So yeah, I'm in LA, and I went to MMVR2006. I got called in at the as a last-minute stand-in to present a paper on some of the physically-based modeling work we've been working on at the lab. I took a couple of photos; all I've got so far is here.


The flight was fairly turbulent, but I managed to sleep through it ok. Crossing the international date-line from east to west meant the whole arriving-before-I-left thing happened, which is always amusing :)

Anyway, the conference went well; it finished a couple of hours ago. With certain commitments, jetlag, giving a talk and running about trying to find out about possible life post-PhD, I'm industrial-grade tired. The talk was well received, and I got to meet all sorts of crazy folk from the all the big simulation groups - notably Stanford, Harvard and MIT.

The hotel I'm staying at is the Long Beach Hyatt, and the view out of the window isn't too bad:



That's the Queen Mary outside in the left of the picture, next to the giant-dome thing which used to be the hangar for the Spruce Goose. A good account of the Gooses' rather sad demise can be found here.



LA is big, smoggy, and a little bit daunting if you are unhinged enough to try and see it on foot. I did that last time I was in Long Beach (from the previous MMVR, which was also here!), it took me a good couple of hours to get from the upper end of the actual beach on Long Beach down to the other end, which was as far as I could work out I could go on foot ;) Anyway, I've got the day in LA tomorrow before I get on a plane back home; I'll wander around with the camera and take more happy snaps. I'll write that up when I get back. Anyway, probably time to get some sleep :P