Fast Fiction

Today was my first day of coffee house writing for the year. I went to one of my favorite spots, Sabor y Cultura in Hollywood. They have excellent Mexican Mocha, or at least they normally do. This time my mocha was too sweet and didn’t have enough espresso in it. I asked for a double shot, maybe I was missing one.

No matter, I pounded out the words.

time…...running tally….words…words/minute
11:30 AM…....4177…......135…....9.00
11:45 AM…....4616…......439…...29.27
12:00 PM…....5110…......494…...32.93
12:15 PM…....5525…......415…...27.67
12:30 PM…....6052…......527…...35.13
12:45 PM…....6513…......461…...30.73
1:00 PM….....7074…......561…...37.40
1:15 PM….....7500…......426…...28.40
1:30 PM….....8074…......574…...38.27
1:45 PM….....8652…......578…...38.53
2:00 PM….....9252…......600…...40.00
2:15 PM….....9761…......509…...33.93
2:30 PM…....10363…......602…...40.13

35.12 words per minute average
6,321 words for session
3 hours

The plot, as thin as it might be, is moving along.

My novel has invented a candy bar that was made back in the early eighties. At the moment it’s called the ‘Splodio (SPLOH-dee-oh) Bar and it was made by the Atlanticandy Company. It was a fluffy stawberry nougat with strawberry pop rocks in it covered in milk mockolate (fake chocolate coating). I’m thinking of changing the name to the Popperberry Bar ... or maybe the Splodio came in Popperberry flavor and possibly Mocha and Mint while I’m at it. I don’t think they were particularly good bars, but certainly original.

My main character, Natalie, is trying to track down a tee shirt, or something from the candy bar for her boyfriend’s birthday. Of course the Atlanticandy Company went out of business years ago, so she’s still tracking it down and eBay has been no help either. Yeah, I like throwing obstacles in her way. At some point I have to bring in the title of the novel, Limited Liability Chocolate, an LLC, but you know, details and all that.

The good news is that with 10K tallied in the novel so far, I’m already 20% of the way through the thing and feeling comfortable about the amount of plot I have left to cram into those other 40K.

Today I wrote at home. I rarely write at home, but The Man went down to Laguna to see his folks so I had the house to myself.

The problem with writing in the house is all the distractions. So made a little challenge for myself that I could go take photos of candy after I got to 4,000 words for the day (tomorrow I have to get 6,000 words to get back on track for the week).

time…...running tally….words…words/minute
1:00 PM…....2,468…......721…...48.07
1:15 PM…....2,890…......422…...28.13
1:30 PM…....3,241…......351…...23.40
1:45 PM…....3,590…......349…...23.27
2:00 PM…....4,042…......452…...30.13

I don’t really care for writing at the dining room table especially with my noisy neighbors, so next time I might try the seclusion of the back room.

The story is crap but I’ve found out that my novel is set in Los Angeles.

If nothing else, this year’s novel will be remarkable because of the way it started. I know in the past I’ve stayed up late and started at midnight before, but this was the first time I joined others to wait for the toll of midnight.

Chris Baty invited the NaNoWriMo staff over to the office to start the month off. I was already up in San Francisco, so I could hardly refuse the invite. (Besides, I had candy to get rid of!)

I really have very little clue about what I’m writing, and though it’s a little clearer now that I’ve started, I fully intended to toss out whatever meager words I logged that night.

Here’s the synopsis of what I did:

time…...running tally….words…words/minute
12:15 AM…....525…......525…...35.00
12:30 AM…....1,096….....571…...38.07
12:45 AM…....1,570….....474…...31.60
12:52 AM…....1,747….....177…...25.29

But I’m starting to think that I might keep what I have so far.

I don’t usually start my novel right at midnight. Oh, sure, I have in the past. But I usually toss those words out and start over. (Though I have to admit as a swimmer I never had a false start in all my meets.)

So tonight I have to start because I agreed to go to a midnight write.

Which means I have to know what I’m doing, at least enough for the first thousand words or so.

I’ve been thinking about characters and maybe an arc.

I was thinking if the novel is going to be focused on candy, it should have a character in it that loves every candy I detest.

I was also thinking there should be a quest ... that my main character has to be searching for something or trying to do something. You know, something. I haven’t figured out what it is. I haven’t decided anything past the first sentence and scene.

If that doesn’t work, I guess I can always start over!

When I was pulling my FAQ for Candy Blog together, it seemed that some of my readers think that I’m a top blogger and I might have some authority on the subject.

Well, I’m not so sure about that, but I’ve certainly learned a lot through trial and error over the years, enough to share some of that with others. So here are a few of my thoughts in a series that I’ll post over the next week or so.

Stake out a Little Corner

The following are some technology basics that you should keep in mind when setting up your blog.

1. Get a good URL - there’s nothing wrong with blogspot, typepad or livejournal, but pick something folks can remember and spell easily. Is it too late for that? Even if you don’t want to get your own hosting, you can get a domain name and point it. 2. Claim your blog at Technorati.com - they index blogs and you can add keywords to your blog so others can find you. You can also keep an eye on your blog and see who’s linking to you. Go see what they’re talking about and how it relates to what you’re talking about. There are other blogs that allow you to track your position in the whole scheme of things, such as blogshares.com and blogpulse.com. 3. Ping - your blogging software probably already does it, but make sure that you’re pinging all the networks so that people know you’ve got something new (I recommend pingomatic.com to catch those sites that your blog software may have missed). 4. Get listed - there are always big sites that aggregate huge link lists. For local Los Angeles bloggers it’s LA Blogs, for foodies it’s Kiplog ... just find where you belong. 5. Publish a feed. Even if it’s not the full post, at least folks will know that you’ve updated. Make it easy for readers to add your site updates to whatever they read with. Little chicklets help, but even a little sidebar space with text versions works well. If you choose to use a feed publisher like Feedburner, you’ll be able to track who’s reading you and what’s popular. 6. Use tags - keywords and tags help other people find your posts. Sign up with something like del.icio.us or digg - you add a little tag at the end of your posts and then other people who may never have seen your site might find you via the subject of your post. 7. Optimize your blog for search engines - this means permalinks so that other folks can link to specific posts and when someone searches for content, they go right to where you blog has what they want.

Next week I’ll talk about Layout and Templates.

I haven’t decided what to write for NaNoWriMo this year. All I have is a topic. Candy. (It’s about time I wrote a candy novel.)

I thought the whole thing with starting with a title back in ‘04 worked pretty well (that was the year of An Alphabetical Order). I also thought I would work in a different genre this year, as I always do. I’m running out of new POVs, so this one might be 3rd Person Limited.

The current title is:

Limited Liability Chocolate, an LLC

But I’ve been thinking of other titles as well, since I’m going for the Comedy genre. (The LLC novel would be a satire, I believe, somehow involving corporations and chocolate, as the title would imply.)

A new title that I’m mulling over would go something like this:

A Novel That Has Lollipops in It

Of course that breaks my rule about having a title that alphabetically sorts high.

It’s a work in progress.

So last night I was sitting on the couch enjoying some Prik King from Rambutan Thai and watching the premiere of 30 Rock.

My laptop was on the dining room table, plugged in, but with the battery removed.

We’re watching TV and the damn thing made that loud pop again! The battery isn’t even in the same room, so it’s not the battery. Something’s seriously wrong with it. It still works, doesn’t feel unusually warm to the touch. But a loud pop is not a good sound.

I don’t know if it’s going to make it through this NaNoWriMo and the sad thing is that even my desktop computer isn’t working anymore (no strange sounds of that because I can’t even get it to boot). I’m in bad shape. Bad, bad shape.

(See previously Not a sound you want to hear from your computer.)

Every year as NaNoWriMo season begins, I get a little stressed. It gets easier and easier to be the ubermoderator for such a big community. But the one thing that I’ve noticed is a good indication of my stress levels is dreaming in October.

For the past three years my dreams in October have had large portions formatted as forum posts.

Seriously. The dream bits are separate posts. Not specifically text, but somehow, in that dream-way, enclosed within forum code and forum frames. The dreams are not necessarily nanowrimo-related, but just formatted as topics and threads.

The dreams this year, of course, started on October 1st. Last night I had no forum dreams that I recall. Will this complacency blow up in my face? If I do not live, breathe and dream nanowrimo, will it still come together?

Last night I was working on my laptop ... on my lap, in front of the TV. I can’t recall what I was working on, probably an email or the forums.

Suddenly the computer made a loud POP and I felt the expression of air on my legs. I picked the computer up by the corner of the keyboard and held it like a rat by its tail, fully expecting to burst into flames (it is a Dell, after all). I dare not put it down, lest it catch something else on fire so I held it out for The Man to yank the power cord. It shut off instantly and The Man followed me into the kitchen as I carried it by the corner. Twisting it around and seeing no indication of flames or even any unusual heat or smoke, I put it down on the floor. I felt the top, then the bottom then closed it and sniffed it. All perfectly normal.

We took out the battery, which also looked normal and didn’t feel hot at all.

After a few minutes of puzzlement, “You heard that pop, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. Did it hurt?”

“No, not at all, just, you know, I thought it was gonna burst into flames, like they do on BoingBong.”

We set it down on the dining room table, sans battery and plugged it back in. It works just fine.

The battery wasn’t holding even the slightest charge for the past month or so, so it’s not like running it without the battery is any big deal.

You can be sure the first thing I did was copy ALL of my files off to the server.

Now I can’t decide if I should get a new battery (which Dell doesn’t even sell on their website any longer) or just spring for a new laptop. My Inspiron 2600 turns four this month. That’s 88 in dog years.

I was reading Wil Wheaton earlier about meeting Larry Niven (author of Ringworld). It got me to thinking (which I commented there about) that I’ve always thought that the whole super powers thing is all wrong.

A really powerful superhero would have special powers like the power to make people laugh.

Think about the different in how much work it takes to hurt someone ... any old schmo can do it. It doesn’t even take a weapon or super powers. Sure, you can hurt someone MORE with more power, but really, how much hurtin’ does one person need?

Then think how rare and powerful laughter is.

Or the power to make someone feel good about themselves.

The power of pleasure.

The power of contentment.

The power of just seeing someone else’s side for a moment.

The sad thing is that most of these are not super powers, just rare powers. Undervalued powers.

So, today I decided to tackle the stains on the upholstery in the living room. We have a little carpet cleaner thingy that we got when we adopted Becky which works well for cleaning up all sorts of her messes. So I went to work with the noisy machine on her chair, to make it at least acceptable for company.

While I’m cleaning away, I glance over at the dog, who looks most unhappy about me taking over her chair and making it all fresh smelling. As I back up to examine my progress, I look down at her feet and see what she’s unhappy about. Three different piles of fresh vomit on the living room rug.

Being an optomistic person, I think that this is my lucky day! I can suck that sick right up! No worries about that leaving a stain.

When I was a kid I invented a few things.

One of them was noise cancelling technology. Okay, I never built a prototype or anything, but I made some pictures. This invention came in 9th grade after a science lab where we took long springs out into the hallway and created waveforms by having one student hold one end and wiggle it and another student hold the other end. Many of us quickly saw that you could cancel out your partners wave by creating an equal and opposite one.

I mulled it over and then told the teacher several days later that it would be possible to create a machine that would create equal and opposite sound waves to effectively dampen loud noises. These machines would be installed on cars, jackhammers and pile drivers.

My invention became noise cancelling headphones, of which I own a pair, and paid retail and received no royalties from Bose or Sony. I still think that masking the noise at the source is a better idea.

I didn’t get any extra credit for this. I don’t even think I got an A in the class.

Later in Advanced Bio in my senior year we studied bacteriophages, which are a kind of virus. They’re pretty cool, and the picture in our textbook showed that they looked like the Apollo Lunar Lander. A little module with some legs sticking off of it. The bacteriophage would land on a bacteria and then insert its genetic core and then take over the bacteria as an incubation unit until it would finally burst with new bacteriophages.

I suggested later in class that this could be used to fight diseases, since the bacteriophage was so specific to killing only bacteria (and not human cells) that we could just inject into people and let them keep us clean. It was pointed out that the bacteriophages are usually pretty targeted and not a broad-spectrum antibiotic like I hoped. Then I suggested that they could be used as a disinfectant, in tablet form for drinking water in places like Africa with chronic water contamination problems. But the teacher kind of moved on from there to the next class assignment. (Our textbook and the books in our library did not reveal to me the degree to which bacteriophages were being examined for these same purposes, so I can still say I got the idea in a vaccum. If nothing else, it might make a good basis for a SciFi movie.)

But here it is, 2006 and the FDA has actually approved the use of bacteriophages to fight listeria on lunchmeats.

Oh, my other invention was a low-sodium celery. My grandmother was on a low-sodium diet and couldn’t eat celery. So I came up with a way to use reverse osmosis to draw the excessive sodium out of the celery before market. I couldn’t guarantee that the taste would be the same though.

Of course I probably had some other wacky ideas which were not only no good, but probably so poorly conceived that I no longer remember them. Until they become practical and profitable, of course.

I am loathe to follow fashion, but sometimes something that “everyone is doing” is just a good idea.

Last night I bought a bike.

Part of my hesitation about biking in LA is that I’m afraid of being hit by a car. But the new trendiness of biking, I think, is helping to increase awareness of bikers as part of the normal flow of traffic.

The other thing that’s kept me from buying a bike is that freakishly steep hill that I live on. So, as a compromise, I bought a starter bike. If it doesn’t work out, you might see a craigslist link posted here very soon. But if it does work out, you also might see a craigslist post here very soon as I upgrade!

Actually, if this one works out okay I’ll probably trick it out with some fenders (since I’ll be commuting), a pannier or saddlebags, a kickstand (because I don’t like leaning my bike on stuff) and maybe one of those tall flags (I can get it custom printed with the candy blog logo!).

A few weeks ago Sean Bonner posted about Google News and their screwy, secret and inconsistent policy for including blogs as new sources.

All of the Metblog sites should be added. Granted, not every post is news, but when it comes to big stories like Katrina, London Tube Bombings and Mumbia train bombings as well as the Pakistan Earthquakes and web censorship by the government in Saudi Arabia ... the sites are all over that stuff.

But the thing is that they’re not consistent (which you know is a pet peeve of mine), so I decided to see if I could get Candy Blog listed as a news source.

First try, I was turned down for the following reason:

“we currently only include sites with news articles that report on recent events.”

Okee dokee, I can understand that. But I started thinking about what I read there ... things like movie reviews and regurgitation of press releases and of course recipes. So why isn’t a candy review considered a recent event? My photos are original and many of the products are new ... why is that so different from a soft profile piece about an actor in a TV show? A fan site for Stargate SG-1 and Celebrity Babies are listed! Even the satirical Australian site called The Chaser gets in.

Second try, so I submitted again with an angle towards comparing my site to movie reviews and I got back:

“We don’t include sites that are written and maintained by individuals.”

So there you have it ... I guess since I’m taking my own photos, I’ve done myself in. If I’ve got no editor, I’m not worthy. I looked around a bit and only found one site run by an individual (Mongabay.com), but you know, I didn’t look at all 4,500 sources or anything.

Now, if you think differently, you’re free to tell them that you’d like to see me included on Google News. Of course you could also tell them to include the Metblogs sites too.

Total Miles: 1,866
Gallons of Gas Consumed: 38 (about $125.00)

Saturday
Drove from Los Angeles to Ukiah
Highest Temp: 117 - somewhere near Richmond, CA

Sunday
Hiked Founders Loop - Avenue of the Giants
Hiked Trinidad Head - Trinidad
Miles Hiked: 3
Dinner: Seascape (Trinidad)
Highest Temperature: 97 (Avenue of the Giants)

Monday
Hiked Fern Canyon
Hiked Founder’s Grove
Miles Hiked: 4
Dinner: Larrupin’ Cafe (Trinidad)
Highest Temperature:

Tuesday
Hiked Klamath River Overlook - Requa/Klamath
Hiked Yurok Village Loop/Hidden Beach - Klamath
Hiked Trinidad Beach - Trinidad
Miles Hiked: 4
Dinner: Abruzzi (Arcata)
Highest Temperature: 73

Wednesday
Drove from Trinidad to Olema
Highest Temp: 93 (Cotati)

Thursday
Pt. Reyes Lighthouse
Limantour Point Beach & Spit
Dinner: Olema Inn
Miles Hiked: 3
Highest Temp: 82

Friday
Hiked some other Fern Canyon at the Bird Center
Hiked Palomarin Bluff Trail
Bioluminescence Kayak Tour
Highest Temp: 78

Saturday
Drove to San Francisco via Highway 1
Walked to Ferry Terminal Building
Dinner: Rue St. Jacques (Nob Hill)
Highest Temp: 73

Sunday
Drove to Los Angeles
Highest Temp: 98 (Buttonwillow)

Contrary to what many googlers must think, Candy Blog is not a store.

I do not sell anything.

I am not a candy company.

I do not have a catalog.

Please don’t send me your address.

Please do not try to place orders.

Please don’t ask me about gluten or manfucturing procedures.

While we’re at it, I have no need for your tin manufacturing facilities in China nor your wonderful processed coconut products from Thailand.

I know that this series of statements may cut down on the amount of email I get ... well, so be it.

I’ve been writing notes to MySpace for several months to stop people from hotlinking to my photos.

It’s not a huge request ... but one that should at some point be acknowledged. I’ve written four notes to them through their online contact info pages and I don’t even get a confirmation email that they’ve recieved my note. If anyone knows an email address that I can use for these notes in the future, I’d appreciate a heads up.

So here’s my problem: so far in the month of July I’ve had 35,000 MySpace hotlinking hits on my domain.

Apparently they like my photos. Not so much my blog ... just my photos.

Even though I have htaccess limits in place, it’s still a drain on my bandwidth, something that I pay for.

MySpace has it well within their coding powers to keep their users from unauthorized hotlinking. It’d be very simple for them to set up a blacklist (that would be populated by the domain owners requests) that would swap the requested image for something that says “please only link to images you have the rights to.”

But no.

Here’s a scenario that could probably get them to change their minds:

Buy a domain and populate it with 200 fantastic and highly-desirable photos for hotlinking. Code the page to make them super-easy to find with Google Image searches. Cute kittens, candy, pretty rainbows ... blah, blah.

Let the MySpacers link away.

When you reach a threshold, then do an htaccess swap and have all the images changed to an image that violates the Terms of Use for MySpace. (Use your imagination ... there are lots of things that would qualify.)

Continue as needed until MySpace gets the message that allowing hotlinking is not only bad for the people who are paying for all the hotlinking - it’s also bad for MySpace.

If you want to hear what MySpace has been spending their time doing instead ... well, you know, it’s all over the news.

Here’s is my best tip on how to find something that’s been missing for weeks.

First, look everywhere. You have to.

Mention to people that your item(s) is missing.

Then stop looking and stew about it.

Go back and look again.

Post on your blog that you lost it and can’t find it.

Then go look in the same place you just looked before you posted on your blog.

Your missing item(s) will be there.

I lost some candy. Or maybe I misplaced it.

I had two bags of candy that I bought in New York at Aji Ichiban. It was the perfect candy to hang onto for a while because it was all individually wrapped bulk candy. I photographed them and then put them carefully back in their bag, put them in a spot where I wouldn’t forget them and now they’re gone. It wasn’t a lot - but I did spend some time picking it out ... a special trip to Chinatown and about $10.

Then I had a bunch of candy that I didn’t want from the All Candy Expo and I’ve misplaced that too. I don’t care so much about that stuff, since, you know, I didn’t want it and all.

I just can’t figure how I’d lose two different bags of candy. But I have a lot of candy and it’s entirely possible that it’s here and I can’t see it through the din of candy noise.

For the record, I’m hoping to get rid of a bunch of it tonight at the Farmers Market blogger get-together thingy.

Is it wrong that as we’re trying to book a vacation and one of the things I’m most concerned about is internet access?

I mean, some of the places don’t even have PHONES! And we’re talking California here ...

I’m not looking to spend my whole vacation online, but I do like to keep in touch and stuff and of course I have my blogging empire to maintain (fast fiction is sadly neglected, I know).

Should Los Angeles value its immigrants or its Lakers fans?

There are currently 5 times as many people milling about with a common cause than any given Laker game ... and despite the traffic snarls, I like what I’m seeing.

I don’t know what the big deal is about steroids in major league baseball.

I think the thing to do is just accept that there will always be some all natural athletes and there will always be some enhanced ones. So go ahead and acknowledge it and move on. Quit wasting the federal government’s time investigating it.

Then we can spend our time developing a labeling system for all players, games and teams.

Just like you can get organic vegetables and hormone free milk, you can opt for an all-natural steroid free baseball team. If people want to see the ‘roidal freaks then they’ll buy those tickets and those teams will experience better sales and a larger fan base. Maybe they’d be different divisions, maybe you’d have integrated teams.

The point is that it’d all be out in the open.

Well, I took a huge gamble on Wednesday. After getting through the first few stages of grief over my Sony DSC-V1 demise, I started bidding on eBay for the next version of that camera, the Sony DSC-V3. It’s not like I was adverse to buying it new, but no one seemed to have a new one and there is no “next generation” for this model. I know I should go with a DSLR, but I’m just not ready yet.

So, I bid on one on eBay and didn’t win. So I bid on another one, and waited. Well, the first one I bid on had the winner back out and they have a “second chance offer” that’s good for 24 hours. Of course I was still the high bidder on #2. An hour later I was outbid on #2 so I took camera #1.

Not only did I get it at the price I wanted, he threw in a 1gb memory stick and free overnight shipping. So there it was, waiting at home for me last night. I was holding my breath, because you never know on eBay if you’re actually going to get what you paid for. This was my 11th purchase on eBay (plus the dining room set which didn’t technically go through eBay because I bought the whole set, not just the table) and I have to say that I’ve never had a problem yet. The only weird thing is that the charger cable was missing, but it included an external battery charger, so that solves that problem. Not only that, but my V1 cable works just fine.

It’s a different camera in many ways than my V1. It’s slightly larger, black and not silver. The controls are in different places, though the operate in pretty much the same way. What’s cool about the new one is that it’s 7 megapixels, still has the great Zeiss lens and has better auto-focus. The LCD screen is bigger than my old one, but doesn’t seem as crisp (but I can live with that).

I’m still fooling around with it and trying to figure out all the different, new settings but I’ve got my little candy photo studio set up and so far things are going well. The extra megapixels will me more detailed candy goodness on candyblog!

In the mean time, here’s my tribute to the wonderful camera that has brough so much photographic goodness to my blogs over the years.

When I was in high school I was planning a trip to Spain and as a gift, my father gave me a camera.

It was a Canon Snappy - a fixed focus camera that took 35mm film and was bright red. It looked like a cross between a PlaySkool camera and a Tonka truck, but I loved that thing.

I took, probably, about 100 rolls of film during the life of that camera. I had it from 1983 to 1991. I took it to class one day when I was in grad school and it just up and stopped working. I was so upset, it was the only camera I’d ever owned and it took such great photos. It wasn’t even that expensive and I probably could have replaced it, but I didn’t.

(The Man later gave me a Canon PowerShot that was super small and took good pictures, but it was film and it was the dawn of the digital age. I still have the camera, but haven’t used it since I got my most recent digital.)

My reason for this post it to relate the recent demise of my beloved Sony DSC-V1. You’ve seen the photos I’ve taken with this camera. It’s an awesome camera and I carry it with me everywhere. It takes great shots, I’ve found it easy to use and of course up until last night, extremely durable.

It’s possible I just plum wore it out. It have taken over 26,000 photos with it. Probably 100 times more than I took with my Canon Snappy before it kicked the bucket.

I spent a half an hour on the phone with Sony to trouble-shoot the camera and they say it’s not covered by a recall on the sensor (because it still shows me the image on the LCD screen, it just can’t record a usable image). Instead they’ll guarantee to fix it for $181.00. I don’t know quite how they arrived at the $181.00 amount, but there it is. The problem is that I can simply buy a refurbished DSC-V1 from their outlet for $299 - which would mean that the lens ring is intact (I dinged mine and can’t use my telephoto lens). Or I can just upgrade to the DSC-V3 which take 7 megapixels shots instead of 5 and uses the same memory sticks and of course is brand spankin’ new.

Those of you who know me, you know that I fear change. Once I get to know people or things, I’m exceptionally comfortable. But the idea of a new camera, no matter how nice a new one might be is causing a fair bit of anxiety. But the idea of being cameraless is even more frightening.

I do plan to upgrade to a DSL at some point. At the moment I’m planning on the Nikon D50 ... but I still want a camera I can throw in my bag and have at the ready.

How nuts would it be to just buy a used Sony DSC-V1? I already have a huge investment in the other stuff - the memory sticks, extra batteries and the telephoto lens.

(cross posted on blogging.la)

It is so incredibly clear today, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it like this before. I went out on the Voyager this afternoon (I admit it was a bit chilly on the water) and was surprised at the intense detail and visibility.

Today’s adventure started out a little less promising than our others. No whales were sighted by the morning boat, but they did have a super-pod of dolphins. In the afternoon the wind was picking up so there were some small whitecaps through the swells were only 2-4 feet. The exceptional visibility played tricks on us, as we spotted what might have been some dolphin heading across Santa Monica Bay towards Pt. Dume, but as we turned out and approached, they disappeared completely.

No matter, it was early and we turned south towards Pt. Vicente, stopping briefly at buoy PV10 to look at the sea lions. Continuing south it was nearly 90 minutes into the trip when we spotted a huge bunch of birds off towards the horizon. Captain Gary mentioned that he saw dolphin below the birds and there was a lot of talk in the wheel house about whether it was birds or dolphins making the spashes. Finally the Captain turned the Voyager out towards Catalina to determine what it was. It was pretty clear after only a few minutes that it was a large pod of dolphins. Another ten minutes or so and we were traveling along at about six miles an hour with a huge pod of about 800 common dolphin pointed towards Pt. Dume.

They were feeding on the way, probably some small bait fish (I never caught site of them). We were in the middle of the group, many rode the pressure wake of the bow, others followed alongside the boat and still other surfed in the wake of the Voyager.

We followed along with them for 30 minutes, and luckily they were headed in the same direction we needed to go.

Honestly, I could just go out and watch dolphins all day. But we were already running kind of late as the Captain angled our journey to maximize our time with the dolphins. As luck would have it, we did find one Gray Whale on our way back into Santa Monica Bay, just opposite the wreck of the Dominator and we delayed our return to the slip for another fifteen minutes as we tried to get a good view of him (he was heading west).

Even without the sea life, it was an exceptional day for the views. From off San Vicente we could see Angel’s Gate, the full length of Santa Catalina all the way to the Hollywood sign and the occasional peek of the snowcapped mountains through the clouds.

Read more of my whale watch adventures on blogging.la: 2-12-2006 & 12-26-2005, 7-21-2005, 5-15-2005,  1-30-2005 & 1-17-2005 and of course all the whaley goodness right here on fast fiction.

I’ve been out on a few whale watching tours now but I have to say that the best ones always involve dolphins.

Today’s trip out of Redondo Sport Fishing on the Voyager with Captain Gary involved a lot of dolphins.

The weather was absolutely amazing today. Excellent visibility, warm weather, calm winds and clear water. You really couldn’t ask for anything more.

As we got out into the bay I spotted a huge pod of dolphins miles off to the north of us heading towards Pt. Dume. As tempting as it was to go towards them, they were moving away from us, and it didn’t seem that we’d be able to catch up with them. But something happened out there, they must have come across some fertile feeding grouds because they stopped and a huge swarm of birds were building up over the pod. Captain Gary decided we’d turn towards them and take our chances that they’d stay put.

I was so excited! The conditions were ideal for good photos of the dolphins in the water.

We didn’t spend long with the long-beaked common dolphin pod, but that’s okay. It was an amazing half hour. I took about 250 pictures.

Then we headed off towards some Pacific Gray Whales that were spotted back near Torrance Beach. It was a rather odd sighting. The whales were in a bad position as there was a huge amount of traffic in the bay, especially as they were hugging the coast within the bay. There were plenty of times where they changed their direction or breathing patterns because of the boats nearby. As we rounded the point the traffic seemed a bit better and they settled into a better pattern, however, it took them closer to shore and we didn’t get as good a look.

I’m not going to get to go out again in the next few weeks, so to end my February schedule with this trip was pretty awesome. What’s more, the passengers on the trip seemed equally thrilled with their experience.

I was reading Science Daily and came across this quote:

I set up a null hypothesis and the program rejected that hypothesis using the new data with a probability level of 10 to the minus 17th. In science, you don’t get any more conclusive than that. - Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D, of Washington University in St Louis

Okay, I’m not even sure about what the probability level of 10 to the minus 17th is in relation to other hypotheses that we’re comfortable with as established theories, but in the future I’m using that phrase.

You’re wondering how to incorporate this into everyday conversation?

YOU: What time does the movie start?

ME: 7:25

YOU: Are you sure?

ME: With a probability level of 10 to the minus 17th.

YOU: Word!

Link to New Analysis Shows Three Human Migrations Out Of Africa

I’ve decided that Grey’s Anatomy is really just Ally McBeal set in a hospital.

Skinny young woman pines for a married man who has feelings for her. (Gil Bellows/Patrick Dempsey)

This grown woman of independent means has a roommate(s). (Lisa Nicole Carson/Katherine Heigl)

The no-nonsense woman of Asian descent has great power over her man. (Lisa Liu/Sandra Oh)

Insecure but sincere man pines for the lead. (Peter MacNicol/T.R. Knight)

They hang out in a bar after work.

Lots of music including on-the-nose narration-style montages.

Today was my first voyage on the Pacific Spirit with Captain Tim at Spirit Cruises down at San Pedro’s cute little Ports o’ Call.

I’d never been out on this boat before (though I’ve been booked on it before and even boarded the boat on December 30th before the boat was canceled).

The weather was stunning today. The air was crystal clear, the water smooth and calm and it was rather warm. Captain Tim took us through the harbor area, pointing out the raft of sea lions near the pier by the fish market and then we made our way out to the open waters, past Angel’s Gate Lighthouse on the San Pedro jetty.

Within about twenty minutes Captain Tim spotted a whale, about a mile further out to sea, a little north of us. We caught up to it and were delighted to find a very cooperative whale. It would surface without much of a blow, but would take five faithful breaths and then a dive and a lift of the tail (it fluked for us three times) and then only stayed down for about three and a half minutes before it would repeat the cycle.

We stayed with the whale for well over thirty minutes, following it south as it made a bee line for Dana Point.

On its last but lackluster dive we turned further out to catch up with some dolphins seen further out. What we thought were common dolphins turned out to be much more. We first came across a small pod of common dolphins (at least eight individuals) that met up with the boat and surfed in our wake. We continued towards the larger group that appeared to be feeding. Those were not common dolphins, instead they were bottlenose dolphins. They were delighted to see the boat and though it was a small group (probably a dozen) at least three joined in a few times to swim in the boat’s bow wake.

We had a large number of children on board, and they just scream with delight when the dolphins come up to the boat. A few circles in the area and the captain went off to catch back up with our faithful whale. As we headed towards him we instead ran across another small group of Risso’s dolphins. These were by far the most visible of all the dolphins we saw for the day, moving more slowly and showing more of their heads as they came up to breath and moved around. I suspect there were squid that these dolphins were feeding on. They were definitely staying in the same area, and there were plenty of gulls (but no Pelicans, which don’t eat squid).

I was suprised by the number of Heerman’s gulls. I’ve not seen many of them over at Redondo Beach, but there seem to be lots of them out of Ports ‘o Call. I think they’re very pretty gulls, with their bright white heads, red beaks and waxy gray bodies.

On our way back to the harbor the Captain stopped at one of the buoys to visit with the sea lions. There were two of them on the buoy , both males, and one of them had a huge growth at the base of his flukes. The little kids kept pointing at it and asking about it. I didn’t know quite what to say, since I didn’t think that sea lions had testicles. I’m going to print out a picture and take it into class, I have a feeling it’s some sort of tumor. It was probably the size of a mango - far too large to be a normal scrotum. I hope it’s not an indication of something dastardly going on in the harbor that may affect the wildlife.

The past two trips have had huge varieties of wildlife out on the water, they’re like dream trips where we get to see whales and dolphins. It just makes me so happy that I started doing this whalewatching stuff in the first place.

Yesterday was an awesome trip on the Voyager’s afternoon trip from Redondo Beach. It was the kind of trip that I think naturalists dream of.

The weather was mild and beautiful. A little chilly, but the waters were calm and the air was brilliantly clear. We set out at 1:30 with a rather full boat with over 50 passengers. I talked with my fellow naturalist, John, and we agreed because of my bum knee that I would take the mic for the whole trip so I didn’t have to deal with trying to navigate around the boat during the ride.

It was the first time I’ve done the whole trip as the lead naturalist, the first time I’ve really had to narrate much at all. I felt pretty comfortable about it, and I think part of it was that I’m more familiar with the material and also because Will was along and he’s always such a good audience. I tried to remember some of the biggest comments I’ve gotten, especially the one to “slow down and not talk too much.”

About 40 minutes out we passed around Rocky Point and caught sight of at least one whale close by and another a bit further out to sea. Captain John pointed us towards the closest whale and we tailed him for at least five cycles on the surface. He was not a regular whale, he didn’t follow the guide books completely. He would surface, sometimes taking his first breath and briefly snorkeling and taking another quickly after that. He did some wonderful fluking and because of the moderate wind we got some very good views of his flukeprints. He didn’t swim in a straight line, he dodged in and out, possibly because of his proximity to the point and possibly because of the other whale nearby. We never got particularly close to him and he probably preferred it that way. His irregularity made it a little difficult to predict where he’d be and how many breaths he’d take. Of course he didn’t stay down for 7 minutes or more like last week’s whales.

After following this lone whale for over 40 minutes our other naturalist, John, called the whalewatch census that pointed out a pod of dolphins a bit further out to sea. We’d seen the glinting of dorsals and a few light blows and some birds and knew they were dolphins, but it was the spotters with their scope that confirmed that it was Risso’s dolphins. I was really excited by this since I’d never seen Risso’s before. Of course I didn’t want to tell Captain John that I really, really, really, really wanted us to go out there to see them. I’m just there to help tell our passengers what we’re seeing. As we got closer to them in our current course I directed the passengers to look for the blows from the dolpins. Luckily John waited for another fluke from our present whale and turned us towards the dolphins. While on our way out there I gave the brief info that I had about the Risso’s which is pretty scant. They’re dolphins, about the size of bottlenose dolphins, 10-13 feet long, but with no real beak. They’re dark grey at birth but as they get older they get scarred and streaked until some are practically white. Their dorsal fins are quite tall and are often mistaken for Orcas, especially at a distance.

(that’s Point Vicente lighthouse there on the bluff - click to embiggen)

Risso’s, as it turns out, are rather aloof dolphins. Unlike the long-beaked and short-beaked common dolphins and bottlenose that I’ve seen before that come right up to the boat and bow-ride, the Risso’s pretty much go about their business. But it’s pretty cool to observe them ignoring us.

As far as I could tell, there were well over 20 individuals scattered over a pretty large area about a half a mile wide. They appeared to be feeding and worked in small groups of up to four individuals. They’re known to eat squid and though we saw birds around, they were gulls and I didn’t see any Pelicans, which apparently don’t eat squid.

The Captain powered down the boat and we made several slow circles through the group. With the engine and wind noise gone, all we could really hear were the squeals of the kids on board that were just tickled pink at the dolphins and pointed them out all around the boat and then there were the sounds of the dolphins themselves. They made that poofing sound as they exhaled sharply. If you didn’t see them coming up, you knew where to look just by the sound. The water was wonderfully clear and with the swells we could see the lightest colored Risso’s under the water, darting around in different directions. Sometimes two or three would come to the surface at once, and I even saw two jump partway out of the water.

At that point we were two hours into the trip and Captain John parted with the Risso’s and we headed back into Santa Monica Bay. As we passed the Dominator I prepared to wind up the trip and started my little audio presentation about the patches that we sell for the Whalewatch program and there was a loud bunch of hollering from the passengers and they all pointed at three o’clock as we saw at least two whales speeding along, hugging the coast.

Whoo! More whales! The Captain pulled around to see them, of course he had to turn out and away from them, lest he get to close. I was hoping it was a mother and calf, as they often hug the inside of the bay like that. But it was possibly better, three or maybe four whales. All coming up in close proximity and the light from the setting sun was just stunning. It was a little tough as we lost them in the glare on the water at one point, but after another cycle Captain John positioned us to catch some really nice flukes from two of the whales.

I’m sure we all would have liked to keep following them around the point, but it was time to go back to shore.

Captain John pointed us back towards Redondo Beach, we made a short stop at the buoy at the breakwater to peek at the hauled-out sea lions and then we were home again.

My pictures for this trip are rather lackluster, I’m afraid, as I was concentrating on creating the experience for the passengers. Not a bad compromise at all!
Will blogged about it.
Will posted some fantabulous photos.
I found these photos from another passenger, Josh Young.

I’m booked to go out again this weekend, a Saturday morning boat from Spirit Cruises at Port-o-Call. That’s a boat what there Captain does the mic talk, so I’ll be able to move around and maybe get some more pictures.

Here’s what the whale census had to say:

As of 16-Jan 2006

Southbound Today———————- 18
Northbound Today————————0
Total Whales Today——————- 18
Southbound Calves Today————- 0
Northbound Calves Today————- 0

Season to Date (since 1 Dec 2005)

Southbound—————————223
Northbound——————————0
Total———————————- 223
Calves South————————- 28
Calves North—————————0

Message from the observers: We started the day REAL SLOW. We had two sightings between 9 and 10 am, another sightings at 11:30am and then around 2 pm we started to see whales. Our numbers were greatly assisted by a number sightings on or near the horizon. We had a pod of 4 and two singles with Catalina as our backdrop. We had four sightings after 4 pm, which is when it got a little confusing. There had been a pod of three and they separated, then there was another sightings where the whales were pretty close and the sun was setting, so the visibility was difficult. Dolphin included Rissos, bottlenose and probably common.