Marc's Public Blog

2024/12/17 Enchanted Xmas SJ

π 2024-12-17 01:01 in Outings

Another year at Enchanted Xmas in San Jose, well done, plenty of LEDs again. If you put aside the pretty ridiculous price of parking or food and drinks onsite (but eh, if people are still coming, they are charging what the market will bear, I guess), the lights are beautiful indeed:

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2024/12/12 Santa Clara Vasona Park Fantasy of Lights

π 2024-12-12 01:01 in Outings

Vasona Park did a great job with decorating the park. It was nice to visit but tedious to get in (via a long detour to get people in a very long line to get in, despite timed tickets):

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2024/11/14 Neil deGrasse Tyson back at San Jose Center for Performing Arts: An Astrophysicist Goes To The Movies, the Sequel

π 2024-11-14 01:01 in Outings, Public

Back to see Neil deGrasse Tyson for a 3rd time, this time for part 2 of "An Astrophysicist Goes To The Movies". It ws a fun evening as any evening would him, would be, although I found this specific talk a little weaker than the first one, probably because he had to find other material that he hand't already used in the first talk, but that said there were still plenty of fun bits, and as I said, any time with him is a fun time :)

he still has a few books I should read :)

the list of movies for his 2nd talk

those doors were indeed portals to a 4th dimension we can't see as 3 dimensional beings

wizard of oz was wrong all along!

I never caught that one either

parsecs are a unit of distance, they can't be used for speed or time (BTW a parsec is 3.6 light years as I found out)

Gravity: haha, that's an easy one. It had lots of good physics, but also some glaring holes

Oh no, don't let him go! :)

As a bonus, he gave he attendees a hall pass for the next day if they were late :)

And I had no idea he was on zoolander 2 :)

It was another very fun night, very quick video summary:

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2024/10/20 Northern California Maker Faire at Mare Island

π 2024-10-20 01:01 in Outings, Public

Maker Faire came back but it's not really in the bay area anymore, Mare Island is honestly closer to Sacramento than it is from the South Bay. It's a bad location in my opinion, and I hope they come back to something more central to the bay, but we'll see.

That said I was driving back from Tahoe, so that remote location was on the way home and stopping there wasn't terrible. We arrived almost at opening time, but with offsite parking and bussing in, it did burn about 30mn. not ideal but we arrived in eventually:

Finally at the entrance:

It was nice to be in time for Adam Savage from mythbusters:

still has the passion

Fun to see coke and mentos again too:

The dark room was a fun time:

The LED Piano was great to see again:

I also loved the cuttlefish art car from burning man:

Plenty of other expos:

cool hat

electromage

oh my, I had one of those when I grew up

oh, I need one of those

how does it even? :)

cool idea :)

For some reason they also had cars:

This was fun enough, but the new location is not great, I hope they change it back to the middle of the bay area, I don't care if it has to cost more as a result.

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2024/05/16 Illuminarium in Las Vegas

π 2024-05-16 01:01 in Outings

Illuminarium Las Vegas is next door to Area15, and being there a little bit early for the Dreamstate Area15 show I had just enough time to see the show, which is a nice space movie projected on a lot of walls. Cool place:

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2024/05/01 Little Rook House Cafe in Athens

π 2024-05-01 01:01 in Greece2024, Outings

This was randomly part of the Psyrri walk in Athens, and a hillarious find. HAd to stop and enjoy the place for a little while. They really went all out, it was both impressive and fun:

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2024/04/10 San Antonio, the Saga, 3D Projection Mapping on San Antonio's Cathedral

π 2024-04-10 01:01 in Outings, Texas

That was a cool show, totally free and somewhat unexpected:

Video:

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2024/04/08 Texas Eclipse

π 2024-04-08 01:01 in Outings, Public, Texas

The Texas Eclipse Festival did not end as planned, organizers cancelled the event for weather risk reasons, although in the end the weather was so much better than forecast (forecast said we'd never see the sun at all and it would rain).
When I heard about the cancellation on a thread fo bar one of my 2 cell phones,while barely awake, I managed to tear up camp and start driving out in just 15mn and got out of the festival in just over 45mn, before traffic got really bad. I then realized I had just enough time to drive my friend Marc Antoine's ranch 50mn away, and the fact that 2 lane roads in TX have 70mph speed limits, sure helped. I got to his place 30mn before totality.

It did not rain, and the sun came out just at the right time for the eclipse and went hiding in the clouds soon after. Timing was perfect. And I happened to capture some solar flares and mercury with my not so great handheld camera, so I'm happy :)

When I got out of the festival, partial eclipse hadn't started yet, but the sun was barely visible

Marc sent me the GPS location of his ranch, and GPS said I could barely make it and thankfully the roads were near empty

I pulled over a few times when the sun was visible for barely a minute

Most of the time, it was fully overcast, as per the forecast

but the sun came back out a few times

And in barely 50mn I made it to Marc's ranch and got to meet his family. We had just seen one another 2 weeks prior at beyond wonderland

all ready

fun thing is you can see a partial eclipse without glasses

getting there, so close

and yes!

even a decent shot frmo my cell

it got dark :)

I caught some sun flares on this one

on lower right, I think I you can see mercury. Einstein used it the lensing effect of gravity in his theory of general relativity

my best lucky shot!

and way too soon, it was over already :)

and the sun soon went to hide under clouds again, perfect timing!

The eclipse festival didn't end well, but the eclipse itself went way beyond expectations!

Video:

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2024/02/27 Lucha Libre Wrestling at Arena Mexico

π 2024-02-27 01:01 in Mexico, Outings

I used to watch wrestling as a teenager but had never seen a show in person, and Lucha Libre was listed as one of the things to do in CDMX, so I gave it a shot. It was of course silly and had a few expanded "rules" compared to the wrestling I used to watch (3 on each team instead of 2), but otherwise it was the same half ridiculous but entertaining show I had seen before, even if I could not understand the spanish (which ultimately didn't make a huge difference anyway).

Lucha Libre Wrestling is very popular in Mexico, lots of merch in the city:

Very strangely, cameras were not allowed but taking pictures with cell phones, was. Go figure...

Short Video:

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2023/12/30 Another Xmas in the Park, In Mamchester's Heaton Park

π 2023-12-30 01:01 in Outings, Uk

While Around Manchester for 1.5 days, my last stop was to visit Xmas At Heaton Park, some nice decorations that were nice to checkout just before going back to the airport and flying back to Paris.
They did a good job:

after fasting for 48H, best hot chocolate ever :)

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