Rackbits

I know I promised more Quakecon stuff but I’d rather do a write up about my first two days in Chicago. I also promised to do daily updates but you can clearly see how well that has gone. Leaving the Hilton Anatole at the eye bleeding time of 6am, we headed to DFW airport for our 8am flight to Chicago. Compared to our previous flights this one went bye in a cool 2 hours, feeling pretty much like landing mere minutes after takeoff.

One short shuttle bus ride downtown and we are out our hotel, the Hilton Palmer House, situated in an area of Chicago known as the loop. The loop is ringed by the ‘L’ Train system, an elevated train system that is iconic of this city.

As with all of our travels, the first step is always to get your bearings. Walking out the front door with nothing more than a sense of adventure and hunger for food, we headed out into the unknown. Our hotel is a couple of blocks from Millennium Park, an L train station, three hop on hop off tour bus stops, lots of food places and some excellent views.

For lunch we grabbed some hot dogs followed by some Chicago style pizzas. Cliched, I know, but cheap and tasty.

Our first afternoon was then spent figuring out what we wanted to do, how we can get to anything further than walking distance, and anything else of interest. Chicago has an extensive mass transit system run by the CTA, who provide unlimited ride passes for their network. For $23 USD you can buy a 7-day unlimited ride pass which gets you access to the ‘L’ train, CTA busses and subway network.

With time drifting through dusk towards night we headed to the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States. It has 108 usable floors of space and the 103rd floor is dedicated as the SkyDeck, a publicly  accessible observation deck. In less than a minute you go from first floor to the 103rd floor, at a speed of nearly 30km/h. Upon stepping out of the lift you are immediately greeted with a panoramic view of the city spread before you. My command of the English language is not good enough to give the view it’s due description so I’ll leave it to the photographs.

Day two in Chicago started with our Hop On Hop Off bus tour of the city. The tour took us on a tour of the downtown and surrounding areas of the city. I didn’t take many photos from the bus itself  because it was impossible to get decent shots without getting lots of other heads in the bottom of the frame. Nonetheless I did take a few including this shot of the skyline including the John Hancock Centre on the right and a fragment of the Lake Point Tower, located near the Navy Pier, on the left.

It was around 2:30pm when we decided to head to the suburb of Oak Park to do the tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. Designed and built in 1889, it is a precursor and experiment for a lot of design ideas that would later become the ‘Prairie style’ of architecture.

The house is quite beautiful and shows many traits that would later make Frank Lloyd Wright famous. His use of horizontal elements, like Roman Bricks, inbuilt furniture, the use of optical illusions and space compression in order to make rooms look larger and prototypes of what would later become his distinctive art glass are all to be found here.

Unfortunately I couldn’t take photographs inside the house.

We left with plans on going back to Oak Park to do the guided tour and take more photographs of the area including the numerous houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

A short drinks break and a quick search of the internet (free wifi is common and quite convenient), we head off in search of dinner.

Also I managed to capture EVIDENCE that Chicago is really a domed city with the sky being held up with large support towers. Observe the lightweight tower going through the cloud layer and connected to the skybox.

Or maybe not. I still like the idea of a domed city, though.

Quakecon 2010 is over and it was a whole lot of fun. Unfortunately the internet was quite flakey even going down for quite a bit of the con so I didn’t have any opportunity to post anything on the site.

The second day of the con was again mostly spent at the various demonstrations and talks that were given. The day started with the ‘Building Blockbusters’ panel with Todd Howard from Bethesda Softworks, Tim Willits from ID Software, and Vince and Jason from Respawn Entertainment. Unfortunately the only information I could get from the Respawn Entertainment guys was that they were working on something that ‘if it were another project it would be a sequel’ possibly hinting at their first project being a spiritual successor to one of their last projects made with Activision.

Some of the attractions of the Exhibitors hall included more extreme cooling using liquid nitrogen (no accompanying power outages, though),

Bethesda had a huge exhibit demonstrating their upcoming games Fallout New Vegas and Brink. The large silver metallic object on the left of the next photo is a spacecraft from Armadillo Aerospace. It’s quite a small craft, not yet capable of suborbital flight, but it’s a tech testbed which fits into their incremental process for design.

After spending some time in the exhibitors hall trying to win free stuff (I got a couple of t-shirts, one for Fallout New Vegas and one for Brink), we headed to the Rage presentation. This is some of the first proper gameplay that will be shown of the game. The game will feature customisable guns and vehicles, both of which have a decent level of progression and difficulty in obtaining parts so make the process more rewarding and satisfying.

Among other things the game will feature a lot of unique enemies and a decent variety of arenas to fight them in. I want this game in my life.

The game is getting released on the PC, xbox 360, and Playstation 3 and to demonstrate how well their console versions compare to the pc version they demonstrated all three running at the same time on three different projector screens. They had three people playing the game at the same time roughly keeping up with each other. It was quite amazing seeing the both consoles and the PC rendering the same amazing graphics and running at the same smooth (60FPS according to ID) framerate. This combined with the Rage engine port to the iPhone really shows off how good a game engine programmer John Carmack is.

The photo above shows the PC version on the left and the xbox 360 version running on the right. Dodgy photography aside the two projections were virtually indistinguishable with no obvious performance penalties on the 360 version. There was another projector running to the left of these two showing the PS3 version of the game. It too was running just as well as the PC and 360 versions and ran the demo quite well.

Part two coming soon, including swag photos.

My trip to Quakecon began yesterday, with our morning flight out of Seattle to Dallas Texas. The flight, despite being 4 hours long, disappeared very quickly as I read World War Z. If you’re a fan of the Zombie Survival Guide you will like it.

Because of time zone differences we landed around 5pm Dallas Time, and then spent the best part of an hour and a half just getting out of the airport. Eventually we made it to the Hilton Anatole, the hotel hosting Quakecon, and before we knew it we had our room.

With our room sorted our next task was to find the Quakecon registration queue and join it. With memories of last year’s epic multi-hour wait in the queue the night before firmly burned in I fully anticipated being there until two in the morning. Fortunately the queue was small, fast moving, and before we knew it we were fully signed up Quakecon BYOC attendees.

With the events not beginning until the following day, we grabbed some food and headed to sleep in anticipation.

Day 12 begins, and we head down to the BYOC and Exhibition hall to check out the sponsors booths. On the way in we can’t help but notice the gigantic queue formed that spills out of the room and around the hallway, far surpassing the queues of the night before.

After making our way past the horde we headed into the exhibition hall, where all of the Sponsor’s booths are located.

This year around Bethesda Softworks have a much larger booth than last year with demo machines for Brink, Fallout New Vegas and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.

After wandering around, playing games on machines provided by the vendors, and watching the unveiling of the prize cars we headed off to the Level Design Panel to see the first of the game development panels. The panel had level designers from iD, Bethesda, Splash Damage.

Afterwards we headed to the Main Stage to watch the iD software welcome and John Carmack’s keynote. The welcome was, as always, given by iD software’s CEO Todd Hollenshead.

Sadly this year there was to be no new information about Doom 4.

The introduction was followed by John Carmack’s annual keynote. Because of the merger with Zenimax John was able to take on a more technical role within iD software and as such his keynote was a lot more technical than last year’s was.

This year John Carmack decided to do two entirely new things. He gave a demonstration of some tech he made up in short order – he had managed to port the Rage engine to the iPhone. It ran at 60FPS and had stunning graphics which were so detailed and crisp you wouldn’t believe they were running on a phone.

He also ran an entirely separate keynote to talk about Armadillo Aerospace and it’s partnership with Space Adventures called Rocket Talk. Both of these keynotes ran for two hours each and included Q&A sessions. The Rocket Talk session included talks from John Carmack about Armadillo Aerospace and Richard Garriott.

Richard Garriott was responsible for the Ultima series of games, as well as Tabula Rasa, and spent 12 days in Space including a 10 day stint aboard the International Space Station. At the Rocket Talk he tells his story in fine detail about the lead up and eventual trip to and from space.

After the Rocket talk John Carmack continued to talk to an ever shrinking group of fans outside of the halls (I was there, it was good), and I even had a conversation with him and a few others about mobile development and the Android platform.

The keynotes were over and I finally decided to make it back to the BYOC and fire up my computer for the first time during QC2010.

Day nine started early with our tour around the Boing Factory. Unfortunately the Boeing factory doesn’t allow cameras (or any electronics) to be carried while on the tour. As a result you’ll just have to imagine what it looks like from my vague descriptions.

The tour started at our hotel where we were picked up by a crazy New Yorker who gave us a brief background of the Boeing company and kept us entertained until we reached the Boeing ‘Future of Aviation’ facility. Boeing are quite proud of their history and this facility is their way to show their achievements especially those connected with their next aircraft, the 787 Dreamliner.

The factory tour itself started at 11am and after a short introductory video promoting Boeing’s past achievements and future developments, we were lead to the factory building. The factory building is the largest building, by volume, in the world. Many comparisons are drawn between it’s area and what it could contain, such as it is large enough to hold the entire Disneyland theme park and parking area within itself.

Within it’s walls the 747, 777 and 787 aircraft are produced. All three plane models appear to have at least six aircraft each in various stages of completion being worked on simultaneously on rolling production lines that move while the aircraft are being built. The building is divided up into bays which are all capable of making a 747, which is a huge aeroplane, look small.

The tour is guided and the guide herself was or is a Boeing tech who worked on the 777, and gave an interesting commentary on the workings of the factory.

After the tour we were given a choice of where we wanted to be dropped off, and we chose Pike Place Market in the Seattle downtown. Pike place market is full of good food, interesting stalls and shops and is a good place to people watch. We had a late lunch, we explored the area, took part in taste tests and generally relaxed. Unfortunately I still didn’t have my camera and as such I have no photos, however being unconstrained by linear time I do have have a photo from tomorrow which I’ll substitute. Just imagine it as a heavily overcast day, instead of being bright and sunny.

Day 10 started with a simple quest; to go out to nearby lands and eat a burger from Red Mill. We headed out for an early lunch to try to beat the legendary queues that this place inevitably attracts.

When we got there, the place was reasonably full but there was only a handful of people waiting on their orders and no queue. I decided to order a Blue Cheese and Bacon burger, a tasty combination of Beef, Blue Cheese, Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and their Mill Sauce on a Kaiser Bun; and Ricci got a Cheese Burger which is Beef, American Cheese, Lettuce and Mill Sauce again on a Kaiser Bun. We also order a side of Onion rings and Fries to share, as well as chocolate shakes each.

After a small wait we got our food, and then we got to discover if it was worth the wait. It was definitely worth it, everything about my burger was tasty. The combination of flavours was delicious, from the salty and perfectly crisp bacon, to the sharp blue cheese, the smokey mill sauce, the fresh lettuce and tomato, the slightly toasted Kaiser roll. To top it off the onion rings really were quite tasty, nice and chunky with crispy batter that had good flavour and the slightly sweet onion.

While we were waiting I couldn’t help but notice the huge stack of bacon sitting in wait to be consumed. I knew, from watching Man v Food, that it would be large but much like the Boeing Factory tour only experience can actually show you.

Another thing I couldn’t help but notice is that this store, and there are a two in Seattle, is also the one operated by Babe Shepherd who also appeared in the Man v Food episode to guide Adam Richman around the Red Mill shop.

I mentioned earlier that there was no queue on the way in. During our lunch, however, the story had changed dramatically. There now was a queue that stretched out the door and halfway across the shopfront. I thanked our luck with timing as we headed out and back to Downtown.

Our next stop was the Underground tour, a tour that takes a look at parts of the old city and journeys through the cities real ground level one level below street level. As the tour explains after the city was burned to the ground in an accidental fire, in order to solve the various drainage problems the city had they decided to build all of their buildings with entrances and roads one level above ground.  This is why many of the buildings in Seattle start on the second floor, where the first floor is the basement.

While chatting to the guide, appearing in the photograph above we got a recommendation for a place to have dinner, an Italian restaurant that we may have even walked right past without even noticing called the Pink Door. First, as it wasn’t nearly late enough, we decided to head to the Smith tower observation deck.

The Smith Tower was once the 4th tallest building in the world upon it’s construction, and for 50 years it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It has an observation level on the 35th floor complete with an outdoors observation balcony that wraps around the building giving an unobstructed 360 degree view, save for the safety cage.

By this stage it was getting late, almost time for dinner, so we headed to the restaurant recommended. It was located in Post Alley, right near Pike Place Market. This restaurant doesn’t even have a sign and it’s only identifier is it’s Pink Door. Fortunately I was told where to find it, opposite Kells Irish Pub. We ended our day with good food, wine and even by Australian standards, good Espresso.

And that basically wraps up our last two days in Seattle, a great city with lots of places to explore and good food to eat.

Tomorrow we fly down to Dallas, Texas where we begin our Quakecon 2010 adventure.

Given that our number of days remaining in Seattle is quickly shortening, we decided against weather and common sense to take a ride to the observation deck of the Space Needle. The Space Needle is a remnant  of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, and one of the few remaining, along with the Monorail.

Unfortunately the weather was not exactly providing perfect observation conditions. Fog lay thick high above the ground turning the view into a shifting grey blob. Despite this there were still quite a few people queueing up to get to the top of the tower.

We waited and watched and soon enough the fog lifted and the view of Seattle was revealed to us.

As a side note, I’m working on embedding photo galleries in my blog so I can post more photos without making my posts epic huge and even more unreadable.

After leaving the Space Needle we had an explore of the grounds. Right near the needle is a the EMP building, a museum founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It was designed by Frank Ghery, shares many of his building traits, and has similarities with other buildings such the metal panel skin.

The museum houses the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum. The Science Fiction Museum is full of props, costumes, models, books and information. Because of the dim lighting within the museum I didn’t take many photos. They had all sorts of cool and unexpected things like a t-rex control interface used to animate the t-rex cgi model for the original Jurassic Park movie and the portal generator used in the very last episode of Red Dwarf.

After lunch we headed downtown using the old Monorail. From there we walked until we ran out of interesting buildings, and then we turned around and headed back along another path. I knew the Columbia Center, which is the tallest building in the city, has an observation deck so we headed there to try to visit it. Unfortunately when we got there we found out it was ‘closed’. It wasn’t late in the day so all I can assume is that Sunday is a slow day in Seattle.

We ended up walking through Seattle’s International District (Chinatown, basically), through Pioneer Square, and back up north through the downtown past the Pike Place market and into Belltown.

By this stage it was getting quite late so we decided to trek it out to the last of the three Man V Food spots – Red Mill Burgers. We got there but not early enough, Sunday trading ends an hour earlier than normal, and we were stuck. I have decided to try for this again when they reopen on Tuesday.

Nobody told me this but Seattle is supposedly famous for it’s rainy/perpetually overcast weather. Today was no exception so we decided to take a trip to the Museum of Flight, located at the site of the original Boeing factory.

Amongst it’s aircraft on display are a British Airways Concorde, a 707 based Air Force One (the very one that Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn inon after John F. Kennedy was assassinated), and an SR-71 Blackbird.

The museum is situated right near the Boeing Field Airport and as such aircraft can be seen taking off and landing here. While I was ordering lunch my request was interrupted by a loud rush of noise. As I turned around I saw a US Navy jet racing down the runway and taking off.

After lunch we took a wander outside towards a growing crowd surrounding the fences separating the museum grounds from the runways. We could see, lined up on the runways, a group of Blue Angels F/A-18′s looking ready to go. Even from the distance we were at we could hear their jet engines idling. With perfect timing, just as we found a perfect spot to watch and get comfortable, they began to take off. Just as one group took off another came screaming down the runway with engines at full throttle.

They have quite an excellent exhibition on the early days of boeing including a glimpse into the original factory floor that made their beautifully constructed wooden aircraft.

We both rather had a lot of fun exploring this place. I’m quite a fan of the subject matter and the opportunity to be so close to those FA18′s take off, to feel the sound resonate through your body, was just the icing on the cake.

We left the museum around 5pm, having taken a look through all of the exhibits. By the time we got back to our hotel room we were getting hungry again and decided to make our second Man V Food trek for this leg of the trip. With my memory of the Seattle episode fresh in my mind I decided that we should go to Beth’s cafe, home of the 12 egg omelette.

I ended up ordering the 6 egg Southwestern Exposure; an omelette made with 6 eggs, beef brisket chili, salsa, sour cream, and cheddar cheese; and which comes with a side of toast and a generous amount of hash brown. I managed to nom my way though the lot, leaving the place quite (read: extremely) full. I have to admit for a moment I did consider the 12 egg monster but in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t.

Aside from the huge food servings and it’s appearance in Man V Food, Beth’s cafe is known for having it’s walls completely covered in art made by the patrons. Anybody who eats there is allowed to stick their artwork to the walls.

With Beth’s cafe and the Crab Pot down, that only leaves Red Mill burgers left on my Seattle Man v Food quest.

Update: Later that night I took this photo out of our hotel window. Using a stack of bags as my tripod, I managed to get the camera stable enough for a longer exposure.

Day 5, our last day in San Francisco. Having recovered from the previous night’s entertainment we decided have a late breakfast and then explore the Marina district, effectively the last suburban built up area before the Golden Gate Bridge.

Coincidentally while we happen to be within walking distance of the Exploratorium, a science museum that was the brainchild of Frank Oppenheimer, on the one day of the month that they hold their After Dark events. Given this good luck and timing we decided to attend. At the very least it’s always funny watching a museum full of adults playing with the museum’s vast array of hands on experiments.

Notable discoveries include finding the sign that read “Don’t drink and climb. You might get hurt… or even spill your drink!” near a geometric climbing thing with more than a few drink wielding adults on it.

I also managed to find an exhibit powered by a Macintosh SE. Of course about a minute after sitting down at it I decide to see what would happen if I hit the multifinder menu. Let’s just say the application they were using didn’t do proper screen redrawing and I left it a little more incomprehensible than before.

By this stage it was getting quite late and we had an early morning flight to Seattle so we left and went back to our hotel for our last night.

Day 6 started early. Far too early. Six Thirty alarm to make it to the airport by 8 o’clock, and we didn’t even have any transport organised (because I’m that skilled). Fortunately transport problems are easily solved with the application of American dollars. Our flight was with Alaska Airlines who have something of a dodgy reputation, online at least, for quality of service. Unfortunately my already low expectations were missed when, upon checkin in, we were told we had to pay an additional fee just to have luggage on our flight. There’s only so much you can argue a point with the front line peons and I eventually conceded defeat and coughed up the extra fee.

One mercifully short flight in the most cramped aircraft I’ve been in yet and we were in Seattle. Once again our transport issues were solved with the strategic application of money and we were finally at our hotel.

It was now midday and we were getting hungry. With only a vague idea of what was out there we set off in search of food. Our random wanderings through downtown eventually took us to the Crab Pot, a seafood place (Shocking, I know) that featured on Man Vs Food. While they do have a normal menu their drawcard is their Seafeast; an assortment of seafood like Crab, prawns, Clams, Mussels combined with Corn on the Cob, Red Potatoes and sausage which is cooked with spices and served on a sheet of butchers paper. You are armed with a fork, a mallet and your wits.

Our lunch started and thus ended rather late. By the time we got out it was quarter to five (we both have no idea how this happened or where the hours went). The rest of the day was spent exploring the area and getting an idea of where our hotel was located relative to other attractions.

As it turns out our hotel room has a great view of the Space Needle.

I’ve had to delay writing up my day 5 post because I ran out of time and need to sleep before my early morning flight. Today was my last day in San Francisco, and tomorrow I’ll be flying northwards to Seattle.

I’d like to take a moment here to explain just how awesome the public transport in San Francisco is. Everything from the busses to the cable cars are operated by Muni, and weekly tickets (costing $26) can be bought which allow unlimited rides on all Muni transport for 7 days. If you plan on travelling in San Francisco I absolutely recommend this.

The island of Alcatraz allows free exploration. Once you land you can move around the various buildings and discover it’s past. Originally an army fort intended to protect San Francisco during the California Gold Rush from foreign invasion it eventually became a Civil War fort; a US Army Prison where it was subsequently shut down due to it’s high cost; then it was reopened as the 30′s rolled around. It’s doors were closed once again in the early 60′s again due to it’s cost and it’s prison life was finally over.

In the early sixties, it was taken over by activists who claimed it as Indian land. Nineteen months later it was abandoned once again and eventually it became part of the National Parks service and a tourist attraction.

The Cell House has an audio tour which takes you through the cell blocks and adjacent facilities and does a decent job at showing some of the more interesting stories.

Once back on the mainland we had lunch and set off to explore the suburb of North Beach. Paradoxically named, as there is no beach there nowadays, North Beach once was a long stretch of beachfront land that has over the years been infilled.

Starting at Telegraph hill we ascended to the top of the Coit Tower, then we proceeded to walk around the streets around Telegraph hill and North Beach.

It was now getting late and we were getting hungry. Having watched too much Anthony Bordain: No Reservations, we decided to head to the House of Prime Rib. This place is so epic it delivers it’s meat it has the Hindenburg of meat delivery systems.

That ends our second last (complete) day in SF. Tomorrow I plan on doing more tv show chasing and finding out if Bacon Maple Coffee tastes any good.