We had an amazing trip to South America, but it is so nice to be home again. A few small luxuries I missed while in Peru for 33 days: safe drinking water, reliable hot water, toilet seats, being able to flush toilet paper. Two of my new favorite fruits are granadillas (gelatinous, pulpy passionfruit) and shimbillo (sweet seed pod fruit). I kind of wish I could live in Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu town), which has natural thermal baths and serves as the gateway to the famous Inca ruins of Machu Picchu.

Lima, the capital and largest city, is the hub of travel to anywhere in Peru, so we were there on four separate occasions. We spent the weirdest Christmas ever in the dirty jungle city of Pucallpa (including a breathtaking 360 degrees of fireworks at midnight on Christmas Eve). We spent New Year’s Eve in Lima (including dinner in Barranco in a 1909 train car with stained glass cathedral windows and wood paneling, and dangerous seaside fireworks in Miraflores).

I have almost 3,000 photos to sort through. My girlfriend is already posting her photos to Flickr, but it may take me forever to do the same. Back in Oregon, our cats definitely gained weight while we were in Peru. Even Tanuki looks chubby now. Emotional eating? Or sheer laziness plus unlimited food? Reminds me of this classic A Softer World comic.

Below is an outline of some of the places we visited. I have a journal full of handwritten notes, and there are many stories to tell, but this trip outline is all I can manage at the moment. After a weekend of recovery, I was thrust back into my pre-vacation work life today. The profound culture shock of being back in my own country—and having to return to my desk, in an office with no windows, where I stare at a computer screen for eight hours each day—is deeply troubling.

The Inca Empire: December 4-13

• Lima
• Puno/Lake Titicaca/Uros floating islands/Taquile Island
• Puca Pucará/Raqchi
• Cusco
• Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu
• Sacred Valley (Písac/Urubamba/Ollantaytambo)
• Cusco/Sacsayhuamán
• Lima

The Amazon jungle: December 13-31

• Lima
• Pucallpa
• Yarinacocha Lake/Puerto Callao/La Jungla
• San Francisco de Yarinacocha (Shipibo village)
• Pucallpa
• Lima

The high desert: December 31-January 6

• Lima
• Nasca/Nazca Lines
• Arequipa
• Lima

By the way, 2011 was the 100th anniversary of Machu Picchu’s “discovery.” And it was the first year of the Nazca Lines-inspired Peru’s New Brand. I love Peru’s new logo.

The terrible Auto-Tuned music

As a bonus, here are some dance-pop songs I remember hearing endlessly and unavoidably on Peruvian radio (mainly CPN Radio 90.5 FM Lima) while traveling. We were subjected to these Auto-Tuned sounds during all hours of the day, especially in Pucallpa. Sak Noel produces music even worse than Rebecca Black songs. Some things can’t be unheard. I ended up liking a few of these songs, possibly due to Stockholm Syndrome. This is music to rot your brain. The last video is a Shipibo song from the Amazon jungle. Listen to them all in this YouTube playlist: “Peru loves Auto-Tuned dance-pop music.”

• Michel Teló: Ai Se Eu Te Pego
• Sak Noel: Paso (The Nini Anthem) and Loca People (What The Fuck)
• LMFAO: Party Rock Anthem
• Joey Montana: La Melodia
• Usher (featuring Pitbull): DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love
• Pitbull: Give Me Everything
• Farruko: Pa Romper La Discoteca and Hola Beba
• J. Álvarez: Junto Al Amanecer and Regalame Una Noche
• Plan B: Si No Le Contesto and Es Un Secreto
• Black Eyed Peas: The Time (Dirty Bit)
• Shakira (featuring Pitbull): Rabiosa
• Jennifer Lopez (featuring Pitbull): On The Floor
• Jay-Z (featuring Alicia Keys): New York
• Britney Spears: Till The World Ends
• Katy Perry: Firework and California Gurls
• And we also heard this from some Shipibo friends:
  Los Shipis: Ishtontani Amenwe

Why is Pitbull, a Cuban-American rapper, sneering and barking on almost every track that gets played in Peru? Some things we can never know. If you’re really in love with this kind of music, check out the PERÚ Top 100 for more pop inspiration.

More updates and pixel art

For more regular updates, you may want to follow me on Twitter. Also, check out my recent Peru-themed 8-bit pixel art at Mascot Mashup.

Dogs and cats

This video is kind of awesome: Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog. Poor dog.

At last. My life is now complete: When poodles turn into peacocks (12 pictures). Sigh.

Oh no: How to properly massage a cat.

This is a cute kitten (on a weird Japanese TV show): Kitten eyebrows.

Movies

The new and upcoming movies below are all on my “To See” list.

• Check out the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
• I guess I’ll need to watch “Alice” out of morbid curiosity. (This is the Syfy miniseries, not the Tim Burton movie.) Weird.
• This might be good: Leap. At least it caught my eye.
• The latest Miyazaki film Ponyo should be amazing, once I get around to seeing it, right? Wait. Why do they play the dubbed version of Ponyo in U.S. theaters? Dammit, Disney. Apparently this song (in Japanese) mutated into this awful English version. Horrifying. Also, the boy singer is named Noah Cyrus . . . is that Miley’s brother?! Oh no, there are more of them! Why doesn’t he sound like he’s been drinking whiskey his entire life as well? And the girl is the sister of the Jonas Brothers. What?! No! Sorry, guys, but I have to go die now. If you hear an Auto-Tuned scream in the distance, that was me. Miyazaki!

Check out this cool movie blog: Three Frames.

Photography and randomness

I enjoyed this tomato-themed photo journal: “This Town Is Red All Over.”

Personal photography note: I currently have a backlog of photos to upload to my Flickr account. But no, I haven’t abandoned my “365 Days” photo project. I’m still taking at least one photo every day. I’ve just gotten lazy about taking them off of my camera. Plus, there was a whole glut of praying mantis photos from August 19 that I wanted to sort though. That’s the bottleneck that started my apathy about uploading. Someday I’ll catch Flickr up.

Speaking of Flickr, these are some nice photos: X-Ray Funnies (mainly X-ray shots of gaming consoles).

I was amused by this crazy, over-the-top video game trailer: “New Serious Sam HD trailer is the best trailer ever.” I think it works for the jaded, demented consumers demographic.

This site is kind of awesome: Truck Spills. I like the Doritos spill on the beach.

Here is some YouTube video evidence that Zach Galifianakis may be the best young comedian alive: appearing as a 1700s comedian on the Comedians of Comedy stand-up comedy tour, as himself on The Michael Showalter Showalter (for CollegeHumor.com), and as Seth Galifianakis on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Also, here’s another 8-bit cover album! Kind of Bloop is an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.

I love the last panels of these Comixed entries: Good at his job, It was an “accident” and Khan hates spoilers. I can’t wait to not watch “Heroes” when it starts up again. No, I probably will. No! It’s terrible . . . and yet.

Worms, insects and gardening

Here are three cool articles on worms and insects:

• “Journalist hunts for acid-spitting Mongolian death worm“
• “Zombie Ants Controlled by Fungus“
• “Pesticide potency can depend on bug’s clock” or “Biological Clocks Of Insects Could Lead To More Effective Pest Control“

In related gardening news, vegetable gardeners can plant in August and September for a tasty payoff this fall and winter: “Salad days of fall and winter.”

Science!

Cool: “Mysterious Origins: 8 Phenomena That Defy Explanation.”

Really? “Science ponders ‘zombie attack’.” I hope they were using federal grant money for this zombies study. In other news, “still no cure for cancer” (as people used to always post at Fark.com for seemingly frivolous or obvious research).

Music

I’ve heard of a lot of good stuff via Stereogum lately. Below are a few notable bits.

• Was recently made aware of this tasty remix: “MGMT – Electric Feel (Justice Remix).”
• Nice: “New Tiësto (Feat. Tegan & Sara) – “Feel It In My Bones” (Stereogum Premiere).”
• New Massive Attack song and EP: “Splitting The Atom.”
• Enjoyed this: “Old Folks Review Radiohead.”

I’ve been doing much listening to an mp3 playlist I made of artists I plan to see at Bumbershoot in a little less than two weeks. In Bumbershoot-related news, this video by Oren Lavie is really cool. I sent some new Metric stuff to a friend of mine and he recommended the Submarines (Apple haters beware) back to me.

Here are some other random bands I’ve been listening to lately: Rasputina (see “1816, TheYear Without a Summer“), Get Shakes (see “Sister Self Doubt“), Shy Child, The Boggs (see “Arm In Arm (Shy Child Remix)“) and so on.

There’s also this comedic greatness: “The 7 Best Literal Music Videos Of All Time.”

Movies and randomness

This is an awesome short film: Moments by Will Hoffman. Four minutes of life.

Are you interested in the modern history of cinematic nudity? IMDb posted the results of the poll. The full top-100 list is at Mr. Skin (NSFW).

Check out this cool time-lapse of LEGOS: 8-bit trip.

Watch this video: Little Kid Teaches You To Park. Kind of awesome. Wait for it.

The following is for my future reference when I need car repairs. How to keep mechanics honest: “Pricing Car Repairs, Before the Repairs.” See RepairPal for an estimate of how much a specific car repair should cost where you live. Nice.

What is greasy, downscale, industrialized and aggressively unhealthy? This article holds the answer: “Who Won the Recession? McDonald’s.” I just liked the “aggressively unhealthy” part. Aggressively anything, really.

Web technology

This was good for a chuckle: 56K Modem Emulator.

Interesting ideas to browse through: “50 Chrome Experiments and counting!”

Here’s a useful URL-unshortener tool: Long URL Please extension for Firefox.

Lastly, I am planning to install hacked firmware for my Canon camera at some point. This is one: CHDK for PowerShot A650 IS. Also, I may experiment with this fanciness someday: High-Speed Shutter & Flash-Sync. All in the pursuit of better quality photography and more interestingness, hopefully.

I’ve browsed through a number of non-Flickr sites lately that have provided excellent inspiration for my own photography projects. Here are some:

• Scott Wade’s Dirty Car Art Gallery
• “Rubik’s Cube Sandwich,” which I plan to make someday (but with different, more colorful fruit and vegetable ingredients)
• James D. Griffioen’s photo sets, including Feral Houses
• “Gallery: Inside Alaska’s Answer to Area 51“
• The Ruins of New York
• The ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which still has an actively burning Silent Hill-style mine fire (also see Johnny Blough’s Centralia set on Flickr)
• Russian plastinochnye (record) collages

Weeds, fruits and vegetables

I will probably want to refer to this article later. From The Oregonian: “Get rid of those weeds once and for all.”

This list by the Environmental Working Group will help you decide what produce is the most important to buy organically grown: “The Full List: 47 Fruits & Veggies.”

I’m thinking about trying some Vegiforms-type molds for my garden vegetables next year. Who doesn’t love novelty vegetables with little faces? These clear plastic forms are very similar to how the Japanese create square watermelons for easy refrigerator storage and stacking.

Technology and gaming

Cool: “Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH.”

Amanita Design’s Machinarium looks amazing: “Machinarium has become too gorgeous.”

Insect technology

I found this fascinating: “Hacking a remote-controlled moth with insect venom.”

Cats and baby animals

He’s quite the cat: “Pet cat catches the daily bus for four years.”

Need to replace your toilet? Make your next one a toilet-tank aquarium: Fish ‘n Flush.

Lastly, here are three more of of these blogs: FYBA, Item Not As Described and Probably Bad News.

We spent most of Saturday afternoon in Darkside Cinema at the da Vinci Film Festival encore.

I loved the feature documentary In Pursuit of Panama by first-time filmmakers and lifelong friends Garrett Martin and Ryan Swan. The film is Kerouac-like, both genuine and inspiring. It’s a truly funny, coming-of-age story about a seven-country road trip that starts in Corvallis, Oregon. I definitely recommend it, if you can find it. (Personal sidebar: The experience of watching it approximated the feel I wanted to create with my first novel . . . that I never actually finished.) See the trailer at their website.

More movies

Last weekend I also watched Timecrimes, which was very good and reminded me of Primer. I love the exploration of time-travel paradoxes. See other films I’ve rated and reviewed at Filmometer.com.

Here is some interesting news: “Neuromancer movie in the works (no, really this time!).” The attached director is Joseph Kahn. You may know him as the director of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and “Stronger” music videos. As well as Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” . . . and a Blink-182 music video . . . and a horrible feature with Ice Cube called Torque . . . and . . . I am afraid. I really want Neuromancer to be awesome.

On that note: “After Watchmen, What’s ‘Unfilmable’? These Legendary Texts.”

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus received a standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival this May but has not yet been picked up for U.S. distribution. Read more: “Terry Gilliam’s Final Cut for Heath Ledger and Imaginarium.”

The Orwellian satire Visioneers starring Zach Galifianakis looks very interesting as well.

It’s refreshing that Michael Bay has progressed to this current point in his career, where he’s willing to be a parody of himself. He’s really become the ultimate artist the postindustrial world has been waiting for. See: Verizon Commercial – Michael Bay EXTENDED. Groan.

Browsing the Web from 10,000 feet

This is very cool: Pixamix. It’s an experiment that reduces any site to its core color mood (i.e., giant pixels of color).

Resignation

Vanity Fair edits Palin’s bizarre, incoherent resignation speech into publishable shape: “Palin’s Resignation: The Edited Version.” Wow.

Ice cream

Will they succeed in making ice cream fall from the sky like snow? Check it out: “The Cloud Project Would Theoretically Make Ice Cream Fall Like Snow.”

I am reminded of a few weeks ago when I ate Cold Stone ice cream that melted into JELL-O pudding (mentioned here and here on Twitter). That was fun.

Flickr and Creative Commons images

Earlier today on Twitter I also noted that I am trying to deal with social media overload. I should probably evaluate how I use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, FriendFeed, etc. What I really want is to manage them all more easily with my OpenID.

I add new photos to my Flickr profile on a daily basis now, as part of my “365 Days” photo project.

In related news, I found this cool photo set on Flickr: New York 1940’s.

Here’s a handy new Google Image Search feature: “Find Creative Commons images with Image Search.”

Web fonts and typography

It would be great if better typography was available for the Web, but IE doesn’t support @font-face. Cufón and FontJazz seem nice. I’m not a big fan of sIFR or FLIR, though I understand why they were developed originally. I’m not sure about the licensing and distribution model of Typekit. Only foundries that agree to a web-only font linking license will have hosted fonts supplied via the Typekit CDN.

This is a nice overview of four methods: “Font-ificating: Delivering Web-Native Fonts.” For more information on Cufón see this article: “Use Whatever Font You Please On WordPress.” For many fonts you can download, see broble.com Font Sharing.

AJAX web development

These sites and articles have come in handy for me during the past few months, for a few different AJAX-enabled sites I’ve built:

• jQuery UI
• AjaxDaddy
• “37+ Great Ajax, CSS Tab-Based Interfaces” at Noupe.com
• “50+ Nice Clean CSS Tab-Based Navigation Scripts” at Hongkiat.com
• “10 Javascript Ajax Tabs” at TutorialBlog.org
• Ajax Tabs Content Script at DynamicDrive.com

Here are some pages I found useful during some Internet Explorer-related AJAX fury last month:

• “IE and ‘Operation Aborted’” from Clientcide
• “Attaching JavaScript functions to the Window OnLoad event” from Thought Bytes blog
• innerHTML Property from MSDN
  

Eudora, Penelope extension and Thunderbird

April 8, 2009 is still the most recent release date of Eudora 8 (8.0.0b6) and Penelope (0.5a3). The Penelope extension works with Thunderbird 3.0b1 or higher. To sum things up: Three years later, Eudora 8 is still in beta. It is currently based on the Thunderbird 3.0b2 source code and comes packaged with an alpha version of the Penelope extension (which gives it that “Eudora” feel). Compelling. At this rate we may never have a final version of Eudora 8.

Oregon Country Fair

I will be attending the Oregon Country Fair near Veneta on Sunday. One highlight should be The Nowhere Band performing The Beatles’ White Album in its entirety for the 40th anniversary celebration. The Oregon Country Fair got its start in July 1969, a month before a little event called Woodstock happened in New York.

I’ll post some amusing and random pop culture links tomorrow.