Getting back was the other half of the fun

My flight to Vancouver was delayed by three hours, and coming back was just as good.  First, I didn’t realize that you go through all of the customs stuff on the Canada side - good thing I have Global Entry!  Then I got pulled aside for random screening, which requires taking every electronic thing out of every case and turning it on, which required a de-Tetris of my bag, followed by a re-Tetris, so it was a good thing that the flight was delayed by a half hour. Then we boarded!  20 minutes after I’m in my seat, I look out the window to see the ground crew examining the bottom of the wing and the captain comes on to announce that they accidentally unplugged us from the terminal too early, and the resulting power failure wasn’t taken kindly by the instruments, so they need to reboot the plane.  O_o    We have our safety demos (four exits, and your closest may be behind you), but 20 minutes later we are still there. The captain  announces that they are doing some more instrument checks, and I hear the guy in front of me make the comment, “it’s like the key to the Subaru: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”  By this point the ground crew is looking bored.  Finally we push back from the gate and I’m hearing some sound effects that are like a large hydraulic something trying desperately to do something.  We taxi for a while, then pull off into a little corner so they can “work on an issue.”  We’re finally wheels-up at 1:16 - only an hour and a half late for this hour-and-three-quarters flight.  Once again I am thankful that I brought a sandwich for my short flight, and in this case, thankful that we made it.

On the plus side, I did enjoy the view. When I could see it. There was a lot of smoke from wildfires both in Canada and down in California.

This is the view as we are coming in to land.  Generally you would see the other end of the bridge and the entire East Bay:

Stanley Park in orange

Orange light because there are wildfires all over, but the trees here are still green. About an hour before sunset I looked directly at the sun, which was a red-orange ball. That tells you how much smoke is in the air. You don’t smell and taste it as much as you do in California, but you definitely feel it. It was a pretty walk, even if it was hard to breathe.

A long walk

After a week of sitting in conference sessions, I went for a walk. Over 8 miles, actually. I met up with a friend and we walked along the seawall that surrounds Stanley Park, stopping only for views and lunch and finally landing at a place that makes evil chocolate. A day well-spent!

Good night SIGGRAPH

It's been a blur but an awesome blur, and once again we come to the close of SIGGRAPH. On the plus side, some of the haze has cleared and I'm sticking around in Vancouver for a couple more days, and it turns out that so is a friend of mine. Hopefully we'll have good weather tomorrow and can get out and enjoy it! 

New glasses

Trying out a new look at SIGGRAPH. This so works. Also, you don't need progressive lenses since the eye tracking combined with focus-tunable lenses means that everything is on focus as soon as you look at it.  Plus you look cool.

Other highlights include a session on the robots of Laika - actually their collection of motion control rigs; Almost 50 of them in every conceivable size and shape - and the effects of Blade Runner.  

Ankle-deep in mud

The conference starts tomorrow so I had today to enjoy Vancouver, and a new moon means low tide so I headed for the beach. The tide went way out, and while Monterey has more anemones, Vancouver had lots of muscles, barnacles, kelp, and two nice starfish. Also some non-Newtonian mud: it's so saturated that you sink if you stay still, but if you move quickly enough you don't sink. 

The day was nicely overcast so I didn't burn, but after spending all day walking to and along the beach (I think a total of seven miles), I'm tired!

That is a slide and it is closed at low tide!

Running starfish

Getting there wasn't half fun

My under-two-hour flight to Vancouver for SIGGRAPH was delayed by three hours!  Well, first we were waiting to board, then they told us we were getting a different plane since ours was having mechanical issues (which is fun since it just landed and let off a whole load of people).  So we changed gates and waited. And waited. And waited. Then it finally gets there and we board. And then we wait, and wait, and wait. First the story was that they had a “manning problem” and there was no one to push us back from the gate, then it was that there was a piece of luggage without its owner and they had to remove that.  We finally took off an hour after we should have landed.

The flight was otherwise uneventful with good views of volcanos, but boy am I tired!

Two bands and four dancers

More scenes from the local concerts at the park near my house.  Great people-watching even if you don't like the music.  I usually get a spot in the shade next to the stage where there's good stuff to draw.