I cannot understand this one...

If Microsoft objects to pop-up from Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, I can understand.

This one I cannot.

Is the AI that is responsible?

Toyota is bullish on Hydrogen for energy and transport

Not without reason as I have enumerated many times in my posts. Toyota is doing research to use cow dung to produce Hydrogen . It plans to build America's first 100% renewable power plant in CA capturing dung from dairy farms to generate water, electricity and hydrogen.

Use of cow dung to produce Methane is not new and is being adopted in many countries including India. But Toyota's will be high tech venture to produce hydrogen to power its autos that run on Hydrogen. The Toyota plant Tri_Gen is projected for 2020 in Long Beach where it is testing its zero-emission, hydrogen-cell powered semi-truck that can total daily 200 miles.

Here is a picture of the truck from the first link above:

Read more about this at the above link.

Merry Christmas 2017

Aloha

Hope to post more in coming years....

Keep fit and look forward to great things.

Video of historic moment: Tax Bill

Chinese ES8 competes comfortably with TESLA's Model X

Model X is not a sexy name for a car. Besides that China (NIO) has come up with an electric SUV which is just 50% of Model X. The model is called ES8, also not very attractive.

ES8 looks OK just looking at a picture on a web page. The cheaper price is due to a mega subsidy.
This is what NIO founder William Li said,
"
 "Maybe Tesla will sell less...after our product is out. Or probably, because the whole market is growing, they will still maintain growth in sales. It's hard to say."
Here are images of ES8 from an MSN site.

Chinese ES8 competes comfortably with TESLA's Model X


Picture and Video from Tesla site:

Self driving car from TESLA

"

2017 Tax Bill Passeth

Yes. It passeth. All GOP for it and none of the Democrats.

Almost done deal.

 It is done now. Look for increases in your pay pockets!

Would rich get richer?     ---->Christmas Gift
Would poor get poorer?
Deficit, UP or DOWN?

Ravello, the picturesque town that inspired Wagner

After a delightful morning in Amalfi and lunch we started on our next visit for the day, a visit to Ravello. The bus takes less than 20 minutes to reach from Amalfi. Ravello is long associated with Moors (who ruled Sicily and Sardinia), and Moorish art and architecture. The towers and the Moorish arches still exist to remind us of the past.

We arrived around 2 PM and the sun was bright with few clouds. We entered through Via Rufolo and spent some time in the garden. There were flowers, but it was off peak. The view of the mountains and the sea was grand. We walked through Villa Rufolo and the exit opens into the piazza. The Cathedral is the center piece of the piazza.

Panoramic Picture of the Cathedral in the Piazza by Raymond Austin, 2017.

The façade of the Cathedral is without too much decoration, but the main brass door seems to date back to Byzantium and the interior is supposed to be very nice with a beautiful pipe organ. The pulpit sits atop six columns on lion back.

The coffee at the restaurant in the Piazza was very good.

Source : http://www.italianways.com/the-pulpit-in-ravellos-cathedral-and-a-medieval-mona-lisa/

We did not elect to go inside as we had perhaps less than 2 hours before getting back to hotel.  Ravello is also known for its cameo and coral works and we managed to peek into one of them.

Looking away from the Cathedral in the pizza, one can get a glorious view of the Gulf of Salerno. It is indeed better looking than any of its photographs. With just the right sun and the cloudless sky the view presented to us was fabulous.

Ravello has been the home of merchant class who built up the city. It has become the center of art and music in recent times and we missed seeing the auditorium built by Oscar Meyer of Brazil.

Scenes of Ravello:

Ravello has attracted the rich and the famous over a long period from the likes of Boccaccio to Tennessee Williams, and Wagner seems to have finalized Parsifal on which he had worked for many years after he visited the Rufolo Gardens that inspired him his magical garden, Klingsor.

These are some of the notable visitors/Ravello residents (Wikipedia and other sources):

Maurits Cornelis Escher

Giovanni Boccaccio

Richard Wagner

Virginia Woolf

Greta Garbo

Andre Gide

Joan Miro

Truman Capote

Tennessee Williams

Graham Greene

Jacqueline Kennedy

Leonard Bernstein

Henrik Ibsen

Sara Teasdale

Poem by Sara Teasdale:

Title: To E

I have remembered beauty in the night,

Against black silences I waked to see

A shower of sunlight over Italy

And green Ravello dreaming on her height;

I have remembered music in the dark,

The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,

And running water singing on the rocks

When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more

Than a vague prelude to the thought of you –

You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

And when I think of you, I am at rest.

A visit to the beautifual Amalfi Coast in Italy

September 20: It was a beautiful day in Maiori. We boarded a ferry at Maiori wharf to cruise along the Amalfi coast and visit Amalfi.

Amalfi Coast Boat ride:

After disembarking from the boat at the Amalfi wharf Katia (tour director) marched us through the portals of the city.

Named after a nymph who was in love with Hercules and buried here as the legend goes, Amalfi of former maritime glory being one of the four maritime republics (Genoa, Amalfi, Venice and Pisa) is a coastal town of what is called Costeira Amalfiana. Amalfi commanded the position as a major maritime force in the past but is now history. Traders from as far as Arabia, India and China appeared to have traded with Amalfians. Present day Amalfi is a well-known tourist attraction teeming with folks from all over the world.

It was the English aristocracy who came and enjoyed their time in former times , and now even folks like us can come and enjoy.

We could see the imposing cathedral as soon as we entered the town and St. Andrew’s statue was right next to it. We also had access to a local guide provided by Smithsonian Journeys who explained the history of Amalfi; the various details of the Cathedral and how it was modified couple of times; and the history of St. Andrews’ relics buried in the Cathedral.

We walked around the Amalfi town visiting the town square learning the architectural style of the Cathedral; the structure of the city with hidden lodgings carved into the mountain for people to hide for periods of time during enemy invasion and how maritime history came to an end and tourism began.

Katia also took us to see the network of passageways threaded into the mountains where folks hid from enemy eyes during enemy incursions into the city. We also visited a small chapel in one of these grottos maintained by a lady of advanced years where children were collected and cared for during the enemy incursions.

Coastal scenery; boats and ships in the ocean; colorful landscape; embarking / disembarking tourists; picturesque houses precariously perched on the vertiginous mountain slopes; lemon farming on terraces on the mountain slopes; gives Amalfi a unique appeal shared by other coastal towns in the same region like Sorrento and Positano which we will be visiting soon. Amalfi is one of several coast towns in this region included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

We then visited Museum of Paper. The Museo Do Papel De Amalfi, the 14tth Century, oldest surviving paper making facility in Amalfi is certainly worth a visit. It is still in working condition producing the Bambagina paper much valued in Europe and elsewhere. The guides here are truly professional and explained its history; the various engineering pieces bringing water from mountain top to the cisterns; the hydraulic system driving the water wheels of the factory; and how the paper was made.

One of our fellow traveler was able to demonstrate paper making by picking the paper slurry and putting it on a drying cylinder. You can buy the Bambagina paper besides other kinds of paper in the museum shop.

Walking tour of Amalfi:

There are objects of the bygone maritime era in museums such as the Museo Civico.  Right next to it was the 'Emerald cave' which we missed.

We also walked by an imposing war memorial marked for the years 1935-1945.

It was past noon when we had lunch at this very nice water front restaurant called Marina Grande. The food was excellent and the service, a little slow, getting the bill slower, but OK.

After lunch we go visit Ravello.

Ci vediamo più tardi a Ravello!

Scenes from road trip: Napoli, Italy to Maiori, Italy

September 19: Naples to Maiori via Vietri and Cetara

This is officially our first day of the trip. We arrived in Naples from CDG, Paris in a small plane. The Security check at CDG was slow and tortuous. The flight from Seattle to CDG was of course not so comfortable.

Naples is a small airport, appears more like a bus terminal than an airport. The toilets are on level 0 at one end of the airport while you disembark at the other.

Our tour director, Katia was waiting at the airport. We waited for about an hour or more after disembarking to wait for the group members who were arriving later than ourselves. Finally, Katia collected the whole group minus few others who were arriving much later to the waiting bus. As the bus cannot pick up the passengers right at the airport we dragged our suitcases to the bus couple of minutes away at the location reserved for tourist buses.

We started on our day 1 of the trip moving from Naples to a town called Maiori some 65 KMs away on the Amalfi coast. We mostly travelled on the highway to Maiori via the towns, Vietri Sul Mare and Cetara (review the map). After ramping out of the highway you will be basically travelling on a road that hugs the mountains and you get your first glimpse of the Mediterranean. Our hotel was located at Maiori on the Amalfi coast (Costiera Amalfiana) on a road that runs along the coastline. Most of the towns on this coast are World Heritage Sites.

The hotel, Hotel SanFrancesco where we would be staying in Maiori was not quite what I expected. It did not quite match with the website picture taken in the night. When we arrived in the middle of the day, it was quite different. This is not to say, it was not good. The room was quite spacious with clean linen and windows that open to the sea; hot water really hot; and a working Wi-Fi reasonably fast. The hotel staff spoke fair amount of English and were friendly. The breakfast, although not quite what you would expect in an American hotel, was adequate. Coffee was not to my taste. I always asked for 'Cafe Americano' as I like a lot of coffee. Cafe Cappuccino was very popular with our group.

Actually, the hotel had a charming previous century décor.  The whole suit was tiled, floor and all. It had ornate, gilt light fittings together with a non-working jacuzzi(?) sans curtains. Taking a shower turned out to be quite a challenge.

The view looking out of the room was glorious. You could touch the blue sea if only you can forget the road in between. The weather was perfect.

There is a small restaurant/bar across the street in thee beach jointly operated by the Hotel and run by a man and his wife (I heard). Food was quite good, and he even gave us our first taste of Limoncello. Looks like it is offered after the meal as a digestivo, a tradition along the Amalfi Coast. It had a lemony taste, sweet with some strong liquor, perhaps Grappa. It was on the house and I enjoyed every sip of it, but my wife who does not drink thought that it was lemon juice but later commented that it was too strong and highly intoxicating.

In the evening we had an orientation/introduction meeting in the veranda of the hotel outside. The day was waning, and the air was colder. After all the introductions over a glass of bubbling wine, Katia gave us the highlights of our schedule in the coming days and things that we should remember. She mentioned that the best way to convert money was at a post office where you get the best exchange rate, or withdraw from an ATM. We later found that most establishments accepted credit cards including American Express, if the value was over 10 or 15 Euros.

Following this meeting we had our first group dinner and Smithsonian Journeys had arranged for us to get vegetarian dishes sometimes including fish. There was plenty of wine as we were in a region famously known for its wine.  This day happened to be the birthday of one of our group members and this was first of the many more birthdays to come. Of course, there was the birthday cake, candles and ‘Happy Birthday to you’.

The pictures in the slides taken from inside the bus shows the cities and scenery from Naples to Maiori; the hotel we stayed and some happy moments celebrating the birthday.

Look forward to my account of Day 2…