• "Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."
• "I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
• "My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."
• "I find that American & Scandinavian accents work better with women." In response to a question about the American accent of his synthesiser.
• "Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers."
• "My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."
• "To show this diagram properly, I would really need a four dimensional screen. However, because of government cuts, we could manage to provide only a two dimensional screen."
• "Life would be tragic if it weren't funny."
• "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."
• "Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."

How does the movie stack up? Let's start with the good points. The soundtrack was very well done and added quite a bit to the show. The voice talents include Lucy Lawless and Kiefer Sutherland. It's an hour and a half and does tell all the major plot points of the original story.

BUT. . . It gave me a headache to watch. Literally. The movie is animated, not live action, and the animation was "blurry". You could see double-lines and digital artifacts everywhere - as if whoever rendered the video had put it on a medium quality setting for some reason (my guess is to save space; the entire movie just fits on a single layer DVD, which would mean production costs would be cheaper). Even if the animation had been sharp, the quality of the animation compares to that of your average saturday morning cartoon. Again, i could live with that if the storyline were good enough. But that brings up the final point. All of the depth that made the books so good was completely lacking in the show. It was as if someone had written some cliffs notes on the book and then written the screenplay from that. It basically was like watching a book report. "The characters did this, then went here, this happened, etc ... etc..". The movie didn't draw you in, you didn't feel for the characters, the dialog was flat, and you really didn't get a sense of the epic scope that comes across in the books.

I really wanted to like this movie, but i'm afraid i can't recommend it to anyone. Thumbs DOWN. Fortunately i only paid a dollar to rent it instead of $18 to actually buy it.

First off, it appears that a local caving group has been hard at work cleaning up the cave. They've done sand blasting to remove tons of grafiti. They've mapped out several trails that you can use to guide yourself through the cave, and even posted it all online (see the link above).

Second, i took both Alex and Ellie with me, as well as my brother. I was worried that Ellie might not like it so much once we actually got inside, but she had a blast. We spent over three hours crawling around, sliding down steep inclines, using ropes to lower ourselves into vast rooms, squeezing through tight holes, and just generally having a blast.

And third, we actually have gps coordinates of the cave entrance now. I finally decided to take my gps and mark exactly how to get to the caves. Previously, i would just remember that i need to turn here, turn there, follow that dirt road, turn again at the fork, etc..etc.. So if anyone is planning to head out to the caves but isn't sure how to get there, ask me for directions. I'll be happy to let you know.

Oh, we also found a geocache very near to the entrance. In fact, it was almost in the same spot where we spotted the snake last month when we were out at the caves (that trip was simply to get the gps coordinates - we didn't have any caving gear with us at the time).