After the Flames

Pictures of the bush-land near Healesville Victoria starting to recover after the black Saturday bush fires (2009).

The Mission Dolores

My last day in San Francisco. I can honestly say its been a fantastic experience and I have really enjoyed this gorgeous city.

Partially because my partner is a bit religious and because I’m interested in architecture I decided to visit the oldest building in San Francisco at the Mission Dolores (Mission District). The mission was built in 1782 and was constructed of four foot thick adobe walls, so its no wonder it was able to survive the various natural disasters that have beset San Francisco such as the 1906 earthquake.

After the Mission Dolores I trundled (by Tram of course) down to Nob Hill and the Cable Car Museum. After a light lunch at the Gallery Café opposite I went for a mooch around the museum. This museum is one of the few free attractions of its kind in San Francisco. Its quite small being housed in one corner of the building containing the machinery that pulls the cables that run the cable cars. If old technology of this kind interest you its worth a look though. I had something of a personal interest in the museum as I’m from Melbourne where we used to have cable cars like the San Franciscan ones but not any more. We still have a vast tram network though..

Well that’s it fro me from San Francisco. Back to my hotel in the afternoon to pick up a shuttle bus to the airport and then the long flight home.

Poster at a News stand in San Francisco with the slogan “What's an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it's ever done in a PC!”

Posters with this slogan have been blazoned across San Francisco since Steve Jobs made the big announcement on Tuesday, January 10, at 9 a.m. PST that Apple were shipping, as of this date, the new “iMac® featuring Mac OS® X running on the new Intel® Core™ Duo processor”. On this occasion I was lucky enough to be sitting, with the faithful, in the audience at Macworld (all be it in the spill-out room) with thanks to a scholarship received from the Apple University Consortium (AUC www.auc.edu.au). So what is an Intel chip doing in a Mac? Without getting too technical Apple were having a hard time making any new gains in computing speed or power with the chips they were previously using, so they made a strategic decision (which was announced twelve or so moths ago) to move to Intel based chips which are more commonly associated with the Windows platform.

The new iMac is reported to be twice as fast as its predecessor. Another new Mac with Intel inside, the MacBook Pro will be shipped in February. The replacement for the PowerBook G4 will purportedly be up to four times faster than the G4 and will have a built-in iSight camera. The MacBook Pro will also feature an ingenious power cable connector that is held in place magnetically and will leave go of the MacBook if the power cable is jerked so that tripping over the power cable or having the cat playing with it may no longer lead to the disaster it did in the past.

Other announcements at Macworld included new versions of their iWork and iLife software suites (iWork ‘06 and iLife ’06) and a new accessory for their current range of iPods the iPod Radio Remote. Not to be outdone Microsoft announced a formal commitment to Office on the Mac for the next five years.

Haight St

The conference over it was time to get back to some serious sight seeing. The only problem being rain so I decreed it Museum day and headed for the Asian Art Museum. Considered to be one of the largest museums in the western world dedicated to Asian art it was equally fascinating from the point of view of the treasures it holds as for the architecture of their container.

Outside the museum I saw something that I think sums up the sate of the US’s social welfare situation. In front of the city hall a vagrant negro woman was sat on a steam vent in the street trying to keep warm. Shortly after I spotted her a panda car came and moved her along.

The weather cleared after lunch so I headed for the Haight Ashbury district famed for being the centre of the hippy culture and the acid wave of the 60′s, the area still hangs onto that past but the shops are now more kitsch and trendy.

Having walked up and down the Haight St shops I continued on to check out Buena Vista Park. If it wasn’t masochistic enough to build a town where most of the streets are on a 45 degree angle some bastard then decided to build a civic park that goes virtually straight up. The climb up Buena Vista Park was worth it though as the views from the top of San Francisco were just magnificent.

On my way back from Buena Vista Park on the number 71 bus I jumped off in Market St somewhere near Golden Gate Ave and checked out one or two of the Tenderloin book stores like e.g. Arcade Adult Superstore, 1036 Market St. Snapped a shot of a great sign outside the Art Theatre in Taylor St.

'Frank Lloyd Wright Building'

Today was the last day of the MacIT conference and a short day at that just two sessions up till 12:15 pm:

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM: Microsoft® Office for Mac SP2 – improved Exchange server support

Marcelo Wolff, Product Manager and Mary Starman, Group Product Manager, Microsoft Corp.

10:45 AM – 12:15 PM: Add Automator to Your Arsenal

Sal Soghoian, AppleScript Product Manager, Worldwide Product Marketing, Apple. As a newbie to MacWorld it was all new and exciting. To some extent it did not live up to it’s reputation though and I did here some old hands griping about the quality of the conference and the number of sessions that were cancelled etc. I personally did not experience any of these problems. In my case the experience was comparable to the first time I went to London in my late teens. Growing up in Australia of WASP heritage, London had been built up in my expectations to such a extent that the reality was never going to live up to the daydream in my mind. I still found it a fascinating and wondrous place in the end though. Visiting MacWorld for the first time was rather like that.

Unfortunately the next thing on my priority list was laundry. I’ve not used a coin laundry for years so it was a bit of an adventure for me particularly as whilst the coin laundry was only a block or so from my hotel it was several blocks in the wrong direction of the social stratum.

After laundry I returned to my role as traveller. A tourist map I had revealed a ‘Frank Lloyd Wright Building’. It was to be found at 140 Maiden Lane and currently houses the Xanadu Gallery which specialises in Tribal/Folk Art. Turned out to be a real win-win situation for me. First of all I could view the work of one of Americas most celebrated Architects/Designers and I also brought some antique ‘Wayang Kulit’ (Javanese Sadow Puppets) for Yacinta. The building was originally the V.C Morris Gift Store which Wright designed in 1948 [link]. The outside was a large sandy coloured brick edifice with a cave like entrance. The inside is more difficult to describe. Luckily I took several photos of the interior.

I spent the late afternoon and early evening in Chinatown reputed to be the largest Chinatown outside Asia, but then America has a reputation for claiming that the have the ultimate or original of just about everything so I take this claim with a grain of salt. It was pretty big however and I spent a long time mooching through shops and had a very good, inexpensive dinner.

Speaking of grandiose claims, when I returned to my very modest hotel in the evening I discovered that it was playing host to the Worldwide Newton Conference 2006 a device I thought had gone to meet its maker many moons ago.

iPod Vending Machine

This was my first actual full day at the MacIT conference. Most of the sessions I attended were on subject I already new a fair amount about, but one can always learn more and it’s always good to get an idea about whether you’ve been doing things the right or wrong way all these years.

The sessions I attended on this day were:

10:30 AM – 12:00 PM: Learning to Write Shell Scripts for Mac OS X

David A. Pugh, System Administrator, and John Stewart, Computer Systems Consultant, both from the University of Michigan presented a dry subject in a relatively entertaining manor that made correct syntax sufferable if not mildly scintillating.

1:00 PM – 2:30 PM: MacIT Best Practices

Michael Volchok (President, Volchok Consulting, Inc.) compared and contrasted two fictional companies (actually real but the names have been changed to protect the innocent) to exemplify current best practices in it support. His best practice methodologies being predominantly based on ITIL (the IT Infrastructure Library) which is I discovered to my surprise not very well known in the states whilst being widely adopted in Europe and Australia.

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: J2EE Web Services on Mac OS X

Jonathan Maron, Consultant Member of Tech Staff, Oracle. I’m a web developer by trade and currently working as a Webmaster but this session was way to technical for me. I was also starting to suffer a bit of brain drain at this time.

When not in the conference sessions I spent my time on the floor of the Exhibition. Despite there being a number of interesting product (most outside my field of expertise) and may not available in Australia I really think that MacWorld should have been renamed iPodAccessoryWorld or more accurately iPodCaseWorld.

Having done our dash at MacIT for the day Jason and I hooked up again to take advantage of the 11% discount offered to overseas travellers at Macey’s. Here we also saw the fantastic iPod (PSP) vending machines for the first time which are operated by Zoom Systems.

Digital Photography Day

This was supposed to be my first actual day at the MacIT conference but I had signed up to do the Advanced Digital Photography day instead. I had expected to be doing it on Tuesday but fate had dealt me a different hand.

I’m so glad I did this, the key presenters Jay Dickman [Link 1] [Link 2] and Jay Kinghorn (authors of “Perfect Digital Photography” – thanks for signing my copy guys) were quite inspiring. Getting my hands on the Olympus E-500 camera for a couple of hours to play I have to say convinced me to buy one. I’d only ever considered the Canon and Nikon digital SLRs before now but I was quickly won over by the Olympus which gives really good bang for your buck.

I have to say Olympus and I both got our moneys worth from the two Jays.

The Cliff House Today

Pulled up reasonably well after tying it on a bit the night before. Queued for ages to hear Steve Jobs’ key note, in the spill-out room alas (see post entitled “What’s an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it’s ever done in a PC!” for more info). Amazingly caught up with Jason in the key-note queue.

Nothing on the conference timetable for the rest of the day so Jason and I mooched around the Cartoon Art Museum then caught an F tram down to Fisherman’s Wharf and nursed our hangovers in a traditional way with a burger and fries at the In-n-Out Burger Restaurant.

Jason told me about the legendary Cliff House, over lunch which sounded fascinating so we took the cable car back to Geary St. Jumped on the 38 bus and high tailed it out to the edge of Richmond and took some great shots of the sun setting behind the seal rocks over the pacific ocean.

As the evening closed in and one of the colder days I’d had in SFO I talked Jason into hopping the 18 and 71 buses back into town where we caught a bite to eat before retiring to our hotels.

AUC Dinner

Cued outside the Moscone Center for twenty minutes or so at about 8:30 am to register for the MacIT conference, exhibition etc. only to discover that there were no events for me to go to this day and that if I had left it till 10am I wouldn’t have had to cue at all.

Wandered around the area near the Moscone Center and took some great shots of the architecture and some elderly Asian ladies and gentlemen doing tai-chi with fans. Decided to do a round of the Galleries and Museums. Did the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) then tried a couple of other museums but discovered that most Museums and Galleries in SFO are only open Tuesday to Sunday. Resolved to leave Museums and Galleries till later in the week.

Went and checked out the Fisherman’s Warf area – a great exciuse to jump on one of the vintage trams that ply the F route. Saw the seals, Pier 39 , the Musée Mécanique etc. and had some great fresh prawns as a morning snack.

Late lunch at a small restaurant in little Saigon. I have to say, not a patch on some of the great inexpensive Vietnamese restaurants in Melbourne.

Caught up with the rest of the Apple University Consortium (AUC) attending the conference for drinks & dinner thanks to Andrew Jeffrey and the AUC. Drinks at the Courtyard Marriott and dinner at the 21st Amendment Bar. Had a great time, some wicked beer, brewed on the premises, and met some excellent people in particular Jason Benedek form University of Technology, Sydney.