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It is kind of time for another round of pictures from Hawaii. Since everyone prefer lava and since Hawaii in the only place in the world where tourists freely roam on an active volcano, only a few centimeters from glowing lava, I shall start with the pictures of my hikes on the Kilauea.

But first, since this is a geek's blog, I will do some technical rambling. Digital camera manufactures boast that their products can capture a large amount of megapixels. Is this any good for the user? I say hell no! I'll be talking trough my hat since I only used one digital camera seriously but I received enough pictures from others that I'm confident that what I say is true.

Do you recall those new parents who sent you an email with only a few pictures totaling several megabytes? Why do they do that? Don't they know that you are using a monitor that can't display such a large image? Do they expect you to zoom in on this youngling to convince yourself that its eyes are closed? Do they expect you to print this picture? A cheap printer with cheap paper can't match this resolution and sorry buddies, I won't take your pix to a print shop. I'm not saying that parent should not send emails with pictures, what I'm saying is: please, no pictures larger that 300k!

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Even though there is a lot to say about the CASS and about Oahu, I can't find the time to post updates. I will do a good summary when I can but this weekend was the field trip to Big Island and many asked for updates so here is a quick summary.

We left Oahu early Saturday morning. The inter-island flight is less than an hour, we just climb up, get a scenic view of all the islands and go down in the cloudy Hilo. Big Island is really young, less than a million years old. Erosion has only dug rocky rivers and there are waterfalls everywhere. We were ahead off our schedule so we had time to do hiking in the morning. Around Hilo there is heavy rain forest, as we climb up on the Mauna Kea we cross many different eco systems, from deciduous forest to shrub lands and tundra.

While getting acclimated at the Onizuka Station we went for a hike on cinder cones. The station is above most of the clouds, the view was breath taking. The oxygen lean air gave us a good buzz, a diluted preview of what to expect at the summit. We had the honor to get dinner at Halepauhaku, the small lodge where astronomers and support staff are hosted.

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