We went to a world-class cave today called Actun Tunichil Muknal, or ATM for short. The name is Mayan, and literally means Cave Stone Death though it is often [poorly] translated as Cave of the Crystal Sepulchur. The cave has two components—a stream passage with a vigorous river flowing through it and a solutional cave that the river broke in to. To get to the solutional portion, which is where the Maya performed a lot of rituals, you have to hike up stream in the river.

We drove to a parking spot near the river, grabbed some inner tubes that we bought at a gas station, and hiked along a trail that paralleled the river for about a mile. We had to ford the river three times, but the water was warm so this wasn't a problem. Near the entrance to the cave is the archeology camp, which consists of a few simple structures to shelter the archeologists from the rain. We switched into water gear and threw our caving stuff into dry bags, then got down into the river and entered the cave. There is no choice but to walk in the river, which is sometimes deep enough to require swimming, and this makes the entrance really stunning. I've never done a warm water cave before; it's a lot of fun. After about 500m of the twisty whitewater passage, we reached a point where the ceiling seemed to disappear and we had access to the main chamber.

The main chamber is exquisitely decorated with numerous active areas. John said it is more beautiful than many of the best rooms in Lechuguilla. This part of the cave is very large and is divided by refill into several distinct regions. All parts of the main chamber are well stocked with Mayan ritual objects. This includes pots, grinding stones and grinders, bloodletters (eeeuch), and... wait for it... the victims of ritual sacrifice. Yowzer. Skeletons-O-Rama. That's a first for me. The bones have been calcited over in some places, making for really creepy skull-shaped cave formations. I've got lots of pictures.

After touring the archelogical area, we got back in the river and hiked out of the cave. Then we grabbed the inner tubes and tubed back to the truck. It was awesome. Except for the part where I crushed my hand between a rock and my inner tube while negotiating some class 1 rapids, but a couple bandaids later and I'm ok.

ATM: Definitely the highlight of the trip thus far.

OK, the DNS configuration at the internet cafe has been borted for the last few days so I couldn't post. Basically we've been caving every day. We've seen some very impressive caves (e.g. Chechem Ha and Migdalia) and some more or less worthless ones. I have some thoughts I'd like to articulate regarding archeological relics in caves, public access, looters, private ownership, etc. and how it all relates to Belize, but I don't have time tonight. So if you don't see a post on that sometime in the next month, someone bug me.

Today I saw a howler monkey up close. I got a great video of it doing its thing (it sounds like... Jurassic Park T-Rex w/ asthma or something). Weirdest sounding animal EVER.

Also today, we drove the truck off the road and high-centered it on a rock. Very exciting. In the end, we managed to get it mostly out of the ditch right when the guy with the tractor arrived...

They have vampire bats here, and today I saw a couple bats that were large enough to possibly have been vampires. But I can't be sure. As far as I know, I was not bitten and have not become nos veratu. If I wake up in a coffin and there's blood everywhere, we'll know I was wrong.

It is raining like you wouldn't belive here. An incredible amount. The good news is that it keeps the bugs down.

I was walking out across a field to meet a couple archeologist friends of Holley's who were working in the field. It was raining and there were massive puddles everywhere... and I walked right into a dig site which had filled up with water. Nice. On the way back, I noted its location and walked cleverly around the side... right where they had done a loose back-fill, and it had the consistency of quicksand... so in I went again. I'm SMRT.

It turns out that using a machete is really really fun and addicting. I find myself wanting to clear vast tracts of jungle whenever I pick one up. There is a very pleasing "ching" sound whenever you slice through a branch. Reminds me of the sound effects from bad samurai movies. And, of course, this requires me to make cliche kung fu references as I clear trail with my machete. Tomorrow, we're going to go several miles into the jungle to some caves that are not near any trails. So the cave ninja will make another appearance. Powdered Swords.

Goodnight!

Yesterday we took a canoe trip down 7 miles of the Macaw river through the mountains of western Belize. Saw toucans(sp?) and giant iguanas and bats. Took lots of pictures. It was wonderful. Belize is a really relaxed place and everyone is very friendly (except the BDF guys). These shoe shine kids helped us beach our canoes in return for some watermelon. They were hilarious. Now we're off to the market and some Mayan temples.

standing on a Mayan pyramid, getting freaked out by an 8" whip scorpion at close range, meeting random Belize Defense Force soldiers in a machine gun nest out in the middle of the jungle (apparently "policing" the area for banditos from Guademala...), and seeing a Macaw.

I'm continuing to have fun here. It rains a lot, but that's OK. The caves are amazing as is the wildlife. I'm also having quite a bit of wonderful food, though nothing too exotic (the cook that the project hired for us is just the woman who lives across the street, and she makes stuff like rice & beans, but makes it really well. Tonight we had chicken soup with macal. Yum).

The team is fun and spirits are high, despite the daily commute of 50 miles on bumpy dirt roads through the jungle in the rain and the fact that there are six of us in a 2-seat pickup truck. Adventure factor high.

We have arrived in San Ignacio, Belize. Getting here involved a 70 mile ride in the back of a pickup truck, in the rain. We managed to pile 7 people plus 5 large cave expedition packs into a regular cab Ford Ranger. It was quite an adventure.

Anyway, I'm here and we're about to go caving. Holly, our host, had to do pick some stuff up at the local photocopy place so I'm here in the internet cafe in the meantime.

Belize is extremely humid, green, and friendly. Pictures eventually; I'm off to go caving.

I leave early tomorrow morning for Belize. We're flying through Houston, which just had 6" of rain in 70 minutes... and Belize is in the midst of hurricane season. I have lots of rainproof gear. Nothing beats the jungle during monsoon season. :)

I should have access to the int0rnet a few times during the next two weeks; there may be an update or two.

I've spent the last couple weekends working with Minesh and Laura on their deck and the wiring for their new hot tub.

He got the inspector's approval on the deck last week and on Sunday, we finished the wiring for the hot tub. This involved drilling large holes through the side of the house, the floor, some drywall, and several stud and joists. The end result works like a charm. Minesh gives it two thumbs up.

I bought some 1Wire weather instruments and hooked them up at my house. Currently, my weather station consists of an anemometer, wind vane, thermometer, and rain gauge. You can check the weather at my house here. This is part of a larger home automation project that is a long ways out. It will eventually encompass quite a bit more than just the weather, and the interface will be something custom. But for now I'm just using a piece of shareware I found on the web. I'm not very happy with the interface, so expect it to change sometime soon.

Couldn't let Fou have all the glory... here's Stankooo in his eMac spaceship landing pod.

Asleep in the sink, toilet paper everywhere...and he left the seat up.

Right now my arcade machine has an arcade pushbutton mounted on the top, above the marquee, which toggles the power input to the computer power supply, so I can turn the computer on and off without getting inside the cabinet. I wanted a second pushbutton that would control power to the monitor, amplifier, and marquee lights. However, the pushbuttons are momentary-only, so I'd have to latch the signal somehow. There are lots of complicated ways to do this; here is an elegant solution which also has the benefit that if power to the cabinet is lost, the circuit defaults to the off-position:

At power-up, the gate of Q1 is pulled low, preventing current from flowing through the coil and thus the relay does not switch. Meanwhile, 12V flows through one of the NC contacts and charges C1 to about 3V. When the pushbutton is pressed, the 12V supply flows through R1 and R2 to activate Q1, which in turn activates the coil—and the relay switches. During the break-before-make switch, the voltage on C1 keeps the transistor engaged.

Once the relay is fully engaged, 12V flows through the NO contact and keeps the trasistor (and therefore relay coil) active. However, with the relay active and the pushbutton released, C1 is cut off from a power supply and discharges itself through R3. When the pushbutton is pressed again, it momentarily shorts the power supply into C1, leaving R4 free to drain any charge on the transistor gate, and thus the relay deactivates.

Thus, the momentary pushbutton toggles the second channel of the relay,which in this case is shown switching the hot line of an AC outlet. Why not just install a SPST switch? Because I want the system default to power-off when the 12V supply is interrupted. I can't come up with a simpler solution to meet these requirements. Thanks to Bill Bowden for the inspiration for this.

I was having lunch with Laura and Minesh today and the topic came up of my dislike of all things bitter. Minesh said that I must be a "supertaster," a term which I find enormously humorous. But apparently this is a reasonably common physiological variant which is characterised by increased taste buds and a magnified response to bitter tastes. I had never heard of it.

But the description given on the Wikipedia page is pretty much spot on for me:

• Strong reaction to bitter food
  
• Tend to be picky eaters
  
• Dislike alcohol and coffee
  

Here's the instrument I've been working on for most of this year. It's the brains behind a modular gamma ray and neutron detection instrument.

This is the first major product we've produced for which I was the head designer. I just got all of the major hardware blocks populated and tested and everything is working great.

One of the things Pete "Don't call me George" Nanos did as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (aside from shutting us down for several months and wasting millions of your tax dollars over the issue of non-existant "missing" harddrives) was to install the hideously offensive motto, "The World's Greatest Science Protecting America," as part of our official logo, which appeared on all lab letterhead, business cards, powerpoint slides, etc. Now this might have made Pete and his yes-men on the fourth floor feel great about themselves, but for those of us who traveled to scientific conferences and had interacted with the outside world, this was somewhat embarrassing.

Having a motto that basically boils down to, "We're better than you," is not a move in the right direction, particularly for people who deal with an international audience—an audience that, in general, is not impressed with the arrogance displayed by the United States political apparatus. When I talked to folks from elsewhere during my recent travels, the impression I got was that they thought our political administration was ghastly but they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt because, as scientists, we're supposed to rise above all of that sort of thing. And I wasn't about to give a talk to these guys with a logo in the corner of every slide that said, "your science is second-rate," or something to that effect.

So I modified the LANL logo for my slides and business cards, which is somewhat of a transgression. Well, today I can finally put the official LANL logo back on my slides and business cards, because they've axed the motto altogether. Humorously, their new design is basically identical to the one I generated (not that I'm some amazing graphic artist; it's the same logo just with the moto deleted).

They released a bunch of updated graphics for us to use and changed the business card design—sort of.... one of the available card designs still has the motto. I guess they're leaving an option open in case Pete wants to order some more cards.

Nina's dad hooked me up with a guest account on the MIT servers, which is actually just my old account reinstated. When I left MIT in May of 2005, they said they would take down my user account by the end of the year. The account stayed active until January 19th. When they closed the account, they apparently archived everything, including my bloated inbox. By the looks of it, I hadn't checked my email at MIT since September 25th.

I had accumulated over 5,500 emails between September 25th and January 19th, and about 5,400 of those were spam. Yowch. I didn't even bother looking through them to sort out the valid emails; I just nuked everything. If you sent me email at mit.edu last fall/winter and I didn't respond, I hope you figured it out by now.

Anyway, it's nice to have an account there again, as it gives me access to the library and journals, etc. Thanks Dick!

So the CDC recommends that people travelling to Belize be up-to-date on the following immunizations: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Malaria, Typhoid, Tetnus, Diphtheria, and Measles. Luckily, because of my Kazakhstan work, I'm already current in all of that except for Malaria.

Malaria is a desease that is common in tropical areas, but not in Kazakhstan. Now I need to get vaccinated for it, so I went over to Occ Med and had them fill me in on all of this. They spent the better part of an hour telling me about all the different stuff I needed to be sure I was immune to, the specific drug I would want for Malaria (Chloroquine), how to take it, etc. But they wouldn't give me a prescription. Because the travel is not lab-sponsored. The doctor said there was a liability issue if I had a reaction to the medication. Great.

And this is the kicker: She said that, if I were to go down there and get malaria, they would treat me at Occ Med as per my lab medical insurance. So... basically, if I get sick and it affects my time at work, they'll spend time, money, and effort to get me better. But they won't sign a piece of paper to allow me to get the preventative vaccination.

On the other hand... one of the nurses said that if I didn't get a yellow fever vaccine, they wouldn't let me back into the country. A second nurse told me that I didn't need the yellow fever vaccine at all for Belize. So maybe it's best that I have to go to the Los Alamos Medical Center anyway...