Siggraph 2014 Diaries - Vancouver : Sunday 10th August

Nat:

Sunday was my first full day off since we arrived in Vancouver, so I wanted to see some of the lovely sights I'd heard all about. 

Figure 01. Woke up with the light, I still had jet lag at this point and this was the view just from laying in bed.

Figure 02. Breakfast, flavoursome organic cherries

After a chilled out (rush free - from not having a shift) I took a walk around and snapped some cool pictures from within the area. I was heading to the harbour to find out times and prices of the sea-plane tours as that's my idea of fun.

Figure 03. Vancouver Art Gallery

Figure 04. Near Vancouver art gallery

Figure 05. The Winter Olympic torch in early light

Figure 06. Reflective buildings

Figure 07. Knobbly trees

I got to the airport and the flight I was hoping to hop onto didn't have any takers and as I was on my own they wouldn't book just one person, but luckily the flight half an hour later had a space so I went for it. 

Figure 08. Boarding Pass

Figure 09. The plane I flew in

I got onto the aircraft and it didn't look like there were any seats left, so I asked the pilot (who was taking my bag at the time) if there were enough seats and he said 'Would you like to sit up the front with me?' and that was that! I got the best seat in the house. As I sat down, a passenger behind me started asking questions about the flight and when I said I'm just a tourist I thought he was going to fall out of his seat from surprise. 

Figure 10. Nat with the Pilot before take-off

Figure 11. Listening to some funny talk over the pilot radio

I was allowed to put the headphones on and talk to the pilot as we flew, and I also got to hear some funny conversations between other pilots and the control tower. 

Imagine this conversation in a strong Canadian accent

One man said to another 'Hey Bob, it's been a while, how you doin?' (I forgot the actual name used)

'Oh hey, this isn't Bob'

'Oh no? Oh you sure do sound like Bob'

'Oh gee thanks, no Bob's retired now'

'Oh yah?'

'Yah, retired about a year ago now'

'Oh yah?'

'Yah'

'Oh, well you sure do sound like him'

'Oh thanks'

'Yah…. Well…. you take care now'

So I was sat giggling away hearing this with an amazing view

Figure 12. Spectacular View

Figure 13. Spectacular View

Figure 14. Spectacular View

Figure 15. Spectacular View

After the flight and a nice conversation with the pilot, I went and grabbed some lunch

Figure 16. Lunch

Figure 17. Cruise Ship

Figure 18. Lego Movie talks

At 3.45 - 5.15 I went to a selection of talks in the East building (where the cruise ships always moor up)  

These were:

Everything is Awesome

- "The LEGO Movie": Construction, Animation, and Demolition (Animal Logic)

- Tuning Facial Animation in a Mocap Pipeline (Weta)

- Assembling Environments with LEGOscape

- "The LEGO Movie": Bricks, Bricks and More Bricks

These talks were brilliant and solved the questions I had after watching the Lego Movie a few weeks before and so so much more cool geeky information. The 'Tuning Facial Animation' talk from Weta was really interesting, they explained how they adjust and animate parts of animation where the results hadn't matched the actor's original performance to the exact expression by navigating through all of the graph data and corresponding tracking points.

Figure 19. After the World Record Attempt

After the talks we all met up again in an attempt to be part of a New World Record for most cellular devices creating a pixel of an image bouncing off of a satellite. 

However…. we all overloaded the network so the attempt failed.

We did bump into a person we recognised from the train journey from the airport to the apartment on the first day though, and as we knew he was part of Siggraph we invited him to join us to the social.

After that there was a meet at a bar called 'Steamworks' (where we went on our first evening in Vancouver and over populated the establishment). This was an 'SV reunion'. So anybody that had been or is an SV or part of the committee were welcome to come along. 

We walked to this bar with the beautiful evening lit scenery.

Figure 20. Evening Scenery

Figure 21. Evening Scenery

When we got to Steamworks, they said there wasn't enough room for everybody so the new destination was The Cambie (Where we went on the second night).

Figure 22. Kym and Phil

Figure 23. Ernesta

One of the SVs had printed balloons as a type of business card, those went down with the crowd very well. 

Figure 24. Hot chips and a beer

There was pub food, which was too piping hot for me to hold and it was a very fun evening!

Figure 25. Nat and Ateen

Figure 26. Ernesta, Lee and Nat