Category: travel

various travels

it’s like having christmas twice

We’ve just returned from Christmas in Texas, which we capped off with a Utah ski adventure. It was a complete vacation. Besides exchanging a few emails, I didn’t do a lick of work the whole time I was gone. I did, however, manage to bowl over a hundred (in real life, second time ever). I think I owe a lot more to Marc’s coaching expertise than any intuition gained in Wii bowling. If someday I can make the ball go where I want consistently, maybe I can put that knowledge to use.

bowling scores

Not only this, but I survived three days of snowboarding in Utah with no serious injuries, which for me is always a success. Again I have Marc to thank for conceiving the trip and making our condo a home, and Matt for tackling the logistics of where, when, and how much. Here we are in the tunnel they’ve drilled through the mountain at Snowbird so you can get to the backside without waiting for the Gondola:

snowbird tunnel

And, as if all of this isn’t enough, I also decided not to try to publish my latest research in SIGGRAPH, but to wait instead for a later conference deadline. Which means that instead being greeted in Berkeley maelstrom of stress, I’ll instead be able to ease back into work as is proper after such an excellent break.

siggraph: electronic theatre and the tale of the giant head

I got back last night from Boston. A long day of travel, but not too terrible. Since I last checked in with you, the rest of SIGGRAPH managed to happen, so maybe I’ll share a bit about that. Monday night was the Electronic Theatre, a showcase of a bunch of recent cool computer animations. One neat thing they had going on was that they gave each person in the theatre (probably about 2000 people total) a little reflective stick that had green on one side and red on the other:

reflective sticks

There were cameras mounted at the front that counted the number and location of each color. The point was that by showing red or green, you could vote to control the action of games shown on the big screen. They started with the Guinness-certified world’s largest etch-a-sketch, though the results were less than stellar:

reflective sticks

Things heated up with pong though. It was left side of the theatre versus right, and being right in the middle I took up the role of journalist. See an entire point played by the room here.

Wednesday morning I gave the talk. Things seemed to go off without a hitch, though my phone went off in my pocket about 5 minutes in with an alarm reminding me not to miss my talk, which threw me for a loop for about 30 seconds. Because this is quite possibly the only time I’ll give a talk like this, I got one picture before the session of my view (though really I couldn’t see anything because of the lights they had on me):

speaker's view

And finally a shot me in the act of “talking” or whatever the right verb is. Probably the biggest version of my head that will ever exist.

big head!

So with the talk over, I had several good questions, some meeting with people after the sessionand it seemed like the general consensus was that everything went fine. I’m told that the videos elicited both “oohs” and “ahs.” I made my way from the hall to decompress by watching about 3 hours of animation theatre, which ended with our clip. It was fun to see it on the big screen in full 1080p glory.

Wednesday night most everyone was done with talks so we went out to celebrate. Luckily for us we ended up at the EA party which not only had tons of free food and bowling, but an open bar. This was a nice change from the typical $7 beers you encounter in conference land. So we all drank a bit too much and I shamed my self (and my great mentor, Marc) by bowling one of the worst games of my life. Thursday was sleeping in and flying home, and now here I am. Three SIGGRAPHs under my belt–how many more await me?

siggraph: the arrival

Well SIGGRAPH remains much as I had remembered it, in each of its previous incarnations, scattered across the US but essentially unchanged wherever it wanders. A huge conference center, brimming with people, all smiling and excited about this new-fangled computer graphics stuff. I didn’t get too much accomplished today–mostly picking up my badge sitting around, and practicing my 50 second spiel for “fast forward,” a session where all 90 papers are presented one a minute in a frenetic quest to… well I’m not actually why they do it. Although I couldn’t see from the stage because of the blinding lights they shined on me I’m told that my schtick (okay I’m out of yiddish now) went over quite well. The idea was, since we have the word “dynamic” in our paper’s title to sell it microsoft style with buzzwords and all. I even whipped up a pretend “box-shot” as they call it in the business:

fake product box shot

You’re all in stitches right? I kill me. Fast forward was held in the mighty “Hall C,” capacity >3000. This is significant because it’s also the hall where I’m giving my talk on Wednesday:

siggraph hall image

It’s my fervet hope that the hall will be mostly empty for the actual talk. The night was rounded out at a pub, of which there are many, many, many of in downtown boston. They had Hoegaarden on tap, so I was satisfied. I’m now back at the hotel, early to bed on account of the four hours of sleep I got last night. Hopefully tonight will prove more bountiful.

belize: the arrival, caye caulker

After what was probably the best layover of our lives in Dallas with Leslie’s parents, including two great meals, Cameron and Matt, and Murphy, we left on Sunday for Belize. We got extra early to the airport, which was deserted, ended up all seated together in an exit row, and watched Pride and Prejudice for the three hour flight. Then we had a painless run through immigration and customs, and quick taxi ride to Belize City where we caught a water taxi to Caye Caulker. The ride took maybe 30 minutes, with nice, dramatic clouds everywhere. We were greeted on the island by Amanda, whose house we’re staying in. The island is so beautiful, laid back, perfect. The motto: Go Slow.

Go Slow!

Check out the gallery for all the pics from the first day. Today we’re heading out for our first day of diving, the camera is all prepped and ready to go. We’ll probably upload those pics tonight while we sleep.

weekend in the snow

A friend from Apple invited us out to spend the weekend in Bear Valley, in the Sierra Nevadas between Yosemite and lake tahoe. Day one was skiing (I actually did ski, instead of snowboarding, to see if I could remember how). The snow was amazing! Feet of soft powder everywhere:

I had never been in anything like it, looking down and seeing my knees disappear into the snow as I went along. Day two was sledding and snow-shoeing and general playing in the snow.

It was awesome. Check out all the pictures in the usual place.

texas again

It’s amazing after having been away from Austin for 1.5 years until this thanksgiving that I should be back only a month later. We only had a day down there, leaving yesterday morning from Dallas and turning right back around today to head back. Still, the trip was worth it. We saw some of the development that’s been going on downtown (including a visit to the huge new Whole Foods on lamar, it’s like the IKEA of hippie food or something). We also had the chance to spend some quality time with my parents, who had us over for dinner on Friday (ham, yum). We also exchanged gifts, although Jeff wasn’t there (he’s in SoCal with Sophie and her family) it was still nice to get to sit around and talk a bit.

The most amazing thing happened last night–an old friend of mine got a bunch of other old friends from high school together in some random bar east of 35. It was quite a crowd… something that hadn’t coalesced at least since ’99 (6 years ago? Really?). It was great to talk to people I hadn’t seen for so long, and I really hope that lines of communication that were reopened last night will survive.

Now it’s 24 Dec, and I’ve still got quite a bit of time (8 days!) away from SIGGRAPH to look forward to, including 4 bopping around NYC, which should be a blast. We’ve been using the new fancy camera we bought, so expect some pics on gallery soonish.