Geek news: The conference doesn't start until Monday (which is Tuesday your time - well, most of you, hi Will and Liz!). The rumour mills are flying high and wide and it seems that Apple's already fired some bozo running image management at the Apple Store for accidentally uploading an image describing the specs of their new range of high-end Macs... (www.macosrumors.com)... 3 days before they are presumably going to be announced!... you can cut the tension with a knife :-D
It's all rather entertaining, I'm looking forward to experiencing Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field™ tomorrow morning...
Exciting technological developments aside, I got here on Friday lunchtime, after spending two hours in the security queue for my domestic flight from LA to SFO - caught it with 10 mins to spare... insane. If you are flying here at any time make sure you have AT LEAST two hours between connecting flights... I was starting to wonder whether the whole going-to-America thing is worth the pain and suffering! The flight from Melbourne to LA wasn't bad, about 15 hours, couldn't sleep much though. I recognised a stewardess - flight attendant - um - customer service manager - from last year, she cottoned on very quickly that the in flight meals were way too small and kept me plied with food throughout the flight :)
Noticed I was feeling a bit weary Friday night, realised I'd actually been awake continuously for about 36 hours, even if it was the same day :-D
Anyway it's been a pleasant couple of days so far. Right after the flight I met up with some other Aussies attending the conference, and had lunch in Union Square, then went for a wander to check out the Moscone Center (where WWDC is) and the Sony Metreon.
The hotel is really noisy...well not the hotel itself, it's actually quite nice, but the constant doof doof music/sirens/car alarms/people yelling at each other is kind of entertaining... the joys of being right in the middle of a city I guess.
Yesterday Craig (the guy I'm sharing a room with) and I rode the Cable Car to Fisherman's Wharf, hired bicycles, and did 16 miles (about 26km) around the west end of the Bay. The cable cars are freaky - for a country that seems obsessed with safety and lawsuits, the driver is perfectly happy for you to hang on the outside of the trolley - so long as you take your backpack off. I was next to two girls who were hanging on for grim death - they seemed to be enjoying themselves but their knuckles were white! The car runs up a really steep hill - it's exhausting trying to walk up it - then down through Chinatown - which seemed to be dead as a doornail, nothing like Chinatown in Melbourne and on to Fishermans Wharf, which is a Popeye-esque collection of wooden platformed tourist traps and piers and screaming kids dragged along by grumpy parents...sounds like heaven, eh? :-D
We headed west from Fishermans Wharf, towards the Golden Gate Bridge - bought myself some organic apple juice from what appeared to be the only cafe for miles. This whole area around the bridge changes from high-density living to open grasslands and elderly industrial area very quickly, it's quite odd.
The bridge itself is surreal, you almost can't quite believe it's there - like it's been blue-screened in... Maybe you just don't expect anything that big to be RED - grey or blue is fine :)
It's shorter and not as high as the Bay Bridge - but that just doesn't have the same appeal for some reason...
After crossing the bridge we rode up an insanely steep hill and into the Marin Headlands. It took maybe an hour getting up it - I'm not nearly as fit as I thought I was! - and about 45 seconds riding down the otherside! (No exaggerating there). That was a blast, but talk about hard work for a limited reward!
We got a bit lost after that, but managed to find our way to the Marin Headlands Visitor Center - and an entire village - not 10km from San Francisco - and yet with no shops, police station, or anything else that would make it a town...
The last part of the ride took us through a 1km tunnel. It was one-way, with traffic lights at each end - but thankfully also a bike lane! I LOVE this shot...
Stupidly I forgot that the sun emits UV in other countries apart from Australia, and managed to get the back of my hands and neck burned quite pink, which is rather irritating...but I'm coping :)
That's Craig in Sausalito. We stopped in at a 'Foodmart' - and bought Cherry Coke, Beef Jerky, California Strawberries - and celery, because I had a craving for something WITHOUT sugar or salt in it :)
We queued up for about 20 minutes to buy hamburgers - which were very good, let down by the 'Straight-from-the-freezer-to-you' fries that came with it - surrounded by people from France, Brazil and Germany who were there for a yacht race, making us Australians terribly uninteresting to the locals - and then caught the ferry back across the bay to Fisherman's Wharf again.
Then we did a bit of shopping - I got caught up in a Barnes and Noble bookstore - two stories, more books than your average library! Mwahahahahaha, whee...oops, is there any room left on the credit card?
And finally caught the cable car back to the CBD again, staggered up to the hotel room and collapsed :)
It's a rare bird around here that picks my accent as Australian first off. I get English usually, or completely blank looks - until I prompt them with a 'G'day mate' or similar...then the light bulb goes.
This is just a very funky church building and house I saw from the cable car...
This morning (Sunday) we went to get our packs for the conference - the conference center is HUGE - much bigger than the old one in San Jose as far as I can tell - and then we visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. That's the round skylight there in the middle. SFMOMA was interesting - my Titanium Powerbook G4 is exhibited in the Design section! Some of the art I could take or leave, but a lot of it was um...weird at least, if not actually good :) Especially one that was just three white canvases :-D
One exhibit consisted of video taken of a couple, fast asleep in bed, played back at what appeared to be realtime, projected onto the floor at life size in a darkened room, complete with background night noises like honking, sirens, etc...another was an enormous circle of chalk rocks...
We've just had lunch - ate too much again - a lot of restaurant/cafes tend to offer a basic meal e.g. two eggs for breaky - but that comes with toast, hashbrowns and coffee - which you can then add stuff to, like sausages, and so on - but even the basic meals are HUGE - I had about half a square foot of hash browns on my plate. Already feeling the need to revert to a fruit and meat diet. I haven't seen a single dollar coin since I got here - it seems that they had a brief moment of popularity last year, and have since disappeared...apparently people were hoarding them, thinking they contained real gold...sigh. Met a guy yesterday who asked me what weird things I'd noticed about the US compared with home - tried to explain a few of them but his eyes glazed over :)
Write back, I love to read long emails and since you've read this far I might actually find time to reply!
Yes, it's all true, I'm in San Francisco, attending the Apple World Wide Developers Conference on an Apple University Consortium scholarship.
Exciting technological developments aside, I got here on Friday lunchtime, after spending two hours in the security queue for my domestic flight from LA to SFO - caught it with 10 mins to spare... insane. If you are flying here at any time make sure you have AT LEAST two hours between connecting flights... I was starting to wonder whether the whole going-to-America thing is worth the pain and suffering! The flight from Melbourne to LA wasn't bad, about 15 hours, couldn't sleep much though. I recognised a stewardess - flight attendant - um - customer service manager - from last year, she cottoned on very quickly that the in flight meals were way too small and kept me plied with food throughout the flight :)
Anyway it's been a pleasant couple of days so far. Right after the flight I met up with some other Aussies attending the conference, and had lunch in Union Square, then went for a wander to check out the Moscone Center (where WWDC is) and the Sony Metreon.
Yesterday Craig (the guy I'm sharing a room with) and I rode the Cable Car to Fisherman's Wharf, hired bicycles, and did 16 miles (about 26km) around the west end of the Bay. The cable cars are freaky - for a country that seems obsessed with safety and lawsuits, the driver is perfectly happy for you to hang on the outside of the trolley - so long as you take your backpack off. I was next to two girls who were hanging on for grim death - they seemed to be enjoying themselves but their knuckles were white! The car runs up a really steep hill - it's exhausting trying to walk up it - then down through Chinatown - which seemed to be dead as a doornail, nothing like Chinatown in Melbourne and on to Fishermans Wharf, which is a Popeye-esque collection of wooden platformed tourist traps and piers and screaming kids dragged along by grumpy parents...sounds like heaven, eh? :-D
We headed west from Fishermans Wharf, towards the Golden Gate Bridge - bought myself some organic apple juice from what appeared to be the only cafe for miles. This whole area around the bridge changes from high-density living to open grasslands and elderly industrial area very quickly, it's quite odd.
The bridge itself is surreal, you almost can't quite believe it's there - like it's been blue-screened in... Maybe you just don't expect anything that big to be RED - grey or blue is fine :)
After crossing the bridge we rode up an insanely steep hill and into the Marin Headlands. It took maybe an hour getting up it - I'm not nearly as fit as I thought I was! - and about 45 seconds riding down the otherside! (No exaggerating there). That was a blast, but talk about hard work for a limited reward!
The last part of the ride took us through a 1km tunnel. It was one-way, with traffic lights at each end - but thankfully also a bike lane! I LOVE this shot...
That's Craig in Sausalito. We stopped in at a 'Foodmart' - and bought Cherry Coke, Beef Jerky, California Strawberries - and celery, because I had a craving for something WITHOUT sugar or salt in it :) 
Then we did a bit of shopping - I got caught up in a Barnes and Noble bookstore - two stories, more books than your average library! Mwahahahahaha, whee...oops, is there any room left on the credit card?
This morning (Sunday) we went to get our packs for the conference - the conference center is HUGE - much bigger than the old one in San Jose as far as I can tell - and then we visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. That's the round skylight there in the middle. SFMOMA was interesting - my Titanium Powerbook G4 is exhibited in the Design section! Some of the art I could take or leave, but a lot of it was um...weird at least, if not actually good :) Especially one that was just three white canvases :-D
We've just had lunch - ate too much again - a lot of restaurant/cafes tend to offer a basic meal e.g. two eggs for breaky - but that comes with toast, hashbrowns and coffee - which you can then add stuff to, like sausages, and so on - but even the basic meals are HUGE - I had about half a square foot of hash browns on my plate. Already feeling the need to revert to a fruit and meat diet. I haven't seen a single dollar coin since I got here - it seems that they had a brief moment of popularity last year, and have since disappeared...apparently people were hoarding them, thinking they contained real gold...sigh. Met a guy yesterday who asked me what weird things I'd noticed about the US compared with home - tried to explain a few of them but his eyes glazed over :)