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So on the weekend, my parents tell me they’re going down to the local summer fair on Tuesday because it’s free admission day. The Pacific National Exhibition is a decades long staple of the last two weeks of August where people of all ages can enjoy rides, food, and fun. I guess I can understand why my parents wanted to go. They have free time and admission was waived.

Well, I come home tonight to find out that many, many people also took advantage of the free admission day. According to this news report, there were lineups of up to two hours to just get into the fair. All of this just to save $16 for my Mom and $8 for my Dad who is considered a senior. I know my parents hate lineups so I imagine the whole thing was just a pain in the ass for them today. I would have gladly given my parents the $24 so they could have gone another day and saved all the hassle.

This is why I’m extremely wary of free stuff sometimes. In most cases, it’s such a hassle to get the free crap, it’s worth it to pay the money and not deal with all the BS.

I used to watch this show as a kid and I desperately wanted it to succeed since there were so few shows about science fiction and superhumans on at the time. It was cancelled after just one season, airing less than 20 episodes.

Now as an adult, I can see why the show did not do well and we should all have an appreciation of how good sci-fi and superheroes stories are now, in both TV and movies.

The coolest bit of swag I got from SIGGRAPH 2014 last week was a Google Cardboard VR kit. It’s Google’s cost-effective way of getting a virtual-reality headset to the general population. As you can see above, the kit consists mainly of cardboard, two lenses, some velcro, and a few magnets. You supply the smartphone, which is the display for your VR headset. This link, shows you a few more details and the official Google app for it is called Cardboard.

The official app has a few demos, including a Google Earth fly-through of select parts of the globe, a Google Streetview drive through a European city, and a YouTube demo. Unfortunately the YouTube demo doesn’t convert 2D videos into 3D but that’s asking way too much. The magnets, by the way, are used as input to the Cardboard app. You pull the magnet down and you release it just like the lever on an old-school View-Master.

The 3D effect is pretty cool and I’ve been impressed with how simple it was to bring a 3D VR headset to people using just their own smartphones and a bit of cardboard. You can also go on Google Play and download other 3D VR apps. Any one that splits the screen into left and right images will work with this kit. I’ve downloaded several and they all work great!

This by far was the best thing I got to take home from SIGGRAPH.

It has now rained for the last two days. The skies are gray and depressing. Just last week the weather was warm, sunny, and wonderful. Are those days now gone for the rest of 2014?

Summer always ends abruptly in Vancouver. One day the sun disappears and is replaced by the rain that never let’s up until next May. Have we reached that point here?

I just ate like 20 won tons with hot sauce. I am also very tired. I’m going to bed. Good day to everyone.

Today was the first day of the exhibits for SIGGRAPH 2014. I went there with a co-worker during our lunch break. I shamelessly grabbed as much swag as I could. There wasn’t a lot out there. As far as I know Pixar hadn’t given away their teapot yet. Instead, I got a lot of pens, probably ten in total. The best pen came from American Express who strangely had a booth. Their pen was made of wood. ILM had a pretty cool Lucasfilm iron-on patch and a nice Yoda sticker.

I’m returning tomorrow to see if I can get some more stuff. I’ll take pictures of everything at the end of the week.

EA had a little recruiting event near the SIGGRAPH venue tonight. I went because in about two months I’ll be jobless since my contract ends in October. I did a tiny bit of networking but I mainly used my two drinks tickets and ate canapes. Mostly importantly, I picked up a bit of swag. I don’t own a PS4 but giving away a free game was cool. I hope I get some more stuff tomorrow.

This year’s SIGGRAPH returns to Vancouver after being held here back in 2011. Three years ago, it was the first time that the main conference in the computer graphics field was ever situated in a city outside of the US. It’s my understanding that the 2011 conference was such a huge success that organizers decided to return to Vancouver as soon as practically possible (which was three years given that subsequent venues had already been decided upon).

I had a chance to attend SIGGRAPH, just visiting the exhibits, back in 2011 and it was one of the most impressive conferences I’ve ever seen. I was most impressed by the fact that thousands of the smartest people from animation studios, software developers, FX houses, university researchers, and game studios all assembled to showcase their work and to take in the work of others in one giant conference. The weather was great for the entire time and I think many people who hadn’t been to Vancouver were quite impressed with the city and conference venue.

I’m lucky enough to have another ghetto exhibits only pass again for SIGGRAPH 2014 but I’m still super excited about going. There’s going to be lots to see and hopefully a lot of swag to pick up! My only disappointment is that SIGGRAPH has already chosen venues up to and including the 2017 conference, so the earliest it can return to Vancouver will be 2018. That is in the future though and there’s still this year’s conference!

I worked OT all week, marking the first time I’ve done any significant OT since October of 2011. That’s about three years, spanning three different jobs, none of which required me to work any crazy hours. For a guy working in the games industry, that’s amazing! I almost forgot what an OT dinner looked like.

Well, it was a good run but now I’m back to the grind. Hopefully, there’s just one more week left and things will go back to normal. Now that I look back on it, it’s crazy that I used to do OT for months on end. That’s youth for ya.

Ok, I need some sleep.

Ok, I know, things look different right now. Before anyone gets too excited, please understand this is not the final look of this blog going forward. We can all universally agree the previous theme I selected was terrible. While I haven’t selected the final theme, I believed it was better to move onto something else, even if it was temporary because I couldn’t stand the last theme. As such, some of the archives might look weird. Please bear with me. Please also note that I reserve the right to take as much time as possible to choose the next theme.