MacWorld is probably the coolest of the geeky events I’ve attended so far this year. Harriet and I spent a day and a half (January 17 and 18) checking out how the (for me) other half (8% more precisely) lives.
We’re a mixed family: Harriet is an Apple disciple and I’m a member of the PC Priesthood. However, I admire the Mac’s style, I love my iTouch, and I envy every photo book my Mac-Ninja neighbors casually produce from iWhatever. So, it is with a distinct lack of snark (okay, maybe a little) that I visit MacWorld each year and anxiously await Steve Job’s BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.
By now, most of you know that this year’s talisman was the MacBook Air. And yeah, it’s cool. It’s thin: really thin. And light. And surprisingly full featured with a comfortable keyboard and a great display. I’m not going to do a review of it here since there are a lot of good reviews available on the inter-tubes, and they include descriptions of the device’s limitations. But damn it’s cool. And they looked impressive on that wire, hanging like a mobile (we didn’t try the ones on on the wires since Apple had a lot of them set up on counters for us all to play with).
MacWorld has been getting a little bit smaller from year to year. But this year it was about the same size as last year, and it was laid out much better. It wasn’t just iPod World, and Harriet had a good time checking out the cool accessories, as well as sitting in on some Photoshop and InDesign tutorials.
Plus, there is a mighty fine dim sum restaurant right next to the Moscone Center.
We stayed at the best B&B in San Francisco. The Herzfeld has been recently renovated and now boasts the finest dining facilities in the city. And their fruit salad is to die for. Pretty reasonable rates, too: a bowl and a dreidel and they treat you like family (and yeah, this paragraph has a lot of inside references – sorry).
This annual trek always takes place the week after Easter (I typically fly on Easter Sunday), and this year Denver had snow. I don’t typically travel in this sort of weather, so I was fascinated (disturbed) by the de-icing equipment. We didn’t have any problems going through Denver on the way to Orlando, so I suppose this is all pretty routine for them.
This is the one conference where 
This is another view of the show area as several companies are assembling their booths. We’re looking across our booth to the 
Back to the symposium, and here is a shot that I took at a presentation before I realized that photography was banned in the conferences. Yes, the presentations are really this exciting. Next year, I’ll probably be chairing on of these sessions. The fun just doesn’t stop.
This symposium is put on by 
Just to further illustrate the hedonistic nature of this conference, here’s the no holds barred party atmosphere on the first night. Whooeee!
So, here’s the annual IRWindows user’s group. There were 19 of us at a very nice restaurant in Orlando (
This is our booth just before the doors opened on the third day. There’s a variety of equipment on display, and the IRWindows station is in the middle, towards the back. I don’t want to go into why it says IRWindows 2005, but this shot really is from a week ago. On th table at the right is a giant bowl of M&M’s. They’re special ordered to just be black and red. Could you tell that those are our colors? Subtle is not valued in the harsh world of photonics.
And what would a booth be without a special give away. We had a drawing for a couple of iPods. You had to find a special word hidden in our signs to be eligible for entry, but if you look at that bowl you can see that your chances were pretty darn good. I think we all agreed that it’s time for a new game. Pictured here are two of our three Gregs: Greg M. and Greg W.
How about a paint that will make a room secure against Wi-Fi? Basically, the idea would be to keep your Wi-Fi signals (think cell phone or wireless internet) from getting out where anyone could eavesdrop on them.
Okay, what’s up with teens nowadays? Hot on the heels of the home spectrograph, I now find that another teen has been able to achieve nuclear fusion at his home. Using spare parts he bought from eBay, from hardware stores, and from just scrounging around he built his aparatus in his basement and actually achieved nuclear fusion. Nothing dangerous or commercially valuable, but quite an achievement.