Book Report: Into the Raging Sea
USA ships don't go down with all hands anymore. There are multiple redundant safety systems, inspections, drills… But the El Faro steamed into the eye of a hurricane and sank with no survivors...
Permalink
Book Report: All At Sea
It's a writer's memoir about joining up with a documentary film crew hoping to document seamanship techniques by nomadic sailors based near Thailand, sort of. But things go off the rails and it's a r...
Permalink
Book Report: Manhattan Beach
It's a novel. People enter the water, people exit the water. People change names, people change themselves. There's some WWII waterfront life bits, which were fun; and shipwreck raft survival which w...
Permalink
Book Report: We, the Navigators
It's a book about navigation techniques of Pacific Islanders. I'd thought this was a lost art, only written about by westerners recently, carefully-hidden mysteries of guild-like navigator clans. But...
Permalink
Book Report: A Voyage for Madmen
In the late 1960s, someone single-handedly sailed around the earth. This inspired a newspaper to sponsor a race for someone to single-handed-sail around the earth without stopping at port for repairs...
Permalink
I took an overnight trip to Monterey, which has a scenic rocky coastline and a big aquarium. I took some photos of rocks and of people looking at fish. ...
Permalink
Book Report: The Lost art of Finding our Way
This book is darned near perfect: It's about how folks navigated back before there was a GPS phone in every pocket. Had things I didn't know about Vikings and about Marshall Island stick chart wave m...
Permalink
The Dutch word "scheepvaart" means "maritime", not ovine flatulent whatever. ...
Permalink
Book Report: Last Man Off
It's a survivor's story from a fishing boat that sank in Antarctic waters. Not everyone on that boat survived; this book might be a good gift for someone who's become blasé about boating safety. It's...
Permalink
You know you've overtrained your brain to look out for secret messages when you're reading an interview about crewing an old-timey sailing ship and see Question: What is your favorite line (rope) o...
Permalink
"Pledging on Kickstarter is buying my future self a surprise gift." –Joshua Little This Baggywrinkles comic book by Lucy Bellwood was a pretty awesome surprise. Sometimes I think the projec...
Permalink
This afternoon, I clomped around the decks of a couple of tall ships, the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain. These ships are usually up in Washington state, but for now they're at Oakland's ...
Permalink
Book Report: She's Just Another Navy Pilot
A memoir by Loree Draude Hirschman about being one of the first women combat pilots for the US Navy, mostly about her first voyage as such on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. As if learning to l...
Permalink
Book Report: The Old Ways
It's a book of philosophical meandering ramblings about walking and sailing old routes. It starts out with a great deal of meandering musings, but if you can get past that, there are some interesting...
Permalink
Book Report: Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea, and One of the World's Deadliest Jobs
It's about crabbing and fishing and nautical life in Alaska. There's some tough bits to slog through: bragging about having survived some harebrained stunts; an attempt at a framing story that makes ...
Permalink
Caught the play "Fanny" at Fort Mason this afternoon. It'll be playing for the next week. It hearkens back to a simpler time, a time when ruination was darned simple and common. A time when everyone ...
Permalink
Book Report: Livesaving Lessons
This book by swordfisherwoman Linda Greenlaw is different—it's about adopting a teenager. This feels like higher stakes than life-or-death actions out on the water: Greenlaw and her daughter ha...
Permalink
Book Report: The Long Way
In this memoir, Bernard Moitessier sails around the world solo. By the end, he either achieves some enlightenment or goes kinda loopy from being on his own for a few months. There is sailing. There i...
Permalink
A resident addressed me: "It would be interesting to set up a time-lapse camera here." I was walking at Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito, a big houseboat area. Specifically, I was stepping off a tempo...
Permalink
Link: The International Code of Signals
I watched the new Studio Ghibli film, "From up on Poppy Hill" and of course all I could think about was the marine signal flags. In the movie, our heroine, who lives in portside Yokohama, hoists sig...
Permalink
I'm just back from GC Summit 2013, in which Game Control folks talk about how to run games without going crazy...crazier than necessary. Folks presented on a cool variety of games this year. Well, th...
Permalink
Book Report: The New New Thing
It's a biography of Jim Clark, a high-tech entrepeneur. This book talks about a period of his life after he helped found SGI and Netscape, when he was working on health-service software and designing...
Permalink
If LASER stood for Liquid Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Ripples http://goo.gl/Mdb2p. ...
Permalink
Comic Report: Syncopated #3
It's an anthology of comics. Some are about New York City; some are about history; some are about New York City history. Special bonus: an interesting article about heading out to Staten Island to lo...
Permalink
Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere, including water-related places in the SF Bay Area
I was sooooo sure that the Shinteki Aquarius Remix water-themed puzzly treasure hunt game thingy would send us to the Pulgas Water Temple. I remember a few years ago, back when I started playing thes...
Permalink
Book Report: Seaworthy
What does "seaworthy" mean? It means something that can survive being out on the sea. But "worthy" is a word with interesting connotation. It doesn't just hint at toughness, but also at a sort of rig...
Permalink
Zine Report: Giant Robot #66
It is another issue of Giant Robot. There is an advertisement for Android figurines decorated by Andrew Bell. There is an article about MSG advising you should use it even though a few people have ...
Permalink
Book Report: The Battery and the Boiler
You think you've seen cultural imperialism? The Battery and the Boiler shows you what cultural imperialism looked like in 1880s England. I read this book because it's an adventure story about the l...
Permalink
Book Report: Offshore
It's a novel; it's litrachaw. I tend to approach a book of litrachaw as a puzzle: spot the theme, spot the metaphor, that kind of thing. I was feeling all clever for having figured out this novel, ...
Permalink
Zine Report: Giant Robot #65
In the new issue of Giant Robot (available at fine periodical stores and the Giant Robot store on Shrader just off Haight), there's an interview with Eric Cheng! He doesn't talk about The Game, only...
Permalink
Seattle 2010 Trip Notes
Remember how I went to Seattle months ago? I finally got around to writing down some Seattle 2010 travel notes. Time-saving tip: you can write up your travel very quickly if you first procrastinate f...
Permalink
