Journal

See: Smoke from Quebec moves into region, Boston.com, May 31, 2010.

Leave it to those pesky Canadians. Again. The last time they tried smoking us out of house and home was back in July of 2002. (See Unusual Haze the Result of Quebec Fires.) Well, they didn't succeed in '02 and it won't work this time, either.

We may be gagging and coughing with every breath we take, but, By God, we're New Englanders and we're a proud and stubborn lot. We won't be driven away from our beloved dirty waters of the Charles, or our Fenway Ball Park by people who can't decide whether they should be speaking English or French.

John Candy had the right idea--we should'a declared war on Canada when we had the chance. Say, does anyone have any of those leftover gas masks from the Iraq war?

I was in the vicinity, so today I stopped by the local Apple store in the Mall at Chestnut Hill to see the new iPad.

As you might imagine, Apple is making a huge production out of their new product. The store associates were all wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with the iPad name. They strategically set up the front two tables--normally loaded down with iPhones--to contain nothing but iPads. Each was available to touch/feel/smell and, I suppose, even to lick--if that's your perticular fettish.

I picked one up, turned it sideways for landscape mode, and immediately started entering URLs in the Safari browser. "Hmm, that's interesting" I thought to myself, almost aloud. They've moved the the big blue "Go" button. It sits on a different row on the keyboard. Also relocated are the "." and "," keys. No biggie. The browser's pages rendered beautifully. I imagined what my MacBook Pro would be like if it had a touch screen.

I fired up a different app at random. It wasn't optimized for the iPad screen. Instead, I saw a rendering of the application in a rectangle in the middle of the screen. It was the size of the iPhone screen. Hmm. i hit a "2x" button to enlarge it, but the resolution seemed poor when doing so. I guess there's a reason why the App Store is carrying separate iPad versions of its applications.

It seemed comfortable to hold, and kinda sexy to boot. And I have to admit it, but I'm bummed that iPad users will have first crack at the new NetFlix app while us old-fashioned iPhone users will have to wait a while. Sigh.

I put the new-fangled contraption down on the table. An Apple associate walked up to me and asked, "So, what do you think of the new iPads?"

I replied, "Not bad. But can you tell me when Apple is coming out with the iRans?"

Today I went on my first Geocache hunt. (See Geocaching--A Potential New Hobby For Me?.)

Between my recent travel, back problems and miserable weather, I've not taken advantage of the new Geocaching iPhone app I downloaded several weeks ago until this afternoon. I told the program to find nearby Geocaches; it returned one called "Topsy Turvy" just 0.2 mi. from me in Watertown's Filipello Park. In fact, I can see the park outside our hallway window when the foliage isn't blocking the view.

I started out on foot, watching the "pin" icon slowly traverse Coolidge Avenue, then turn onto Grove. Finally, I entered the park, and vectored in on the precise location. The program reported a GPS accuracy of approximately 156 feet. And it showed a difficulty of 1 1/2 stars out of 5. Yes, Topsy Turvy seemed like an ideal beginners cache to try for.

Well, I was a certainly dismayed by the degree of trash and litter scattered about, and the poor condition of the landscape. Not only had someone(s) had been using the area as a dumping ground for their trash, but also, several good-sized tree branches--even whole trees--had come down. One such tree was resting atop one of the old, abandoned park benches.

I assumed the cache--listed in size as a 2 out of 5 on the scale--was either attached to a tree at eye level, or buried on the ground with some telling signal--a flag or colored marker of some kind. But after nearly an hour of traversing the landscape, kicking over trash, checking around various tree branches near ground- and eye-level yielded, I had found no cache. The "hint" from the iPhone app was not particularly helpful, other than to confirm that I was, in fact, in the immediate vicinity.

I have to wonder: did someone come along and tamper with the cache, perhaps even remove it?

Despite my failure on this first attempt at this new hobby, I'm not discouraged. I'll move on to the next cache on the list. Perhaps I'll have better luck.

As we've done now for over a dozen years running, the Chameleons performed at the Town of Chelmsford's Winterfest/Winterrest festivities at the First Parish UU Church on February 6, 2010. I've included photos taken by myself and Ariel of the event.

This year was especially rewarding, as our music helped the church volunteers raise almost $500 for the church youth to plan a trip to help with post-Katrina repairs in New Orleans.

Our new sound man, Ken Porter, did an incredible job. His equipment was unique--all speakers were mounted on a monopole behind us on stage. It allowed the performers to hear ourselves in exactly the same way our audience did.

As always, I'm a nervous wreck during these performances. But the rehearsals leading up to the show were certainly a lot of fun. I enjoy the comradeship with my steadfast friends.

[Shown here: Phil and Ken form the "locomotive" and "caboose" for an imaginary train for one of the child story-songs.]