Phone Home

Learned a few new trick today, like how to enable International Roaming on my iPhone the easy way. If the automated phone voice at your phone company starts asking you questions and you really don’t want to drag it out, just say in a loud voice “Consultant” its like the Abra Kadabra of voice recognition. You immediately get an actual person to talk to. I also learned that holding down the zero(0) key for long enough will give you the plus(+) sign you need to dial +61 when phoning home.

It’s going to be about 3 Dollars per minute to call Australia and about 60 or 70 cents per text message. Skype is looking really good at this stage, phone will be there just in case.

Photos

I will be taking my Olympus E-520 over, has a great battery life approx 600 shots per charge. The 4Gb card should hold over 500 shots with resolution set to 3648 x 2736.

Audio

Got some more great advice regarding recording audio at the conference, as well as an authentic Apple USA Power Plug from Jason M… Thanks . Ended up going for a free app for my iPhone made by nfinityinc and installed Audacity on the Macbook Pro. Much more efficient than taking notes.

Paper Work

I am in the process of making copies of everything that I will be taking over like my passport, visa waiver application, contact details and itinerary. Had a great suggestion from a mate to take a pretend wallet with just the bare essentials, sounds very sensible. I am using a disposable Visa card (that I can destroy when I get home). Was not keen on handing out my everyday card numbers to everyone.

Poster Presentation

Finished the poster today, will have to write a few words to say for when it comes time to present it. The official abstract is at Open Repositories Conference Site.

You can download the software from CAIRSS Subversion Repository.

The Flu

Preparation for avoiding the flu started this week. Daily shots of echinacea, andrographis paniculata and olive leaf extract, followed by a multi vitamin, plenty of fresh fruit and veg and lots of water. I have the Tamiflu on hand as a last resort. So far, fit as a fiddle. I managed to avoid the flu that everyone around me has had for the last 3 weeks so I must be doing something right.

Flight path back from Georgia includes Akransas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and finally California. Great flight friendly people.

Hollywood

Apparently there are approximately 17 Million people in the greater Los Angeles area.

Hollywood was originally named by H J Whitley in 1886.

The Hollywood sign was originally erected on 1924 and read “Hollywoodland”, in 1949 they removed the letters “land”. It was refurbished in 1978 and still looks great today.

Hollywood Bowl

This is the entrance to the famous Hollywood Bowl

This water fall design outside the Hollywood Bowl was designed in 1938 by George Stanley, the sculptor of the Academy Award’s Oscar statuette.

This place is enormous it took several minutes to just walk to the very last row, if you look really hard to the upper right you will see Mt Lee and the Hollywood Sign

Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is home to the famous Rodeo Drive. We took a couple of drives up and down the street and saw all the big name stores. The Pretty Woman thing is a bit of a myth, if you want to buy something they are more than happy to take your money.

Sunset Boulevard

Whiskey a go go

Whiskey a go go has hosted gigs by some of the worlds most famous bands including Guns and Roses, The Doors, Motley Crue, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Oasis, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Metallica.

Rainbow Bar And Grill

This place has some history, it was originally named the Villa Nova restaurant and was originally owned by Judy Garlands husband. In 1952 Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe had a blind date here. The Rainbow Bar and Grill featured in Guns and Roses music videos November Rain and Don’t Cry and is the place where John Belushi ate his last meal. It was quite a surprised when I saw it that night on the plane in Notorious (2009), a documentary about the life of Biggie Smalls aka Notorious BIG. The Notorious documentary has so far grossed over $42,000,000 worldwide.

Pretty Woman

This is the Las Palmas Hotel from Pretty Woman. Remember Richard Gere pulls down the fire escape with his umbrella to rescue Julia Roberts.

Sister Act

This is the Church from the movie sister act starring Whoopie Goldberg. It was also used in Back to the Future 1 + 2, Anger Management and The Godfather just to name a few.

Million Dollar Baby

This is one of the shooting locations for Million Dollar Baby, this is where female boxer Maggie (Hillary Swank) worked. Million Dollar Baby starred Morgan Freeman and was directed by Clint Eastwood.

Flint Publications

Playboy Mansion

This is about as close as I could get to the action, sorry lads !

La Brea Tar Pits XXXX

Shot of lake pit (one of the hundred tar pits). This was amazing there are huge bubbles of Methane that come to the surface every few seconds.

Light Sculpture

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Pueblo de Los Angeles

Really interesting part of LA. In the early 1900′s the city evicted over 3000 Chinese people to build a railway system to improve the infrastructure of the City. Today the railway building still stands however it is surrounded by a thriving china town as well as the Pueblo de Los Angeles historical monument. There were street performers there today along with a public art gallery and market stalls, really great atmosphere.

Meet the Osbournes

This house was great to see I remember the big wooden gates opening in the TV reality show, followed by Ozzy shouting obscenities about dog faeces or venting his frustration about using the TV remote. Classic !!!!

Guess

Went to the Guess store in downtown LA but did not realise how high profile the Marciano family is. This is a shot of the house, check out all the Ferraris. There were 2 gates. There is a line of exotic sports cars from one end of the house to the other.

Michael Jackson

Heaps of cameras waiting outside this house… cars parked all over the side walk waiting for a glimpse of the star. Michael had apparently just got home and was inside preparing for his upcoming tour. Notice the christmas decorations, apparently he likes the decorations so left them up.

Breakfast and the Fox theatre

Met Luis for breakfast at Starbucks. I cant believe how cheap the food is, all cakes and slices are around 1 – 2 Dollars. We took a walk through Atlanta City and went to see the Fox Theatre. I managed to pick up the first of the souvenirs. Decided to head back to the Hotel sooner rather than later as I really did not want to miss my flight to LA. I shared a cab with a lady flying to Tokyo we had a great chat. Seems there were allot of people in town for the BIO-TECH conference. I am pretty sure that there conference participation was well into the thousands, I now know why it was so hard to find a hotel when we were booking back home.

Met another Developer waiting in the Airport

I checked in and got completely confused when checking my bags in people everywhere, this is a really really busy airport.

I finally went to the bath room and changed from sandles and shorts into jeans and shoes. The automatic flusher went crazy and flushed about 20 times, ENOUGH ALREADY !!!

Sat down at gate A1 and introduced my self to the gentleman next to me, turns out it was Kim Shepherd from the Library Consortium of New Zealand. Kim is a Dspace developer/committer. We had a long walk to another gate as they changed our departure point, we chatted about Sword, The Fascinator and Repositories in general then exchanged details. I have met so many people this week, I will have to spend the next week going through business cards and brochures so that I can stay in touch.

Rise and Shine

Up at 3:30am for the first leg of the trip, jumped on the Airport flyer, arrived at Brisbane International at 7am. Had the best Bacon and Egg Panini (warmed with Hollandaise sauce). Went through customs no dramas, very professional. Went to buy 2 magazines a bottle of water and some chewy, bill came to around 45 dollars. Turns out one magazine was 24 dollars, it looked better on the shelf anyways. Super happy with the Virgin Pre Paid USB modem instant internet anywhere. Was a bit sceptical of range and speed before I tried one, totally recommend it now.

Took off from Brisbane at 11am, we flew over the east coast islands, sandy beaches looked amazing from the air. Australia is really a beautiful place.

Food

Hours and hours went past then finally food. I had the beef ala aluminum road case on wheels a small orange juice. I was a bit confused what meal this actually was. It could have been an Aussie lunch or an LA dinner, either way I was glad to have something to do.

In-flight entertainment

There were a couple of Aussie blokes on the flight, I swear they drank VB after VB for the entire trip, they were so funny. They were not so big on the in-flight entertainment so they shared an iPod (one headphone in each persons ear) and played cards on their dinner table while laughing and yelling out. I could not sleep at all too excited, after a while I decided to check out the documentary channel and proceeded to watch a few hours of Stephen Hawking, this was not a good idea !!! My brain went into full overdrive mode trying to absorb his theory on how the universe was created in what seems to be explained as the reverse of a black hole. This is not exactly light entertainment and leaves you with a quite strange feeling looking out your 747 window into the black of night.

After watching that I would not really get back into “Mall Cop” or “Confessions of a Shopaholic”.

I watched the sun come up and got a pic of that.

Touchdown

Just before we landed we flew over an Island off the coast of LA. It is really really mountainous and is apparently covered in motor-x tracks and trail rides.

I touched down in LAX at 7:30am still awake, went through bag collection etc and headed out side for a breath of fresh air, I thought I might find a bit that nobody else had used yet.

The first thing I see is a Police Officer with a huge pistol on his hip, riding his standard issue Harley Davidson Police Motorcycle. I could not get the camera out quick enough. I ended up finding another guy on a different bike and got a quick piccy for the blog.

Breakfast

Breakfast was great… A spicy Barrito and a Beer. Hey gimme a break I needed a pick me up for my connecting flight.

This was the first time that I had payed a bill using American Dollars and took some very good advice from a friend back in Australia… “Make sure that you don’t accidently give them the wrong note” I tell you what they do really all look the same, I almost payed $100 for breakfast. Apparently if you hand over a big note they think you are generously tipping.

Next Please

Next step was off to Georgia stay tuned.

Millenium Billtmore Hotel

During my brief time in LA I stayed at the Millennium Biltmore hotel, it was built in 1923 and has been the choice of hotel for many presidents. In 1969 it was designated a historic cultural landmark by the city of Los Angeles.

Events that have taken place at the hotel include a gala for the Duke & Duchess of York in 1988, the semi-finals for American Idol and many Grammy Awards after parties.

Black Dahlia

There was a gruesome LA murder case that remains unsolved (nicknamed Black Dahlia). In 1947 Elizabeth Short was found mutilated in Leimert Park.

There were hundreds of suspects and thousands of people were interviewed by police. During investigations hundreds of officers were borrowed from other areas.

This hotel serves a Cocktail named after the unsolved case. It is rumored that she was last seen at this hotel. There is a 2006 movie based on the Black Dahlia book written by James Ellroy, writer of L.A. Confidential.