Through the Interface

Iguassu Falls

Our last stop in Brazil ended up being one of the trip’s highlights, so far: we arrived in Iguassu on Sunday night, and stayed in a hotel on the Brazilian side of the famous Falls. (We were sure we’d asked the travel agent to book a hotel on the Argentinian side, but then it’s our fault we didn’t check the itinerary.) We only had one day to visit the Falls – many people take 2 days to visit both Brazilian and Argentinian sides, for comparison – and as the Argentinian side is more extensive and varied, we decided to... Read more →

Paraty to Rio de Janeiro

The weather wasn’t great during our first few days in Paraty, but at least we were dry after the thorough soaking we received in Sao Paolo. We used the time to do a few “non-beach” tourist activities, such as renting a boat to take us around the coast, walking in the jungle and visiting a cachaça distillery. The old town of Paraty is really nice, too: The place we were staying in – the Resort Croce del Sud – was really special. It had been built by an Italian named Luca, who had previously built a boat he was... Read more →

Sao Paolo to Paraty

Apparently Brazil has very few extended bouts of cold, wet weather – even in their winter, which is, of course, right now – but one of them started just before our arrival. Sao Paolo had just gone 40 or so days without rain, and so many people welcomed it. Fair enough. From our side, we were hoping for better weather to discover Sao Paolo, but in the end we spent more time than expected catching up on work and schoolwork. Our Airbnb was very central – just a block from the famous Paulista Avenue. There are many, many pizzerias... Read more →

Displaying a round-the-world itinerary using Google Maps – Part 5

I really thought this series was finished, but there you go. In the first part we saw a basic, embedded map and then added information windows and labels. In the most recent part we added overlay data being recorded by a tracking device to show our progress in real-time. Here’s the thing: a few days ago I realised the tracking information wasn’t being displayed. Initially I thought it might be due to limited connectivity or bandwidth – I was in Peru, at the time – but I then realised it was probably due to the volume of points being... Read more →

From Peru to Brazil

So we made it to Brazil. After a 4:30am departure from the hotel (ouch), we took the 6:55am flight back from Cusco to Lima. We ended up having to collect our bags and recheck them onwards to Sao Paolo, as LATAM needed to issue us a new ticket after cancelling the previous leg due to our “missing” the flight from LA to Lima (this is when we were re-routed via Dallas and Miami, as you’d be forgiven for not remembering :-). The wait in Lima was a little long but not insufferably so. The flight to Sao Paolo was... Read more →

Cusco and Machu Picchu

We were always expecting these few days to be special – one of the highlights of our trip – and they haven’t disappointed. We didn’t want to take any chances with the Peruvian leg, so we had the complete itinerary – including airport transfers and hotels – organised as part of the overall round-the-world trip. The week started well: I mentioned in passing, last time, that we had one fewer bag than expected on arrival in Lima. It took the airline a few days to sort out, but we were finally able to pick the bag up just prior... Read more →

Lima

We left early on Thursday morning to get to SFO in good time for our flight. Catching BART would have been my preferred way to get there, but when I costed up the options it looked cheaper to catch an UberXL (at around $43) than to pay for 5 people at $8.90 per person (it’s frankly outrageous there are no discounted BART tickets for kids unless they have a Clipper card). Plus there would have been the not-insignificant effort of walking 6 blocks to 16th & Mission (which is way up on the list of most sketchy BART stations)... Read more →

San Francisco

It’s been really great to be back in the Bay Area. My wife and I lived here from 2000 to 2003 – back when (in retrospect, although it didn’t seem so at the time) it was affordable to do so – and being back here is in many ways like coming home. Old friends have gone to great pains to make us feel welcome: it was fantastic to stay briefly up in Novato – taking advantage of the weather in Marin County – and our time in San Francisco itself has been excellent, if a little on the cool... Read more →

Registration for the Forge DevCon is now open!

I have to admit it’s a little bittersweet to be talking about this year’s Forge DevCon: I’ve been involved in helping schedule some great classes for the AR/VR track, but I won’t be presenting myself – or even present at the event, at all – this year. But it’s all in a good cause: our big trip is progressing well, and – in any case – I’ve had enough time in Las Vegas for the year. :-) For those of you attending, you can now go ahead and register. If you want to attend just the DevCon, you will... Read more →

An online hackathon for BIM 360

If you’re working in the BIM space and are thinking about developing a cloud-based application that works with BIM 360 and Forge, there’s an online hackathon that may be of interest to you. In fact it may well be of interest even if you’re not thinking of building such an app in the immediate future: these events are a great opportunity to learn about Autodesk platform technology and consider whether it might be useful at some point down the line. The hackathon kicked off a week ago on August 1st and runs until September 30th. You have until then... Read more →

From Monterey to Marin County

After leaving Sequoia National Park, we headed across the central Californian valley towards Monterey, stopping for lunch in Fresno. Approaching Monterey we started to get excited, seeing the golden hills of California reminded us strongly of our time living in the Bay Area. Then we hit the bank of fog coming off the Pacific and remembered just how much the temperature can vary during the summer months in this part of the world. Camping might prove interesting. We’d just spent a couple of days of camping in Sequoia – and the previous days of camping were just before the... Read more →

Las Vegas to Sequoia National Park (from the ridiculous to the sublime)

Las Vegas pretty much met my expectations (which were admittedly very low). After coming to the city 1-2 times a year for around 20 years for Autodesk conferences, it was strange coming back with my family. We initially struggled to get a room at late notice: between the Black Hat security conference, a huge basketball tournament and the World Poker Championships (plus probably 15 other events I’m not aware of) the city was pretty well booked. In the end we stayed at the Travelodge by McCarran, which was on the helicopter flight path for the airport. We had fun,... Read more →