(no subject)
On April 10th animekid, randonb and I attended Yuri's Night. This is a celebration of Yuri Gagarin's first flight into space. It is exciting and great to see American's finally celebrating the success of humankind rather than just Americans in space. The Russians deserve credit for their successes because they pushed the US towards our own successes.
The event is a mix of music, geek, space, NASA festival. I am NOT a big fan of people in even moderately sized groups so I was a little bit nervous about... especially since the person who told me about it consistently referred to it as a rave which has a very specific association in my mind (lots of excessive noise and people packed in like sardines). But I love space stuff and sci-fi and I wanted to go.
As it turns out, the crowds were almost a non-issue. It was only when time came to get some coffee in the evening and we had to stand in line for 20+ minutes that I started getting grumpy but beyond that I actually felt pretty relaxed. It helped that there was usually decent music playing on one of the two stages. We actually took off after 10pm when both stages were playing absolutely horrid music.
Anyway...
The event was held at Moffet Field. As I mentioned previously, there were two stages that hosted a variety of musicians. Inside the main building was a variety of booths that hosted a bunch of neat stuff. My personal favorite was Syzygryd who makes me wish I was more inclined to enjoy things like Burning Man as I would thoroughly love to see what they are working on for that event in person.
There was a bunch of shwag opportunities as well. My favorite sticker that I brought home says, "What happens in the event horizon stays in the event horizon." :):)
This is becoming haphazard so I'm going to start with the pictures... of which there are many.
People could climb up a ladder and go inside. This is something my (weight gain related) social anxiety is not a fan of so I was more than content to take pictures from the outside and tweet obnoxious things like "spaceship bitches".
What better way to draw the right sort of people to your booth than with a huge ass 20 sided die? I am officially a fan of the Maker's Faire people. Not only did they give away rad pins but they let us make our own raver bling with LEDs, electrical tape and batteries.
I really wanted the knitting book.
We showed up just after the event started and this allowed us to wander around and interact with exhibits without interference from other people. If I go next year I plan to do the same thing.
Here you see the dome-womb that once you entered felt a lot like the PE parachute exercise from elementary school. We got to lay back and watch a video about the space program (starting with Russia!) and I actually learned a lot of stuff that I've never heard about because our media is so focused on our own accomplishments.
I don't know about anyone else but my heart soars when I watch anything about space travel.
I love this picture so much that I am thinking about getting a print of it for my front room.
Another booth that I liked (but ultimately was annoyed by because they kept closing so I couldn't finish what I was working on) was the Shapelock booth (http://shapelock.com/). This stuff is very kewl for the obvious technological reasons but I think that it has a LOT of potential for other things such as 3D tactile objects for blind students.
Crazy complicated and expensive bicycle wheel bling
I have no idea...
I think it is important to note that the food at this event was of reasonable quality and pricing. They even had vegan, yuppie food for people who like that sort of thing. Oh, and the coffee was decent quality. I got this quantity of chicken and rice for $6 and I felt well fed. There was also free water available since there were no drinking fountains.
We ran into some familiar people while we were there. These ones shall rename unnamed as requested. Silly humans. :p
And then I discovered that my holga filters fit on my 50mm 1.8 lens.
A little holga + filter action
A 3D thing. These sort of 3D doesn't work for me so I took pictures of people looking at it rather than actually looked at it.
Some alternate jumping pictures
One of the more offensive things I find that rich people do is they say things like, "If I can do it, you can do it." There's an obvious disconnect there that doesn't work for me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the presentation by Richard Garriott who I admire because he puts his money to work... not only for his own benefit in the short term but for the benefit of humans in the long. His explanation of what taking a crap in space is really like was absolutely fantastic.
There was a tiny air show that wasn't very interesting and my lens (10-22mm) made photographing sort of challenging.
I don't know who these people are. I did a walk by shot of them because they were very orange.
Ample toilets that were actually not too bad to use. Impressive!
I'm not exactly sure what this was but it looked kewl.
This car is awesome.
Do want.
I had no interest in the truck blimp until it got dark and suddenly I needed to take a picture.
And now for the people pictures... ;) I love my diffuser.
randonb and his Nasa bling on his ear.
animekid looks to be plotting
I needed a tripod at this moment
Read the sign.
We ran into Sagar (http://horizontalrain.com/blog/) at the event and he followed us to Taco Bell (damn stalker).
My screen is beyond tweaking so I'm not working on photos at all anymore so they are largely straight from the camera. I hope to save up money for an iMac over the next two years and then maybe I can get back to post processing with some confidence of what the actual outcome is.
The event is a mix of music, geek, space, NASA festival. I am NOT a big fan of people in even moderately sized groups so I was a little bit nervous about... especially since the person who told me about it consistently referred to it as a rave which has a very specific association in my mind (lots of excessive noise and people packed in like sardines). But I love space stuff and sci-fi and I wanted to go.
As it turns out, the crowds were almost a non-issue. It was only when time came to get some coffee in the evening and we had to stand in line for 20+ minutes that I started getting grumpy but beyond that I actually felt pretty relaxed. It helped that there was usually decent music playing on one of the two stages. We actually took off after 10pm when both stages were playing absolutely horrid music.
Anyway...
The event was held at Moffet Field. As I mentioned previously, there were two stages that hosted a variety of musicians. Inside the main building was a variety of booths that hosted a bunch of neat stuff. My personal favorite was Syzygryd who makes me wish I was more inclined to enjoy things like Burning Man as I would thoroughly love to see what they are working on for that event in person.
There was a bunch of shwag opportunities as well. My favorite sticker that I brought home says, "What happens in the event horizon stays in the event horizon." :):)
This is becoming haphazard so I'm going to start with the pictures... of which there are many.
People could climb up a ladder and go inside. This is something my (weight gain related) social anxiety is not a fan of so I was more than content to take pictures from the outside and tweet obnoxious things like "spaceship bitches".
What better way to draw the right sort of people to your booth than with a huge ass 20 sided die? I am officially a fan of the Maker's Faire people. Not only did they give away rad pins but they let us make our own raver bling with LEDs, electrical tape and batteries.
I really wanted the knitting book.
We showed up just after the event started and this allowed us to wander around and interact with exhibits without interference from other people. If I go next year I plan to do the same thing.
Here you see the dome-womb that once you entered felt a lot like the PE parachute exercise from elementary school. We got to lay back and watch a video about the space program (starting with Russia!) and I actually learned a lot of stuff that I've never heard about because our media is so focused on our own accomplishments.
I don't know about anyone else but my heart soars when I watch anything about space travel.
I love this picture so much that I am thinking about getting a print of it for my front room.
Another booth that I liked (but ultimately was annoyed by because they kept closing so I couldn't finish what I was working on) was the Shapelock booth (http://shapelock.com/). This stuff is very kewl for the obvious technological reasons but I think that it has a LOT of potential for other things such as 3D tactile objects for blind students.
Crazy complicated and expensive bicycle wheel bling
I have no idea...
I think it is important to note that the food at this event was of reasonable quality and pricing. They even had vegan, yuppie food for people who like that sort of thing. Oh, and the coffee was decent quality. I got this quantity of chicken and rice for $6 and I felt well fed. There was also free water available since there were no drinking fountains.
We ran into some familiar people while we were there. These ones shall rename unnamed as requested. Silly humans. :p
And then I discovered that my holga filters fit on my 50mm 1.8 lens.
A little holga + filter action
A 3D thing. These sort of 3D doesn't work for me so I took pictures of people looking at it rather than actually looked at it.
Some alternate jumping pictures
One of the more offensive things I find that rich people do is they say things like, "If I can do it, you can do it." There's an obvious disconnect there that doesn't work for me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the presentation by Richard Garriott who I admire because he puts his money to work... not only for his own benefit in the short term but for the benefit of humans in the long. His explanation of what taking a crap in space is really like was absolutely fantastic.
There was a tiny air show that wasn't very interesting and my lens (10-22mm) made photographing sort of challenging.
I don't know who these people are. I did a walk by shot of them because they were very orange.
Ample toilets that were actually not too bad to use. Impressive!
I'm not exactly sure what this was but it looked kewl.
This car is awesome.
Do want.
I had no interest in the truck blimp until it got dark and suddenly I needed to take a picture.
And now for the people pictures... ;) I love my diffuser.
randonb and his Nasa bling on his ear.
animekid looks to be plotting
I needed a tripod at this moment
Read the sign.
We ran into Sagar (http://horizontalrain.com/blog/) at the event and he followed us to Taco Bell (damn stalker).
My screen is beyond tweaking so I'm not working on photos at all anymore so they are largely straight from the camera. I hope to save up money for an iMac over the next two years and then maybe I can get back to post processing with some confidence of what the actual outcome is.