Tsunami: Fail.

So I've been busy at school this past week and fallen a little behind on things I wanted to share on this blog. Here's one story...

At 6:00 Saturday morning, the siren started. Coming out of a dream that had incorporated this unexpected sound, I was confused. "Is this real?" I think I managed to mumble. As my brain woke up a bit more, I recalled the email we'd received from the university late the previous night: Earthquake in Chile, 8.8, tsunami advisory for 11:19 am... Ah. That's what it is. A tsunami alarm.

The siren was loud and long. They test the alarms at the beginning of each month, but I often don't hear it if I'm inside. I guess they don't run it as long in the tests as they do for the real thing, so it doesn't have time to get to full volume everywhere (since when it runs for minutes it cycles between high and low volume, I theorize that it projects in a certain direction and rotates around). But you'd have to be a very deep sleeper with earplugs in to miss this alarm. My three housemates and I each stumbled out of our rooms. The Ukrainian couple didn't know what was happening, so I filled them in.

We checked out the news. The tsunami advisory had by now been upgraded to a tsunami warning, which I believe indicates the highest degree of risk. It's hard to predict how big a tsunami will be when it hits various places--I don't even know what information they use to make the predictions. But they thought there was a possibility that this would be big. It was all over the news, even getting mentioned in national news. People were hitting up gas stations, buying fresh water and canned food (as if it were a hurricane, really), and heading for the hills. We were safely out of the reach of a tsunami, so we weren't worried.

Within an hour, the Housemate had gotten calls from both his brother and his mother on the mainland, since they'd heard about the tsunami warning on the news and wanted to make sure he was safely away from the beach. No one called me (I finally did get a call from my dad at 11:05, less than half an hour before it was supposed to hit). There was another alarm that sounded at 7:00. After briefly musing about grabbing his surfboard and heading down to the beach, to which I simply replied "No," the Housemate proposed that we go to Diamond Head to watch the tsunami. I thought it might be a bad idea because the authorities probably don't want people on the road during emergencies like this, but I was intrigued... As a physical oceanographer, wasn't it my duty to take this opportunity to witness a tsunami? I said I'd think about it.

Another alarm went of at 9:00. Some friends of the Ukrainian couple arrived to spend the day at our house, since their apartment was close enough to the shore to be evacuated. They brought tales of a Waikiki ghost town, everything closed, police waving people to turn around... I got a little more nervous about going out, but if we approached Diamond Head from the land side, there's no way they'd have closed all those roads down, and the volcano itself would of course be high ground and safe. The Housemate and I decided to go.

Around 10:40 we hopped in the car and drove off to Diamond Head. The roads weren't empty, but they were noticeably less crowded than would be usual for a Saturday. When we got there, we didn't drive through the tunnel to the crater (the path to the peak starts in the crater and zigzags its way up to the top); lots of people were already parked all along the road leading there and setting themselves up on a ridge, so we decided to do the same. We were settled and ready for the tsunami by 11:10. They were now predicting it would arrive some time around 11:35. So we sat there taking pictures of the crowd and the water, hoping for some nice contrasting "before" and "after" photos. We had a good view of Koko Head and the coast leading to it, including a region with a fairly shallow reef that we thought might be revealed as the water receded. We had a closer view of the water right by Diamond Head, but it was somewhat obscured in places by buildings and trees and wasn't so shallow. But it seemed like a relatively good spot. We waited.

I spouted nerdy physical oceanography stuff like "The tsunami would travel across the open ocean at approximately 200 m/s, assuming the ocean is 4000 m deep, which is a fair estimate of average open ocean depth." While a tsunami in the open ocean may not be very high, it is very long (couple hundred kilometers) and thus is associated with a great mass of water. Since it slows down as the water gets shallower (the speed of long gravity waves like tsunamis is simply sqrt(g*depth)), the water "piles up" as it gets towards shore, which is why it is high when it hits. Still, the wave heights may not be that impressive (though they can be enormous)--I think they were worried that ours might be 10 feet high. Waves on the North Shore can be 30ft+! But again, these are long waves, with periods of tens of minutes. The wave doesn't just wash up on shore and within seconds go back out. It keeps coming for minutes and minutes, pushing more and more water up onto the shore. I don't think any of us spectators were expecting some monstrous wave to leap up, knock down trees, and suck houses out to sea. That would have been pretty distressing, actually. But we were hoping to see some reef revealed or some beaches covered. We waited.

And we waited. People around us were calling friends who were watching the news. When is it going to hit? Did it hit the Big Island yet? After all the anticipation, the excitement, and the trepidation, there was nothing to see. I think the largest tsunami waves were 0.8 feet. A rise and fall of the water about equivalent to a tidal cycle was observed in bays, which tend to amplify the effects, but we weren't at a bay. One of our professors said that there was a huge mass of water measured by her instruments moving through the Ala Wai canal. So there was a tsunami, but there was no disaster. Nothing to get excited about. It was better, of course, that no one got hurt, and no shoreline or shoreline property was damaged. Still, after all the hype, we were disappointed. No fun pictures of the tsunami. Maybe next time.

Mac: Fail.

I'm sorry about this post, but I just need to rant a little bit...

My MacBook Pro just experienced its second kernel panic, after its first less than a week ago. If you don't know what that is, it's when the screen goes dim and tells you you need to shut down your computer by holding down the power button because there has been a fatal error in the operating system that it can't recover from. Or that's my understanding of it--I'm actually not all that great in the realm of fixing computers. But neither time was I doing anything out of the ordinary. I had not recently installed any new software or hardware. I was not downloading anything. I wasn't running anything strenuous. This time, I had Firefox open to Gmail, my calendar open, and was typing into a Matlab m-file.

Since the first kernel panic, I have had a few other issues that in other contexts I would have deemed unrelated. First Firefox crashed and wouldn't reopen because it thought it was still open already. Then the X11 terminal wouldn't stay open--it would open, then close, then open, then close etc. on a period of around 10 seconds. Then my computer was very laggy, where I would get the color wheel when I started typing an address into my internet browser or writing on a desktop "sticky note". Then Matlab wouldn't let me save a file because it thought for some reason that my Documents folder was read only.

My beef is that Macs aren't supposed to do this. Their advertising campaign boasts that Macs, unlike PCs, are always reliable and don't crash randomly. This is the first Mac I've owned, and I was expecting it to be worry free after my PCs. At present, my 6-month-old MacBook Pro has had more unexpected crashes than my 2-year-old PC laptop. And I do much harsher things to my gaming PC than to my work Mac. Fail. Suck it, Macs.

D&D in jail and other old stuff, plus an award for DAO

So I got lazy with my occasional entertainment news posts. All but the last one of these tidbits are from a month ago, but I figured I'd include them anyway...

A federal appeals court upheld a ban at the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin preventing inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons (NY Times). Apparently, D&D can “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior.” If this is true, then so can books, for heaven's sake. It's not like gaining the lock pick ability or hide in shadows or fireball for your character in D&D can actually give you the ability in real life. Maybe D&D games would promote groupings among inmates, but that happens anyway and I'd say that a gang of fantasy geeks isn't as bad as other possible prison gangs. Oh well, what do I know anyway?

Avatar officially passed Titanic in record worldwide box office take on January 25, after its sixth weekend at the box office (Variety). Since then it has also passed Titanic in domestic (US) gross. It is still going strong, ranking in the top five at the U.S. box office and number one overseas. Recent tallies place it at over $688 million in the U.S. and over $2.4 billion worldwide (inclusive of U.S.) (Variety).

In further Avatar news, a mountain in China's Hunan province has been renamed for Avatar (BBC news). According to the Xiaoxiang Morning News, a photographer from Hollywood had visited the Wulingyuan Scenic Area in 2008, and the photos had served as a basis for the planet Pandora--particularly for the floating Hallelujah Mountains. The Southern Sky Column mountain in Zhangjiajie has now officially been renamed the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain. Avatar is now the top movie of all time in China, and locals hope that renaming the mountain will allow them to capitalize on its popularity; they are currently promoting Avatar Tours with the slogan "Pandora is far but Zhangjiajie is near." Sweet.

Taylor Lautner has been cast as Stretch Armstrong in the planned Hasbro - Universal film that I'm kind of horrified is being made (Variety). I guess a different toy franchise had already claimed Channing Tatum. In case we've forgotten them, I'll list the other Hasbro movies that are in the works: Battleship, Monopoly, Candyland, Ouija, Clue, and Magic: The Gathering. Really.

OK, finally the news that I actually wanted to share, and it's just a little tidbit:
Dragon Age: Origins was named Role-Playing/Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year at the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences--essentially, the Gaming Oscars (Variety: The Cut Scene). And it's well-deserved. I should mention that the big winner of the night was Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Batman: Arkham Asylum also did well (winning, among other things, Best Character Performance for its Joker, voiced by Mark Hamill). Anyway, I was pleased to see a prestigious award go to Dragon Age: Origins. But now I'm ready to move into 2010 and finally get Mass Effect 2 started.

I'm kind of a big deal (in Ferelden)

I finally beat Dragon Age: Origins last night! I was quite elated afterwards; beating an awesome game after spending dozens upon dozens of hours on it gives you a kind of high. Still, considering how late it was I couldn't bring myself to make a post until this morning. It's an awesome game. There are some big, tough choices that the game forces you to make near the end, none of which seem like the obvious "best" choice. None of the options made me entirely happy. I guess my choices were made somewhat easier, though, in that I had a romance with Alistair; if one's desire is to have a (somewhat) happy ending with Alistair, one's choices are constrained. So that's what I did--the only thing I felt I could do to keep us together. I didn't compromise too much in order to achieve that. Did I?

Anyway, DAO had engaging gameplay, a fascinating fantasy world, many enjoyable quests, interesting and lovable NPCs, and an exciting and challenging story. I loved it, and I would be eager to play through again with a different character...if I didn't have a shiny new Mass Effect 2 sitting here on my desk. *Sigh* So much to do.


A few screenshots to document the occasion.

Alistair got to do the cool animation killing the dragon Archdemon. The people in the background with yellow circles underneath them are, in order of increasing distance from the "camera", my PC, Leliana, and Wynne.


I was the one who got the real killing blow on the Archdemon. Here I am in a cut scene stabbing it through the skull. With a sword. I'm a mage--I don't think I've held a sword in my life. I'm probably not even strong enough to wield it. Ah well. Not the clearest screenshot, but I'd have to go through the long battle all over again for another go at it.


After the battle was over, this achievement popped up on my screen and made me laugh. Good times. With all of Ferelden cheering for me, I certainly felt like a big deal. Games can be great for ego boosts.

RPG Called Coding

Apologies for my scattered thoughts...

It's been a crazy week. The long weekend (we got Presidents Day off on Monday) only intensified my school workload, and on Wednesday my grandmother (who lives here in Honolulu) wound up in the hospital after her second stroke. It was a minor stroke, and she seems to be doing well, but she'll be spending more time in the hospital and eventually in rehab--stuff she went through last summer after her first stroke, which I'm sure is frustrating to her. I was supposed to drive her to a dentist appointment on Wednesday afternoon, which may have actually been linked to the stroke (the appointment, not my impending driving)--she had stopped taking her blood thinner for three days in preparation for the dentist. I guess that's how things can be when you're 88. Hopefully she'll have a speedy recovery.

Anyway, I meant this post to be about coding, not my grandmother. So here we go: I have three classes this semester, and they each give constant homework of different types: for Geophysical Fluid Dynamics I have to do reading (really detailed textbook reading so that I could reproduce derivations in class or analyze the physical meaning of equations in different ways); for Equations for Geophysics (aka "advanced math") I have to do problem sets with good old paper and pencil; and for Data Analysis I have to do coding in Matlab. Which of these assignments do you think I enjoy doing the most?

That's right: coding. The other assignments are painful. But the coding is actually kind of fun, to the point that I procrastinate on the other classwork by touching up my already working code. It's a good thing that I find coding fun because I have sentence myself to a career of computer programs. Coding is kind of exciting, since you start with a blank screen, puzzle your way through the problem, and wind up with colorful plots, or interesting numbers, or... some sort of reward to admire, at least.

I was recently discussing this topic with a coworker, and he pointed out that programming in Matlab is a bit like playing a computer game:

"My wife will call to ask me, 'Hey, when are you coming home?' but I'll tell her that I just can't leave until I finish this bit of code. It's like 'Wait, I just have to beat this level!'"

And I realized that's exactly what it is. I like coding because it's a bit like playing a computer game. Now, computer games are designed to be fun and entertaining, while data crunching generally isn't. Still, both gaming and coding have their frustrating moments. You can spend hours trying to get one thing to work just right (it doesn't happen very often, but there are a few game battles I could name that I have spent multiple hours trying to beat), and it can drive you crazy. But the satisfaction once you overcome the challenge is a great reward. Triumph is fun, and addicting.

My homework assignment for Data Analysis this week had three problems that I had to solve for four different water property time series (at five hundred different depths). Solving each of those three problems was like beating levels 1, 2, and 3. But I had developed my code using the temperature time series as the test data set; the code didn't work for the oxygen or chlorophyll data sets because those had periods of missing data (sensors didn't work or something). So then I had to modify the code to work for the series with missing data--levels 4, 5, and 6! It was hugely frustrating, incredibly annoying (I complained to at least four different people about it, individually), and yet...when I finally got it working, and those lovely graphs popped up with the oxygen data, I felt elated. I won! Take that, ye evil error messages!

I handed in the assignment only to be given a new one for next week. But I'm ready. I recruited two team members into my adventuring party (classmates I consulted with)--it's a multiplayer game, though I can't decide if I'm the tank or DPS. And in completing the last one, I gained experience, learned new skills, and even added some new bits of code to my inventory. Hopefully the game sequel will live up to the original.

Valentine's Day adventure

On Valentine's Day morning, after the Housemate had made me breakfast and presented me with a bunch of red roses and a huge box of Godivas (cliché, perhaps, but still sweet), we discussed what we wanted to do for the rest of the day until our dinner reservations. We decided we'd go snorkeling at Hanauma. Of course, by the time we got out of the house it was about 11:00, and I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to find parking at Hanauma Bay since it is such a popular and busy spot. Sure enough, as we reached the bay on the southeastern corner of the island, there was a sign saying the lot was full.

We agreed: let's keep going. There were more beaches up the East Shore past Hanauma. Not as good for snorkeling, but we could still go swimming. However, by the time we passed the third crowded beach not five minutes later, we reached a new decision: let's drive all the way around the island. Well, at least up to the North Shore and then back down the H2 (we had just driven all along the West Shore the previous weekend, so we could take the short cut inside of that coastline). Both of us had been up the East Shore as far as Kailua, and we had been to Kaneohe by cutting across the island from Honolulu, but neither of us had seen the part of the coast between Kailua and Kaneohe or between Kaneohe and Turtle Bay at the northern point on the island. It wouldn't be hard to navigate--just keep the ocean to our right. And it would be an adventure.

And so we spent the whole afternoon cruising around the island. We stopped for some fancy tropical smoothies in Kailua. Just outside downtown Kailua I saw a stand on the side of the road--much like you'd see a stand for fresh papayas or malasadas, or pickled mango or kalua pig--with a sign saying "Fresh Ukuleles". Mmm. I pointed out the funny stand to the Housemate, and he immediately turned around. He plays guitar and has been in the market for an ukulele since arriving here. The trouble is that the cheap ones are crappy and the good ones are expensive. These "fresh" ukulele were great--they were hand made on the island out of koa wood, sounded great, and weren't too expensive. He bought one. And so we got back on the road with ukulele and chord sheet in hand.

Of course, the Housemate was driving, so I was the one who got to sit in the passenger seat strumming on the ukulele as we continued around the island. The weather was beautiful. We stopped at two beaches along the way, but we didn't go swimming. It wasn't the most environmentally friendly adventure (took under half a tank of gas, though), but it was lovely.

Dinner at Roy's was delicious, and it was the Housemate's first experience in "fine dining" (i.e., when they give you a huge plate with a little pile of food in the middle that looks, especially with the colorful dashes of sauce, like artwork and tastes unique and exciting and delicious). Still, the car ride was the best part of the day. The Housemate driving with me strumming on the ukulele as we pass palm trees and picturesque coastline, windows down to let in the warm ocean breeze. A perfectly Hawaii Valentine's Day, and a moment worth remembering.