SteveStreeting.com

I’m finally back at home and beginning to return to normal, trying to iron out the wrinkles in my sleep cycles. I’ve done 12 flights in the last month (I’m trying not to think of my carbon footprint, although at least I rarely drive back home) with a time zone range of 10 hours and I’m certainly feeling it – I’ll be happy to be settled in one place again for a while!

Siggraph was fine, very hectic with some long hours on the booth and some very late evenings at the office – as such I was lucky if I got to check my email for 10 minutes in the day, never mind trying to cope with the OGRE forum. I managed to meet up with a number of people from various companies in between working for my client which was great (such as AMD, NVIDIA, IDV, FMX), and even got recognised a couple of times by people I didn’t know which was kinda cool. On a personal level it was also great to finally meet Andres Carrera, aka Lioric, oFusion creator and long-time OGRE community member & GSoC mentor, who turned out to be a really nice bloke who was a lot of fun to be around. He doesn’t like to travel much and getting a US Visa from his home in Argentina is stupidly difficult so I was really happy to get the rare opportunity to meet him. I was also very happy to run into Sean Morrison from BRL-CAD and BZFlag again, which I always seem to do whenever I’m in the US!

It might have been nice to have some leisure time in LA, but there really wasn’t any time prior to or during the show, and I literally went straight from the closing of the show in the afternoon to the airport for my overnight flight, because I needed to get back in time for my cousin’s wedding yesterday. Luckily I made it, although a combination of sleep deprivation and jet lag meant I needed precision doses of coffee and Red Bull throughout the day

So, I plan to catch up with my email today and perhaps brave the Ogre forums tomorrow, although ‘catching up’ with those is probably impossible – I’ll skim and try to pick out anything important. My focus for the coming week will mostly be OgreSpeedTree and getting Ogre 1.6 even closer to RC status. The Google Summer of Code also finishes this week so I’ll be on hand for that if any organisation assistance is needed.

I arrived in LA either Saturday night or Sunday morning depending on whose watch you believe, and am coping with the inevitable jet lag. Working helps to some degree, since it keeps you active, until you hit that ‘wall’ where suddenly your brain holds up it’s hands and says “I don’t care what the clock says, it’s 3am”, before grabbing its hat and coat and sodding off, leaving you a hollow shell looking at a screen full of C++ going ‘buh?’.

I’m staying in Torrance since that’s close to my client’s offices, but we’ll be heading downtown to get registered for Siggraph today I’m sure. I have a fair few things in my diary for the next few days so hopefully I’ll be lucid enough.

If you’re at Siggraph too and want to say hi, drop me an email (sinbad at ogre3d dot org or steve at torusknot dot com), I’ll check my email as often as I can. Alternatively you may find me on the ‘Works Zebra’ stand on the AMD booth (#323) where I’ll probably be from 3:30pm Tuesday, 12:30pm Wednesday and 1pm Thursday. The company will also have a presence on the Vicon booth (#1101) at times although I don’t think I’ll be needed for that. Bear in mind I’m there for my clients while on booth duty though, so if you want to yak about Ogre & unrelated TorusKnot stuff we’ll have to arrange to meet again later on.

Urghh.

I appear to have come down with a nasty cough / chest infection and I’m pretty sure I can blame it on sitting through 6 flights in 3 days. Planes these days are breeding grounds for illness, I remember hearing somewhere that flying is actually less healthy since they banned smoking on board, just because now they can get away with recycling the air lots more times and won’t spend money on decent air filters.

My wife almost made me to go to the doctor today about it, something I very rarely do since I generally figure they can’t do anything for viruses anyway so why waste both our times, although I must admit I was starting to consider it this time since secondary infection did seem likely. However, my fever seems to have broken and my lungs appear to have stopped being highly efficient fluid factories as of a few hours ago so I think I’m on the mend. I’m in no state to do anything today though, which sucks because I have a ton of things I should be doing.

Here’s hoping I can get well enough for the next flight I have to take on Saturday to LA, and not come down with some other strain after that.

I just got back from my trip to Gotland, I almost didn’t make it back due to delays on the M25 (surprise surprise) making my transfer from Heathrow back to Gatwick rather late, when I didn’t have that much time to spare. I just about made it by sprinting all the way through Gatwick, getting to the gate just as they were about to leave.

It was a good trip despite the travel overhead, I think there’s a good chance we can build an ongoing working relationship and I’ll end up going back again sometime. If all goes well I’ll talk more about it in future posts.

It struck me how much Gotland and Guernsey have in common – we both have about the same populations (despite Gotland being much bigger), and the main town of Visby is about the same size & population as our St Peter Port, although if anything it’s quieter, maybe because there are less cars. We share the same frustrations at having to shuttle through onshore international hubs, and that we one we can get to isn’t necessarily the best one for international connections (London Gatwick for us, Stockholm Arlanda for them), and a culture which is a little different from the ‘mainland’ we have the most direct connection with. Gotland relies most on tourism, and although Guernsey tends to worship the finance sector these days tourism is still very important, so we share experiences such as ‘cruise ship days’, and their harbour is dominated by a marina awash with expensive yachts too. Both our towns are full of history, theirs very medieval, ours more of a mixture from medieval (e.g. our castle), via Victorian and up to the WWII occupation. I was surprised to discover they don’t have an active fishing industry though – I generally assumed fresh local seafood would be a staple in any island community like it is at home. Anyhow, even though the culture & language are very different, there was an odd sense of familiarity about the place…

The hotel I was staying at had no Internet access so I have a bunch of catching up to do again. I’m back for this week, then I’m off again to Siggraph so apologies if I’m rather brief / flighty with my communications. After Siggraph is over I should finally get to settle down for a while again!

Feel free to whistle the very appropriate but highly copyrighted tune that you’re no doubt already thinking of

I’ve wedged another business trip rather hurriedly into my schedule, sandwiched betwixt (oh, you gotta love that word) our recent holiday and my impending departure for Siggraph in about 10 days. It came up at really short notice and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to fit it around my existing commitments, but luckily I was able to organise it to happen over this weekend, which just about worked (although I still have to leave early Friday). This will be my first trip to Sweden, specifically Gotland, so I’m looking forward to it, although my time there will be short and I’ll spend an enormous amount of time in transit. It’s a bit of a tortuous route, requiring 3 flights and a coach in each direction (Guernsey-Gatwick-Heathrow-Stockholm-Gotland), plus a short transfer to Heathrow Terminal 5 on the way out (uh-oh). I can’t really complain though, living on an island myself I know all about having to shuttle through onshore international hubs, you just learn to live with it – but I have it at both ends this time!

Should be good anyway – with luck some business and/or future partnerships will come out of it, but at the very least it should be an interesting trip.

I’ve only been to Siggraph once before, in 2006 when it was held in Boston. It happened to coincide with a trip I wanted to make to see some friends / clients of mine anyway so it dovetailed in quite well – I also held a Birds of a Feather (BOF) meet-up for the OGRE community while I was there, and it was good to meet a few of our users.

I enjoyed the experience but given my small / micro business status it’s hard to justify the expense to get out there, especially with airline prices seemingly increasing by the second. It’s generally just more cost- and time-effecient to cherry-pick the papers I’m interested in afterwards, unless I have a specific business case to be there in person.

Nevertheless the thing I enjoyed most about it last time was meeting people, so I’m glad to say I’m going again this year, as part of the entourage for a company whose project I’ve been working on quite a lot over the past 6 months. As such I’ll be spending a fair amount of time manning a booth, but there should still be sufficient time to enjoy the event and meet up with people. I haven’t decided whether I want to run an official OGRE BOF this time around, or even if I’ll have time for it – I’m actually thinking an informal meet-up at a bar nearby or something instead might be better. If you’re going too and you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know! This will be my first trip to LA but I’m expecting to have some reliable guides

It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for good food. The thought of eating anything from a fast food establishment utterly repulses me, and although I did go through the usual period of bachelorhood that most of us males do, when plastic knives and forks, take-away food and Pot Noodle were de rigeur, I quickly came to the conclusion that I was going to have to learn how to cook. Luckily Marie feels the same way and while we don’t claim to be experts, at least the majority of the meals in our house are prepared with fresh ingredients rather than from packets and we have quite a varied menu.

I got a taste for Thai food many years ago around the time I first visited the country, and since then have learned to make some dishes, and regularly dined in local Thai restaurants. We’re lucky here in that we have lots of good quality restaurants and our current favourite local Thai is very authentic, owing to the fact that it’s small and run very traditionally by a native. They make a killer Tom Yum Goong there, provided you are willing to accept that it will take the back of your head off if you eat it too fast.

Thus, on my second trip to Thailand, I found we had to be a lot more choosy about where we ate. The first time round I was fairly green, and I enjoyed the food but I realise now I was getting the ‘Farang‘ version which is deliberately toned down. Less chilli,  but also less of the other flavours too such as galangal and sweet (holy) basil. Being super-tired on the first night we ate in the hotel restaurant in Bangkok, and were pretty disappointed at both the price and the taste – way too bland. The key, as always wherever you go, is to seek out the places where the locals are eating, which is usually the small, sometimes shabbier looking establishments – in Rome they had a saying: ‘the more you pay, the worse you eat’, and that seemed to apply in Thailand too.

One of the best places we ate while we were there was a place called ‘Same Same But Different’, down in our second port of call of Koh Lanta Yai. It was literally built out of driftwood directly on the sands of the beach, a short stroll from our hotel, and run by a family who seemed to work there almost 24/7. The food was dirt cheap but absolutely fantastic, and the ambience particularly in the evening (provided you don’t mind defending your food from bugs and wandering cats) was great. I remember one night we ordered some fish, and what they had that night was a really large black and white snapper. It was delicious but the owner ended up apologising to us afterwards when she brought the bill because it was quite expensive (as with many places most fish dishes are unpriced, and the amount you pay is based on the type and weight) – but in fact this meant it was about a fiver! We could obviously live with that, even though it pushed our meal up to a record-topping fifteen quid that night (with drinks)

Probably my favourite Thai dish is Pad Kaprao , preferably with chicken (Gai). It’s hot, but it’s a slow-burner unlike a good Tom Yum which is liquid fire, and the blend of flavours, particularly from the thai basil leaves (which are completely different from european basil), is something else. Same Same did that dish really well so I was well catered for. There’s really nothing quite like traditionally cooked Thai food, and if you’ve only ever eaten Thai in the west, bear in mind that what you’re getting is probably not a lot like the real thing, less hot and probably a bit over-sweet unless you’re lucky enough to have access to a place which cooks it more traditionally.

On a final note, I was surprised that one of our hotels had Vegemite on the breakfast buffet, and having heard some Aussie’s claiming it’s better than Marmite, I just had to try it. I’m sorry for the inevitable offense chaps, but Vegemite is just a castrated version of Marmite. Yes, it’s really just like Marmite would be if you could somehow unman a foodstuff. I spread a little on my toast, and took a bite. Waited. And waited. Hmm, there was a slight hint of a taste there. So I spread it a bit thicker, and yes, indeed there was some taste there – almost exactly like if you took Marmite, watered it down by a factor of 10, and then somehow extracted any remaining tang/kick it was desperatey holding on to.

If I’d spread Marmite on my toast as thick as I had to spread Vegemite to actually get any taste out of it, my mouth would be smouldering for the rest of the week. Highly disappointing – I liken it to the difference between English mustard and the embarrasingly weak French or American varieties, which you could almost drink with your food. But on the upside, it’s always fun to watch an American visiting the UK encountering our local mustard for the first time, and spreading it on his food like he does on hot dogs back home. Sit back, relax and wait for the fireworks to start – tee hee

The first stop on our Thailand trip was to spend a few days in the capital, Bangkok. When you fly into Thailand you have to pass through it anyway, so it makes sense to stop off there for a while, and particularly at the start of the holiday rather than the end, especially since one of our main aims was to relax. Having done quite a few multi-stop holidays in the past, I’ve learned that doing a city at the end is a mistake if you want to get any lasting benefit from the unwinding you do elsewhere, particularly a city like Bangkok which is one of the more chaotic. It’s smoggy, overcrowded and hot, but it’s definitely an experience worth having.

Last time I visited Bangkok we stayed in a fairly packed area of the city, and at the time public transport was dire – if you wanted to get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time, the infamous Tuk-tuks were pretty much the only way due to the almost 100% gridlock at many times of the day. Of course you take your life into your own hands here, as the driver (necessarily) seeks to use absolutely any paved or even unpaved surface as a valid highway, and damn any other road users or pedestrians.  Crazy Taxi has nothing on this. Of course it’s a lot of fun too, in small doses – one of my enduring memories of my last visit (in my early 20′s) was barrelling headlong along pavements with a friend in the back of one of these things, trying to get back to the hotel in time for our airport pickup, choking on other road users deisel fumes as we darted between them like minnows in a shark pool. The key to using them successfully is to avoid the ones hanging about touting outside tourist attractions and use the ones that queue up separately in ‘stands’ in the street, and to barter the exact price and destination, preferably knowing the approximate route and decent price before you get in to avoid getting ripped off and/or taken to all sorts of intermediate locations like the gullible, fleeceable tourist you are. For example, Sathon to around Siam Square should cost about 30 baht (about 50p), but they may try to charge a tourist up to 200 baht and / or go via dodgy gem shops if you’re gullible enough. Luckily everyone is always friendly, even when they’re trying to cheat you, and once they realise you’re not buying it you can normally get the ‘local’ price and service, always with a smile of course.

  This time we used Tuk-tuk’s sparingly, firstly due to the fact that I deliberately picked a hotel bordering the Chao Phraya river  – a little more expensive, but worth it. Being there meant we had the option of using the ‘express boat’ public water buses for some trips, which are just as crowded and directed by a conductor with the loudest, most high-pitched whistle ever created outside the range of canine hearing, but you can at least get a little bit of fresh air that way, they’re very regular, stupidly cheap (13 baht each!) and you can’t get lost – even the stops are numbered so you don’t have to remember the local names The second reason is the relatively new Skytrain, which wasn’t there when I last visited, and handily our hotel had a free water shuttle down to the nearest station. There’s only 2 lines so far but they pass though the major places you’ll want to stop, cheap (30 baht each), fast and even air-conditioned. Combined with the express boat, some leg power and the occasional Tuk-tuk we managed to get everywhere we wanted to in fairly good time without getting gridlocked. I pitied the poor suckers grabbing regular taxis as they sat there stationary with the meter racking up

 We of course visited the Grand Palace while we were there, as well as smaller temples like Wat Pho which headlines with the gigantic Reclining Buddha but I also liked the warren-like nature of it which made it rather interesting to explore, as a contrast to the wide boulevards of the Grand Palace. We also visited various markets and eating establishments, the detail of the latter I’ll save for another post. As it turned out, we happened to be in town at the time of the Loy Krathong festival, which was totally unplanned but turned out to be well worth seeing. Almost endless streams of military landing craft had been converted into floating spectacles covered with lights and digital screens, while fireworks went off all along the river and thousands of people released small banana-leaf based rafts with flowers and candles / insense onto the river. Our hotel was obviously ideally placed for this, which was a bonus since it was our last night before we headed south and we had to be up at 4:30 the next day to catch a plane down to Krabi province. 

I’m sorry to say we just got back from a great 2 week holiday in Thailand – sorry because I could have easily stayed there a few more days at least. I’d been before, about 13 years ago, but this was the first trip for my wife, and she thoroughly enjoyed it too. We’ve relaxed, eaten some fantastic (and of course, at times extremely hot, if you head for where the locals eat, which we try to) local food, and generally had a good time.

The return journey was somewhat demanding though, clocking in at 27 hours due in part to the fact that for the latter part of the holiday we stayed in a somewhat less travelled area (at least compared to the now arguably spoilt tourist centers of Phuket and Koh Samui), and given that we also live on an island, the whole journey amounted to 1 boat, 2 car trips, 1 bus transfer, and 3 flights, with all the inherent waiting about in between each.

I have a ton of things to blog about regarding the trip and other subjects, but they’ll be delivered in a gradual fashion over the next few days. Needless to say, lack of sleep and jetlag means I’m taking a couple of days to catch up with things and adjust to normal life again

Typically having had just enough time to finally adjust my various mental and physical cycles by 8 hours to GMT-7, I’ve returned and am undergoing the exact same process in reverse. As such I’m feeling a bit rough but at least I can adjust in familiar surroundings.

In the meantime, here’s a few photos of me doing the rounds at various Silicon Valley locations (click for full size versions):

I managed a few hours in downtown San Francisco too on Sunday before heading back to get the flight (all of yesterday was travelling, what fun), which was ok I guess. This was more of a business / tech trip than anything else and I must admit that once all that was done (and it was pretty hectic), I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind for general tourism. Beyond that, travelling alone for business & geekery is fine, but when it comes to leisure tourism, it’s best enjoyed in company. I only had a few hours spare on this trip anyway as I said (thus it wasn’t worth Marie coming along this time) but I did find myself thinking that those hours would have been much more fun had they been shared.

Anyhow, I’m starting to catch up now, best give me a day or so to re-acclimatise if you’re waiting for a reply to something.