Bubbles in the Bathtub

I was extremely pleased to see that Maptool had been used to create maps for several of the presenations at the symposium. In particular, ALan Reese and Dimitris Margaritoulis had three posters with Maptool maps. Brendan had a bunch of very nice maps of turtle satellite tracks from West Africa. And Randall Arauz had some maps in a talk about TEDs which I missed unfortunately. Also saw a poster from Barbados that may have had a Maptool map (not sure because it wasn't cited). There may have been others that I missed. I'll try to provide links to these examples of how Maptool is being used when I get home so people can get some idea of what you can do with it.

In general I received good feedback from people. I was disappointed to see a variety of sub-standard maps in many posters and presentations. With Maptool freely available to all there's just no excuse.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sorry, we've gotten a bit behind. I always forget how busy things get once the symposium proper starts. No one has had time to blog. Here are some pics from the opening night social. I'd have to say the best entertainment I've seen yet at a symposium. The dragon dancers were fantastic and very entertaining.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

My wife asked an interesting question before I left for Kuala Lumpur. After hearing me talk about the much lower than usual number of registrations and all of the last minute cancellations, what did I think was the primary reason people weren't coming. I started to answer and realized that I didn't really know. I have heard different reasons from different people, mostly related to expense or safety (because of the current state of affairs in the world or the fact the Malaysia is predominantly muslin country, barely). I'm also guessing that many US goverment employees have had trouble securing permission and/or funding from their agencies to attend (mine wouldn't fund me but did officially allow my travel).

In any case, I would be interested in hearling from folks that would have normally attended the symposium. Why did you decide not to come? Post your answers in the comment field below (or click the comment link). Don't be shy. This could be an interesting exercise and helpful information for future symposia planning.

My personal feeling is that KL certainly isn't any more dangerous than being in Washington DC at the moment. So no concerns there. Malaysia is also very culturally diverse. Great pains seem to be taken here to be culturally sensitive to the large numbers people of mulsim, indian and asian descent. It appears to be as tolerant a place as I have been. The expense gave me a bit of pause, much more will come out of my own pocket than usual, but I think it will be well worth every penny. And it's certainly very cheap once you get here.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Solving the world's problems over breakfast

Arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur without issues. There tunred out to be about 8 or 9 turtleres on my flight. An added bonus was that we were able to put together a carpool from the airport to the hotel.

Getting settled into the hotel was not without issue. I'm rooming with Matthew and Brendan Godley. I was the first here and noticed that there was only one bed in our room (there were supposed to be three). I like these guys but not that much! Matthew was to arrive later that day (yesterday), so I called the front desk to have one sent up. Matthew arrived about midnight and still no extra bed, so we made do.

In the meantime I cleaned up from 30 hours of travel and noted that brown water was coming out of the tap. Not very appetizing. So I made a point to go down to the grocery store to get some bottled water (fortunately there is a 4 floor shopping complex under the hotel). It's probably ok, but why take chances.

Also had some issues getting online. I have a tollfree dial-up but that wasn't working for some reason. So I tried the internet cafe in the hotel lobby and their service was down. So no conneciton yesterday. Fortunately we wormed our way into a room upgrade today that included an in-room internest connection. Broadband (woo-hoo!). Now we are wired.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 05:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Five hours down, 20 to go.

I am safely ensconced at LAX waiting for my flight to KL via Taiwan. Actually, I'm waiting for a 1.5 MB file to finish sending over my laptop modem. Could be a while. I'd much rather be in the bar next door having a beer. Soon, soon...

Trip has been completely uneventful so far. I have to say that I like the new TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) employees much better than the old airport security. They are much more professional and courteous. It's the small things.

The next flight is still a couple of hours away, so the crowd is sparse in the waiting area. But it looks like there are already a couple of turtlers on this flight. Nobody I recognize as yet, they just "look" like turtlers...

Posted by Michael Coyne at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Packing and waiting for the taxi that will take me to the airport and then on to the symposium. And I am exhausted. All of the usual last minute items have cropped, plus a few extras. The short of it, I stayed up until 2am last night to finish a few things up using the logic that I can sleep on the plane. I leave today (wednesday) at 5pm and don't get to KL until 11am on Friday.

I'll need the first couple of days just to rest up for the symposium.

You'd think that after doing all this symposium stuff for a few years I'd have it down and things would get done a little more efficiently (perhaps they are and I've just taken on too many other things). I've cobbled together all kinds of lists and spreadsheets from the registration database, but I'm sure I've forgotten something. I'll realize it just as it's needed (or after), it will be a big emergency and everybody will be scrambling left and right to cover for it. On the upside, everything will work out in the end :)

Here's wishing good luck to all the intrepid travellers.

See you in KL!

Posted by Michael Coyne at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online registration has closed and I am in the process of tallying the final numbers. As of now there are 349 people registered representing 73 countries. A small but diverse group. I am extremely excited about the opportunity to spend more quality time with fewer people. Countries with at least 5 people registered:
99 United States (US)
24 Australia (AU)
14 Mexico (MX)
12 India (IN)
12 Malaysia (MY)
11 Vietnam (VN)
11 Indonesia (ID)
10 Costa Rica (CR)
9 Spain (ES)
8 United Kingdom (GB)
8 Venezuela (VE)
8 Japan (JP)
7 Italy (IT)
6 Oman (OM)
5 France (FR)
5 Uruguay (UY)
5 Netherlands (NL)
5 Brazil (BR)

Of note were 35 cancellations from the US. Not sure if that's more because of the extra expense of getting there or fears related to current global events.

Posted by Michael Coyne at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another rant. This one has been bugging me for a long time...

So I've just posted another 10 back-issues of the Marine Turtle Newsletter on the MTN website. That's all but about 10 issues of the MTN now available to the public, nearly 90 issues available RIGHT NOW...

FREE OF CHARGE

FULLY SEARCHABLE

WHAT A GREAT DEAL

So why the measely online donation rate? It's not cheap making stuff like this happen. Only $170 donated online so far this year. I'm pretty flummoxed on this one. I know people use the site. It has been one of the most visited resources on seaturtle.org over the years, closing in one 1 MILLION hits, 70 to 80 thousand in each of the last two months alone.

And best of all, the pending release of the celebrated 100th issue!

So what's going on? Why the apparent lack of support from the readership? Does anybody have any ideas?

Posted by Michael Coyne at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)