October2004More Conferences, Returner1 October 2004 Well, it looks like I'm off to a conference in Philadelphia at the end of October. It'll be a chance to evaluate a small corner of the US firsthand. Hopefully also stopping by Amsterdam (although I don't think I can afford to leave the airport). And when I get back I'm immediately off to a short local conference about Cape Town's high performance computing centre (it's been in discussion behind the scenes for year - seems like it might finally get off the ground). Been spending part of my evenings working on getting Gluon back up and running. It now has Fedora Core 2 installed, along with TikiWiki and the old PhpWiki content has been imported. A slight hiccup occurred when I discovered that the FC2 kernel doesn't include support for Gluon's old NE2000 ISA network card. Compiling the kernel caused the CPU to overheat because the fan was broken. Anyway, it how a replacement fan (donated by Lucas) and the new kernel is compiled and installed. All is well. Watched Returner last night - it's a time travel / triad / action film directed by Takashi Yamakazi. Not without its faults but very enjoyable with quite a few nice touches. Definitely the best film I've watched in awhile. SchpatCON happened last weekend. The modules I enjoyed the most were David and Adriaan's GURPs one (interesting look at a combination of ideas from genetics and memetics) and Philip and Jo's Cthulhu spoof (in which you play Cthulhoid monsters searching for their young). I also got in some Tekken 4 (man did I get sk00l3d) and played in Altered States' WWII concentration camp LARP (a bit single plotted but enjoyable). Spent Tuesday evening having a dinner party and playing Cthulhu 500 with Lucas, Claire, Mark, Nadine and Greg. Cthulhu 500 seems to get more interesting once the players know it a bit so hopefully we'll get another game in some time. Finally had a Sigil session again Wednesday. I think the mini-campaign we're starting out with is moving forward nicely. Reuel was absent again and my attempt to temporarily incapacitate his character backfired somewhat when the party airlifted him to another location. Still have no clue how he's going to get back. May have to give him a temporary character for the next few sessions. Retroactive SOFG ReportDeparture from Cape Town22nd October 2004 The most notable feature of departure was the luggage searching. Hand and check-in luggage were both searched on check in. Then some people had hand luggage checked again on boarding. Liza only had hand luggage and was asked to dispose of her tweezers (because we all know how dangerous tweezers are). The SAA check-in people were very worried about the birth date given in my US visa being out by one day. After much deliberation (and a few phone calls) they did, however, let me board. :) The flight itself was unexciting (we stopped over at Ilsa Do Sol - which appears to be a barren rock off the coast of north western Africa) although I did get to finish reading Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. Arrival in Atlanta23rd October 2004 The airport is huge and the city seems entirely surrounded and invaded by forest. It makes for a nice picture from the air. I had no trouble with immigration control despite my squonky visa (they didn't seem to care even though I pointed the error out to them). I was selected for "additional questioning", where "additional" seems to mean "the same questions asked by a different person". There was, however, a long queue as everyone was searched again before being allowed into the departure lounge. I will never understand how searching people and then allowing them into what amounts to a small shopping mall can provide any increase in security. Flight to Philadelphia23rd October 2004 After boarding at the last minute (even with a smooth trip through customs and immigration the sheer number of security checks and other formalities made the one hour ten minute change over schedule very tight) I discovered that Liza wasn't on the plane. Handling her dual citizenship was apparently beyond the capabilities of the run of the mill immigration officials and she had to be referred to people higher up - thankfully all turned out well in the end and she caught a later flight. Some US soldiers returning from Iraq were on the Atlanta to Philadelphia flight with me. After having the pilot make a short patriotic speech (followed by much applaus) about the wonderful things they've been doing for their country they all wound up with me filling in forms in the lost baggage office. The process of tracking down the missing baggage and arranging for it to be delivered to the hotel was actually pretty smooth (although it would obviously have been better if it were not separated from me in the first place). My luggage arrived unscathed at the hotel sometime around 21:00 that night. Conference Opening23rd October 2004 The shuttle from the airport to the Sheraton took an extremely round about route. The driver seemed to feel that he was required to deliver people to their destinations in the order in which the boarded. The net result was that for the remainder of my stay in Philadelphia I would occassionally encounter bits of the city which I had seen before from the taxi. :) I spent the late afternoon napping and then proceeding to the opening conference. A buffet dinner was followed by a presentation by Carol Gobles on the current state of ontologies in Bioinformatics. Not a bad talk perhaps but I'm afraid all the in-jokes went straight over my head (perhaps I'm just a bioinformatics peon :). After the talk I caught a taxi to Dirty Franks with Win. It seemed to be the equivalent of a small South African sports bar and with all the students out of town for varsity vacation, it was dead. We didn't stay long and left for sushi across the road. Got to see a little more of the city while walking back to the Sheraton and feel overjoyed by the presence of my luggage at the hotel. Shortly afterwards, I was fast asleep. Hmm... Bookstores...24th October 2004 Most of the day was taken up by many talks, interspersed with frantic attempts to get the new eVOC website online. In the afternoon I found a great bookstore between the conference and hotel. After browsing around a bit (and deciding to definitely come back and make purchases later) I wobbled off to the hotel to email MyrdemInggala (email facilities at the conference itself were no existant if you didn't have your own laptop with wireless network card) and get some rest. Dinner at Mad Max (a Mexican restuarant) was followed by drinks at a nearby bar and then a relatively early turning in. Thundercats and Ranma 1/225th October 2004 Got up early to exchange travellers' cheques and only just made it back to the conference hall for the first of the mornings talks. After lunch we bunked the remainder of the days talks (mostly poster sessions and software demos) to go shopping in South Street. South Street is somewere between Long Street (Cape Town) and Camden (London). I bought the first two comic books in the Ranma 1/2 series and a t-shirt with the Thundercats logo. Since Win was with us we inevitably ended up at a bar. I had a small sip from a jug of Long Island Ice Tea for the sake of photographic appearances. The evening was taken up by the conference dinner which included some discussions in the field of comparative sociopolitics but was otherwise a relatively quiet affair. Afterwards we proceeded to a bar (are you noticing a trend here? :). The experience was made slightly more entertaining than usual by the inclusion of quiz competition. We didn't fair too badly considering how US-centric the questions were. :) Last Day of the Conference26th October 2004 Only about three quarters of the last day was actually taken up by talks so Adele and I attempted to see some of the historical monuments in the Old City. Unfortunately we narrowly missed the closing of the Libery Bell exhibition hall - although we did get to see the bell from about 20m away, over a fence, through a set of large windows. :) On the way back Adele and I nearly got separated when a bus driver closed the door and started pulling away while I was asking for directions. Fortunately the next stop was only a block away. That evening Win took Adele and I out to White Dogs, a fairly upmarket restuarant. After all the time spent in loud bars it made for a quiet pleasant evening. Trip Home27th October 2004 The trip home was long and having to start out at 4:00 in the morning didn't help matters at all. By the time I reached Cape Town I was wasted. I watched 13 Going on 30 (not a bad movie) and Stepford Wives (a really bad movie) on the in-flight entertainment system. The multimedia surprise find of the trip was a biography of Jules Verne (hidden under the amazingly descriptive title "Biography" in the TV mini-series section) which I enjoyed alot. Overall Ratings of Cities So Far:
Extremes of the scale reserved for later use. :) |