Josh Deprez

End of WWDC: Let’s Party

So I have mehfforted on the blogging for the past couple of days; it started on Wednesday when I decided that I really didn’t have much to talk about (WWDC content being under a certain agreement whereby I can’t tell you the content) so since that took up most of each day, it seemed worthless to post about it.

Now it is Sunday night, so I have plenty of content I can tell you about. (This is also the post I am “treating myself to” for successfully upgrading WordPress manually.)

Wednesday night was party night 2: Andrew broke his arm (but he’s all better now!) and we had lots of fun with internet celebrities, developers, free food, the Apple Store, and the homeless. After hours of amazing sessions at WWDC, we headed to the San Francisco Apple Store for CocoaHeads; between arriving and the event, however, we spent the time vacillating over whether to purchase new computers, and messing with the MacBooks on display.

CocoaHeads was as informative as it was refreshing. Three talks that I was keen on being there for were given by infamous entrepreneur Wil Shipley, the talented Sofa guys, and the brains trust behind Cappucino, 280 North. I succeeded in capturing Wil Shipley’s blurry, tuxedoed silhouette on iPhone camera as he spoke to nearby geeks

Wil Shipley is so fast, you need an iPhone 3G S just to photograph him without blur!

After CocoaHeads, we headed out to the Cloud Made party, which made for an interesting night, but first, here is a photo of a store we passed on the way:

Rasputin Music & DVD store

Rasputin, lol.

We got to the party, it was in a pretty slick pub. The Cloud Made guys were doing great stuff with non-Google map data on the iPhone, and they awarded the author of OffMaps a prize. But everybody was a winner, with free bottles and coffee mugs delivered by girls in costumes, an open bar, exquisite finger-food (can you say “finger-hamburger?”) and frequent power outages. Best of all of course was meeting the top guys from a few companies. Unfortunately it appears that all the photos I took were when the power was off, or maybe the lighting was just crap, but you can believe me when I say the place was swank, the party was happening, and the schwag delivery girls were cute.

Of course I got home later than I would generally like, but along with the lack of things to write about so far, decided to forget blogging about it and went straight to sleep.

Thursday: wow, another amazing day at WWDC. Met even more people, learned even more cool stuff. We had a terrific hamburger lunch in the Metreon instead of the usual catered fare; I must say it is a shame that the Metreon seems empty.

Thursday night is the night of the WWDC bash. This is generally optimal, since Fridays have fewer sessions than the other days, and many people leave on the Friday. The bash was again held in Yuena Berba gardens. Goodness knows how much Apple pay for the permit to use such beautiful gardens for, essentially, a rock concert where the turf is trampled by over 7000 nerds. At least it was cleaner than Falls festival and the food was (again) free! I got in to the food nice and early, had myself an American style hot dog among food from lots of other cultures, and relaxed, pondering who or what was to be the musical entertainment. It is a running tradition at WWDC to keep the performing band a secret until they get on stage.

Welcome friend

Two's company, 7000 is a crowd!

Unfortunately for them, I had scoped out the instruments on stage, and being a muso, I had a few clues as to who it might be. They had a standard drumkit, guitars, bass, keyboard with effects, and a trumpet mute all laid out. Hmmmm…

Well it turns out it was Cake!

The Cake was not a lie: Cake performing at the WWDC '09 Bash

I had heard rumours that Cake was not a likely choice for band, because of some history with them and Apple. I was sure glad they were wrong! Cake played like Cake does, and we even got a song from their potentially-never-to-be-released next album!

I was pretty happy after the bash: after all, being surrounded by friends and like-minded folk, having a belly full of food, having just listened to a favourite band perform live, and in such wonderful surroundings. So I had a bit of a dance. You might see me on some Flickr streams dancing like I don’t have a care, and I didn’t.

After all the fun, we dropped by the hotel to get ready for more partying. At this point I decided to get an “early” night instead, although in retrospect it might have been better to go, to make sure Jess and Jess didn’t get in trouble with the gang of friendly male attendees who were their fan club! As it turned out, nothing happened, and I got a great night’s sleep.

So Friday rolled around.

WWDC '09: The Last Breakfast

I will miss the infinite juice and the muffins. Following Paris’s advice, I got my bag into order the night before, making checking out of the hotel a slick affair, with the exception of losing the key to my bag lock. Paris lent me one of his locks.

Though Friday had plenty of neat sessions, overall it didn’t seem nearly as thrusting as the previous days. The highlight of the day was listening to the session on [session title redacted] given by Apple’s Principle Research Scientist, Kim Silverman, a fellow Australian with a flowing beard.

After the last session, we bade farewell to Tony who headed back home to Tasmania that night, we grabbed our bags from the Marriott and we walked to the hostel. The Secret Lab awesome foursome (Paris, Andrew, Jon and myself) are sharing a room with two double bunks at the USA Hostel in Post St. (Already we’ve started on the crude humour.) But on Friday, we had other things to do.

We caught up with the Jesses at the Café Royale just up the road. More about that café in just a moment. Jess and Jess had each lodged themselves in different hotels. Jess C stayed in the JW Marriott (a different Marriott to the original) for two nights, whereas Jess L had somewhere slightly lower-brow. Either way we were glad that everybody was within spitting distance of each other again, especially now that we were essentially in the Tenderloin.

After coffeetime, we headed back past Moscone, where they had started bumping out WWDC, to Buca di Beppo, a nice Italian restaurant, for dinner with the rest of the AUC delegation still in San Fran.

Artsy photo along the wall of Buca di Beppo where we ate rather a lot of good food!

Artsy, upside-down photo taken along the wall of Buca di Beppo, near where we ate rather a lot of good food!

This cake was also no lie: an epic slice to share between six.

This cake was also no lie: two epic slices---one chocolate cake, one cheese cake---to share between six. Andrew in background.

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And now, a few words about Saturday.

This hostel has a number of awesome features that make it an incredibly good deal for anybody travelling on a budget. For instance, infinite pancakes and oatmeal before 10AM.

Epic quantities of pancake! Serious maple syrup too! Paris in background.

Other benefits: cheap laundry, nice atmosphere, free wireless internet, endless parties and events every day of the week, and a great rate. But rather than hang out here, we decided after finding the Café Royale that we would hang out there, because of the coffee and the superior internet connection to the hostel. (For a start, they don’t filter out mininova >.>)

I spent most of the day there Saturday, but did come back to the hostel to get some laundry done. What a relief to not have to worry about running out of clean clothes! The laundry is way cheaper here than the retarded laundromats back home. $1 US for the dryer? I normally have to pay $5! Plus the clothes come out dry!

Feature event of Saturday was seeing Wicked, the Musical (again). With the exception of Jon, we had all previously seen Wicked in Melbourne. Though the ceiling and walls of the theatre here are most impressive, the stage is smaller, the audience capacity is smaller, and this led to a different experience. But not only had we seen it before, we also got copies of the soundtrack CD, and I have listened to it a lot. Knowing what the lyrics of the songs are helped me notice a lot of nuances this time around that were lost amidst the awe I experienced the first time.

After the show, this time I was sure to pick up some merch. I really wanted those green glasses this time, and got them: but for $19 US, more than twice the price at the Melbourne show last year. I’m told they really suit me.

Me and my green shades. Two separate people have told me I look like Art Garfunkel, prior to obtaining the shades, I wonder what effect they will have?

Walking to the theatre was fine, because it was daylight, but walking back home could have been a nightmare. We are apparently now inside the Tenderloin of San Francisco, considered to be the “bad neighborhood” area with gangs, roaming potheads and drunks, regular murders, and shiploads of homeless people.

Apparently.

I haven’t noticed this feature of the area much at all—this doesn’t mean I’m getting complacent!—on the way back from the show, we walked past a few mean-looking guys but didn’t get threatened by any. We weren’t approached for spare change by homeless guys at all. And we all got home to the hotels safe and sound. But best of all, the atmosphere in this place, especially the Café Royale, is more organic, an aspect I’m admiring a lot more than the polished tourist mania of Fisherman’s Wharf or the slick, anaesthetised hotel experience of last week.

This brings us to today. We did our café thing for nearly the entire day. Jon spent it productively completing his thesis, I spent it writing an 8-minute piano track. We were visited by Jess and Jess for the last time. They brought a bag: it had all the stuff they didn’t want to pack and take back. Lucky for me, they included moisturiser!

Finally, this evening, we were entertained at the Café Royale by the Nice Guy Trio, a jazz trio with trumpet, bass and accordion. Really tight little group and I was glad we stuck around to listen to their first half. At about 7:15 we got pretty hungry and left to find a nice dinner. The internet was raving about a little Japanese restaurant nearby called Ryoko’s, so we went there. What did they have on the menu?

Pokemon on the menu!

OMG. We simply had to have it. So does everybody else that goes there, given by the smile on the waitress’s face.

The Pokemon sushi roll: a salmon sushi with some other interesting ingredients.

It was a delight! Between the infinite green tea refills, the amazing sushi, and the tempura-fried icecream, we certainly had a meal to remember.

2009 06 15

WWDC Day Two: Stuff

Awoke, had Starbucks, went to Moscone.

Had a bunch of sessions. Some more interesting than others. Favourites of the day for me were the Managing Kernel Extensions and Audio Processing and Playback sessions.

Installed Snow Leopard developer preview. On top of Leopard. Works just fine. Installer crashed though, which had me a little worried until it worked the second time.

Had student job fair. Failed to obtain the free iTunes card from Apple. Gave some business cards, got a few back. I don’t really care about landing a job here…yet. Good to keep the options open though.

Went up to the Apple Design Awards. Many amazing apps got awards, well done. Moved up a few rows and scored some great seats for Stump the Experts.

Stump the Experts was huge fun. I got the spotlight when I fired up Mac OS 8.6 under Sheepshaver to demonstrate that it was the “Junior” voice in MacinTalk that says “My favorite food is pizza.” As it finished, I beat many in the rush to grab leftover prizes, and I managed to grab two different T-shirts, an LED booklight, and some kind of expansion card for the Apple II—still sealed.

Now I shall mehffort on fleshing out this blog post for tonight, I’m feeling a bit tired.

2009 06 10

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WWDC Day One: Ponies and Steve

Things I learned today:

Applied Queuing Theory.
The outside queue to WWDC at about 5:30 AM
Queues in Practice and Principle.
Another shot of the queue
Queues and You: A lesson in hidden opportunities.
The queue inside Starbucks
Queue Participation for Fun and Profit
Internal queue friends
Time and Distance: A queue-theoretic case study
Are we there yet?
Escalating Queues to the Next Level
Skilled "escalatio" practitioners on the way up
Go go go!

Between arriving a little early and careful migration during relaxed waiting periods, we managed to score better seats in the Presidio room than certain people who had been awake and waiting all night.

View of the stage from where we sat

Then we had the keynote. You can watch it yourself when it becomes available to download. Quick summary:

Phil Schiller is a pretty good substitute for Steve;
I want an MBP now;
Bertrand Serlet still likes stirring the shit among Windows types;
Bertrand Serlet is a cyborg;
When the 1 jumped off stage when they announced the price for Snow Leopard, I nearly JIMPed;
Scott Forstall is a dude;
The iPhone app demonstrations were too long, but if the two more complicated demonstrations worked, it would have been great.
iPhone 3G S… :O

A quick summary of the rest of the day (Lunch and State of the Union addresses):

Lunch was not fail at all, but a table and seat would have been nice;
Apple have given us all free ponies to take home;
New technology built into Snow Leopard and iPhone OS 3.0 announced at the Core OS SOTU is pretty sweet and I almost can’t wait to install the latest builds;
New features announced at the Developer Tools SOTU that will appear in Xcode, Dashcode, Instruments, and compiler technology, all totally blew my mind, and the session was definitely sponsored by the word “thankyou!”.
The Graphics SOTU could have used a little more momentum, however there was still lots of cool stuff they showed (only I could have told anybody 90% of it beforehand)

Other curious factoids:

The Americans don’t use permanent markers, they use Sharpies.
My attendee badge now has “University of Tasmania” written on it with a Sharpie.
Microsoft’s developer toolkit just got leapfrogged.

So after the last session, Tony, Jon, Paris, Andrew, Jess, Jess and I went to Mel’s Diner for some fast food, and then we caught UP in 3D like we wanted to before. I was very impressed by the storytelling and artwork put into the film by Pixar, and was pleased to see our old friend André Pang in among the credits, despite however limited the time he’s worked there.

Bedtime!

2009 06 09

Code

Pre-WWDC: Heavy Water

Breakfast.

It’s a wonderful thing. We rendezvous-ed in the lobby as planned, and commenced a thrusting Starbucksery session. Today was different, though. This time we were gradually joined by the the rest of the Aussie delegation. Bus tour of Silicon Valley! Andrew Jeffery’s dulcet tones riveted us to the seats as he gave his tour-guide description of passing features, and Tony’s speech about the AUC scholarships begat applause.

We're on a bus!

Discussion at the rear of the bus included a few Maclab memes, and MC Tony, rockin’ the bus, spread word about [retain] clan. After about an hour of this nonsense, we hit first stop: Fry’s! Also had a quick non-stopping whirlwind detour through part of Google, which I neglected to capture.

Fry's electronics store!

Inside Fry's, it is quite vast.

Fry’s had just about anything I had ever seen in any electronics store, ever. They had Mac, they had PC, they had soldering irons, they had whitegoods, they had RAM, they had sound systems, they had books. They still stocked 3.5 inch floppy disks. I scored:

a 4 GB USB key,
a USB powered portable DVD burner,
a 3.5mm stereo jack socket,
a neoprene sleeve for my Dell Mini 9,
and a 24-pack of water bottles.

Why the socket? Well, it turns out that airplanes still have that retarded two-prong audio system in the armrests. I, uh, happened to have a pair of airplane headphones, and since they didn’t ask for them back, I took it upon myself to make my own adapter and not pay $11 for one. More on this later.

Why the water? This was not my idea, and I partially regret it now. But I’m assured that water will be difficult to obtain during WWDC, because punters naturally form queues for things, even water dispensers.

So after purchasing the goods, I lugged the water to the bus, and we boarded, and headed to our next destination: the Computer History Museum. As we arrived it was closed, so to kill time, we dropped in to the Starbucks just nearby and had another coffeetime for lunch.

At about 12, we entered the museum. I’d post heaps of photos, but we’re only supposed to use them for private purposes. Needless to say, there were a couple of moments of “wow, I had one of those” and several more of “oh cool, they really did make them like that!”. It blew me away. They have some very famous pieces (the Utah teapot and an Apple 1 come to mind) and I think everybody should go at some point.

Most impressive was the Babbage difference engine, mark 2. With half an hour before the bus left, they started a demonstration of the device and explained a lot of the history behind it. None other than Jon was picked as the audience volunteer to read off the results. Toward the end, the demonstrators started explaining how the maths of polynomials worked and translated into the numbers which popped up, which was a bit boring for a maths major like myself. I was far more interested in the mechanics.

So after exiting the museum, we got back on the bus and headed for “the Mothership.”

Welcome.

Nobody said I couldn’t post pictures of this place.

We hit The Company Store like a pack of starving hyenas at a meat festival.

Inside the Apple Company Store

Apple baby clothes. So cute!

A wide selection of official, branded Apple gear.

Pens, pencils, drink bottles, mugs, t-shirts, coats, caps, business-card holsters, keyrings, bags, notepads, etc, but that’s not all: it merged with a regular Apple store! MacBooks, software, iPhone accessories, the list goes on.

What did I get? Two t-shirts, one the obligatory “I visited the Mothership” and the other “Hello, I’m a Mac.” Also got some coloured pencils, two pens, a keyring, and a black business card holder. Compared to my compatriots, that wasn’t much at all. I went easy on the wallet, but I was very tempted to get more.

We went outside for some more cameratic photgraphoid foolery in the scenic Apple campus.

Like this!

Flags above the 1 Infinite Loop sign. The Apple flag flew high. There was also a Paris and an Andrew.

Hey I know! Let's stand on the garden and get cozy with the sign, like every other tourist that comes here!

Hey I know! Let's stand on the garden and get cozy with the sign, like all the other tourists that ever come here!

The photos with me are all on other people’s cameras, so I might post them when I get them later.

We got back on the bus and took the highway back to San Francisco, stopping at Moscone West. Registrations for WWDC opened today, so it was the best opportunity to grab the name badges before the conference starts proper.

But there was one detail that really got me down between disembarking from the bus and returning to the hotel after grabbing the conference badges. That damn 24-pack of water. That thing is pretty bulky and heavy. I tried carrying it on my head for a bit and it helped, but it was a chore. After walking it a few city blocks I wanted to rest. But back to Moscone West and the registration.

As expected, iPhone OS 3.0 and Snow Leopard were featured on the overhanging billboard-like things. Wifi was up and was quite thrusting. I expect Apple have totally saturated the 802.11* spectrum in the area.

Conference bags are very sleek backpacks this year. They are black, of quite sturdy construction, padded internals with space for a MacBook or MacBook Pro up to 17″, and an iPhone or iPod holster in the left strap.

Conference t-shirts are black with “WWDC 2009″ written on the front…in iPhone app icons. Not just icons they invented for the shirt…actual icons from shipping apps in the App Store, like the ones plastered across the façade of the building and the internals. They’re really thrying to thrust this app thing. Speculation: is this because they are going to release a lightweight touch-interface netbook or tablet-like computer, for which apps are probably going to be an even bigger hit than on the iPhone and iPod? Or perhaps a smaller device than the iPhone, marketed at a lower end of the market?

Conference badges are quite stylish and minimalist: a printed plastic card with hole for the lanyard clip in the top. Mine is coloured green (for student? Probably.) Unfortunately for me, the ADC member site bug involving the inability to change the name of the school from “UTAS” to something a bit more meaningful bit me. Luckily, the information desk helped out; a man from management was called over, and he said I could write “University of Tasmania” underneath in permanent marker.

So we checked Twitter and left. I lugged the damned water back to the damned hotel.

When we got inside, I unpacked and arranged a lot of the merch and product I had purchased that day, and found the 3.5mm socket. Cool, I’ll get started on that adapter. But I didn’t bring a soldering iron, or solder, or a wire stripper, or a stand, a magnifying glass, or any of that cool stuff I would normally use to do the job.

I made a functioning adapter cable with nothing but a tiny pocket knife and a steady hand. I hope that it doesn’t break by the time the flights back roll around.

This feat chewed up enough time before the Australia and New Zealand WWDC delegate reception on level 2 of the hotel. They served lots of yummy sushi, cheese, salad and apparently some sub-standard sausages. I didn’t try the sausages. We talked up some of the other delegates; I was intrigued on hearing stories of QUT requiring .NET for their entire computing unit offerings, and at the same time they were quite interested in our projects and uni life in Tas.

Around 6:15, we remembered that we had deliberately triple-booked ourselves for this evening and headed off to another party at the iPhone Mansion again, out on Divisadero. A great time was had by all and we got our names out there even further. I wish that, just like the party, blondes would walk in to my home and call out, “Hey, I brought scotch!”…actually I would if I drank.

We got back to the hotel, and as I sit in bed writing this, I am reminded of the main reason I’m feeling really tired right now.

The watery end to this post, centre of picture.

2009 06 08

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Pre-WWDC: Escapée

After furiously uploading the previous post, and having a furious amount of sleep, I awoke nice and early and Paris not long afterwards. Showers, clothes, and a pile of chat happened, and we slowly assembled on the couches in the lobby.

Breakfast ensued with food from Starbucks in the lobby.

Plans for the day were: Alcatraz, UP in 3D if we had time, and an iPhone party. We checked the session times for UP and found out that it wasn’t on anywhere useful, so we decided to mehffort on that for today and just head out. Thus we went to Chinatown, via another Starbucks. Much camera was used. Every second store sold the same toy swords in a basket out front, reminiscent of the markets in Melbourne. We managed to attract a local for a fair while as we proceeded up the street.

Gates to Chinatown

Some church in Chinatown

LOL O CUP - an example of fail ordering

Nice day to air your dirty laundry

The Stinking Rose - what?

Of course, Chinatown is just next to Italy-town, so we wasted some more time doing touristy things there too. Like photograph the scenery. But just as I thought Chinatown was behind us, I found a torn-out page from a Sailor Moon manga book

Where Chinatown and Italy merged

It's an Italian Chophouse. Well I thought it was funny!

Photo friends!

Another church, quite picturesque with the trees

Coit Liquors, LOL - I hope they don't try to use all of "Happy Hour!"

Which brings us to Coit Hill. Tony was all rearing to go, and managed to stay ahead of us most of the way up to the tower—but that didn’t get in the way of having more camera fun.

A street view, with the rest of the group steadily approaching

Stairway to the tower; the bricks have names in them.

Tower and statue

Scenery!

The statuesque Tony measures up

After walking up, we walked down again!

Cameras all around

More classic San Fran

Stairs that go to a dead end. Andrew had apparently never seen a dead end so he went up to explore, and found that the stairs stopped and a wall started.

Stairs that go to a dead end. Andrew had apparently too much energy so he went up to explore, and found that the stairs stopped and a wall started.

Sign of the times - the Jeebus sticker is not part of the original sign however.

Sign of the times? The Jesus sticker is not part of the original sign.

The Photography of a Cactus

Camera wars

We kept walking down and then made a line for Fisherman’s Wharf. This time, I paid attention to some of the touristy restaurants and shops.

The surfer-themed restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf. The only good suit is in fact a wetsuit, and they had other terrible terrible signs hung up throughout.

More signs of the times: No Thongs - Except on Feet. I think the Americans are catching on!

Best Thing Ever: Automatic mini doughnut machine

Tony with finger and crab

At this point we really couldn’t avoid the Alcatraz departure queue and so we enqueued in the pre-queue. Tony had a panic attack about not bringing his passport for ID to go on the boat, but it turned out we didn’t need any ID other than our pre-printed tickets and we boarded without any further dramas.

Pre-queueing pays off, by this much!

We're on a boat, mothe-- (strangling noises)

Jess helped invent a new superpower---the Blinding Wrists!

Obligatory shoe shot

Scenetastic

Alcatraz from a boat

MC Tony, rockin' the boat

I call this one "Window"

There were boatloads of other Alcatraz photos but I can’t be bothered uploading them, just go yourself. It’s a great excursion, thoroughly recommended! Alright, three more…

Hydrant with flowers

Gaunt prison stairs

Myself and Andrew performing the zero-legged trick

After returning from an epic run of the Alcatraz audio tour, ending in the prisoner dining hall (Note: the date on the menu in the dining hall was Tony’s first birthday), I headed through the gift shop and scored myself an awesome warm black jacket plus some postcards. My bags are going to be quite full on the return flight of this journey, I can smell it already!

We disembarked from the boat back on Pier 33 and decided it was time for post-lunch pre-dinner stomach fulfillment. The nearest place was a swank restaurant called Butterfly. They were so swank they had fancy art installations, a terrific view of the waterfront, and all the meals were “Entrée”s!

These items were tabled for discussion.

After this I decided I had used way too much iPhone battery and gave it a rest for most of the rest of the day. We ate our delicious, swanky hamburgers and desserts, and played around with exotic settings on Paris’s camera.

Green Jess is green. :S

Tony parted with us. At this point we had to decide what to do before the iPhone party. Since we were unfamiliar with the location of the “iPhone Mansion” that the party was at, we mehfforted dropping stuff off at the hotel in favour of going straight there. Thus we caught buses.

The bus ticket scheme is a bit different to the one for Hobart buses. Instead of using magstripe tickets, the tickets are just bits of paper that the driver rips off and hands to you—after the machine accepts your $1.50 in exact change.

So after two buses, we made our way to the mansion and decided we had another half hour to kill. What to do? Coffeetime!

The Cafe Abir was the first one we decided was good enough to grace with our presence and the baristas were certainly the strangest I’d ever had the pleasure of buying a latté from. Did I want a single or a Gemini? Was I going to pay $325 for it? For voodoo purposes, was I born on October 13? (Close, dude!) Charisma and oddness was to the guy who served us, what sass was to Faye from Questionable Content. Definitely a cafe to visit again!

Then we went back, had an iPhone party, listened to Neal Goldstein (author of iPhone Application Development for Dummies) talk about, well, iPhone development, and socialised it up with the iPhone Boot Camp people.

Then we went back to the hotel in the dark on a bus that went through the tenderloin, via McDonalds. And thusly I now bid you, dear reader, goodnight!

2009 06 07

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Pre-WWDC: Preparation, Planes and Phun in San Fran

If I were completely accurate, I would have to say my journey started when I told Paris I wanted a ticket to WWDC even if the AUC weren’t going to give me one for a scholarship. But in actuality it started last week when I decided to shift my sleep schedule in order to make the transition to US Pacific time smooth. Easy: because my alarm clock is really my Mac Mini and a combo of iCal, iTunes, Automator and ABC Classic FM streaming radio, all I had to do was shift the events in iCal and all was good to go. That, and pack.

This brings me to Friday the 5th, Tasmania time. The night before, I hit the sack at 6pm, and awoke right on schedule at 2:30 AM… leaving me a good 6 hours before the time I planned to be at Hobart Airport and 8 hours before the first flight. So around 5:30 AM I got bored and went for a walk around Sandy Bay.

Sandy Bay at 5:30 AM on a rainy morning

With the added moisture to wake me up further, I proceeded to work on packing remaining items into my case and try to get some 60IV webmaster requests out of the way. Fast forward to coffeetime at Hobart Airport:

Friends at Hobart Airport

Much fun was had with cameras

And who should we run into at Hobart Airport, also going on the same flights to the same conference? Our old lecturer and tutor Mark Hepburn! Despite Paris’s foreshadowing that Melbourne air traffic control were hours behind and the plane would be delayed, we got boarded and sent off on time. So began our journey in earnest.

Now I have never travelled internationally before, so my expectations of what would happen at customs and immigration was, shall we say, influenced by my dear friends who were travelling with me. But on reflection, the whole process was quite smooth.

We got into Sydney domestic with no bumps from the plane and proceeded to the transfer bus that took us over to the international terminal. There were many possibilities for fantastic shots of rows of Qantas jet tail-fins but nobody had a camera out. Then, we stood in a queue for about half an hour to have our passports looked at and our departure cards examined. At this point nobody was allowed to have cameras or phones out.

In the queue I was with Tony, and naturally, the number of Tony jokes was pretty big. I’ll spare the reader.

So then after the queue, we made a promise to wait for each other while going through Security 2.0 before heading through the duty-free stores and to the gate. Of course, I lost track of everybody, thinking Tony was somewhere ahead of me, and decided going to the gate was a good idea. Little did I know everybody was looking for me! So I called and they called and the whole lot was sorted out with time to spare. Sorry guys, won’t happen again!

Thus I boarded a 747. Another first for me. We had prearranged the seating back in Hobart, and I was with Jess and Jess in row 60, on the port side. I got 60C—aisle seat.

The Jess Squared with sleepy-time masks on.

Breakfast buddies!

I suppose a decent cuppa is substitute for missing the hot towels.

Between the decent movie selection, horrid crackling in the sound system, PA announcements every five minutes, inter-seat phone calls, and awkward leg-bag interplay, I managed at least four instances of unconscious sleep.

We landed in San Francisco and disembarked in very good time, and proceeded to the US side of the customs and immigration joy we had experienced back in Sydney. Again, after a half-hour queue, we tried the meet-up-just-after- trick again and it worked this time. But adrenalin shot up as the computer that the US immigration agent was using, at the booth I was at, decided to freeze up, so I had to do my scans twice.

Then we collected our luggage and went through customs. This was surprisingly less painful than I anticipated—of course, who would have been feeding us stories of cavity searches and probing? (Hint: His name starts with ‘P’) and in fact less painful than anybody anticipated since none of our luggage was checked. I think Andrew had some kind of handerchief trick in his bag that he was anxious to try out on the wary US customs agent, but he was deprived!

So what next? Tony took the lead and we all went to catch the BART train into town. Another minor hiccup occurred when the gate ate my ticket, but this was sorted really quickly and we were on our way. Still not many choice photo opportunities, but hey, I’m pretty much the only person on this trip without a non-phone camera.

After the train, however, there were some photos to be had.

Totally a render. Those thumbs are so fake!

We checked in, had showers, rehydrated, and met back in the lobby of the Courtyard Marriott.

Serious Sunglasses time

The rest of the day is summarised thusly: we went to Moscone to check out the Apple display,

The Big Apple...right?

We checked out Yerba Buena gardens, and went to have tea at the Samovar tea place there…

Yerba Buena gardens statue

Yerba Buena gardens and the delightful Samovar

Jon with statue

We set out from Samovar towards the Embarcadero…

Hmmm.

Some hotel entrance, they look like soap

Port of San Francisco clock tower

We looked around the port, then moseyed past the piers towards Fisherman’s Wharf…

The other bridge

Statue of Ghandi

Poles apart

Warranty void if seal is broken...tempting, as the smell was wondrous!

Alcatraz from a distance

We had a burger and drink at Johnny Rockets and then things went uphill from there, as we walked up Hyde St and Powell St, watching the cable cars roll past…

Root Beer Float, the Johnny Rockets name for a sarsparilla spider. Also note how the sauce was given to each of us separately in smiley face shapes.

A typical cable car

Nice view up this far...

A typical San Francisco street

Gorgeous view up here!

Then we walked down (and up and down and etc) to Union Square…

...via a busted sewerage line. This managed to smell worse than the seals.

In the middle of Union Square

Then to the Apple store…

Inside the Apple store, they have a Genius bar, and a theatre where the TV ads were playing.

…and back to the hotel. Which is where I am now. I’m zonked. And with that, I’ll be off to bed. |-)

2009 06 06

Comments (3)

Scholarships! To WWDC! Hats off to the AUC

Why on earth did I forget to blog about this when it happened?

(Because I am a horrible, horrible blogger waste of carbon…)

The AUC have awarded both myself and one of my best-ever friends Jess Clarke student scholarships to go to Apple WWDC 2009 in San Francisco!

I’m still feeling lucky and quite grateful they picked me out of the swimming pool of quality applications (they were, I peeked at some of the other UTas ones). Just from the introductions given by the other scholarship recipients on the mailing list, I can infer that they have gone to deserving people.

By a happy coincidence, Paris, Jon, and Andrew, also from UTas, are also going to WWDC by virtue of their Student Developer Scholarships, also from the AUC. The culture here at UTas must be doing something right to be so fortunate!

This will be my first overseas trip…ever. Travel tips are welcome. (Uninformed swine flu hysteria will be treated as spam.)

And one more thing…

This year I also recieved a Tasmania Honours Scholarship care of the University scholarships office!

2009 04 30

Code

Secret Unleashed

I take pride in being the fourth wheel of the Secret Lab fun van. We’re doing some wonderful things, and finally, one of them I can blog about.

Announcing! Day of the Tiki, the official Tiki Bar TV tie-in game.

What is my involvement? I am creating the soundtrack for the game, and also a few SFX Macguyver style, with only a plastic ruler and a rubber band using my computer. I’m way outside of my maths/computing background on this. But, amazingly, everybody here keeps telling me to keep going, so I do. My tool of choice is Logic Studio (a while back I wrote a post about some small Logic tricks I discovered…before reading the manual. )

Why am I making music instead of code? The history requires explaining, but it boils down to this. They haven’t asked for code. They could, after all code is what I do at the day job. They asked for music. And so, it turns out that all the years I spent playing trombone with Hobart City Band and singing with TUMS is more useful than I used to think. (Incidentally, although I couldn’t go with them this time, HCB took out first prize in the A grade concert and B grade brass sections this year at the national band championships—terrific achievement! Sorry I couldn’t be there!)

Why me? Previously I also did the soundtracks and noises to the other Secret Lab projects: Culture and Button Squid (keep a track of this blog for a free Button Squid surprise soon). Also the soundtrack for their Software Engineering Project project Side-Game. So we have plenty of history, plus being good friends helps

2009 04 29

Dead Fish Battaile, a short story

Inspired by today’s Maclab whiteboard images.

“The ice cube is mine!”
“No!!”
Gomez and Sputnik abruptly paused their mutual dead fish-fight to
glare wide-eyed and menacingly into each other’s souls.
“Never! I’ll never give it to you, you….You!”
The words sliced into Sputnik’s ego as sharply as the fishbone
unfurling forth into his fuzzy face. “How dare you not put in the
effort to insult me properly! That’s low, you evil little…”
“Hah! Another opening!”
Splatch! The sickening crunch of dead fishmeat slapped against skull
reverberated around the Arena, and for but a moment, there was
stillness, and the lights flickered briefly, highlighting the globules
of wobbly fish juices arcing gracefully outward from the impact.
“kusoooooouu….” Sputnik mumbled as the instant of time passed, and
collapsed on top of the cube.
The Arena speaker crackled to life, booming “CRITICAL HIT” to the
cheering, captivated crowd of virtual patrons. But for Gomez, there
was only emptiness and a shallow feeling as the icy prize they fought
for melted beneath his friends’ unconscious body.

2009 04 07