The Inaugural Lecture

Part of becoming a full professor is a rite of passage known as the Inaugural Lecture. This is essentially a public lecture at which the new professor gets to speak about some topic of general interest, usually related to their research. My turn came on 23 September!

The lecture was entitled It's the End of the World as We Know It: A View of the Future of Computing, and focused on the changes that have happened in the world of processor hardware in recent years (particularly, the move to "multicore" chips), why this has happened, what the implications are, and what future developments in software will be needed to take full advantage of the changing hardware platforms. It was a lot of fun preparing the talk, as it brought together a lot of threads from my teaching and research. Finding the right level at which to pitch the talk was difficult, as the audience ranged from people who might occasionally play Solitaire through to colleagues who have many years of experience in distributed and parallel programming. The feedback from members of the audience suggest that I found the right level reasonably well.

One of the highlights of the whole process was being able to share the evening with family and friends. I was particularly blessed that my good friend Theo was able to come down from Pretoria for the occasion (unfortunately, Brenda and Caleb were not able to come with him).

Traditionally, an inaugural lecture is used to acknowledge the support, encouragement and help of the people who have been involved in the new professor's life and the process of becoming a professor. It was wonderful to have a public platform on which to acknowledge the many friends, family members, colleagues, teachers, mentors and role models who have contributed so much to my life.

The lecture was held in the early evening, and involved a certain amount of ceremony, with a procession of academic staff in full academic dress and an introductory speech by the Vice Chancellor before I was allowed to take the floor. Afterwards there was a chance to mingle with the members of the audience over some drinks and snacks, before going on to a formal dinner hosted by the Vice Chancellor and his wife, to which I had been able to invite a few particularly close friends and colleagues, and my parents.

Getting up at 3:15am the next day to take Theo down to the airport was a bit less fun, but at least it was a public holiday, and I was able to relax and come back down to earth slowly!

My last weekend...

I got back from Las Vegas on Thursday night, and on Friday we went to Lake Camanche for one last camping/boating trip. That was absolutely awesome with hot sunny days and warm water to swim and tube (and even to ski and wake-board for the more energetic!). We went with some friends of Colin and Janet's who I have also got to know quite well and had a great time relaxing, eating good food and enjoying the lake.

One of Colin's favourite pursuits is to try to dislodge riders from the tube. Here you can see an action shot as Bryn went flying, and I am about to follow! Lexi is hanging on for her life (the middle is usually the safest place to be, but even there I managed to fall off by doing a somersault over the front of the tube as it slowed rapidly when someone else had just fallen off and Colin had throttled back the boat suddenly!).

Somehow it seems fitting that my last photo of the U.S. should be of a stunning sunset during a weekend of excellent memories with wonderful friends.

Viva Las Vegas!

The trip to Vegas was very interesting. I have been there for conferences several times (in fact, most of them for the conference that me there this time too). What was noticeable this time though was just how much more confident I felt about getting around, etc. — I guess living in the U.S.A. for a year has had an effect on me!

The conference was good (actually, it is a little too big to be really good: 2000+ delegates is a massive crowd). My paper went well on Wednesday afternoon, and there was some nice discussion and questions about it afterwards.

One of the main highlights of the trip was the chance to do some geocaching and to add Nevada to my list of states that I have cached in. Many of the caches along "The Strip" are virtual caches (i.e. there is no physical cache container, you simply visit the spot and answer some question(s) to validate that you were there), due to the crowds of people that are ever-present. However, I did also get to visit my first Webcam cache. This requires some assistance from a friend. Essentially, the geocache coordinates take you to a spot where there is a pubic webcam. When you reach the spot, you phone someone (in my case Jared was very helpful) who can then go to the webcam's site and take a "photo" of you to prove that you were there. I'm not sure that the quality of the photo here proves much, but that really is me standing on the steps!

The other HUGE highlight was attending a performance of The Lion King on Wednesday night. That was absolutely breath-taking — it is amazing how well they create the animals with puppets and actors. However, it did make me a little home-sick (I never thought I would get misty-eyed when hearing "Moloweni" as a greeting!). Maybe it's a good thing I'm going back within a week!

Leaving Davis

I was back in Davis on Monday for my final small group/Bible study meeting. That was actually a potluck/bring-and-share supper (some delicious barbecued/braaied chicken with various salads, etc.), and was my "farewell" to the group. The small group had got me a book about the Davis area and had all signed a card, which was very nice of them. It's great how one has a Christian family all over the world.

Colin and Janet had lent me their Dodge Durango SUV for the trip to Davis on Monday. Packing my stuff into the SUV and cleaning up in Davis was relatively unstressful and I was back in Rocklin by 3:00pm on Tuesday. It was nice to have the big vehicle as it swallowed a chest of drawers and a small desk easily with stacks of space to spare for the two suitcases, as well as numerous bags of junk, bedding, etc. which need to be returned to their owners or donated. I'm ignoring the challenge of fitting everything I want to bring back to SA into two suitcases for the moment!

I need to get back to Davis sometime to collect the bed and the bicycle, which will need a trailer — the plan is to do that on Saturday.

Next week I will be in Las Vegas for the 2009 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'09), part of the 2009 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP'09). That's a huge conference that I have attended several times before. I'll be presenting a paper on some of the work that I did here late last year.

Then there is one last camping/boating trip planned before I fly back to SA.

It's hard to believe I leave here in only two weeks now. The time seems to be flying by rather fast!

A Geocaching Milestone

While most geocachers are adamant that "it's not about the numbers", keeping track of the number of caches found and celebrating significant milestones is a very common habit!

A while back I had realised that I was fairly close to reaching 200 caches found, and that I could reach this in the USA by finding about three caches a week. I took advantage of the end of my formal commitments at UC Davis to go out on a country ride last week and managed to tick off quite a few, bringing me up to a total of 193. I then considered trying to reach the 200 mark while in Yosemite over the weekend, but that would have meant pushing the geocaching rather hard (and would not have been all that considerate to the others on that trip). Still, the caching on our hike in Yosemite did bring the total tantalisingly close: to 197!

With today as my last day in Davis I had to do something about this and went out for a quick ride to get three fairly close-by caches, deliberately aiming for a specific one for the milestone. My quest was successful and I hit the target, just hours before leaving Davis!

The ride was actually very pleasant, mostly on a bike path that follows the original Lincoln Highway route into Davis, parallel to the current highway. The highway is particularly spectacular at the moment with masses of blooming oleanders in all sorts of colours down the median.

The geocache that I found for the milestone is an interesting one. Called "Losing Yamar's Marbles" it was placed by a cacher called Yamar, and the cache container is full of marbles. The idea is to take a marble and then drop it off anywhere you care to, noting the location on a website he has set up (he describes it as a study in Brownian motion!). I had noticed this cache some time ago as it is quite close to where I was living in Davis (just a little difficult to get to, as it is on the other side of the railway tracks). More importantly, no marbles have been dropped in Africa yet — an omission that had to be rectified!

So, I reached my goal of 200 caches, on my last day in Davis, and will be able to drop the two marbles I took when I get back to South Africa.

All in all, a very satisfying day of geocaching!

Yosemite: Day 2

After a relatively strenuous day, the plan for day 2 was a lot calmer. We started off with the obligatory cooked camping breakfast (including a neighbouring squirrel!) and then headed off into Yosemite again.

We took the Northern road, which runs right through the park this time and headed up towards the North-East part of the park. This involved a fair amount of climbing (fortunately, with the SUV doing the work this time, rather than human legs!). As we climbed, the terrain and vegetation changed noticeably from the pine forests to relatively bare rock, with patches of some very pretty wildflowers.

Our destination for the day was a short (a few miles), and flat (maximum climb 100ft, or about 30m) hike along the Tuolumne River. One of the main goals was for Colin to do some fly-fishing.

It was the perfect way to recover from the previous day's exertions and we thoroughly enjoyed the gentle stroll along the river, with pine forests and wide-open meadows. We stopped a couple of times for fishing breaks before reaching a lovely, quiet meadow spot where we had lunch with very few other people in sight or passing by.

Shortly after lunch we were somewhat surprised when two women walked up to the river (about 200m from where we were sitting in plain view, and much closer to some other people sitting on the river bank) and proceeded to strip off their clothes and plunge into the icy water before sunning themselves on the rocks! As most Americans are relatively prudish and wouldn't dream of being seen naked in public, we decided they must be European! (And, no, I didn't take any photos!).

After a post-lunch rest (for the non-fishers), Janet and I walked a little further along the river, enjoying the ever-changing interactions of the water and the rocks.

A rather long, but pleasant and scenic drive with musical accompaniment by Casting Crowns had us back at the camp site reasonably early for our dinner of braaied chicken and baked potatoes.

It had been a very different day to the first, but served to highlight the amazing variety of terrain, vegetation and activities available in Yosemite.

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On Sunday morning, Janet and Erin had to get up early (5:00am) to get back home as Erin was leaving on a church camping trip for the week. Colin did some last minute fishing before breakfast, after which we packed up (again, relatively easily in the RV) and headed back to Rocklin. The first part of the trip involved 5 miles of rather steep and winding descent, which we did very slowly in the "bus" and there was a lot of end-of-holiday-weekend traffic, so we took a lot longer to get back than Janet and Erin had.

Yosemite: Day 1

The past weekend was a long weekend in the US (with the Fourth of July falling on a Saturday, Friday was a public holiday). We headed for Yosemite national park (South-East of Sacramento) on Thursday afternoon. Colin and Janet had borrowed their neighbour's RV (Recreational Vehicle — a monster motor home!) for the trip, as the thought of tent-camping in bear country did not appeal too much! Getting camping sites in Yosemite on the Fourth of July weekend was a non-starter, so we stayed in a camp site just outside the park gates. We left Rocklin on Thursday afternoon, and arrived at the campsite early that evening, in good time to set up camp (relatively easy with the RV) and enjoy a dinner of braaied sausages and salad.

On Friday morning, we tried to get up and going reasonably early, but with with relatively little success! The line of cars waiting to get into the park was a little daunting, but was moving reasonably quickly and we were soon through the gate and enjoying the beautiful scenery of pine forests, dramatic rocky mountains and cliffs, and rushing rivers. The mission for the day was to tackle the hike to Nevada Falls. The round-trip distance was about seven miles (about 12km), but the difficulty lay in the 2000ft (600m) climb (and descent)! There were several geocaches located along the trail, which added to the fun of the hike.

Our route up the trail took us along the Merced River most of the time. The first climb of the day was up the "Mist Trail" alongside the Vernal Falls. The spray from the falls provides a very welcome, cooling mist as you climb up a set of stairs built into the cliff face. At the top we stopped for lunch at the pool above the falls, and got our breath back before the next stage.

From Vernal Falls, there was a short section through some woods, before starting the climb up to the top of Nevada Falls. That was a little more hair-raising than the climb up to Vernal Falls, as the steps were relatively rough rock, with no hand rail. It was also in hot sun most of the time and far enough from the river and falls that there was no cooling mist effect on this climb. The effort was more than worthwhile though, as the view from the top of the falls was amazing and there was a lovely cold, refreshing pool in which to soak our feet before contemplating the descent.

We took an alternative route for the descent, which didn't follow the river as closely, but also took the descent more gradually (the alternative trail is used by horse riders, which pretty well rules out staircases!). It was also well shaded and reasonably cool.

By the time we got back to our parking spot, it was starting to get quite late, so we abandoned our plans to try to get to a scenic sunset spot (a fair distance drive away), and settled for getting some pizza for supper at the "village" near the parking. After dinner, Colin tried fishing for a while in the river, before we headed for the campsite and showers.

While we didn't see any bears, we did see a lot of squirrels and a few deer in the park, but the highlight was without a doubt the spectacular scenery.

Up and away!

Another good weekend, with less than four weeks to go to my departure now :-(

Most of the weekend was spent enjoying the facilities of the Hobson "resort" (as they refer to their back yard!). That was a very pleasant refuge from the 40+ degree heat.

On Sunday afternoon we went to see Up at the movies. The movie is outstanding — probably one of Pixar's best ever (and they've been making superb movies ever since the original Toy Story), and one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. Without giving too much away for the benefit of those who haven't seen it yet, the story is incredibly moving without being cloying, and has a very strongly principle-based message (actually several messages) without being "preachy". Really good stuff — highly recommended.

With Bryn in Uganda (and having a great time — Colin and Janet spoke to him briefly on Sunday), I have the use of his car and so made my own way to Davis this morning to continue the packing. That is going reasonably well. Tomorrow I need to go into campus to return my keys and wrap up things there. More "lasts"!

With the Fourth of July coming up, Friday is a public holiday and we have a trip to Yosemite planned. I'm really looking forward to that: hiking among the mountains, forests and waterfalls.

Time's running out...

Today marks one month to go until I leave the USA — it's scary how quickly a year can go by!

I had a good weekend with the Hobsons. It was somewhat hectic with a whirlwind of kids coming and going: Erin was out for the whole day on Friday at a theme park with some friends; Jared left on Friday morning for a church camping trip to Yosemite; Bryn left for Washington, D.C. on his way to Uganda early on Sunday morning; and Jared returned from his camping trip on Sunday afternoon. I'm going to miss them all terribly when I return to SA.

My time at UC Davis officially ends at the end of June, so I am busy starting to pack up (bought a new suitcase on the weekend!) and wrap up in Davis.

Camping at Camanche

This past weekend we went on a great camping and boating trip to Lake Camanche (just South-East of Sacramento, about 1.5 hours from Colin and Janet's home in Rocklin). We left on Friday just after lunchtime, and took the back routes to avoid the worst of the traffic. Bryn and Jared had invited a couple of friends, so we were a fairly big crowd. We quickly set up camp and then took the boat off to the launch ramp and got it in the water and then moored near the camp site for the night.

Our campsite was in the "overflow" area, so had no showers and chemical toilets (porta-potties), but was relatively uncrowded and had a super view over the lake. Camanche itself is a lovely lake with relatively warm water (about 74 Fahrenheit, according to Colin's fish-finder gadget, or roughly 23 degrees Celcius). The weather was a little strange for the time of year, with cold evening winds both nights, and a few showers of rain in the middle of Friday night. The woodfire was very welcome in the evenings! Fortunately, the days were lovely and warm, with a little cloud around on Saturday to keep it a little cooler.

On Saturday, after a hearty breakfast, we headed across the lake and found an island where we could camp out for the day (the island property being useful in that Freckles could be let off his leash and allowed to wander — he's even got his own little life-jacket!). Different groups went off tubing behind the boat through the day, while others stayed on the island playing with a frisbee or a ball (or reading and dozing!). During the afternoon, Colin, Janet and I left the youngsters on the island and headed up the lake in search of some boat-in geocaches. Unfortunately, the water level was quite high and finding safe mooring for the boat was tricky as much of the current waterline was very rocky. We did manage to find one that had a reasonably decent "beach", and after some hunting around (with much careful banging and prodding to scare off any rattle snakes) managed to find the cache.

On Sunday, Janet and Erin had to leave early as Erin had a girl scouts "ropes course" in Sacramento. The rest of us went out boating and enjoyed the tubing again (Colin also did some water-skiing), before packing up the campsite. We jumped on the boat and found a nice spot for a picnic lunch, before heading out into the middle of the lake for a final swim and a last tube-ride back to the launch ramp to get the boat onto the trailer and head back home to Rocklin.

High School Grad

Today was Bryn and Jared's high school graduation. That's a big deal here (much more so than in Africa, where my own memories are very of a very anticlimatic fizzle-out to six years of high school education!). The ceremony was held in the school's football stadium, with music provided by the school's "symphonic band", and the procession of graduates (in caps and gowns) led in by cadets carrying the US and Californian flags.

The national anthem was sung, and there were speeches (mercifully short) by a wide range of people: the principal, the president of the students' association, one of the valedictorians, a couple of the other students (an "inspirational" message and a class "history"), one of the teachers (chosen by a vote of the students), and the class president.

The graduation itself went fairly quickly with two streams of students coming up on both sides of the stage with names being called alternately from either side. However, with over three hundred graduates, it still took a while!

It was a highly significant graduation for the school which had only opened four years, with this as the first, new "freshman" class (there had been a small graduation last year, as they had also admitted a few transfer students initially). The school has done very well, earning the status of a "California Distinguished High School" despite its youth.

It was wonderful to be here for the boys' graduation. It just seems like the other day that they were babies in Grahamstown — they've come a long way since then!

Memorial Day Weekend

This last weekend was mainly spent painting! As part of her birthday present, Erin was redecorating her bedroom and the great paint-job happened this past weekend. Janet did the lion's share, painstakingly stencilling multiple, brightly coloured polka dots on the upper parts of the walls. This area and the ceiling were painted white, above the pink picture rail which acted as a border for the BRIGHT green walls! Erin is very happy with her new paint scheme, and just rolled her eyes when I asked if she would provide a rack of dark glasses for people entering the room!

Due to the painting activity we went to church on Saturday evening, which was good — relatively uncrowded and a very relaxed atmosphere.

I also enjoyed relaxing in the pool — just the way to relax after a tough day's painting!

The weekend was a long-weekend, as Monday was Memorial Day, in memory of those lost in defense of their country. I came back by train on Monday afternoon, to be here for my small group meeting on Monday night. When I got home, the nearby cemetery was completely decked out with American flags (large ones along all the roadways, and smaller ones on some of the graves — I presume those of ex-servicemen and women). Unfortunately, the flags had all been a removed a couple of hours later when I went to get a few photos!

My last weekend in Davis...

No, I'm not leaving yet, but I spend very few weekends here and this was probably my last!

I stayed to attend a concert (Baroque classical recital) on Friday night. That was put on by the University's Music Department and was very good.

I had been thinking about going to the new Star Trek movie on Saturday and it turned out Shane and Anni (my housemates) had the same thought so we ended up going together on Saturday evening. That was a very good "prequel" movie.

On Sunday I went to church followed by my usual brunch at the little Austrian restaurant.

It felt a little odd/sad doing all these things for the last time! The time for my departure seems to be rushing close very rapidly now.

Oklahoma!

On Friday night I went to see the UC Davis production of Oklahoma!, the well-known, much-loved Rogers and Hammmerstein musical. That was excellent. The story is a little corny, but the music is superb and the production was top-notch. They had brought in a few professional performers for some of the lead roles, but the majority of the cast were students (and a few community people). The orchestra was made up completely of students and staff.

While the music and the acting/singing were good, the highlight was the staging. As people were coming into the theatre, there was a picture of a farm scene (farmhouse, fence, windmill, etc.) projected onto the stage curtain/screen. As the play started, the lights on stage brightened and the screen raised slowly revealing that it was actually a gauze screen and that the scene that had been projected was actually the same as the stage setting, giving this amazing effect of "fading" from two-dimensions into three. They used the same trick in a few other places — very impressive and very effective (I guess they did spend $185,000 on the production — i.e. somewhere around R1.5million!).

Jim Larus

The Computer Science Department here at UC Davis hosted Jim Larus from Microsoft Research yesterday for a "distinguished lecture". He spoke on "Spending Moore's Dividend", which was based largely on his recent article in Comm ACM (see p. 62). The talk was a fascinating look back at how computer processors have developed over the last 40 years or so and how software has developed to take advantage of the huge increases in processing power and then a look forward to the very different future that we face as increases in processor speed have stopped in favour of increasing numbers of processors (cores) per chip. That trend is going to require some very different approaches to how we do things in future, and it was fascinating to hear some thoughts about what form that might take. The article is well-worth a look if you have access to the Comm ACM.

Thrive

I'm a little behind with the blogging (again!). Last weekend was the Thrive conference at Bayside, Colin and Janet's (and my!) church. The conference is a little like the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, but with a wider focus (not just on leadership). The conference was really excellent, and I enjoyed and learned a lot at the sessions that I attended.

They had a combination of "general" sessions, with major speakers like Franklin Graham (Billy Graham's son), Francis Chan (a well-known pastor, speaker and author) and Nick Vujicic (an amazing Australian man who has no arms or legs!). The general sessions also included worship, led by several different groups (including the Katinas).

In addition to the general sessions, there were smaller, parallel "break-out" sessions focused on specific topics. I went to talks on "God-Size your church", "10 systems of a healthy church" (both concerned with how to build and run healthy churches), church finances and church leadership.

There was also a fair amount of "entertainment" with two Christian comedians, and the pre-screening of a new movie called To Save a Life, which is due to be released later this year (it deals mainly with issues that teenagers face).

On Sunday, they had one of the conference speakers, Chris Brown, stay on as a guest preacher, and he gave one of the most entertaining, "seeker-friendly" messages I think I have ever heard, while at the same time being one of the most challenging messages for believers that I have ever heard. Colin and Janet had heard him and his senior pastor talk about this approach in one of the break-out sessions at the conference, so it was interesting to see it in action.

Return from Seattle: Amtrak

My "vacation" wasn't actually over when I left Seattle, as I had opted to return to Davis by train. The train left Seattle at 9:45am and the journey took just over 21 hours, passing through some spectacular scenery along the way. In the interests of a comfortable night's sleep I had reserved a "roomette" — a compartment with two seats which formed a single bed and an overhead bunk for a second bed. That entitled me to free meals and also to the use of the "parlour car" — a renovated carriage with bar, lounge area, eating area, "theatre" (a huge flat screen TV) and massive picture windows.

From Seattle the train headed past the Museum of Flight on its way to Tacoma and then along the Puget Sound (past the famous Tacoma Narrows, scene of the bridge disaster that we watched over and over again in Physics as an illustration of the power of resonance!). The scenery along here was beautiful.

We crossed into Oregon and arrived at Portland just after lunch time — a very pretty town where the train stopped for a shot while (much to the relief of the smokers on board who were able to get off and puff away!).

Later in the afternoon (after 5:00pm) we started to climb up through the Cascade Mountains, which provided more spectacular scenery. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera to the dining car — the setting sun as we travelled through the snowy, forested top of the mountain range was awesome!

After a remarkably good night's sleep (I found that I woke up when the train stopped — fortunately, there were only two scheduled stops through the night), I woke up as we were approaching Sacramento. As the train was a little behind schedule there was time to enjoy the (free!) breakfast before the last leg of the journey to Davis, arriving at 7:30am, a little after the scheduled 6:50 arrival time.

All in all, a very fun way to end a great week away!

Day Three in Seattle: The Museum of Flight and Underground

My last day in Seattle started with a half-hour bus journey South of the city to visit the Museum of Flight. That is built on the site of the original Boeing factory (a converted barn!) and has some stunning planes on display and other exhibits. Some of the highlights are the last British Airways Concorde flown, a previous presidential jet (a 737, the first jet used as Air Force One), the first 747, the first 737, a Blackbird spy plane (the fastest aeroplane ever built), a moon rover, Mars explorer, space capsule, a recreation of the original Wright flyer and much, much more (clicking on any of the photos below will enlarge them).


Recreation of the Wright Flyer (note the Russian satellite hanging in the background too).


An elderly Air Force One!


The first 747 (note the large "1"!).


An Apollo Capsule.


The Blackbird spy plane (note the unmanned drone mounted on top too).


A recreation of the original Boeing factory in the barn.


The original factory from the outside.

I finally managed to drag myself away from there at about 3:00 in the afternoon and got back into Seattle just in time to take an "underground" tour. In the early part of the last century the city had been having a lot of trouble with its drains (mainly thanks to the recent introduction of indoor plumbing!). At that time a bad fire razed most of the town to the ground and offered an opportunity to fix the problems. Needless to say the townspeople and the city officials differed on just about every aspect of how this should be done, which led to the merchants rebuilding their shops at the (old) ground level while the city eventually rebuilt the roads one-storey higher! The result was that shoppers had to negotiate ladders to get down from the road level to the level of the pavement/sidewalk, and that incautiously driven carts sometimes ended up falling off the roads (as did incautiously inebriated citizens at night!). The eventual solution was to cover over the sidewalks, making the street level of the shops what was previously the first floor and introducing underground tunnels around each block. The underground tour went through a few of these tunnels, giving some of the history of the area with a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, (and not a little toilet humour given the cause of the problems!).

After a brief rest, I went out and got one last cache for my visit to Seattle. That was in the area of the Seattle Public Library, which was right across the road from my hotel (I could see the cache site from my hotel-room window!). The Library is interesting for its stunning architecture (I remember reading about it in Time magazine when it was opened a few years ago). That was followed by a meal of fresh fish and chips on the waterfront, watching the sun set and the seagulls stealing food from people eating on the dock outside the restaurant! A very memorable end to a great break.

Day Two in Seattle: Aquarium, Caching and Science Center

My second day in Seattle started with a trip to the aquarium (there's a photo of it from the harbour cruise in the previous posting below). That is an actual working/research aquarium, with some very interesting displays. In the entrance area, there is a huge tank with a depiction of the fish life from the Puget Sound (Seattle is on Elliot Bay, which opens up into Puget Sound). Just after I arrived they had an interactive "show" with two divers who were in the tank for cleaning and feeding and had headphones and microphones so that they could talk to the presenter on the dry side of the glass and the audience — very well done (you can make some of it out in the photo here, although there is a lot of reflection from the glass, actually more than 12 inches of acrylic). I had some lunch at the aquarium restaurant (but resisted the seafood options — it seems wrong to be eating their relatives in front of the tanks!).

From there I walked up into town through the Pike Place Market again to visit a small computer company who run the web-based systems on which geocaching works. They're bigger than I thought (35 employees and growing) and have a very nice set of offices in downtown Seattle (the servers are off-site, but nearby apparently). They do "official" tours on Friday afternoons, but very graciously allowed me to pop in briefly during normal office hours as I would be leaving on Friday morning. In the photo here you can see me standing below the company logo holding a HUGE geocoin and with the biggest geocache I have ever seen open in front of the desk!

From there I walked up to the Seattle Center again and visited the Pacific Science Center. That was what had triggered the visit to Seattle, as they were hosting a special exhibit on geocaching, GPS technology, etc. That was good fun (and a great way to introduce the uninitiated to geocaching). After completing the "maze" I wandered around the rest of the science centre and also saw an excellent IMAX movie on beavers (incredible creatures!).

Keeping in the geocaching spirit of the day I then did a few more caches (both the visit to the headquarters and the special exhibition also counted as caches), finding a couple in the vicinity of the Science Center (including one with the stunning fountain and view of the Space Needle that you see here).

After another ride back into the shopping area downtown, I walked through Pike Place (again!) to the waterfront and back to the hotel (with one more cache find en route!) as the sun was setting over the bay.