12th EG Workshop on Rendering, June 2001

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The morning of June 24th found me and a group of current and former Bristolians on the bus to London for the 12th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering being held at the University of Central London.

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Ki was quite exhausted from the all-night drinking, dancing, and carrying on following her birthday party the day before. I checked out of the festivities early and went to bed.

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Defusing
Alan had bought a famous "Bag-in-Box" beer bomb, which seemed to be continuously growing on our trip out to London. He was afraid to open it. Very afraid. In the end, the sound it made was less of a "Bang" and more of a "Phfffft!"

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The first workshop registrant steps up to the desk. Celine (background) helped Mel and Yiorgos to organize everything, and was constantly running around checking arrangements.

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The night before the start of the workshop found us at an excellent curry house just down the road from our hotel.

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Waiting in line at the refectory the next morning at breakfast.

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It was quite warm in the old lecture hall where the papers were given, and we moved the next day to an air-conditioned auditorium across the street since we were unable to get permission or a key to unlock the roof doors that would have allowed the old hall to vent.

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Ki, Kate, Me, and Alan enjoying some unusually sunny London weather.

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Alan with his Ph.D. students and former student, Ann McNamara, who now teaches at Trinity College in Dublin.

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The 12th annual Eurographics Rendering Wonks, all sitting still and reflecting photons in real time.

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The second night was an official workshop dinner, held at a nearby Chinese restaraunt that we all walked to in a mob. Somehow, they managed to accommodate all of us, with room to spare. The food was also plentiful, and quite delicious. We must have had four courses -- I lost count!

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When Ed Catmull speaks, everybody listens.

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Ze German Table.

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Our table, looking like we've had enough. (And we had.)

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Our new lecture hall.

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Left to right: Hendrik Lensch, Annette Scheel, and Xavier Pueyo. Annette celebrated her birthday during the workshop, and Xavier has been to every rendering workshop so far. There's nothing special about Hendrik, really.

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The next night was another organized dinner, this time in the Covent Gardens shopping district.

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The area has a very nice indoor-outdoor sort of flavor.

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The table at which I was sitting and we were waiting. The waiter was a bit overwhelmed by all of us, I think. It was very hot here in their "sun room," and they had 16 inch fans peppered liberally about the place trying to keep us all from dripping sweat on the nice tablecloths.

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There were 4 or 5 long tables like this one.

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Erik and Ann, friends again.

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The London Eye. I heard that Queen Mother calls it, "The London Eyesore."

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It's just like riding a bicycle!

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Gosh, it's BIG!

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You get on at the bottom. No surprise there, and the cars hold quite a few people in each, and turn around synchronously as the wheel makes its slow, punctuated revolution. (You get just one per ticket, which was 25 pounds or so as I recall.)

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Westminster Abbey with Big Ben on the right. (Duh.)

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What we did in the Eye was take a lot of pictures. Of ourselves, mostly.

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The crew in my cab. I was the pilot.

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It was the perfect time (dusk) and the perfect night (near the summer solstice) to be hanging out on the top of London.

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I climbed out on the structure to get this picture of our cab from the outside. Or maybe it was the next one over -- I can't quite remember.

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Blurry, but still beautiful.

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Debevec makes the move on Kate. Kate politely ignores him.

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Westminster Abbey
I really like this shot and the reflections on the water, which were very realistic in my opinion.

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Others checking out my snapshots using Photophile (Version 0.01).

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Image rotation was a manual process in this release....

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UCL
The part of UCL on the other side of the street was very nice from the outside, but we never saw the inside of it.

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Filing in for a buffet lunch at the refectory.

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Most of us, eating.

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Le Gallerie du Peanutte.

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Back from the grocery store with more beer!

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Trying to decide where to go out for dinner on the one night we had to arrange for ourselves. There was much confusion and disagreement, and even Alan couldn't manage to keep us together. We eventually headed in separate directions, and I went with Ki and Kate because I'm rather sheepish that way.

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On the London Underground. Underground.

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The Italian place we settled for was quite nice, and we said our farewells.

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The next day (following the workshop), "the girls" and I went out to Trafalger Square for a little romp.

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Some weather was brewing, and we were supposed to meet Alan in a bit to go to the museum there to check out some artwork Kate was studying.