Friday: Last conference day

As usual, it was the standard "here's the schedule people in charge have agreed to, so there's an implied set of goals to meet."  I kind of have mixed feelings about this schedule/goal list.  On the down side, something I was very happy to come up with a reasonable solution to is likely to get tossed in the trash due to the timing required for the schedule.  It's not that my algorithm won't be ready in time, just that the amount of processing required to realize the improvements no longer fit into the timeline.

However, the up side of this is that I probably will have more time to start writing science papers, if I'm not working on esoteric data analysis methods.  "Lemonade," as one of the other people said.

Anyway, last day of the conference, so back to the airport hotel to prepare for my rather early flight tomorrow morning.  I'm on the other side of the hotel this time, so I looked out the window:

Wait, is that an aviation museum on the other side of that park?

Yes.  Yes it is.  No additional pictures here, so just imagine planes, plane models, diagrams of planes, and discussion of planes, and the people who made them and flew them.  Also, some plane stuff.  Definitely not the Smithsonian Air and Space, but it was a good use of an hour and a half, and felt appropriately priced.

Then, later on, I said "fuck you" to eating locally, and got a pizza sent in for room service.  Plus a salad.  Because healthy.

Thursday: These pictures explain why my feet hurt

Bao for lunch.

At Taipei 101.

It's a really tall tower.

Then a visit to a temple.

This mosaic is badly done, but the building is wonderful.

Then a night market.

Everyone loves Jake.

Wednesday: Science stuff

Not in this post.  That's what today was about.  Science stuff.  Lots of talks.

I also discovered that there is a reasonably constant component to things that's totally in the way of getting a project done.

Taiwan understands the importance of putting sunglasses on the sun.

Tomorrow is a half day of conference, followed by an afternoon of tourist stuff.

Tuesday: Banquet day

Plus, I'm super sleepy.

The banquet was buffet style

I tried as much as I could reasonably fit on a plate.  Or two plates.  Side point: more places need Fanta.

Dessert.  Second Fanta.

Ice cream.  Second dessert.

Second ice cream.  Sesame and green tea.  Second second dessert.

Monday: Mostly pictures

And mostly of food.

French toast/ham and cheese/something mildly spicy coffee break sandwich.  This was really good.

Spicy chicken stuff for lunch.  Piles of various side dishes to the right.

Even more lots of food for dinner.

This fish was delicious.

I clearly missed a chunk of the sky.

Link for today:

• The Gimp developers are basically a bunch of dickbags who think that "helped them to formulated their product vision" is the proper way to realize their product vision.  Whatever happened to "do the least surprising thing"?  If I load an image as type A, and then try to save, why would you ever, ever, decide that I really intend to save as type B?  If "people are losing hours of work because they accidentally save their thousand layer project to jpeg," aren't you basically just catering to fucking morons?  In the previous version, saving would always prompt me with "whoa, this has layers! What should we do?" with a series of reasonable options.  This is again, the least surprising thing.  Seriously, what is it with UI specifications being written by people who seem to be not only idiots, but such dogmatic idiots that suggesting you make their abomination optional makes them shit themselves with "that's not what the specification allows for"? 
• Side note: even freaking photoshop does the "save writes to disk what you have in the current format."  So, the sane thing to do.

Sunday: These seem to be the TV channels

• 03: News channel.  Periodically plays a story about a baby panda.
• 05: On 11/10 at 10:00, a show with "ATM" in the title will play (permanent freeze frame)
• 07: A different news channel, that seems to focus more on health/lifestyle stories.
• 09: News channel.  Arts?
• 11: News channel. Technology?
• 13: A perpetual music audition show.
• 15: Interviews?  This one doesn't have the news feel to it.
• 17: Music audition show.
• 19: A cooking show that has been stopped in time.  An electric hand mixer will never complete the cake it seems to be trying to make.
• 21: Variety shows?  This one is about grilling shellfish.
• 23: Drama shows.  I think this was showing cartoons earlier.
• 25: News channel.
• 27: Variety/reality show?  I've seen similar ones on KIKU before that seem to match this style.
• 29: Old man lecture show.  I think he's pro-train?  There's a cartoon train on the screen.
• 32: Evening news.  Even if I'm just catching everyone showing news, are there really six networks?
• 65: No channel.

Suffice it to say, none of these channels or shows is in a language I have even a passing knowledge of.  This certainly complicates things somewhat.

Here is my current list of "tv pictures".

One link for today:

• "The After Dinner Mysteries."  I watched this on the plane from Tokyo, and enjoyed it enough that I think I'm going to try and find the tv series it's based on.

Two links.

• I discovered my laptop wouldn't start X this morning.  I had updated things before leaving, but never did the "check" reboot.  I eventually traced the problem down to this issue.  Somehow, libpam-systemd had gotten lost, and that basically breaks everything everywhere.

Hotel breakfast: buffets are weird edition.

Western tasty looking food in front, dan-dan noodles in back.  I went back for some fruit and a pastry to eat with the coffee.

Saturday: right? It's still Saturday, I think

In any case, I've made it to the first hotel, so that's some sort of win. Here are the three things that nearly ruined the trip.

First: despite the hnl counter guy asking if I was going to taipei, he didn't bother to manually print out the second boarding pass. I guess if you do international connections, someone has to do it. I didn't know this, and the inflight screens suggested that I had to go to the other side of "security" to get one. This is a poorly worded phrase, as the meant the special international flight security, not "go outside, then back through security" security.

Second: as I was leaving I.f. security, one of the agents chased me down with my housekeys in her hand. I keep them in a zippered pocket with my passport, which is needed at ifs. So, that could have been very unfortunate when I got back home.

Third: did you know verizon phones roam in japan and taiwan? I didn't, and spent five minutes disabling everything I could so I don't get crazy bills. I can still receive calls, but I will stab you if you call me. Seriously. Stabby stabby.

I'm totally sucking up the $2 it's costing me to determine if Taiwanese coke is the same as Mexican coke. I think it is.

Blah blah food stuff. Hnl california pizza margarita. Ua in flight "terrible chicken with undercooked rice." Ana in flight "better than it looks fish in cream/tomato sauce with proper rice."

Now I'm watching the cartoon network equivalent. Maybe. I think. This is more of a power rangers type. Picture attached.