P7218279.JPGRemembering
Sara and I stayed at the same hotel, which was very close to the Alamo. I had never seen it before, and I barely had a chance to even think about it, let alone remember it, while we were there.
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Remembering
Sara and I stayed at the same hotel, which was very
close to the Alamo. I had never seen it before, and
I barely had a chance to even think about it, let alone
remember it, while we were there.
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"The River Walk" as they called it was a very nice stroll
of shops by the river, which looked a whole lot like
a canal. Boats of tourists went by frequently, and
we could catch little snippets here and there of the
tour guide's speel.
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Sara and I met up with Holly on the first day we were
there, and had dinner together.
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The tex-mex food was quite good at this restaraunt,
which boasted a bona-fide mariachi band to accompany
your meal.
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Night on the River Walk.
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SA Conference Center
The conference center itself was quite attractive, and
had plenty of little nooks and places you could sit
and converse or just hang out. Too bad we won't be
having Siggraph there again anytime soon -- attendance
was way down due to the difficulty of getting to San
Antonio. Just when I was learning my way around!
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Tim, Alan, Toshi, & Erik
These were the speaker's at Alan's popular "Parallel
Rendering" course, one of two half-day courses he helped
organize this year.
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Greg, Phillipe, Kat, Paul, Alan, Duncan
And here's the other course -- a new one on Archaeology,
which Kate did much of the work for. I got to participate
in this one, and it seemed to go over quite well. (Except
for my bit -- but we can ignore that.)
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Greg, Phillipe, Kate, Paul, Alan, Duncan
Here I am rendering motion-blur in real time!
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Katerina, Holly, & Ioana
The Siggraph welcome reception was very well done this
year and a lot of fun. It continued on into the "Chapters
Party," where Siggraph chapter organizers are celebrated.
Many of the guests didn't realize that there were two
parties, and just hung out the entire time. We hung
out, too, but at least we knew what we were doing!
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The party included a number of live entertainers, including
a magician who couldn't fool anyone and a knife-juggler
who kept dropping his knives at people's feet. The
lariat master was perty good, tho.
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There were several separate rooms where people could
gather to talk and listen to different kinds of music
at different decible levels. This was one of the "quieter"
rooms...
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Characature
The charicature artist they had basically drew smiley
faces for everyone. No one resembled their charicature,
but everyone's charicature resembled everyone else's.
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The live music was all country, all the time. They
did have a DJ programming beats in one of the halls,
which was full the whole night long.
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Lou & Ki
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Alan's Fan
To cool us off, they had some swamp coolers blowing
mist, which was a blessing to the dancers. (Alan is
a big dancer!)
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Colin & Neill
I don't even know what to say about these two characters,
except that this shot was pretty normal for them.
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The following day, Katerina gave a presentation in
a course organized by Mel Slater on virtual reality
and "presence." It was quite good, what I saw of it.
Unfortunately, I had a number of conflicts that day
and had to keep rushing out to catch other talks and
things.
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Here's me, Scott, Alan (with finger), Ki, and Pete,
enjoying a nice, Texas-style BBQ dinner.
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A Kitschound
I caught sight of this amazing example of Americana
through a shop window, and had to take a picture.
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Spiros & Katerina
Katerina came "with friend" this year. Spiros was very
nice, I thought, though his English was only slightly
better than my Greek.
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3D Printer
One of the interesting new developments at Siggraph
were these commercial rapid prototyping printers.
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Here's a collection of items that were produced by this
company's 3D printing technology.
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Wall Crawler
I'm not sure who this was, but it looked like he was
having fun.
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Shlomo, Julie, & Leonard
I just happened to get out my camera as we were settling
the bill, so this is what I got.
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Ann, Maryann, & Katerina
Enjoying ourselves at the well-attended Morgan-Kaufmann
party.
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Kate & Ki
Alan has come to the MKP party with his students and
friends so many years in a row now, that they finally
gave up and extended him an official invitation. His
crashing days are over.
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Erik & Kate
What is it with the Dutch and the Irish?
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After the MKP party, a bunch of people came over to
our hotel to continue some important chemistry research
in the creation and metabolism of various alcoholic
colloids.
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Sara, the chief scientist, with her research assistants,
Fredo and Schlomo.
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I believe the name of this experiment was the "Texas
Toaster."
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Here are some of the experimental subjects. I was the
control.
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Terry, Ki, & Scott
Out of a mug?
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Lilly & Sara
Bottoms up, my little guinea pigs!
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Jordan
Why is everyone just holding their drinks?
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Not losing control, yet!
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Schlomo & Ann
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Per w/ Lilly's Hat
It looks quite good on him, actually.
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Msr. Durand
Be Fredo, Be Very Fredo.
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I suspect these dancers were having their motion captured,
but I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure. This is
one of several of Pete's pictures I included in the
set.
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Darth Longhurst
Here's Pete giving the virtual light saber a go in the
emerging technologies exhibit.
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Gerhard & Olaf
On the final day of the exhibition, I joined my friends
at Spheron for tear-down, and helped them lug their
equipment back to their rental car, and we had a drink
in celebration (tea).
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Tear Down
It's amazing how quickly the show comes apart, really.
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That night was the technical reception, and Alan was
getting down as usual.
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Boogie Man
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Move over Travolta!
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Following the party, Paul and Maya and I went for a
little walk by the river and took in some desserts.
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Here we are at lunch on the final day, getting ready
for Patrick's sketch.
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Sara joined us by happy coincidence.
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Ki got this souvenier bear for Alan, and Kate attached
a train of miniature ribbons to his little badge.
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Patrick gave quite a good talk at our sketch on the
HDR viewer.
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Erik shows off his final ribbon collection.
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The whole lot of us. Or at least, a whole lot of us.
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Ready for sleep, here we are back at Oakland International,
waiting much longer than we expected for the discount
parking shuttle to pick us up.