MM 7 — Day 4: Serene Seas, Grand-Mastering Google, and Fabulous Four-Wheeling Fun
Being the total opposite of a morning person, waking up in the middle of the night — say, around 6am — usually annoys me to no end. Not so today: noticing that it was getting light outside, I chose to go see what there was to see of the sea (sorry…), and was rewarded with a stunning sight.
Sunrise was just a few minutes away, and a dramatic cloud constellation hovering above the vastness of the sea provided a gigantic canvas for the sun to paint on. Being this close to the equator, the sun rose quickly, and you could literally see it move up onto the sky, creating countless shades of purple and orange on the towering clouds.
As you might expect, I did take a number of photos, but — luckily — realized in time that trying to “can” this kind of vista into a digicam photo just doesn’t work: while it may be helpful to relive this moment in your mind after returning back home, a two-dimensional representation of a small excerpt of this majestic scene simply cannot replace experiencing that moment right then and there. There is nothing worse than going through your vacation photos back home and wonder “Umh, when was that? Did I really see this?!”
So, I put the camera away, just stood there on my verandah, and immersed myself in the moving beauty of the moment. Eventually, though, my True Self™ requested its due, and I got back into the cabin for a few more moments of sweet sleep.
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Thanks to that genius invention called Alarm Clock, the night did finally end at around 8am, because this was the first day featuring an early-morning class I did not want to miss: David Pogue’s talk on “Extreme Googling.”
To be totally frank, I daresay that this session was off to a rather dull start, and that’s not just due to the fact that David was a bit late(, because he thought that this class was scheduled for a different day). It was also because the class started out with some pretty average, i.e., definitely un-extreme, Google fare, like using the asterisk wildcard, enclosing your search term in quotation marks to find multi-word phrases, or removing hits from the search result by prepending a word, or more, in the search term with a minus character.
It got much more interesting — and fun — when David started presenting some lesser known features offered by the Google site. Here’s a rundown of those features, and what you need to type into Google’s search box to access ‘em:
- Look up a word’s definition and find related phrases: “define:[word]”
- See a concise weather forecast: “weather [place name or zip code]”
- Check out movie listings: “showtimes [place name or zip code]” (Click the top-most link in the search results)
- Type in a partial address, and the top-most result is the full address and a small map view of that address
- Type in an equation to calculate the result. Also works for converting units via “[unit 1] in [unit 2]”, e.g., “teaspoons in a gallon”
- See the product assigned to a bar code: type in the number found on the barcode label and click on “Look up UPC number” on the results page
- Get airline flight information: type in the airline name and flight number, e.g., “united 22″
- Find out more about a book by typing in the name of that book. Google Book Search shows the cover image, lists a table of contents, most popular pages, and much more.
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We’re on the beautiful island of Aruba today, one of the Netherlands Antilles. When I saw they were offering an off-road excursion for this port of call, I immediately put a checkmark next to it. However, when we — that is, fellow-cruisers Tara and Jonathan, and yours truly — arrived at the parking lot with the off-road vehicles, I was not so sure anymore whether that was such a good choice.
Those Jeep Wranglers looked pretty with their yellow paint job and decent off-road tires. But a closer look revealed a state of maintenance that would give the average German MOT official an instant heart attack: wheels were mounted to the Jeeps in mix-and-match fashion, some tire flanks showed “ghastly tire wounds,” engine warning lights came on, at least one vehicle lacked the lap belt for the passenger seat, etc.
Well, after a short briefing, and having signed an all-out waiver that would surely protect the operator from liability suits even if they actively blew one of the vehicles up during our excursion, we took off anyway, with four people sharing one vehicle.
Starting out on a few miles’ worth of pavement, and progressing gently via a two-track onto some more serious dirt roads with deep ruts and pleasantly steep inclines, we spent almost 4.5 hours chugging along.
Switching drivers every now and then, we could clearly confirm that, yes, female drivers are the maddest. Well, OK, that is, if their name begins with “T” and there’s a deep water hole right in front of the vehicle. Oh. My. Gosh. (Or is that “Gush”?).
During the tour, some sightseeing was thrown in, too, including the now-collapsed Natural Bridge, a little church just by the shore line, the California light house, and there was even a thirty-minute break at a gorgeous beach, which we reached just in time to catch the sunset.
Driving the last few miles back to the Jeep depot, enjoying the warm gentle evening breeze in our open-top Wrangler, we had that satisfying feeling of having spent a grand day out. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me who thought that Aruba is exactly the kind of island where you wish you’d miss the boat.
MM 7 — Day 3: All (Day) At Sea
Today is our first “sea day” on this cruise.
I love sea days: from wherever on the ship you look out, you see only water. Lots of it. Combine that with balmy warmth outside, a nice breeze, and the gentle noise of the waves from the ship’s cutting through the sea, and it’s the perfect atmosphere to really wind down.
Of course, it’s also during sea days that most of the MacMania seminars take place, so you have to make a conscious choice between relaxing idle time or learning cool new things about the Mac. Making that choice is surprisingly simple, though: if you’re already familiar with the topic, and the class expressly targets an entry-level audience, or if the topic just doesn’t interest you, you’ve got some more spare time on your hands.
Today’s classes pretty squarely fell into the former category, so I opted to scrap ‘em all, except for one.
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As a less formal kind of “class,” this cruise features “Ingenious Bar” sessions. Modeled after the “Genius Bars” found in Apple Stores, they’re an opportunity for us to ask the MacMania speaker luminaries for advice on all things Mac.
The one I joined today was manned by Apple’s Sal Soghoian and Macworld’s Jason Snell, and quickly turned into a pretty deep discussion about how technology could be used to teach Civics to young people, which topic was brought up by Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, who is with us on this cruise.
Richard explained that he has since left showbiz to focus on just that: teaching civics to kids and teens, and raising awareness for its importance. He will present this project during “An evening with Richard Dreyfuss” next Saturday, and I am excited to find out more about this. Should make for an interesting blog post, too!
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Yeay for towel animals!
The cabin stewards sometimes craft animals from towels during turn-down service. On this cruise, they even use stick-on eyes!
MM 7 — Day 2: The Private Island Adventure
Our first port of call on this cruise is Half Moon Cay. Leased from the Bahamian government by Holland America Line, this private island has been turned into what the brochure calls “Holland America’s Private Island Paradise.”
Well, to be frank, the infrastructure on the island reminded me of good old Disneyland: the harbor entry a bit too “natural,” the Pirate’s Cove village (which consisted mainly of a bar, restrooms, and a few shops) a bit too “idyllic,” and the shops too commercial.
However, as soon as you look beyond this stage façade, what you’ll see is, indeed, a gorgeous tropical island with silky-smooth sand beaches, crystal-clear turquoise water, lush vegetation, and colorful birds singing their heart out. And all of this comes with a topping of balmy sunshine generously sprinkled with a cool breeze. Just the perfect surroundings to try out some water sports.
Let’s ignore banal swimming, and I can safely claim that, before heading out to Half Moon Cay, my experience with water sports was zero. Never sailed, never dived, never snorkeled, although I always wanted to. So I grabbed the opportunity that was offered by the “Eco Lagoon Kayak Adventure” shore excursion.
After a short ride on the bed of a truck — nothing says “eco adventure” like fresh Diesel fumes! –, we reached Bone Fish Lagoon, were greeted by our friendly guide, put on floatation vests, and got into our kayaks. With three twin kayaks and two singles manned by us vacationers, we headed out onto the lagoon at a relaxed pace. And, man, I loved every single frickin’ minute of it: I just could not get enough of the serenity on the water (once I stopped cussing and whining to myself about getting all wet inside the boat, that is…).
Having endured far too many excessively verbose and vocal tour guides on other trips, it was a welcome change that our guide on this tour just kept quietly paddling along, providing only a few choice morsels of information about the flora in the lake area. Luckily, all my fellow-kayakers seemed to be in the same mood, so there wasn’t any annoying chatter during the whole excursion, either, and even when we returned to shore after what seemed to be a far-too-short hour out on the lake, that silence and quiet among the group remained. It was awesome.
The only thing I did not like about this outing was that it was really way too short — I could have stayed out on that lagoon lake for hours –, but that’s probably a common criticism you can apply to all of the shore excursions offered on an average cruise, if not to any package holiday: it’s that “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” approach to traveling.
Instead of getting a chance of truly immersing yourself in the foreign surroundings, you (get) rush(ed) through a few “key areas of interested” as selected by whoever organizes the tour, take a few photos to prove you’ve actually been there, and still have that nagging feeling of not having actually experienced anything. If you want real immersion, you need to re-visit on your own and bring lots more time.1
Then again, you’ll probably get the best out of such organized excursions if you take them exactly for what they are, i.e., appetizers, and not full meals. Use them to check out new things you haven’t done before or to visit places you’ve never been to, and if something, or some place, appeals to you, consider going back to it, bringing lots more time. In that sense, this kayak experience was such a great “appetizer” that I’ll add this type of sport to my list of activities I would like to do more of in the future, maybe even back at home.
Again, this excursion was great, but instead of repeating this fact over and over again, let me just cut over to the first of the MacMania seminars.
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Perl wizard Randal Schwartz has been InSight Cruises’s CEO Neil Baumann’s sidekick since the inception of the company, and as such, he has an amazing 39 cruises under his belt. It’s only fair that he is awarded the honor of giving the inaugural class of this MacMania 7 cruise.
In a class entitled “Amazingly Cool Utilities,” you can expect an alpha-geek like Randal to present tons of apps that are worth trying out, and, man, did he ever. Instead of actually demoing any software, though, he just went through an extensive list of software tools and utilities, sorted into categories like Audio, Network, System, and a few others.
Having been familiar with most of Randal’s suggestions already, I just jotted down a few that really sparked my interest. They are:
- the Audio Units plug-in generator “SonicBirth,”
- the software planetarium “OSXPlanet,”
- the, well, uuuhhh, “sleep helper”(?) “Pzizz,”
- the game “Lumen,”
- the space fly-through simulator “Celestia,”
- and screensavers “Skyrocket,” “HotelGadget,” and “LiquidMac.”
Sorry I haven’t included any links here, but that’s just because I haven’t yet checked these apps out myself, so Your Milage May Vary™. However, considering that we’re paying $100 for 250 minutes of Internet access (and, at 40 Cents a minute, that is the bargain deal of the bunch), I’d rather spend those precious drops of the Digital Ages’s life blood on more important things like checking email and keeping up with news feeds, and leave downloads for when I get back home (Yikes! I should remember not to remind myself of home while on this cruise).
Update: The slides for this presentation are now available on ourmedia.org. Thanks, Randal!
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Our walk through Palermo is a great example for “re-visiting on your own.” ↩
MM 7 — Day 1: A Virgin No More
A cruise virgin, that is.
If you’ve read my coverage of last July’s MacMania 4.5, you may recall the story that fellow-cruiser Erik Pitti and me were asked if we were virgins. Let’s just sum this whole embarrassing incident up by saying that that was in reference to us both being on our very first-ever cruise.
As with every premier(e), there are a few things to learn before you can fully enjoy your cruise, and the embarkation process is part of it, as is the life boat safety drill. Sounds menacing at first, but after you’ve been through this once, it’s a minor item to check off on your cruise to-do list, so I’ll spare you any further first impressions, as I’ve written about those quite extensively already.
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Moved into the cabin, got more-than-was-necessary annoyed by the noisy airco, grabbed some food on the not-quite-as-spectacularly-posh-as-the-name-suggests Lido deck, greeted my cabin steward, unpacked, went through the safety drill, called home quickly to give ‘em the all-thumbs-up, and waited for cast off.
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5:00 pm. Let the voyage begin! Sail away, Cap’n!
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Apparently, this cruise is the biggest one for Geek Cruises/InSight Cruises, yet: each of the two seminar tracks — called “MacMania 7” and “Shakespeare at Sea“, respectively — has some 120 participants. That’s quite a crowd, and so the Bon Voyage parties have been split up, as well. While the Shakespeare’ians enjoyed theirs in the Crow’s Nest, us MacManiacs have congregated on the after Lido deck. Interesting crowd, this, and some of the luminary speakers like Macworld’s Jason Snell, the NY Times’s David Pogue, and Derrick Story have joined in the fun, as well.
Looks like this will be a fun cruise.
MacMania 7 — All Set for Roaming the Caribbean Seas!
Once you have enjoyed your first cruise vacation, you may well feel that, from that moment on, your life can be categorize into two states: being on a cruise and waiting to go on your next cruise.
After being in that latter state for some 15 months now, there will be a state change tomorrow, as I’ll be boarding the MS Volendam for MacMania 7. Cruise ahoy, baby!
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Compared to last year’s MacMania 4.51, there’s one major difference, and that’s the itinerary: whereas the MacManiacs cruised the Western Mediterranean last year, the destination this time is the Caribbean, with ports of call being Half Moon Cay, Aruba, Curaçao, the Panama Canal, and Puerto Limón in Costa Rica.
Yup, sounds pretty cool, but it also means that a bit more time and effort is required to get to the ship in the first place. To be precise, it took about 14 hours to fly with my favorite airline, British Airways2 from Düsseldorf via London to Miami.
If you should ever consider going on a cruise which requires a comparable travel effort, adding an extra buffer day between the flight and the cruise ship’s departure is a very good idea. Especially if that travel involves clearing US immigration, which, in my case, required waiting in line for a full 90 (yup, ninety!) minutes. Even changing queues twice didn’t help much: it was always my line in which someone way up front had some problem either communicating with the officer, or with their paperwork, or whatever.
On that note: if you’ve ever travelled to the US as a non-US-citizen, you surely have heard those horror stories that the INS officials will send you back to the end of the queue if that green immigration form isn’t filled out correctly? Not true. Sadly. I saw folks in line who hadn’t even filled out anything, but were they sent back to the end of the queue?! No! Instead, they were kindly asked to correct that form, and “just come back to me here” afterwards. Great, so I couldn’t even find comfort in someone screwing up more than I did by those queue changes. Must have been a case of bad immigration karma, I assume.
At least it turned out that the officer I eventually talked to (let me pause here for a moment to remind you that this was after waiting for about 90 minutes. Ninety. Nine. Ty. Minutes!) came up with some seriously funny, yet insightful, remarks about current US politics, which cheered me up big time. Until I headed for the baggage belt, and started wondering what had happened to my suitcase during all that time…
When I arrived at the baggage belt, my flight wasn’t listed anymore, and, even worse, none of the officials there were able to tell me which belt was assigned to my flight. I have to admit that this kind of situation makes for great exercise: gets your heartrate up to 140 in no time without any physical effort. If my cardiologist knew about this, he’d probably advise me to not even bother with jogging anymore, but simply travel to the US more often.
Well, all’s well that ends well, and eventually I did find my well-traveled suitcase in a darker corner of the baggage hall and could proceed to the exit nearest to me. Turns out, I was literally the last person they were waiting for for the bus transfer to the pre-cruise hotel in Fort Lauderdale. (If the friendly elderly lady from the Isle of Wight, who had to wait for me, is reading this: I seriously apologize that it took so long. Should I run into you anywhere on the ship, I’ll gladly buy you a glass, or two, of your favorite beverage to make up for it.)
After all this hoopla, I finally arrived at the Renaissance Plantation hotel, taken there by a superbly funny bus driver, who drove — nay: chauffeured — said elderly lady and me in a full-size Greyhound bus from the airport to our hotels. One bus, two passengers, one funny driver. Suh-weet.
It was during that drive that I fully realized that I hadn’t been in Florida since ages, as I usually visit the West coast thanks to Macworld Expo San Francisco, and even that destination hadn’t been on my calendar since January 2005. Feels great to be back in the States 3. Now, let’s see how I can get over this jet lag thing…
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As I mentioned earlier, it’s a Very Good Idea™ to add an extra buffer day between your travels and the ship’s cast-off. It let’s you get acclimatized (from dry lower 50s to very humid high 90s is pretty intense), shake off at least some of your jet lag, and have ample time for last-minute pre-cruise shopping. E.g., if — and I’m using a totally arbitrary example here (no, really!) — you mistakenly think that razor blades are still welcome aboard a plane when packed in your carry-on baggage.
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With all that out of the way, I could fully enjoy the Pre-Cruise party at the hotel: great food, friendly catering staff, and a chance to meet a few nice folks who will also be on the cruise, so here’s a heartfelt “Yo!” to Neil, Randal, Jill, Chris, and quite a few others.
Best of all, I met Derrick Story face-to-face for the very first time at that party. Derrick’s the guy who offered me the opportunity to blog for O’Reilly, and I am seriously grateful for that. Thank you so much, Derrick!
Well, after that party is now over, it’s time to take one final photo of the Florida sunset, catch a sack-full of fairy dust, and get ready for tomorrow’s embarkation.
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If you’d like to read about last year’s cruise, you can step through the whole story by starting with day 1, or browse the list of posts. ↩
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I’m being serious here: I love flying with BA. Their planes aren’t in a worse shape than other major European or US airlines’ and their pricing is OK, so there is no factual reason not to fly with them. However, the one thing I seriously dig about BA is their distinctly British service attitude. So far, I have not flown with any other airline whose stuff are so friendly and attentive as BA’s. What about the service on Lufthansa, you say? You’re being sarcastic, now, aren’t you? ↩
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This is supposed to be a vacation, so let’s not mind the political situation here for now. ↩