On the last Friday of October, I flew to Seattle after work for the Seattle Interactive Conference. The conference didn’t start until Tuesday, so I flew up early to spend some time with B. We went to the “short-run conference” on Saturday and spent some time planning our book (don’t expect more details about that project for a long long time).

The short run conference wasn’t what I expected. I thought it would be like comic-con but for self-published stuff.  I didn’t really see many (or any?) books. It was all comic books, 35% obviously Crumb inspired and the rest a sort of hipster intentionally bad art scribbling (if you don’t know what this looks like, be glad). That’s not to say there wasn’t good art, but it was harder to find. Jim Woodring had a booth, as did Bruce Bickford. I recognized Bruce from the documentary I watched about his animation many years ago. Although it wasn’t done by him, the crazy Grizzly Bear video for Ready, Able (a good song already) was clearly done to emulate his work.

The place was packed, so the market for this stuff must be thriving. However, half the attendees smelled like they hadn’t showered in a long time. It was better people-watching than anything else though I left unsure of how I fit in. At one time, I would have wanted my own booth. In high school, I was part of this crowd (although the aesthetic was quite different back then). Now I feel like an elitist jerk for being unimpressed. If anything, I’m less scared now to try my own graphic novel at some point (another long-gestating project).

The conference had a VR demonstration that I didn’t get to try. Sam and I tried to check out the Samsung VR at best buy the weekend before, but it was broken. I’ve been wanting to try the VR sets for a long time, and have followed the development of Oculus from way before Facebook bought them. I think that this technology will eventually replace TV/Movies/Games, at least as the interface.

The inability to “talk shop” with other self-publishing book authors at the conference was a real disappointment.

Coincidentally B’s wife planned to bring him to a University of Washington football game that Saturday, so she generously got me a ticket as well. I’ve been to a few college football games before (Ohio Stadium three times and OSU at Cal Berkeley), but never gone to a beer garden.  They’ve got a lot more than beer at the UW garden and we spent more than a quarter of the game over there. Luckily it was a good game for UW and we saw many touchdowns from our seats a few rows back from the short side of the end zone.

It was a very different experience than the other games I’ve been to, if nothing else because I was free to down vodka and blackberry juice (the “purple haze” cocktail at UW) without having to worry about driving home. After talking to the fans, it was clear that they’re more interested in having a good time than seeing the team win. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Although it was fun to watch OSU go through the playoffs and win last year, maybe it’s more fun to be a fan of an average team – never all too concerned about a loss, and any win feels great.  Not that OSU games aren’t fun in their own way, but I didn’t hear any “aww, c’mon, get it together!” complaining when UW didn’t go up by 7 touchdowns in the first quarter. And I’m sure a ticket for a good seat at Husky Stadium doesn’t cost $1,000.

On Monday night, B and I went briefly around town to find night photography shots, which is where the farther away shots in the gallery above come from.

On Tuesday night after the conference, I walked down to the Columbia building and went up to the observation deck. Unfortunately, they keep the lights in there fairly bright, so it was exceedingly difficult to take night photography. I ended up grabbing napkins and trying to drape them between the lens and the glass windows. There’s no disappointment greater than taking a five-minute exposure and then seeing that you’ve got the lights of the observation cafe in the sky…

However, I was able to take many more shots than normal because of a trick that B showed me the night before. Sony DSLRs have a long-exposure noise reduction algorithm that runs after long shots, it can run for up to twice the amount of time you used on the shot. Over the years, Sam has been very patient waiting for me to take multiple shots at 5 minutes apiece (2 min shutter + 3 min noise reduction processing). B told me that removing the NR processing will give you instant access to take another shot.  I turned it off and did a few tests, seeing no difference. Why? Because I always try to shoot at 50 ISO for night shots (I hate noise!).  At 50 ISO, if you don’t move there’s not much noise to process out anyway with a full-frame sensor… so all this time I’ve been wasting all that processing time.  At least now I know. That was probably more useful than anything I learned at either conference, although I feel kind of stupid for spending $1,500+ on a camera and not knowing how to use it.

After Columbia, I took my time wandering down towards the bay.

At the conference the next day I was able to finally try out not one, but two of the VR headsets. I tried Oculus and another one. Unfortunately, the experience has a long way to go before I think the public will start giving them as Christmas gifts. You’re quite obviously staring at pixels half an inch in front of your eyes. It became painful for me in under a minute. Also, the fact that none of them give a full peripheral view destroys the “immersive” experience. Instead, it’s more like snorkeling with bulky goggles on. Is it possible to pack pixels in an LED so tightly that you can’t distinguish them from a centimeter away? Until that happens I don’t think this technology will be adopted…