quiet day around the house. The girls and I took advantage of the quiet time to read. We did get out a little, to see Foong’s old high school and some stuff downtown. We tried to get the girls to visualize what the town was like when their mother was a young girl.
Tioman Island
On Wednesday, we drove to the eastern shore of Malaysia to catch a ferry to Tioman Island. Tioman is a popular SCUBA destination for Singaporeans — at certain times of year — in December and January, they have strong ocean currents that stir up the water, making it too murky for diving. So this was definitely the off-season, and there were very few visitors. We finally arrived at the Berjaya Resort. The kids were excited because they got their own hotel room (long story).
On Thursday, we hired a driver to take us around the island in his 4WD truck. He drove up a steep and curvy road through the jungle and over the mountain, stopping to show us the sights like some dense jungle and a waterfall. We visited a sea turtle conservatory, and we fed their resident turtle, Jo. On the way back, the girls and I rode in the back of the truck (and I think the driver added a few more MPH to his driving). It was exhilarating. The last stop on our tour was a pier where you could look down on the tropical fish. We wrapped up the day with a swim at the hotel pool and dinner at the open-air restaurant, under the watchful eye of the resident monkeys.
On Friday, we explored the resort a little, and then packed up for the ferry ride back. We drove back to Seremban along some of the most sparsely-populated palm tree plantation land I have seen in Malaysia. In a moment of pure geek pride, I managed to help navigate from the back seat, using my Kindle on the local 3G network and Google Maps.
More Malaysia
Saturday was another stay-at-home day. The kids and I read books and I tinkered on the laptop, while Foong hung around with her sister and brothers. We celebrated Chinese New Year by stirring the traditional “Yusheng” salad, or “prosperity toss”.
On Sunday, we took our teen-aged nieces and nephews to Sunway Lagoon, a water park in Kuala Lumpur. We spent the entire day riding water slides and swimming in wave pools. After the park closed, the teenagers took a train back home, and we visited with several of Foong’s high school classmates who now live in Kuala Lumpur. We spent the night at one friend’s house.
On Monday, we met our niece Josephine, at her office. She works for L’oreal in Kuala Lumpur. It was nice for the girls to see the professional life of their cousin.
Tuesday was our last day in Malaysia, and we basically rested at home… and packed up suitcases… ugh.
Hangzhou
Wednesday started early at the airport. The flight was uneventful, but it took us some time to get oriented after we arrived. To get to town, you can take a bus or a taxi. But there are lots of guys hanging around the airport, offering to drive you around… I chose not to experiment with those guys. We eventually found our hotel near the West Lake of Hangzhou, and we had some time to explore the neighborhood on foot and to find some local food. I also challenged myself to find an electrical converter plug for my laptop — their plugs look like three prongs in a chicken foot pattern. \’/
It was kind of funny… that night and the next morning, the hotel room was very hot. I later learned that the thermostat did not really control anything, but that I could open a window to cool off (it was not obvious that the windows could open).
On Thursday, we walked around the lake area. I quickly decided that I needed to buy some gloves and maybe a hat. I bought gloves, and within 2 minutes of leaving the store, one thumb had started unweaving… Chinese quality! We found a place that rented bikes, and we rode around the lake. It was so cold, we decided to go into a museum to warm up a bit… nope, many public buildings in China are left unheated. It was as cold inside as it was out! That evening, we met two of Foong’s cousins, who are both living in Hangzhou. We saw one cousin’s apartment, and then we went to a very nice shopping mall for dinner.
Shanghai
On Friday, once again, it was time to move on. This time, we went to the train station, one of the busiest places we saw in China. Everyone was going somewhere for Chinese New Year. Fortunately, we found that the crowds thinned out considerably if you paid a little extra for a first class ticket. I suppose you’re paying extra for breathing room. Our train to Shanghai was fast, 300km/h (186mph)! Foong’s sister Kit has a driver who picked us up and brought us back to their palatial western-style home in Pu Dong. We picked up John at his school, a very posh British school. Then we took the kids to an indoor play-place, with slides and climbing areas… a nice way to get re-acquainted and burn off some energy. We had supper at their house.
On Saturday, we went to the 2010 World Expo center, where a couple of the countries’ exhibits remain open. The weather was cold and rainy, so it was hard to get into the proper mood for the Saudi roof-top “oasis” exhibit. From there, we went to a modern mall to warm up and browse and shop a little. I bought some nice sweaters (did you know that Chinese zippers are on the left side?). Dinner was “steamboat”, where each diner has a hot pot of broth, and they pick raw items to boil in their own soup mix.
Sunday’s surprise treat was a visit to the World Chocolate Wonderland, a museum devoted to chocolate. I was struck by the catchy jingle that played continuously in the exhibit hall, like an Asian answer to “It’s a Small World”… it’s still in my head! No trip to China would be complete without some shopping in the flea market stalls of Yuyuan, where you can find a wide assortment of cheap trinkets. It’s like DealExtreme.com, in person — you want a Hello Kitty USB flash drive? We finished off with dinner at a western-style restaurant that specializes in elaborate salads.
Monday was our last full day in China, and we spent the morning getting new eyeglasses. The mall had an entire floor devoted to optical shops, probably a hundred shops! What a bizarre bazaar! After lunch, we accepted the fact that our time in China winding down. We wandered another Chinese mall-of-bargains, wondering if we had any more room left in our suitcases. We bought some trinkets for our friends at home who had been looking after our fish and crab, and Foong found a nifty hard-shell iPad cover with a built-in bluetooth keyboard.
Remember Benjamin, who ate breakfast with us on our first day in Hong Kong? By this time, he had moved to Shanghai to start his new job, and so we invited him over for dinner on our last night in China.
Tuesday was a 36-hour day. Our flight left early, but we headed east while the sun headed west, and we met again in Detroit 13 hours later, but somehow still Tuesday morning. Weird.
–
All in all, it was a fun trip.
This one was different than previous Malaysia visits, because we spent just a couple of days in each place before moving on to the next. It might just be a trick of perspective, but I felt like the more interesting places were the ones that we had the least amount of time in. My favorite place, which I would always like to explore further, was Hong Kong.
The other thing that stands out about this vacation was the three distinct types of weather we encountered. Hong Kong was sunny and cool, Malaysia was just plain hot, and China was cold and wet. That combination made it hard to pack suitcases (and it also explains why Sydney and I have been coughing a lot since we got back). I might’ve enjoyed China more in a warmer season.
Now comes the hard part… returning to the daily grind after a month off. Someone remind me what I was doing before we left!
Maggie
0
In 1995, I bought a puppy as a present for my wife, who was out of town for a few weeks. I wanted her to have a companion around the house while I was at work or on business trips, someone who could bark and warn her when there were noises in the yard.
I named her “Maggie”, and I set out to train her on the basics of living in a house.
When my wife got home, Maggie and I met her at the airport. I was disappointed to learn that she and I did not share the same enthusiasm for pet ownership. Making matters worse, Maggie seemed to be confused about this strange woman who had just shown up and taken all of my attention. This battle lasted for a couple of years. Unfortunately, the house-training exercises also took a couple of years.
Maggie stayed with us, and she eventually learned the difference between carpet and grass. She learned her place in the family. She became a constant companion. She reminded us to go outside and get some fresh air.
She moved with us to new places, including a year and a half in Singapore. She watched as our family grew, and she dutifully accepted her demotion with each new child. She slept on our bed, keeping us warm on cold winter nights, and reminding us not to sleep too late on Saturday mornings. She also kept our kitchen floor clean.
As she got older, she became less interested in fetching tennis balls and going for walks, preferring to stay inside, and enjoying her quality nap time. But every day, when I came into the driveway, she would look out the window to see who it was, and she would greet me as I came inside.
A few months ago, she started showing the inevitable signs of age. I could sneak in without her hearing me. She sometimes needed help going up and down stairs. She fell off of the bed a couple of times, and so was demoted again — to a floor-sleeper. She started wearing diapers at night.
Shortly after her 16th bithday, Maggie grew weak, not wanting to get up to go outside any more. The vet confirmed that she only had a few more days with us. So I stayed with her at night, comforting her while she slept. And today, I worked from home so I could be next to her. This morning, while I worked, she quietly slipped away.
For 16 years, Maggie was a good dog, a close friend, and an essential member of the family. We are grateful that she chose to stay with us for all of that time. She will be sorely missed by all of us.
More photos of Maggie are in our photo gallery.
Vacation in Hawaii
0In April, our family went on a vacation in Hawaii. My parents went with us, and we spent a week on Oahu, the “main island”. We stayed in Waikiki Beach, which is just southwest of Honolulu.
Wednesday 2011-04-13
Wednesday was a long travel day. We woke up at 3am to get ready for our early flight out, hopping across the country, finally to arrive in Honolulu at 6pm (plus six hours time zone difference). By the time we got to the hotel and had supper, it had been a 24-hour travel day.
Thursday 2011-04-14
Thursday started at 2am, when Foong’s ipod alarm clock (still on Eastern time) went off. She woke us up, claiming that it was 8am and that we needed to get ready for our “orientation breakfast”. After our long day before and a half-night’s rest, no one wanted to get up. It would be several hours before some of us were alert enough to figure out what had happened.
At the real 8am, we were ready to get up, and so we went to an “orientation breakfast”. That’s a free welcome breakfast, sponsored by the hotel and many local businesses, where they tell you all about Hawaii and give suggestions on what to do. We got suckered into taking a shuttle bus “to our hotel” by way of a museum and jewelry store, where they show you how coral is collected and polished into jewelry. I spent most of my effort convincing Sydney that she would not get to open an oyster and discover (purchase) a pearl. This game would last all week.
When we finally caught the shuttle back to our hotel, we decided tp declare our independence from our breakfast-feeding captors. So we took our van and drove through Waikiki beach and to Diamond Head crater. The trail to the top was closed for repairs, but we got to watch a helicopter taking supplies up to the top of the trail. We found a geocache, and then headed out to explore some more.
One place we explored was Safeway. We wanted to pick up breakfast stuff for the hotel, and some snacks and drinks for when we’re out. They had a full lunch buffet, so we ate there and we watched the locals shop… an adventure in itself.
We spent the afternoon at our hotel, on the beach and at the pool.
Friday 2011-04-15
On Friday, we visited Pearl Harbor. We saw the submarine USS Bowfin, the Arizona memorial, and the USS Missouri battleship. It wasn’t a day that will live in infamy, but it was a sobering, educational trip.
Saturday 2011-04-16
We spent Saturday at the Polynesian Cultural Centure, which is on the Northeast side of Oahu. This is a Polynesian-themed park that is run by the nearby Brigham Young University – Hawaii. Like most of the park’s employees, our tour guides, Liam from New Zealand and Kotona from Japan, were BYU-H students. We visited villages from Hawaii, Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga. Each village had activities which showcase some aspect of Polynesian life. We had dinner at a Luau, and later saw their eveng show, “H?: Breath of Life”.
The trip to the Polynesian Cultural Centure was definitely a highlight of our visit to Hawaii.
Sunday 2011-04-17
On Sunday, we drove to the North Shore to visit the Dole Plantation. We took a ride on their mini-train, where they showed all of the different types of tropical crops that are grown in the area. The most surprising part of our visit was learning that pineapples grow as blooms on the top of small bushes (I had always imagined them hanging from trees, like bananas or coconuts). While we were on the train, it started raining. Unfortunately, this was a long tropical mountain rain that did not let up, and so the rest of our visit was spent inside the gift shop.
We left the plantation and drove on to the North Shore. Although the drive was only 8 miles, the landscape and weather changed dramatically along the way. It was sunny and warm in Haleiwa, and so we got out and walked on the beach. We also spent some time just up the road at Waimea Bay Beach Park. The sand on the North Shore is a beautiful mix of shell fragments and volcanic pieces (especially compared to the sand at our hotel in Waikiki, which is trucked in from somewhere else, because of years of erosion).
Monday 2011-04-18
On Monday, we went snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, a bay that formed in an old volcano crater. The floor of the bay is covered in coral, and you can easily see tropical fish and other wildlife. This was an excellent place for a family to try snorkeling for the first time, because there are few waves and currents, the water is not very deep, and it’s easy to go from the snorkeling area back to the beach. We saw all sorts of fish, and we even saw an octopus — and on the shore, there were chickens!
In the afternoon, we walked over to the Hilton to see their “Hawaiian Village”, which I thought was supposed to be some sort of display of native Hawaiian culture. Instead, what we found was a collection of fancy shops that surrounds the Hilton’s pool pavilion. It was nice, but not what I had expected. The real shocker was seeing their display of African Black-Footed Penguins… in Hawaii??
We spent the rest of the day hanging around the pool and the outdoor restaurant at our hotel.
Tuesday 2011-04-19
We did some rough calculations, and we decided that it would be a good idea to do at least one load of laundry before we had to start “recycling”. So we consulted the internet and made an elaborate plan to have our breakfast in Waikiki, just down the street from a laundromat. This would also give us a chance to explore downtown Waikiki. So we got the van, found a place to park, started a load, had breakfast, found a geocache, moved the clothes to the dryer, explored Waikiki some, and picked up our clothes. We were so proud of how clever we were. (Later, we discovered that our own hotel had a coin laundry in the basement, but it never occurred to us to check that close to home base!!!)
From there, we headed into downtown Honolulu to explore the ‘Iolani Palace, which was the official residence of King Kal?kaua and Queen Lili’uokalani. Inside the palace, we learned about how the many tribes of Hawaii were united by King Kamehameha, and later how the queen complied under protest to the forceful annexation by the United States.
From there, we visited the Aloha Tower, which overlooks Honolulu Harbor, and is surrounded by shops.
I had made up my mind that it was time to experience an authentic Hawaiian meal, so we went to a place called “Kaka’ako Kitchen”. It’s not much in terms of atmosphere, but it’s supposed to be good food. I had Loco Moco and Nalo Greens… which I discovered was really just country chopped steak with gravy and a green salad. So much for culture.
Wednesday 2011-04-20
We woke up Wednesday morning and headed back over to the Hilton’s “lagoon”, where the girls rented a paddleboard, which is like a large surfboard that they stand on and paddle with a long oar.
We had already seen the beaches, volcanoes, the city, and Pearl Harbor, but we still had not seen the tropical rainforest. So after lunch, we decided to take a hike on the Manoa Falls trail. According to the guide book that we read, this was supposed to be an “easy” trail, perfect for families. In reality, although it was less than a mile long (one way), it was steep and muddy, and slippery in many parts. The scenery along the path was amazing, with a thick forest at the base, then twisted viney trees, large clusters of bamboo, and finally an opening at the foot of a 100-foot waterfall.
After our hike, we had a little bit of afternoon daylight left, so we drove up to punchbowl crater, which is a large dormant volcano surrounded by a residential neighborhood in Honolulu. Inside the crater is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Thursday 2011-04-21
Our flight back home was at 9pm, so we had most of Thursday free to explore. We packed up and checked out of the hotel, and then Audrey and I bought one last souvenir, a ukulele.
Our final tourist attraction was Bishop Museum, which has exhibits on everything from early Polynesian culture to lava and volcanoes.
Wednesday 2011-04-13Wednesday was a long travel day. We woke up at 3am to get ready for our early flight out, hopping across the country, finally to arrive in Honolulu at 6pm (plus six hours time zone difference). By the time we got to the hotel and had supper, it had been a 24-hour travel day.
Thursday 2011-04-14
Thursday started at 2am, when Foong’s ipod alarm clock (still on Eastern time) went off. She woke us up, claiming that it was 8am and that we needed to get ready for our “orientation breakfast”. After our long day before and a half-night’s rest, no one wanted to get up. It would be several hours before some of us were alert enough to figure out what had happened.
At the real 8am, we were ready to get up, and so we went to an “orientation breakfast”. That’s a free welcome breakfast, sponsored by the hotel and many local businesses, where they tell you all about Hawaii and give suggestions on what to do. We got suckered into taking a shuttle bus “to our hotel” by way of a museum and jewelry store, where they show you how coral is collected and polished into jewelry. I spent most of my effort convincing Sydney that she would not get to open an oyster and discover (purchase) a pearl. This game would last all week.
When we finally caught the shuttle back to our hotel, we decided tp declare our independence from our breakfast-feeding captors. So we took our van and drove through Waikiki beach and to Diamond Head crater. The trail to the top was closed for repairs, but we got to watch a helicopter taking supplies up to the top of the trail. We found a geocache, and then headed out to explore some more.
One place we explored was Safeway. We wanted to pick up breakfast stuff for the hotel, and some snacks and drinks for when we’re out. They had a full lunch buffet, so we ate there and we watched the locals shop… an adventure in itself.
We spent the afternoon at our hotel, on the beach and at the pool.
Friday 2011-04-15
On Friday, we visited Pearl Harbor. We saw the submarine USS Bowfin, the Arizona memorial, and the USS Missouri battleship. It wasn’t a day that will live in infamy, but it was a sobering, educational trip.
Saturday 2011-04-16
We spent Saturday at the Polynesian Cultural Centure, which is on the Northeast side of Oahu. This is a Polynesian-themed park that is run by the nearby Brigham Young University – Hawaii. Like most of the park’s employees, our tour guides, Liam from New Zealand and Kotona from Japan, were BYU-H students. We visited villages from Hawaii, Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga. Each village had activities which showcase some aspect of Polynesian life. We had dinner at a Luau, and later saw their eveng show, “H?: Breath of Life”.
The trip to the Polynesian Cultural Centure was definitely a highlight of our visit to Hawaii.
Sunday 2011-04-17
On Sunday, we drove to the North Shore to visit the Dole Plantation. We took a ride on their mini-train, where they showed all of the different types of tropical crops that are grown in the area. The most surprising part of our visit was learning that pineapples grow as blooms on the top of small bushes (I had always imagined them hanging from trees, like bananas or coconuts). While we were on the train, it started raining. Unfortunately, this was a long tropical mountain rain that did not let up, and so the rest of our visit was spent inside the gift shop.
We left the plantation and drove on to the North Shore. Although the drive was only 8 miles, the landscape and weather changed dramatically along the way. It was sunny and warm in Haleiwa, and so we got out and walked on the beach. We also spent some time just up the road at Waimea Bay Beach Park. The sand on the North Shore is a beautiful mix of shell fragments and volcanic pieces (especially compared to the sand at our hotel in Waikiki, which is trucked in from somewhere else, because of years of erosion).
Monday 2011-04-18
On Monday, we went snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, a bay that formed in an old volcano crater. The floor of the bay is covered in coral, and you can easily see tropical fish and other wildlife. This was an excellent place for a family to try snorkeling for the first time, because there are few waves and currents, the water is not very deep, and it’s easy to go from the snorkeling area back to the beach. We saw all sorts of fish, and we even saw an octopus — and on the shore, there were chickens!
In the afternoon, we walked over to the Hilton to see their “Hawaiian Village”, which I thought was supposed to be some sort of display of native Hawaiian culture. Instead, what we found was a collection of fancy shops that surrounds the Hilton’s pool pavilion. It was nice, but not what I had expected. The real shocker was seeing their display of African Black-Footed Penguins… in Hawaii??
We spent the rest of the day hanging around the pool and the outdoor restaurant at our hotel.
Tuesday 2011-04-19
We did some rough calculations, and we decided that it would be a good idea to do at least one load of laundry before we had to start “recycling”. So we consulted the internet and made an elaborate plan to have our breakfast in Waikiki, just down the street from a laundromat. This would also give us a chance to explore downtown Waikiki. So we got the van, found a place to park, started a load, had breakfast, found a geocache, moved the clothes to the dryer, explored Waikiki some, and picked up our clothes. We were so proud of how clever we were. (Later, we discovered that our own hotel had a coin laundy in the basement, but it never occured to us to check that close to home base!!!)
From there, we headed into downtown Honolulu to explore the ‘Iolani Palace, which was the official residence of King Kal?kaua and Queen Lili’uokalani. Inside the palace, we learned about how the many tribes of Hawaii were united by King Kamehameha, and later how the queen complied under protest to the forceful annexation by the United States.
From there, we visited the Aloha Tower, which overlooks Honolulu Harbor, and is surrounded by shops.
I had made up my mind that it was time to experience an authentic Hawaiian meal, so we went to a place called “Kaka’ako Kitchen”. It’s not much in terms of atmosphere, but it’s supposed to be good food. I had Loco Moco and Nalo Greens… which I discovered was really just country chopped steak with gravy and a green salad. So much for culture.
Wednesday 2011-04-20
We woke up Wednesday morning and headed back over to the Hilton’s “lagoon”, where the girls rented a paddleboard, which is like a large surfboard that they stand on and paddle with a long oar.
We had already seen the beaches, volcanos, the city, and Pearl Harbor, but we still had not seen the tropical rainforest. So after lunch, we decided to take a hike on the Manoa Falls trail. According to the guide book that we read, this was supposed to be an “easy” trail, perfect for families. In reality, although it was less than a mile long (one way), it was steep and muddy, and slippery in many parts. The scenery along the path was amazing, with a thick forest at the base, then twisted viney trees, large clusters of bamboo, and finally an opening at the foot of a 100-foot waterfall.
After our hike, we had a little bit of afternoon daylight left, so we drove up to punchbowl crater, which is a large dormant volcano surrounded by a residential neighborhood in Honolulu. Inside the crater is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Thursday 2011-04-21
Our flight back home was at 9pm, so we had most of Thursday free to explore. We packed up and checked out of the hotel, and then Audrey and I bought one last souvenir, a ukulele.
Our final tourist attraction was Bishop Museum, which has exhibits on everything from early Polynesian culture to lava and volcanos.