In Seattle!

Yesterday I got up at 5am to get to Edinburgh airport and catch a 9am flight. That was about 8 hours, a long time over boring sea in order to reach bustling Newark airport. After the fun of US Immigration (was okay), a shorter (under 6 hours) flight to Seattle. A young boy sitting next to me was impressed that I came from Scotland; he hurriedly imparted this information to the air hostess, and later drew a picture of the Loch Ness Monster. After flying over many hours of flat flat land divided into neat little squares in a variety of colours, suddenly there are mountains, and then soon Seattle. We arrived in around 5pm.

Lots of flying. I'm now a little past half-way through Quicksilver.

I checked into the hotel, had a wander around, ate some dinner at a cool little bar/club place, and flopped into bed exhausted around 9.

This morning I easily woke up and went out for a run around 6. I ran around Union Lake, as shown in the picture above. After changing, I wandered down to Pike Place Market for a look around, and a tasty breakfast.

I then headed over to the Seattle Center, and went up the Space Needle for a (cloudy) view. Then I headed into the Pacific Science Center. They are currently running the Game On computer gaming exhibition. They have a huge collection of machines set up to play; I was most interested in the old stuff they have from before my time. A myriad of space invaders (variations and clones/successors), and a version of Spacewar, the vector-graphics space warfare game that started it all. It seems they have a representative of everything you might think of.

I wandered into the Science Fiction Museum too, before heading back through town, having another coffee and read of a paper, grabbing a couple of new books, and heading up here to sort stuff and write this. The conference starts tomorrow, and I give my talk late morning; I'll let you know how it goes. For now I'm off for dinner.