In the media lounge we saw Charles and Alice Edgin the owners of DMG publishing (I wrote for their Keyframe and I3D Magazines).
Now they have HDRI 3D and here is their new Editor in Chief Darish Derakhshani who seems very nice – and wants more article from me right? Please? 🙂

Meanwhile back at the Hash Booth.
I bump into Steve and Martin and they invite me to Wed nights Hash Party (for first timer’s this is the part thrown by Hash it doesn’t involve any).

On the floor I see this lil mouse for $50 – interesting design.

A 3D printers I can afford.
Well that my institution might be able to. $24,999
Get a 3 year lease and supplies and it isn’t unreasonable to really look into it.

So far the highlight of the show (cause they can really ship me one).
This 640×480 (each eye) stereoscopic headset is about $500.

“You like Swedish Candy?”, asks the man at the booth.
“Yah!”
(Imagine appropriate accents)

I actually just looked into one of these its a handheld laser scanner – just sweep and it encodes data.
For a few extra dollars they have software to make your models watertight for 3D printing.
I see a theme here.

Hold still while I duct tape more ping pong balls to you.
Motion capture stuff for those newbies reading this.

Barclay Shaw’s son is coming to look at Case Western for college.
Its a great place – come on up.

Gotta love these giant Wacom tablet/screen.
At $2500 they aren’t that expensive.

Back at the Hash booth – Heath Hash offers me a party ticket.
Funnily enough this happened like 4 times (not just from Heath).

Another 3D Printer.

I have one word for you: Plastics.
Ok well Rubber.
Ok well – 2 part RTV.
Modeling supplies – way kewl.
And this poor guy wearing his heart on his sleeve (well someone’s heart).

BUGS!
Phil Tippet Studios – gotta love Starship Troopers.

So the moral of the story is – if you are going to ask a company about possible patent infringement/liabilities you probably don’t want to do in 30 seconds after the last guy asked about possible patent infringement/liabilities.
Very nice product though.

Where do they find all these old satellite dishes?

Portable aromatherapy vaporizer.
Is this really a problem people have?
I need to smell a field – NOW!!!

$50,000 volumetric display.
Very clean – very nice – very clever – it uses 20 LCD panels.
Of course it won’t do anything for my stereoscopic photography.

I took the picture for the screen but then talked with them and am really impressed.
For $4k you get a single projector active stereoscopic display.
I am floored. They also have some great software but you only get it cheap with the projector $400 with $2000 without (ie BUY THE PROJECTOR).

So I took this guy’s picture from Dreamworks cause he said something funny and what’s worse is I can’t remember what he said.

The Gnomon school get in cause they have a free M&M candy dispenser.
(I think it is defective cause all of mine where W&Ws)

The wood easels make it art.

Never ask directions from a storm trooper.
Actually if you played the video game they gave you a t-shirt.

I saw this on the Internet (and now you have seen it on the Internet).
It uses the internal polarization of the 2 LCD displays to create passive stereo.
The glass in the middle acts as a beam splitter.
He kept cleaning it – which is probably a bad sign.

$2400 for a haptic pen – I remember when it was $15k.
It doesn’t look like much but when Jenny got to try it you should have seen her light up!

Poor Form-Z didn’t have much of a crowd.

I stopped at the Eyeon booth to see – blanks on his name damn – and he was busy so I will be back tomorrow when I will remember it!

The age of the big booth is not over – there were just less of them.

Big and wooden booth.
How many trees does one have to kill to attend a trade show?

nVidia had a big inflatable dome.
I want to jump on the trampoline and plastic ball thing they have inside it – oh wait I think its a theater.

Apple ‘s booth looking like Mission Control.

And this guy from Disney was very nice. I asked him a bunch of question and he said “I’m just here to make sure the equipment doesn’t go down.”

That’s an interesting design for a booth.
But they didn’t have popcorn.

EA has this gigantic wonderful display with a hand written sign that says ‘Madden 06’ written on it.

So they are selling these TINY digital video camcorders that do MPG4.
Cheap in price.
Cheap in quality.
Still looks like fun.

Z-Corp color 3D Printers.
MMM – 3D Printers.

The guys at Barco were SO damn nice to me this year it was like they knew I was actually going to buy one soon.

This is what I get for asking the guy from Rhythm and Hues for not 1 but 2 pencils.

If you buy an HP printer your hair turns blue!

Jennifer Niles from Charles River Media.
I know a Jennifer Niles back home – this isn’t her.
She remembered me from pervious years so I took her picture.

3D Binoculars.
What it is (or what it will be when they ship in november) is $1500 and twin 3.1 Megapixel digital cameras with a 3.5″ base and an 8x magnification.
They were playing their images back on a so-so autostereoscopic screeen.
I still want one though.

So this guy pissed me off.
He claims his display is 3D and holographic.
Its a 2D image that appears to ‘float’ on a sheet of glass.
I explained that what he was doing was neither stereoscopic of holographic and he should be careful of his terms and he told me that Steven Spielberg has one of these.
Well I’m guessing he didn’t buy it form him.

I then met Lawrence Kaufman from Stereo World Magazine and the President of the NSA (National Stereographic Association) way kewl – I need to get involved there more.

Of course I met him at the American Paper Optics booth where John wanted to pose with his Elvis mask again but was convinced to use his X-ray specs instead.
I told him he was a nice guy – but he saw right through me – yuck yuck.
Actually he is one of the nicest guys at the show (and away from it). I do very little business and he treats me like I order millions of dollars worth of product.
Lesson to other vendors out there – be nice to your customers they like it!

Back in the Media booth I met James Massey from the International News Agency.

And on the way to the speaker prep room we met this person where a Mutech outfit which turns Civilians into Rockstars, Men into Mutechs, Women and into Femtech.
Its from the card – I don’t make stuff like this up.

Its Samuel Lord Black!
Though I like to call him Mr. SIGGRAPH with his sash os ribbons and his diva-like strut and attitude.

Larry Hatch and Janet (whose last name I will remember later) from Bowling Green at the Speaker Prep room.
We prepped.

On the way out I saw Dennis Muren from Industrial Light and Magic.
A few years ago at SIGGRAPH my friend Doug froze in his tracks and said that a few persons down was Dennis Muren from ILM – I said why don’t you go say Hi. He said what could he say to him and eventually didn’t do anything.
I’ve often told this story because I’ve said if you want to say Hi – be polite – be courteous and just do it.
So I did. There was Dennis Muren. And I said it was an honor to meet him – shook his hand – took his picture and gave him my card.
He was very gracious and I am thrilled to get to meet him.
Some people asked if I was going to go back and change my comments about George Lucas yesterday. I think I was fair about his talk – which I did enjoy. And I think my little joke (you can find it yourself on yesterday’s pages) was as funny and as light as everything else.
Anyway it was a thrilling moment! Thanks again!

On the way back to the floor we saw this guy shooting spherical video – we need to talk to him tomorrow about our project.

Back at the Hash Booth…
This is the guy who told the guy in Tijuana that I was retarded to try and haggle a lower price (I didn’t know he was doing this till afterwards).
He doesn’t work for Hash – he just shares their twisted sensibilities.

I still can’t afford this camera. But I look every year.

So don’t sit at your booth eating dinner and have the projector on you like a camp counselor with a flashlight under your chin and not expect me to take your picture.

Big 3D display.

These extended keyboard things are really nice – and I need to find a way of incorporating it into my life.
More importantly it was the last thing on the show floor I needed to see – yes I did the entire floor in 1 day. I will do more ‘fill in’ tomorrow but this was basically it.

Some world music to entertain us.

So we all went to dinner!

And then instead of going to Hollywood we went to Universal City to the Citywalk.

A fun place to go.

Very festive.

So many jokes – SO MANY JOKES.

We got Ice Cream at Ben and Jerry’s but Dave got Coffee instead.
I guess he had a good conversation with the guy at the counter cause they gave it to him on the house.

OK then something AWESOME happened.
Jenny and I are fanatical about our TV and one of the shows we watch – very intensely is Rockstar: INXS on CBS.
So we are walking along and she freezes and starts to point – she couldn’t even talk cause there were the guys from the show.
They were so gracious to us – and Jenny got her picture taken with Ty.
And then Ty, Tara, Jordis, and Brandon posed for us.
Meanwhile Dave was talking to J.D. and I told him it was so exciting because we had been taping the shows cause we were out of town and were so glad to see them all!
J.D. said he liked my vest and then he gave me a really kewl ring. Thanks J.D. (call me we’ll have lunch)
It was awesome – they were all awesome and from a timing and luck point of view it couldn’t have been better.

The evening winding to a close we headed down the long path home to the subway – where I saw a snail.