I Kidjo not!

Very few people know this, but I have danced on stage with Grammy winner Angelique Kidjo. It's true!

Buying airplane tickets on Virgin America makes me furious.

Buying airplane tickets on Virgin America makes me furious, especially when pricing games are being played.

I had to buy plane tickets in two separate transactions that would let two people fly separately on different days but fly back together on the same flight.

I opened up two different browsers (IE7 and Firefox) so any settings made in one browser wouldn't affect the other one. Using Kayak.com I found the cheapest airfare at Virgin America for both of our trips, clicked through , and entered my billing info. I then purchased one ticket for a great price ($175). Next, I completed buying the other ticket only to be told that my original cheap ticket selection ($169) was suddenly unavailable and the only option for the desired flight was $243! Every other flight for the day and time were still cheap at the same $169 price.

Could it be that I bought the last cheap ticket for the flight home when booking the first flight? Maybe Virgin America has some timer, counter, or cookie set so that a user can only get one deal per unit time and then sneakily be shown the expensive prices after the first ticket is bought?

I tried to get prices for Virgin America using both browsers, both using Kayak and by directly visiting the Virgin American website. The specific flight was still extra expensive. Ok, maybe the price is just high. Next, I tried a different computer and also found that the price for the specific flight was still high. Hmm... I'm still not satisfied since it seems awfully suspicious that that one particular flight is so expensive while all the others are cheap and that there are still plenty of seats left.

Where can I get a different IP address? All my computers are plugged into the same router and I think look like the same IP address to the outside world. Ah ha! I also have a wireless connection on my laptop, and the wireless network has a different set of IP addresses. I visited the Virgin America website using the wireless network and the prices were cheap again! I was right! I quickly bought the right ticket at the cheap price.

Just to retest my hypothesis, after buying my ticket I immediately went back and searched for the same flight again. Sure enough, the price for the specific times had skyrocketed from $169 to $243!Very sneaky. It's completely legal but I feel like the company is playing games with me. I would rethink about buying tickets with them in the future.

(On a related note, Amazon.com used to do variable pricing for their goods (depending on when and how often you viewed an item) and that really upset a lot of people. See http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/09/38622 for the story in detail.)

Shadow Puppet Theater

Last night I saw Printer's Devil Theater and Sgt. Rigsby & His Amazing Silhouettes presenting "A Boy in the Beastly City". This was a shadow puppet show and voice acting in one. Like a radio drama, it featured four voice actors sitting next to the screen in 40's clothing.

The story was loosely about a boy trying to find his lost pet monkey in the city. The humor was often Pythonesque, with non-sequiturs and intermittent complaint letters being read, as well as a couple of Benny Hill chase scenes. In some ways it felt like a 12-year-old had written it -- the story was all over the place and had juvenile humor -- but was contrasted by the beautiful set and great period costumes.


I love this kind of theater -- creative, unusual, and something off the beaten path.

HMS Endurance finds MV Explorer in the Antarctic

After the Titanic sank, it took decades before it was found. By comparison, the MV Explorer found just a few days ago, only a couple of months after it sank. What's astounding is that it is more than two-thirds of a mile below the surface.

From www.mod.uk
After an initial unsuccessful search earlier this month, Endurance revisited the area to carry out the systematic search of an area ten kilometres by five using the ship's advanced multibeam echosounder, which uses sound waves to create an accurate chart of the sea bed.

The seabed in the search area was flat and featureless, but a contact was detected at a range of 4,373m from the reported sinking position of the vessel. When compared to the reported sinking position of M/S Explorer this was broadly consistent with the direction of the prevailing current.

The wreck's position is at the northwest end of the Bransfield Strait, and was located at a depth of approximately 1,130 metres. The actual location is at 620 24.2929' south 570 11.7748' west. It was judged that the depth of the wreck showed that it presented no hazard to shipping. Apart from the oil slick, no debris was seen in the water and no debris was observed on any of the land in the vicinity of the wreck visited by personnel from HMS Endurance.

A side view of the M/S Explorer on the seabed created with HMS Endurance's multibeam echosounder
[Picture: Royal Navy]