Liverpool has a fair amount of museums, turns out the "World Museum" is a bit of an "everything museum". I'm typically not a huge fan of those, as I prefer museums that focus on something and are good at it, but I'll admit that this museum is an exception, it had different focusses on different floors and was an enjoyable visit.
After getting there the night before, I was setup for the next day.
The next morning, I got up bright and early and went to see Beatles Story first:
I had a quick look at the maritime museum again, although I had mostly seen it last time:
The Tate Liverpool, I had a quick look, but modern art is never really my thing:
Next, I went to visit the Western Approaches WWII Museum, which is a bunch of displays in underground bunkers, not unlike the similar churchill museum in london. Definitely a cool visit:
After that, I went to see the two cathedrals again. Sure, I had seen them, but they're neat, so I went back:
Since I had a day to spend in Manchester, the second museum I picked was the Museum of Science and Industry Museum of Science and Industry. I had great hopes for it, but unfortunately its hall of planes and other cool stuff, was closed for renovations, so I only got to visit the rest, which was ok-ish for a science museum.
a little bit of everything
They had decent displays on encryption and Bletchley Park, but I had been to the real place :)
haha
The museum is in a former textile factory, cool to see the equipment still there:
I'll be honest that Manchester is not a must go destination. I was nearby and had an extra day, so I went to check it out. It had a couple of non essential but decent enough museums, and an ok cathedral :)
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Given that trains were complicated and the Manchester Imperial War Museum North was inconvenient to get to via public transport, so I just took a direct uber there, Manchester is not too far. Because it was a day trip without a car, I had my luggage in tow, which made all museums uneasy, they are so scared about bombs and they don't care about profiling, everyone is a suspect. After looking at my luggage, they agreed to stash it during my visit, The museum was ok:
those small tethered blimbs were put over potential targets to entangle planes that might want to attack
It was a decent enoough museum, after I was done, I took another uber to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (click me). It was only ok given that its biggest hangar with planes was being renovated:
After that, like an idiot who can't plan, I totally spaced on the fact that there was a google office that I forgot to visit, oops, so instead I went to the cathedral before it closed, and caught the next hourly train to Liverpool:
After things were closing up in Manchester, took a direct train to Liverpool, just about 1h away
π
2021-08-26 01:01
in Clubbing, England2021, Festivals
Foreword and rants
I had heard about creamfields for a while now, but well, it was far, and it also conflicts with Burning Man, so that kind of made it a no go, except this year where the official burning man was cancelled due to covid (although the unofficial burning man ended up being much bigger than planned).
The goal was actually for me to go to ASOT 1000, and creamfields was conveniently a bonus the week before that, but ASOT 1000 also got cancelled unfortunately, so creamfields was what was left (and ABGT 450 went to replace ASOT 1000).
This text below ended up being a lot longer than I though. I have never written anything like this for any event ever, I don't know if creamfields will ever read this, or whether they care, but I feel that others should know so that they can decide whether they went to spend their money there. I'm personally unlikely to ever go back unless I get an apology from them, which I'm obviously not holding my breath, for. I'll be happily proven wrong though, and will update this page if I am.
Back to creamfields, my experience was mixed, and mosty ended up negative due to some of the staff working there (both security and transport staff). I'll therefore start with the list of things that were not great:
creamfields is confusing, you literally cannot attend thursday at all, unless you buy a 4 day camping ticket. So, that's what I did. I even bought an expensive gold 4 day camping ticket, so that I wouldn't have to worry and get access to everything. But no, turns out that ticket does not allow you to leave the event to go sleep at your hotel if you have one, and honestly going to camp in the mud and rain that creamfields usually has, was not what I had in mind (also no camping gear given that I was flying from the US). So, effectively I had a worthless $600 ticket that would be void after the first day after going to sleep in a proper bed on the first night. Creamfields, why do you hate your customers that much?
but eh, they were nice, when I explained my problem, they "nicely" offered to to downgrade me to a 3 day in and out ticket (with no refund for the price difference of course), but instead of then just letting me in for thursday since after all I had paid for it (which I was honestly hoping they would do), they clearly told me that I was not going to get in, to leave, and come back friday. How nice of them! I somehow got lost on my way out and found myself inside the event anyway, but that was no thanks to them. I think the only approved way to attend thursday and sleep outside, is to buy a 4 day camping pass + a 3 day in and out pass, for the low low price of $900 or so. Thank you!
Thursday was a bit weird, they were not allowed to make any sound. So all the stages played with wireless headphones given to all attendees. That was super weird, but to be fair, they were high quality headphones and the sound quality was flawless, so it wasn't that bad. I'm sure that it was not their fault and they had to abide by some regulation not to make sound in the middle of nowhere on a thursday.
rules about what you can bring in: this is where it gets weird, you can bring a fair amount of things in the camping area, but there is pretty much no security or search between camping and the arena, so that means you can really bring a lot of things in. Except, on sunday, which is the only day they searched me on the way in, they disallowed my LED backpack (it's more than A4 size, so not allowed in the arena by their rules, but allowed in camping. They didn't allow it inside at all, then also prevented me from taking in my LED outfit that I had had the last 3 days, even after showing them pictures of me inside with DJs, and those assholes (by then they were really assholes), actually made to remove all the LEDs that were on my arms and legs, before I was allowed in. That last bit was totally punitive and complete dickwaving show of power. Well, you won, you sure showed me you are powerful and I guess you wanted me to pass on the good word about you, so I'm doing that now.
they did have people checking the arena entrance, I walked in and out 3 days with my backpack without them being worried once, which was good. If they were really checking, it would have caused monster gridlocks
So they did allow me in after talking all my stuff (I guess they were "nice" to allow me in while keeping my stuff in their storage), but while I was in the event, pretty pissed, they went through my electronics they had already seen and inspected (they even brought a bomb sniffing dog while I was there), they opened my somewhat fragile stuff like apes, tore some wires and damaged it. It took me 2 hours of testing everything with a multimeter to see what they broke and re-solder things they broke. Thank you.
But seriously, it was trivial to bring anything in the event and stash it in the camping area, so they weren't stopping anyone up to no good, and in my case I literally offered them my passport, and promised them I would not leave my bag in the middle of nowhere so that it could be mistaken for a bomb (never mind that it had $1000 of my equipment in it), they said no, and then further punished me by making me rip out my LEDs on my arms and legs, because why not?
Talking about other staff on a power trip, the transport people outside were literally yelling at cabs and ubers, accusing them of lying and cheating, and one of them grabbed me from behind when I was outside the event trying to get back to the street, and ripped my backpack off my back and yelled at me because I was going the "wrong way" (again this is outside, on a public street where they have 0 authority to touch a pedestrian).
drug check, haha, sure. I won't go into a long tirade on how stopping people from using safer drugs and getting them to use the very worst drug there is, alcohol, is a bunch of BS (and OMG, some drunk brits are out of control and honestly kind of dangerous and unpleasant). Or people were doing way too much K and collapsing on the ground, not a win either. The one day they put the drug dog on me, it said I had drugs. More precisely, my outfit probably smells like weed, because well, I don't actually use weed, but with the amount there is in festivals I go to, I'm sure my clothes do smell like weed to some extent, and I can't wash them all the time due to the electronics on them. They only let me go because they were more interested in taking my LEDs away and forgot about the drugs I indeed didn't have.
Because alcohol is what's left for most, lots of drunk brits who seem ok pissing literally everywhere. Anything that looked like a wall or a fence was fair game, and it's not like there weren't toilets nearby. I don't normally care too much, but that was a bit over the top in "not classy"
the gold ticket hospitality center, had a search within the "secure" area. It was so out there, that I didn't even want to go to that area to claim my free meals included with my ticket. Thankfully they added a bypass entrance a few days later, while still searching people taking the other entrance, go figure.
This is the dangerous outfit they had to save the world from on sunday:
Funny thing is that I was caught on the video during Craig's set (great set, but horrible sound and very poor visuals):
they should have stopped that terrorist during Above and Beyond's set. That said, it is true my backpack was just a bit over the sized allowed, even if it was very far from being the only one, and none of their security people checking the arena entrance minded, they even though it was cool with the fun displays on it
Positive points:
although their webpage said they wouldn't accept foreign vaccine cards, they allowed my CDC vaccination card to get in, saving me from having to take more CV19 tests every day
creamfields android app was pretty good for getting around, even had navigation. However, because they actually moved some stages to be in different locations, on sunday when I went to see pendulum, it sent me to the wrong place (that has the stage name 2 days prior)
there were issues of course (more below on the stages), but well, I still have to recognize that it was impressive what they brought in the middle of freaking nowhere.
I got to see artists I would never have seen elsewhere, like scooter, fatboy slim, faithless DJ set, or pendulum trilogy
Weird:
drunk brits, 'nuf said, give them back their drugs and they'll behave better.
brits singing soccer and crowd songs in the middle of a DJ set where the DJ was trying to play something else. That felt kind of disrespectful.
Production and stages:
On paper, creamfields, is EDC level, there are 10 or so stages with lots of music
Some stages were truly excellent, top notch.
Others were quite poor, which sadly was true of the Rong and Pepsi Max stages where all the trance was played (Pepsi was the worst). Sound was terrible at times, where the bass was so loud that it would hurt you in the front rows, and I had to shove my earplugs all the way in and it wasn't enough. Needless to say that there was virtually none of the trance melody left, what a waste and such a bummer to have destroyed the music of some of my favorite trance DJs :(
The lighting was bad too, you could barely see the DJs at times. In the ajnunabeats stage, Above and Beyond played a 2H set where you could literally not see them 95% of the time, such a insult to them.
The video wall in pepsi max was also very poor. Video was downsampled to low resolution and then blown up with very visible artifacts that looked pretty bad. It's a bummer for the artists playing there like Craig Connelly, Ruben de Ronde, and many others.
Yes, I realize that it's a lot of work and production to bring all of this in the middle of a muddy grass field, and it's impressive that they brought all that, but they messed up the last mile in at least the 3 stages I cared the most about (some other stages looked much much better)
There were also multiple stages with 15 or 30mn cutovers, with nothing in between. A bit weird for an event of that size. They even pushed it as far as playing some commercials on some video screens during the wait. Really?
What Creamfields looks like
I arrived early along with all the campers after having to sort out my ticket issue. Lots of pretty aggressive warnings, drug dogs, and "we'll send you to jail" warnings. Welcome!
nice, they were even drug sniffing the DJs and staff
drugs are bad and will send you to jail, buy our alcohol behave stupidly and go to rehab later, it's better
I felt bad for the campers, it was a long ass walk to carry a lot of gear on bad terrain to their campsites:
it's really a long hard walk with heavy luggage
almost there
they even had a store for the campers
It's big, lots of walking and grass which was fortunately dry when I was there. I can't imagine how sucky it must be in the rain and mud:
british humor, maintain 2m distance in a crowded festival
lucky folks got their DJs there, I only got to see Armin there
the hospitality area was nice once you got in
the bar lines were ridiculous, happy I didn't have to use them
Toilets:
basic toilets are literally a toilet seat on top of a box
but who needs toilets, brits will just piss on anything that looks like a wall
but you can't blame them, they had official toilets where you literally pissed on a wall with a gutter underneath that takes most of it to a bucket. I could be easy to get them confused
Night shots:
note that the amusement rides were not free, unlike EDC
Random people:
did that work?
I found another trancejesus
Day #1: Thursday
Finally got in (it was a long walk) and went to see my first trance DJs in the first Rong stage (there were several depending on the day):
as I wrote earlier, there was no sound on thursday, everyone had headphones. It was a bit weird, but worked well enough
M.I.K.E. Push was awesome, on top of his set which I very much enjoyed, he sent James during his set to tell me how much he liked my LED outfit, and give me his drink and meal vouchers. That was fantastic, you rock:
thank you M.I.K.E.
Scott Project
the one issue with headphones was big lines to get in some stages
Lange took over, it had been so long since I last saw Lange
he nicely came down to see us after his set, thanks Lange
Very short video summary, showing the crowd cheering without sound :)
Day #2: Friday
I then went to enjoy the sets. Unfortunately friday was a pepsi max day (where trance was), and the sound was absolutely terrible:
It was great to see Ruben, but hard to enjoy the sound, and the video wall was terrible (downres-ed and then up'res-ed)
Craig was next, again great set but terrible sound
and terrible graphics, I so wanted the 'more than love' video, but no such luck
Sander Van Doorn was last
I went to check out some other stage, which had advanced technology: lasers!
One nice thing is that I got to see scooter, who I remember from 20 years ago and had never seen:
Video summary of Day #2:
Day #3: Saturday
Saturday was the 14H day 14:00 to 04:00. I split my time between ajnuabeats stage and trance back at some other Rong stage which wasn't great either (but not as bad as pepsi max):
Lots of hard trance on saturday, I guess GB likes it hard :)
GO also played a very hard set, but I still enjoyed it
Brian Kearney played hard as always, not really my thing
Got to see a bit of fatboy slim, that was cool:
Then it was time for Armin, it was a good set. He joked that it was his best set of the year so far (it was also his first, haha):
good thing I had proper cameras and not a cell phone
Right after Armin was above and beyond, the stage they got was pretty sad, it was very hard to even see them most of the time:
one of a few lucky shots
usually it was most like that
the rest of the time, that's all you saw
Two most sets to close the night until 04:00:
Video Summary of Day #3:
Day #4: Sunday
Sunday was the last day, after spending a very unpleasant time with security who took all my stuff on the last day, because why not (see introduction for details), it was honestly hard to enjoy the day. I was pretty upset by this pointless show of force. The terrorist have sure won :(
Faithless DJ set was cool
Back at pepsi max, with still terrible sound, but at least it was not physically hurtful and dangerous like 2 days prior
Yeah, Ferry Corsten
lighting and video wall were still bad
other stages were nicer
back to pepsi max for Paul Van Duk
notice the bad anti aliasing and resolution on the video wall
John O Callaghan, love him too
I went to check out Tiesto quickly, but he just played his usual crap, not an ounce of trance. We miss you Tiesto:
sorry, but no, I don't want sushi from Japan
So I finished the night with Pendulum who played some fantastic Drum and Bass, very enjoyable once I found the stage that was in the wrong place on the map:
Video summary of Day #4:
I then hurried my ass out 10mn before the event was over to avoid 2H+ lines to get out. After being physically assaulted by some mall cop outside in the street who didn't like how I was going out to the street (yes, really), I found an uber that had given up on finding his customers and took me instead for a hefty premium (3x the regular price, but that was the price of getting home that night).
So that was it, the 4 days of creamfields were over. It was an interesting experience, but between the ridiculous rules (can't attend thursday without camping), the security on a power trip and more interested in hassling customers than actually keeping the event safe, and the stages I cared about with bad visuals, poor lighting on the DJs, and sometimes bass that was so loud that you couldn't hear the melody anymore and feared for your ears. I also know I'm very lucky that it was sunny and I saw no rain or no mud, I can't imagine how it is with them
I already knew that insomniac does great events in the US, on so many levels, but creamfields made me realize how many things insomniac really gets right. It was interesting to see once (minus the ruined day on sunday thanks to security), but given the minuses of the event, I doubt that I'll go back, there are better events with better execution and respect for the customer and not the problems of getting in and out on a single lane road with only 10 or 20 cabs and a handful of ubers, resulting on multi hour lines to get out, or walking for 1 to 2h back to your place if you don't want to, or can't camp.
And unfortunately, an event is ultimately judged by its best and worst points. In this case, the security folks who effectively said they would not trust me to not leave my LED backpack somwhere random to cause a bomb scare, and as a result, took all my stuff, all the way to making me rip out my LEDs from my pants and shirt, and then literally damaging my equipment while I was gone, you suck and I will not forget this (that said, I also won't forget that you are literally preventing non campers from attending thursday, what madness is this?).
To all the people at creamfields who took pictures with me, gave me smiles, thumbs up and other "this is so cool" (including most of the security staff inside the event), thanks to all of you. You are the reason why I spent over a thousand dollars on this, plus 1.5 years of effort (not counting the 3 years before that on the previous versions as described on https://medium.com/@merlin_69010/how-to-be-a-peacock-engineer-in-the-world-of-edm-with-an-outfit-from-a-few-leds-to-37440-leds-c7d0cf759a49 ).
During my last visit to London, I did got to see Mme Tussauds, both because the line looked long, and because I wasn't as excited about seeing more wax figures of UK figures I didn't really know, but turns out that it's actually the best such wax museum I've seen in the world, well worth the visit.
I didn't care for this picture, but obviously others did
There were cool sections on movies like Alien:
There was another interesting section on Mme Tussauds herself, how she started her career during the french revolution and did actually make copies of famous heads that were decapitated:
The next part was a very interesting ride showing you even more things, I didn't expect that:
And it wasn't over yet, it seems that they've added extensions over time. The last one was on marvel characters:
And also star wars:
All in all, totally exceeded expectations, definitely enjoyed it, especially when it wasn't too busy.
So, given that it was 4 days of my England 2021 trip (and actually the main reason for the trip in the first place), I have to mention Warrington where I stayed four nights at an AirBnB. Getting lodging was challenging to say the least.
So, there is honestly no reason to go to Warrington, unless you're going to Creamfields, which is what I did (read creamfields report). There is unfortunately no real usable public transport to go to creamfields, and it's a really long walk. I would have gotten a bike, but it was not easy to rent one either (and still a 30mn+ ride).
I ended up relying on uber, which doesn't formally cover the city, but with a bit of luck, you could get a car driving around the area. Cabs were not super timely or reliable either. The biggest issue was getting back from creamfields, the busses were limited, the taxi line was 1h+, and getting an uber on saturday or sunday was really hard.
You're apparently supposed to camp onsite, but given that it's a mud field with occasional torrential rains, and that I had lots of electronics to keep safe and charge overnight, that was a non starter, so I went the uber route and had to get very creative to get back on saturday and sunday
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So there you go for Warrington. It is neatly located between Liverpool and Manchester, so there is that :)
π
2021-08-25 01:01
in Computers, England2021, Sciencemuseums
I did not know anything about Bletchley Park or National Museum of Computing just 1H north of London until I was in London and had dinner with my friend and EFREI schoolmate, Jerome Abela, who told me about it. It is purposely 1H outside of London just next to a train station, because it was a very secret encrypted message breaking and decoding base during WWII and in case London ever were to be bombed, this place that didn't look like anything, would be spared.
I didn't quite know that Bletchley Park is actually separate from the National Museum of Computing (they are adjacent, but separated by a fence, needing an annoying 10-15mn walk all the way around), and Bletchey Park actually opens earlier, so it's probably best to visit first (also check the National Museum of Computing's website for which dsays they have guided tours and guides showing the hardware (well worth it).
I'll start with the National Museum of Computing as it was the most exciting to me with its fully functional rebuild bombe and colossus decryption machines for Enigma and Lorenz (the much more secure encryption system German Command used):
One big mistake the germans did was to send a weather report starting with the same german word (known plaintext) every morning. This allowed building a computer (bombe) that tried all rotor combinations to turn the crypted message into the known platintext:
The even more impressive machine (by a lot) was the aptly named "Colossus" which was build from scratch from a reverse engineered design (that part is so impressive), to decrypt the much more secure Lorenz encryption:
the computer reads the encrypted message from this paper tape (5 bit ASCII)
this machine did the decryption once the other machine had output the decryption parameters
How lorenz was reverse engineered and cracked is complicated and super impressive, but basically all came down to the almost same message being sent twice with the same key which allowed for a known plaintext attack:
This video shows the different machines in action Bombe rebuild (to break enigma), Colossus rebuild (to break Lorenz), plus the oldest still working half-mechanical computer (Harwell Dekatron):
And the museum had lot of other computers, a collection that is close to being as good as the one at the computer history museum in Mountain View, CA:
they have a whole collection of tubes (pre-transistors) to replace the ones that break on their machines
core memory
impressive they had so many of those machines, still working
I had one of those
this too
and this too (Asmtrad CPC464+memory upgrade+floppy)
didn't have this one at home, but worked with them at SGI
those I never had, but I wish I did. Archimedes was awesome and way ahead of its time with Arm RISC CPUs
The Harwell Dekatron was also a very cool (and still working) computer I had never seen:
Watch it in action:
Bletchley Park had different buildings each with their story and what they were used for:
Lots of info on the machines, an earlier crack of older enigma machines was to use EINS for plaintext attacks:
They had many displays on the brilliant mathematicians that broke the codes and built the machines. Alan Turing was one of them, but they were multiple others:
Despite some inefficiencies in having to go back and forth between the 2 museums to join a timed tour at Bletchley (which actually is skipable if you are short on time), I spent the entire day there (open to close) and it was very well worth it.
π
2021-08-24 01:01
in England2021, Flying, Nflying
As part of my trip through the UK, I went to visit the best flight/plane museums, and the RAF one north of london was the easiest one to get to first. What I have now seen is:
My last time in London I went to the British Library during extended hours, but the important room was closed by then, so I had to go back and see the collection, which was quite good. Very nice free collection, glad I was able to see it this time:
Last time I was in London, I went to see most of the bigger museums, but just like Paris, London is full of museums. That day, I had just enough time to go see the London Transport museum before it closed at 17:00. Well, except that they had timed entry and told me I'd have to wait 30mn before being allowed in, and left with just 1H to visit for a visit that they said takes about 2H. Sigh...
After getting my ticket, I looked around the store, and when the exit door happened to get opened, I entered throught the exit so that I'd have enough time to see everything. Kind of sad, but you do what you gotta do.
The museum itself was quite good actually, including showing how the underground was built early on, and used during the war as a bomb shelter:
During the war, the underground tunnels were closed to prevent cross flooding in case of bomb damage:
I feel thankful enough to have been in London in 1995, back when you could hop on a bus while it was running, but it as long ago as this picture:
Turns out, the Mclaren factory and design center is about 1H out of London and 30mn from Heathrow airport, so this time I had planned to stop there as soon as I landed. Putting aside that United managed to take off 3H late (mechanical issue and no spare plane), I got there 45m for my appointment (nice private tour while the place was mostly shut down during the august holidays which is also the time they use to retool the factory. As a result I didn't get to see the factory, but got a nice tour of their office and private collection of special cars. Thank you to Naveen from Mclaren SF for organizing the tour and Jeff for being my gracious host.
Due to a united plane failure, I arrived a bit late in LHR and 45mn late for my appointment (and do not take cabs from LHR, they are a complete scam, I did because I was late, but it was 80 pounds for a 30mn ride, uber was half that). They nicely waited for me and gave me a tour of the center:
nice welcome gift :)
Artura, the new electric hybrid, I'll take that over a prius :)
We then went through the history of Bruce Mclaren and the company's racing history:
aero was trial and error without wind tunnels back then
James Hunt's car
a nice trio of Mclaren F1s, production car, race car, and mule/test car that ended up racing too
gold for heat reflection
the very first production Mclaren P1
a full scale senna built out of legos, impressive
it weighs a lot more than the original :)
And after about 1h30, the visit was over, thanks a lot to Mclaren for hosting me for the visit:
United managed to get me there 3 hours late, so I was late for my private appointement and tour of Mclaren Technology Centre in Woking, but thankfully they were half shutdown (August holidays), so while I had a slightly more limited tour (factory floor was closed), my host Jeff nicely waited for me and gave me a nice private tour (read more about it here:
After a way overpriced cab to Woking so that I wouldn't be more late than necessary, I took a train to London:
After checking in my hotel, I went to meet my schoolmate Jerome Abela for a nice dinner at Orrery. Yummy french food with seared foie gras :)
For day #2, my plan was to go to London's RAF Museum, which is somewhat outside of London:
On my way back, I had enough time to go see a few others museums. I started with the British Libary which had its room of treasures closed last time I went:
Next, I went to the London Transport Museum which was actually a good visit outside of them having limitations on number of people who can visit:
I then had enough time for a couple of nice crepes (my first meal of the day), before going to see a musical (back to the future) after walking around a bit to burn time until the show:
the show was pretty good, I enjoyed it
Day #3, I had to take my post arrival covid test, which seemed very pointless as it took 7 days from arrival to get the results, but it was required for my trip to the UK:
I then took a train to [Betchley park and the National Museum of Computing, which took the entire day, they were fantastic (click me)|perso/sciencemuseums/post_2021-08-25_Bletchley-Park-_-National-Museum-of-Computing.html]
By the time I was done (full day), got a train back to London to spend the rest of the evening:
One cool thing about public transport in London is that you can now just tap your android phone and get in and out without a ticket.
I went to se Mary Poppins that night. The not so great thing was that on one was wearing a mask. Unsurprisingly London got a lot more covid after that:
Harry Potter wasn't ready yet
it was a pretty good show
anyone who knows above and beyond acoustic, knows why I took this picture :)
Day #4, I had some time in the morning to go see Mme Tussauds (much better than I expected) before taking a train to Warrington where I was going for Creamfields.
All in all, it was not an in depth visit of London, but it wasn't meant to be either. Very happy that I got to see the RAF Museum, the British Library, and Betchley Park. Those alone were worth the trip, glad I got to see them.
Buttonwillow was my first time going to a track in Socal, it was a slightly longer flight than going to Thunderhill, but not a whole lot. I ended up flying to L62, which was the closest airport I could find, and was so unused that it was actually used for RC flying. I found out later that the track actually allows you to land on their drag strip, which saves the drive, good to know.
The sky was very smoky, made for some nice views and sunrise, but not great visibility:
Here's what the track looks like, including an extension that is being built:
Landing at L62 interesting, there was no traffic there, but RC planes
Patrick nicely gave me a ride to the track and we got there just before 9, when it opened:
not my ride
that was my ride :)
Took me a while to learn BW, and got below 2:00 equivalent as the configuration of the day was a bit longer than normal. I'm not sure if I truly love the track, but I took a few sessions to learn it and get better at it.
Joon was nice enough to hook me up and I signed up for the Mclaren AutoX in Salinas. It had been almost 15 years since I last autocrossed, and never autocrossed any of my more recent fast cars.
So I started by going to Salinas Airport, that was fun:
I then did a few runs, and got my times down
this was the best time of the day
I got 2 better times even, but they didn't count because I touched some cones
My best unofficial time was only 0.5s slower than their chief instructor and my tires were way past their prime, so I was pretty happy with that :)
I got a price, woohoo :)
After the autoX, I went to Carmel to enjoy the nice downtown, sea view, and cars:
lots of nice houses
police nicely closed Ocean Av after a while, sigh...
I went to see a few nice stores to kill some time
After a few hours, it was time to go to the Mclaren reception (thanks again Joon)
and I ran into Dan, awesome!
I had never been to Monterey/Carmel during car week. That wasn't exactly the perfect day to go, but it sure was fun. Glad that I was able to make it.
Gareth coming 15mn from my house to play? Sure, sign me up :) I'll be honest that I'm always a bit apprehensive for anything at Pure due to their over the top door searches and some nonsensical policies (pocket cameras are apparently not allowed, unless they happen to be able to make phone calls also, absolutely no club anywhere in the bay area does that). But let's be fair too: their search was a bit less invasive than it's been in the past, and they did let me in with my outfit (which their photographers inside, absolutely loved of course).
But back to Gareth, it was good to see him after that long, he played a solid 2H set without surprises. He played all his classics, and honestly given how long since I last heard them live, that was great:
Good to see my friend Robert again. By now I hope he has a lifetime membership at Pure :)
it was nice to have a mirror in the stage to enjoy my own outfit :)
Wait, a trance party, close to my home, with DJs that flew from some other country? Really? OMG, yes! Sign me up!
Big minus for San Jose Civic Center who randomly decided that the batteries for my outfit would not be allowed. Thankfully I had friends to rescue me in, but that was a bit sad.
TenSteps started the night:
Ruben was next:
And then Andrew Rayel took over for the end of the night:
Nice to be able to see some of my friends again, and great to have a real show again, thank you to all:
