0800 tomorrow we dock in Barcelona. Kathy and I are tour leaders for a bus tour of Gaudi buildings.
Meanwhile… here are the misc pics I failed to post last time.
Jer being helpful
Kathy and the Captain chatting it up on the bridge
Kathy conning the ship
Keith in Halifax with the M/V Explorer in the background
Well, things have been moving at warp speed, and my brain is a little bit sluggish. The Global Studies lectures are good. Gerald Bowler . He constructs his lectures as a storyline. Two days ago three invasions of Egypt, yesterday the fall of Rome. He is entertaining, which is critical as he has a “class” of 750 or so spread across 1 large lecture hall and 9 satellite classrooms that all roll through a few degrees left, then right, then left, then right….zzzzzzz.
This morning we should be passing Gibraltar. Thursday 8am local time we get to Barcelona. Last night we attended two “explorer seminars”. Warren Boeschenstein gave an architect’s appreciation of Barcelona. He did cover some of the more interesting buildings, but the lecture was mostly about the organization of the city and the history that led to current features. Barcelona is said to have perhaps the best sidewalks in Europe. One of the features planners incorporated were to “cut-off” the corners of blocks. The makes for more room at intersections (an octagon). The major designer of this revitalization/expansion of Barcelona was Cerda .
Next up David Gies. David described the transition from the fascist dictator Franco to the liberal democracy Spain enjoys today. I was ignorant of the turmoil that Spain successfully navigated after Franco’s death in 1975, including the attempted coup in 1981 and King Carlos’s role in supporting democracy at that point.
Seizure of congress… video
The King’s speech, 2am… video
Just got word we will pass Gibraltar around 11am. Sky is clear, sea flat. We should get a great view of Spain to port and Africa to starboard. 8 miles across. just slightly farther than Burlington to NY across Lake Champlain.
And now.. misc pics.
David asks… try web100.uvm.edu…
9pm local time. Lots of students in lab. Lots across the way in the library. Presumably lots wireless from their cabins. Results…
TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.4.12
click START to begin
Connected to: web100.uvm.edu — Using IPv4 address
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
checking for firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 68.0kb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 124.72kb/s
Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem
Information: Other network traffic is congesting the link
[C2S]: Packet queuing detected
[S2C]: Packet queuing detected
Lots of mysterious laptop problems on both windows and mac machines. Most seem to be wireless problems. Many, if you reboot/restart and try the same damn thing again they work fine. Worst is mapping the windows file servers where profs keep the course materials. We've been working 8am-11pm trying to get all 35 faculty and all 738 students onto everything. Seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. uh oh.
The work-study students started in ernest with us today. They were busy with orientation before this. They are great. Very knowledgeable.
I did take 10 minutes today to simply lie on my back on a sunny and quiet piece of deck up on the bow outside the faculty staff lounge. Ahhh. that was nice.
We are traveling east and loosing time. Two nights so far we had to jump ahead an hour.
Classes started today. There is one class that EVERYONE takes… global studies with Gerry Bowler. Today he started with Greek myths and talked about the importance of memory. Stories survived invasion and occupation, transformed to meet the needs of the new communities. The class is so large (800?) that the union is stuffed and the class is broadcast into all the classrooms (9) as well.
AND! Saw porpoises today. Also almost got dumped out of bed by a fairly abrupt roll….
lots of stuff falling around…