I randomly happened to be a the CHM to drop off some donations, and noticed a room I didn't remember and found out they now had a fully working IBM 1402 (actually they had two).
π
2025-11-21 01:01
in Clubbing, Dreamstate, Festivals
Just like last years, delighted to be back: Dreamstate Socal is still an event I look forward to, all year.
This is our third year at Queen Mary, you can read the first QM report for Queen Mary vs NOS where DS used to be before that. It is true that I still prefer NOS for a variety of technical reasons (from later curfew, shorter distances between stages, no bridge or underpass tunnel, megastructures that allow more kick ass lasers, and a few more...), but honestly DS like it is run, is still going to be (and was) lots of fun, regardless of where it's run. For the record, it's already been confirmed to be at Queen Mary for next year, so we can put that discussion to rest :)
10 Years!
If you like this report, and want to see others/future ones, you can go on these pages:
Let's go through the grounds again, starting with Passport for Insomniac subscribers:
cotton candy :)
if you pay enough, you get to come visit too :)
The Insomniac team still made those magical places:
the ring!
Of course, the water is always nice:
And then, there is the boat, it does look quite pretty from the outside. Unfortunately inside, especially behind the scenes, is literally falling apart. I didn't want to break the magic with pictures there, but honestly it's not looking great.
Generally, my thought this year on the venue:
the layout and footprint looked almost identical to last year
thankfully we mostly avoided the rain this year, but it's still 3 years in a row with rain and mud
It looked full with some choke points with this year's crowds, it wasn't unbearable, but I'd say it was close to the limit
Void was still felt too far even if it's half a perception issue, to the point that I only really went twice, too far for stage hopping.
Sequence was lovely but it felt like a 15mn walk from dream, it's really far end to end. NOS felt more compact while offering bigger and better stages. Not being able to reasonably stage hop between sequence and dream was unfortunate. This did benefit Vision though as it was in the middle :)
barely any lasers at dream, maybe a safety/logistical issue with the location, but disappointing for sets, especially Gareth. What is Gareth without real lasers? :)
but apart from limited lasers, the dream stage was beautiful
Weather
It was reasonably cold this year, but thankfully we barely avoided the rain this year. Obviously this location is much more subject to and affected by rain than NOS. It did rain a good amount just before the event, which sucked for the setup crews, but thankfully attendees were spared. They did a good job getting rid of most of the muddy mess with a better floor they installed:
People say a little rain has never killed anyone, and it does make the lasers look nice (that part is true), but they also forget how the first year at QM, we had a deluge of rain during the boat party that would have simply cancelled the event had it been a few hours earlier. That also made for a muddy mess the next day. So yeah, this honestly makes me nervous every year compared to San Bernardino that is a lot more dry, but I guess for now we just need to keep hoping to remain lucky :) (DS has already been confirmed to remain at QM next year).
The Queen Mary Boat After Parties
The boat had 3 rooms this year again, I think they may have been moved so that 2 of them were on the top floor which was convenient for stage hopping, but they were also the farthest you could be from bathrooms that were all the way down outside the boat, with no working elevator. It was a serious amount of steps to go up and down, and sadly the one working elevator was guarded by someone who made sure no one would get on it without an ADA wristband, and let's be honest, I didn't see many people with ADA wristbands on the boat, it was not ADA friendly in my opinion. So I was not impressed with that person denying the elevator to someone whose legs/knees were hurting but didn't have the ADA wristband. Her answer was to go down a lot of stairs and back up to somewhere not close to try and get an ADA wristband in the middle of the night :-/
I know (from having seen it) that parts of that boat are falling apart, the internal elevators are non functioning and virtually all bathrooms were non functioning too, which is why they were closed. This cruiseship is on its last legs indeed. The corridors with cabins were ok enough, as long as you were not hoping to sleep before 06:00, because the bass was shaking everything (unless you're a burning man veteran that can sleep next to speakers :) ).
People
Like every year, it was fun to see friends and nice costumes:
Pictures with friends:
Finally got to meet Federica/the_roving_raver
Marc from led2rave4
Pystrancemom who gave me lovely kandi, thank you
And the obligatory pictures with DJs :)
Superstrings
Roman Messer
Billy Gillies
My man, Fadi!
Neptune Project
Will Atkinson
Trancewax
John 00 Fleming, OMG his set was so good again
Ferry!
David Forbes, amused to see me yet more more time this year :)
We also organized and took some Trancefamily pictures:
Anyway, let's go through the 2 days of festival:
Day 1
Last year, DS started surprisingly early, 13:00, which was announced late and definitely a surprise. This year it went back to 16:00. I'm fine with anything (even if I want 3 days, haha), but hope the start time gets announced as early as possible so that people can get the right flights (both last year and this year, I had to do a difficult last minute plane change after an unexpected start time was announced).
I did start at Sequence to see Kristina Sky
then went to check out dream
This lovely b2b was quite early in the day
happy my friend Asteroid got a slot to play at Vision before Darren Tate
TFSF's Jonny Atom at Boom box
We also got all the superstrings :)
Anyway, back to dream for Giuseppe Ottaviani, beautiful stage like I said:
And vision:
And dream :)
for this epic PvD b2b Aly & Fila
Of course 01:00 was not the real end, next was the boat party. The lineup was great again, but I had a hard time enjoying the cramped and hot rooms (they did add fans, but it was still not very comfortable):
Asteroid again
FactorB and Neptune Project
One more chance to see superstrings
Day 1 Summary Video:
Day 2: and yes Tiesto Played Trance ;)
Day 2 also started at 16:00 which was no problem to manage:
TFSF's Khromata
Thanks to winter, it got dark quickly, just one hour later:
Trancewax
nice sunset
Many stages, many DJs, let's skip to the end, Dream got packed at the end when many went there to see Tiesto:
So, what happened? ;)
Honestly I just wanted to be happy, and it's just been 20 years since I got to see Tiesto play trance at Tiesto in Concert in LA:
Yes, I was there in 2005
I got the official T-shirt
and I was wearing it for Tiesto's set this DS :)
And yes, I saw him before that even, this was 2004 in New York:
Some people didn't like the first 15 minutes, I did. Some didn't like the rest which was more old school trance he used to play, because it was "the same thing" or "nothing new". I was "Hell, Tiesto is playing real trance, at Dreamstate! Can't we be very happy about that?" ... I was :)
Here's the full set:
So there you go, I had a great time, I was happy! :) But seriously if you're not happy enough with Tiesto, I was not happy with him leaving us for close to 20 years for commercial stuff that I sure don't care for. If he comes back, we have to welcome him back and the people he will bring to trance with him, that's a good thing!
The rest of the night was spent on the boat to finish the fun until we were exhausted:
Day 2 Summary Video:
Aftermath and Conclusion: Should this not be 3 days and with a bit more sleep?
Yes, I'm lazy, I kept the same headline as last year, but it's still fitting :)
DJS and music:
they were somewhat different from previous years, while keeping some favorites, not a bad thing
Some DJs were not able to come because the US has made it fairly expensive for them to get work visas and they can apparently take more than 6 months to be done unless you pay another "go faster" fee on top which is a few thousand dollars more. Sad :-//
And yet, great to see some new DJs like Roman Messer or Asteroid, both I knew from Europe but not everyone gets to go there.
Speaking of visas, I don't even want to know how much it cost to get all of superstrings :)
Queen Mary looks pretty from the outside, but inside:
It's hot as hell, to the point I had to remove my entire outfit to remove layers. They added a few fans, but still uncomfortably hot and humid.
The 3 stages were 4 very tall floors apart with only a single working elevator (the other ones have been broken for a long time and are part of the ship that is falling apart). I already explained above that having staff denying use of the one working elevator that was pretty much unused to people who could really have benefited from it, was poor.
The rooms on top of being too hot and cramped, were not big enough for everyone: on the 2nd day at 04;00, you couldn't get in Grand ballroom without waiting in line long enough for people to get out :-//
I mentioned the boat falling apart behind the scenes: if you get to see behind the curtain (I did), there are so many things that are very broken and left unfixed, we're talking broken walls, barely safe stuff. It's not meant to be guest facing, but not inspiring. So I guess my advice is don't look behind the curtain :)
Last year, DS started surprisingly early, 13:00, which was announced late and definitely a surprise. This year it went back to 16:00. I'm fine with anything (even if I want 3 days, haha), but hope the start time gets announced as early as possible so that people can get the right flights (both last year and this year, I had to do a difficult last minute plane change after an unexpected start time was announced).
From last year, it was similar:
still two days but enough DJs for 3 days, easily.
art was was still 5th stage and passport had its secret 6th stage.
Even moving back the start time from 13:00 to 16:00, it was still a lot of hours, although I'd have preferred more of them outside the boat.
And for anyone asking, Jeff Ryan from Insomniac has confirmed that DS will be at Queen Mary again next year, so he's saving us the time to talk about NOS vs QM :)
Should you go? Would I go Back?
I think I don't need to write a long essay to say "hell yes"
It's still the best night trance festival in the world production wise
Yes, too many DJs all at once in not enough hours, but well, better than the opposite problem :)
Where else do you get all those lovely costumes and nicely decorated LED totems? (for the flags in the smack middle of the crowd, blocking the view, maybe we can do without those, though :) ).
The insomniac crew continues to run a well oiled machine and did a great job this year again.
It had been many years since Neptune Project had last come here, it was a special event, and a good excuse to go back to DNA Lounge.
It was fun to be back and see friends, the set however didn't work as well as the one I remember from 2018: it had some epic tracks that were up to 25 years old, but they were mixed with others that took me off the dream cloud. Still, it was a good time.
This post is not glamorous as the 10 year mark once, mostly because I did many of the cool flights in the first 10 years, and also have many other hobbies (which in the last 10 years included a lot of RC flights, including cool long range FPV flights). Yes, I used the opportunity to renew my BFR and flight medical (basicmed), and do this post:
got some night training at the same time, did ok on my night landing
So yeah, it's really not a lot, but I made the flights count. I also should note that I stopped doing lots of training flights just because, or staying current just to stay current, or getting checked out in more planes that I would reasonably not be able to fly. At this point I pretty much only fly C182, or a 172 when I have to. For the distances I fly, staying current in SR22, the higher prices and lesser availability aren't really worth it (it's the how much time are you saving in flight vs the higher time you spent to be able to save that time).
Highlights for the second 10 years:
And again the most practical use of my license has been to fly to Willows airport where I've been racing my car. Turns out I've now flown there 42 times so far.
Only one unexpected experience in these last 10 years:
Partial engine failure coming back from Burning man in 2022, undetermined, but poor maintenance and engine had to be changed after my emergency landing in LVK. I wasn't blamed for anything, old plane and no working engine intruments.
So just like I said 10 years ago, I'm going to continue to fly when it makes sense, but it's not my main hobby and I don't see the need to fly myself with weather restrictions if I can fly commercial to the same place (LA area) for a 5th or 10th of the price. But it's nice to know that if there is somewhere unusual to go or the zombie apocalypse happen and all commercial planes are taken down, I have options left :)
And as parting words, some of my bestof bestof pictures:
night flight back from Palm Springs to Palo Alto
Vintage pictures:
Moffett Hangar One
Google new campus
and another new campus on the Moffett side
Apple Spaceship Rainbow
Busy SFO
Typical SF day :)
track day at buttonwillow
some dot.com had a small self driving car test track just in front of KPAO
Plane graveyards:
Mountain flying to/from Burning Man:
Squawpine aka Palisades
Back side of Flatstar (the less flat side)
Welcome home :)
5302N that took me there multiple times until an engine failure
Mountain flying to/from Mammoth:
A very cool flying trip to Madras for the total Eclipse
My 2 main computers have been called magic and moremagic since the late 90's. Most people do not know wy, so here is the story I read back in the 90's, reposted from http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
A Story About 'Magic'
Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one knows who).
You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words 'magic' and 'more magic'. The switch was in the 'more magic' position.
I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.
It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed.
Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the 'more magic' position before reviving the computer.
A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the 'more magic' position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch.
The computer promptly crashed.
This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since.
We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic.
I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on 'more magic'.
1994: Another explanation of this story has since been offered. Note that the switch body was metal. Suppose that the non-connected side of the switch was connected to the switch body (usually the body is connected to a separate earth lug, but there are exceptions). The body is connected to the computer case, which is, presumably, grounded. Now the circuit ground within the machine isn't necessarily at the same potential as the case ground, so flipping the switch connected the circuit ground to the case ground, causing a voltage drop/jump which reset the machine. This was probably discovered by someone who found out the hard way that there was a potential difference between the two, and who then wired in the switch as a joke.
