mathieutozer.com

Today's blog is in flickr form. Click the image below to be taken there and read the notes anti-clockwise!

I love Flickr! (uh, and Google Maps)

I just got back on the greyhound, bound for San Jose, and then San Francisco.

Last night was... interesting! I stayed in, doing computer programming work for school, and hopped into bed hoping that the guy SNORING HIS FACE OFF wouldn't actually bother me and I'd sleep all the same.

I couldn't have been more incorrect. Actually I was so exhausted I slept for 1/2 an hour initially, but it must have been the really snorting part that awoke me, and from that point on, from about 12 till 1, I just got angrier and angrier. But what do you do! Throw a shoe? What!?

I got the laptop out and surfed around for a while on the scorchingly fast wireless, even downloading recording freeware to perhaps take a sample, and then next time he honks himself awake I can give him some of his own medicine.

I think the other guy in the room was in the same boat, I think he tried to make some snoring noises of his own to try and get this bastard to wake up!

Thoughts that were going though my head were "How DARE he book a room with other people in it when he KNOWS he sounds like this!!"

Tiring of the internet, I tried the couch in the living room area but I could still hear him.

So I go for a stroll. I actually get up (noisily - I knew the other victim in this situation was awake anyway) and actually get some jumpers on, and leave the hostel!

I roam for a little while, and get heckled by some American youths because of my bright red Peter Alexander pajama pants, and green haviana 'flip flops'. At least I THINK that was it.. I gues my hair was all messed up too.
This teenage wigger guy in a back hat gets the attention of the girls and guys a round him "Hey hey hey guys, you gotta see this!"

I did a little dance to play along, it was all very funny (they were harmless).

Moving right along, I got a couple of frights from homeless people, and then made it back safely, and I'd certainly cooled off. But oh, OH that snoring! I thought people usually snored for a while then were done with it. But it was 2, and he was still going!

After a breif attempt at sleep I stormed out to the couch again in a huff, and somehow woke there this morning with the sun shining, and the occasional person floating about me.

Packed up, went for a quick stroll on the pier, beach, boardwalk, looking for postcards and driftwood, and finding both while stressing about the time, dragged my gear to the Greyhound Bus Stop by 12.15.

Now I'm cruising through the California woods. A really large lady just looked at me and said that my left over Soy and Flaxseed Tortilla chips and Trader Joes guacamole "Smells real goouud".

Should I offer?

Wow! What a day. The best yet.
*Highlights*
The taxi ride to the "Greyhound International" with Greg (who was off to Canada) and joking around about the benefits of bus travel

The un sweetened iced tea at Starbucks.

Getting my Smart Groups work done on the greyhound, and starting to integrate it into my main Words application.

Exchanging small talk with the lady from San Jose on her bus trip to Texas (she'll arrive sometime on Friday).

Arriving in sunny Santa Cruz and within 5 minutes being told by a guy on a bicycle with a basket full of fresh vegies that there was a farmers market on main st with plenty of organics, and that if my hostel was all shut up that I could leave my bags with him! I said I hardly knew him but thanks and though it was a bit strange so I said I might come back if I really had nowhere to put my bags.

The Hostel
It's gorgeous! So is the town of Santa Cruz. I'm staying in the front cottage.

The walk along the beach and boardwalk.
It was so quintessentially American, with beach parties and volleyball.

The taco I had before walking downtown - which is a tree lined avenue.

Discovering there's cruisers available for hire just around the corner.



The farmer's market with all the beautiful smelling and tasting fresh produce.

Finding out that I can have unlimited rides at the boardwalk carnival if I bring a can of Pepsi tonight and tomorrow.

Meeting a Squirrel
I think they thought I was a little crazy about how excited I got over this squirrel, but seriously it was my first time. With such a cute face!! And his bushy tail! CUUUTE!

My run past the surfing beaches, hearing the seals, stepping down to the beach full of happy dogs and happy people. Seeing USSC in the distance.

Dinner with the family who are staying in my room.
With the really crunchy chips and fresh salsa, and the 100% rye and farmhouse cheddar, organic tomatos and basil, snap peas... yum! Interesting people and conversation.

Playing volleyball at night with them.

Walking though the carnival excited like a child.

Learning exactly what a Deep Fried Twinkie is.

Walking past the street performer with the white painted face, then when we get home he walks up to our hostel door, frightens the hell out of me, but turns out he's staying in the same room.

And a nice cup of tea while I write this.

And a ton of other stuff.

Tomorrow I'm going to write some more of my essay, do computer programming, go for a ride, to the carnival to get my ass on some rides, take lots of pictures, do some more homework and flop into bed.

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Hey look at me in the service T!!


Well, I'm not in this one, but I thought it was hilarious and very much a time for reflection about how darn excited all the Aussies got for bananas!

Here's the Moscone centre, a photo someone took after getting off the bus after the campus bash, which I have my own photos of, but there are also plenty online.

That's Wade right there.
I'm in the background.

What a glorious day! Yesterday was spent a tad hung over in the (surprisingly nice) hotel, I got Chinese take away for dinner and also went to the Diner for lunch earlier that day. The diner was good, the chinese wasn't so. Anyway I spent the evening programming and went to bed early. I'll let the photos do the story telling about Saturday night, but in short I made friends with some other American travellers to the city and had some great Mexican dinner with them, and then we all went out for some drinks, met more travellers and well had a good old time moving from bar to bar down at Castro. Needless to say I was flabbergasted that they kicked everyone out at 2am, as any good Aussie would feel, but in the end I think it was a good thing!

So I got a really friendly taxi driver on the way over here, and I was fortunate because I was kind of planning on battling over to the hostel on foot and PT, but he was just there and so I got it. Pointed out some places of interest on the way and knew exactly where I wanted to go so that was great.

I left my bags at the hostel, which is one of the buildings in an old fort on the top of a hill which has great views. Went to fishermans wharf, and waded though all the tourists to The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, did my post card duties :-) and hired a bike for the day.

I really enjoyed the ride. Again the photos do the blogging, but it was really gorgeous.
Here's a google map of where I rode.

When I arrived at Sausalito, a cute little touristy area across the bridge, I was choosing a cafe to have lunch at and as I was walking in when the Canadian guy from the other night, Greg, says "hey!".

So by coincidence I ended up having this Mexican cheese egg festival thing on a plate outside the cafe, in the prime location, with the city views. And I appreciated someone to have conversation with too. Apparently he was on the way to the airport and turned around to come back because it was sunny (!)

Apparently I bought a ticket to an Aids charity drag show over in Oakland tonight so Greg and I decided to head over there for a laugh. Maybe then too I'll let the pictures do the blogging.

Well! The conference is over. It was a busy but exciting week and I feel like I've learnt many different things from it.

I can't wait to get into applying the knowledge to creating some cool software!

Right now I'm sitting in the Marriot foyer waiting for my washing to finish, I figure I should do washing while I can here.

Last night was fun, everyone went down to the Apple campus at 1 Infinite loop, Cupertino (see photos). It was all very Apple. I never did think that I would be dancing on the Apple grass surrounded with several thousand geeks! The photo above was taken roughly here (the little white blip).

The food was the best I'd had in the USA yet, so I ate lots of it, and the beer was varied and cheap (free) so I drank lots of that too!

Thank you Apple for such a great week. I feel very privileged to have been part of WWDC06.

Waking refreshed at 7 am, I took the window opportunity for exercise. The treadmills downstairs were all in use and the only working one was out of order, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I ended up jogging right out of the building onto the streets, down 2nd St, Past Market St, then up a steep San Francisco hill all the way to the top, where I got near 360 degree views of the city and bay. The bay bridge was silhouetted against the glaring water with the morning sun, and looking south I could just see the Golden Gate bridge (my first glimpse) and Alcatraz in the distance.

Yesterday was a conference day, and the highlights were lunch, and the break between the session! Let me explain - I chose a random table at lunch, and after a while I said hello to everyone and found that one guy worked at Apple. On what team? I ask, "The Finder team" he tells me. So I proceed to tell him about my finder issue, which everyone has been saying is reallllly strange.

He poked around in the terminal, examining the setup and even the dock preferences, but he actually couldn't find the problem, right there at lunch. But it was neat to have the finder guy explaining it to me, even if the problem itself was out of his ability to fix immediately.

Even greater was when I went to the OS X lab to ask about my smart list problem, and finding a guys name under 'Core Data' on the white board I explained what I was doing and he told me that in fact he was just doing smart lists in core data that morning, and flipped open his laptop and there it was right on his screen. It actually was similar to my solution. I showed him my code and he said it all looked fine.

It was really great to know that something I had been going it alone with was turning out to be in the right direction.

I also got tips on how to solve the rest of the problem, so now I can flesh it out without worrying if it's the wrong thing to do.

Wow! Student Sunday! Although people have been claiming it wasn't as good as previous years, I still enjoyed myself, despite only having 3 hours restless sleep last night. We covered subversion in a talk from Google, unit testing, with an Apple engineer, and heard other talks from Cocoa 'celebs' Aaron Hillegass and Will Shipley. A Dr from Pixar came and spoke too, and his talk was interesting and motivational, and offered insight into the development process of their animated films.

Afterwards we headed back to the Courtard Marriot for the Australian delegate drinks and dinner. I was careful not to drink more than one beer because I could feel myself zoning out! But I had some good conversations with other student developers and also people from Apple, Pixar, the AUC and others.

Went to back to the main Marriot subterranean ballroom (where the event was held) for the evening careers fair. I walked around all the booths chatting with the other guys from Delicious Monster, LEGO, Apple, Big Nerd Ranch, Google, and I asked Adobe about where they were headed with ebooks, and got their card. There were also other tables set up. I talked about the recruitment process of interternment at Apple and also got a demonstration of google maps on the google guy's blackberry.

As we were leaving and heading up the escalator the Microsoft guys heard Colin and I chatting, about Open Office and Office Mac, and one also spoke Japanese and was interested in my software currently under development for his 8 year old son, who is learning Japanese. I promised to forward him a beta version once it's ready.

And the conference proper hasn't even started yet!

Steve Jobs delivers his key note speech tomorrow morning.

I'm watching the infomercial

"Is a clean colon the key to health and vitality?"

Flicks over the channel

"New weight loss program. You can loose weight and eat chocolate!"
You can enjoy that chocolate flavour and loose weight!

Turns out it was just a chocolate flavoured protein shake....

Well, it was a very long Friday!

The pool was refreshing, and helped waken me up.

There was this 8 year old boy from LA who was there with his Mom, who was looking for a playmate so we mucked around in the pool together - waves, bombs, holding breath, that kind of thing! I actually really enjoyed myself and forgot the evening of my second Friday this week was progressing. I got hungry so I said good bye and that I might see him the next day. His Mom said "Say thank you for playing with me" and he shouted "Thank you for playing with me!" As I left the pool room. Also had a conversation with some German tourists in the spa as well.

I decided to go out for some food, and did a quick google for some eateries around here. I caught a bus half way down Market St, but it veered off and I got off, then went to catch one of the old style trams that goes down that street and a helpful man asked me "where I was headin'" (I had my head in a map). Told him I was looking for some food and he actually said "We'll there's a Mc Donalds right up there". (I THINK he was kidding) I said preferably not fast food and he told me there were some restaurants down there a bit so I waked and found some really nice looking ones (but a bit out of budget and not somewhere to go by ones' self). Then I saw one which looked nice, with, checking the menu, reasonably priced food, and, wait for it LIVE MUSIC!

Well, live, amateur show tunes that is!

I think my favourite part of the evening was when a young girl (she looked about 17) sung "I was born to entertain!"
This was the proud daughter of the proud mother who was singing as I walked in. It was classic! I sat in the corner most of the night until a table invited me over 'cause they could see I was all by myself, we exchanged stories and contacts. Everyone was and is really friendly here.

There was this immense woman who got up in what looked like a dress made of a curtain which was tied around the waist with a 'fanny pack' (bum bag) and expertly sung two songs. I mean she was really good!

Another young woman who had an incredible voice sung some other show tunes too.

I decided to walk home (I kept missing the old style trams), and I must admit it was a bit freaky walking through the dodgey part of Market St (it changes very quickly from 'nice' to 'not nice')

After the dodgey bit was done with, I saw a croud watching those random skater group that were doing the stunts with volunteers off the street.

The guy would take a run up, and do a jump over three people (one black guy with his cell phone out, a wigger with a cigar, and a bogan chick with a soda) and then go down a lengthy escalator sideways on his rolerblades. Talk about random.

To paint a picture, the MC guy with a nana trolley equipped with mixer would announce things through a microphone things like "We gave the cops a box of doughnuts, that should hold them! ... But they're probably already up the bear claw. (Imitating cops) OOOh Bear claw!!"

Did I mention everyone's on roller blades.

Then the MC said once the stunt had been performed "Let's go before the cops arrive!"

And they were off weaving though the traffic on the foot path.

I got back to my room, chatted online for a bit, dropped my iSight on the F key which broke it off, and went to bed.

It's now Saturday and I've been down to have a coffee and croissant (the healthiest breakfast I could find) and I've bought a universal power adaptor. I'm going to see if I can go and get a new F key from the Apple centre to which I've already been to once - I practically followed a beeline there once I'd landed, but as I read afterward in the WWDC newsgroup, you're not a true Mac Geek unless you do so :-)

First impressions of San Fran: (Sorry if these notes sound brooding or gloomy! I'm not - I'm having a ball - It's just that I'm tired!)
The immigration queue markers were in red and blue :D
They didn't even check our luggage!
Walking out of Montgomery BART station was a glorious experience. After the gloom of the flight the bright, summery mild weather was worth it.
The number plates are hilarious! They've got California in cursive font on them.
There's all these houses on hills that look the same. Square boxes. The BART ride from the airport was very exciting for scenery and people watching alike. One girl was wearing a badge on her pants saying "I [HEART] being black!" I love it!
Buying a ticket for BART was an experience all of itself.

Hotel room is very nice, I've got one suited to a disabled person (??) which means that it's extra roomy. A nice view!

The flight hasn't done wonders for my skin of course, I've broken out!

Pretty tired but I can't sleep till tonight (not that I want to!) , meeting up with some Melbourne Conference guys at 3 for some lunch.

Anyway it's nice to not have my lower back killing me constantly

People sitting next to me on the plane weren't very friendly, not even a word in all those hours! But then I didn't really want to talk to them anyway.

My room number is 1521 and you can call/skype me on 415 9470700.

Don't forget to watch the flickr photo stream ;-)

Just got back from an afternoon stroll. Might check out the pool. Sorry about this post being non cohesive, I'm not thinking very quickly!

I'm going to write this post in Japanese. It's my blog, anyway, so I can do what I like! [1]

明日の１２時にメルボルン国際空港から出発します。アップルコンピュータシステムのサンフランチスコにある開発者向けの会議行くために。とても楽しみにしている！っていうか、今日になって、行く事を初めて気付いた。いや、まだ本当に気づいてないと思う。

休みのために行く訳じゃないから、なんかそんなにわくわくしない。違う楽しみだ。会議でいっぱい習える楽しみと、世界中の色々な賢い、マック大好きな人々に会える楽しみだ。そして、その知識や情報や手蔓を使って、将来を作り始める楽しみだ。

もう〜わくわくしている！！

[1] Heloooooo! Anyone out there besides spam bots and the google crawler??