GDC 2009 – Pre GDC Days in San Francisco

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Me!

Been exploring more of San Francisco this year. A brief log of what I’ve been up to…

On Thursday I travelled from Heathrow to San Francisco directly (on a BA flight). The flight was okay – apart from the in-flight screen wasn’t working right (annoyingly there was one thing I wanted to watch), but I did watch some stuff on my laptop and get a little sleep. I met Robin who I’m sharing a room with in the evening once his flight came in.

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On Friday I visited Stanford in the morning to meet up with Henry Lowood – sadly, my chance at taking a bus which would have got me to the right place on campus was hampered by it not turning up for 45 minutes (you know, you just think it’ll be here any minute now…urg). I did however get to chat with the lovely Susan Rojo who is helping Henry do the virtual worlds project, and see the libraries media viewing facilities, which included game consoles.

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Saturday had a quick meetup for brunch with Alex JC, after which me and Robin visited Japantown (which I had some shops I wanted to checkout), back to Union Square where there was (unknown to us before we got there) a Shoulin Temple display of martial arts, then we visited the Cable Car Museum which was fascinating. Back for lunch with Alex and catching where the AI party would be we then checked out the Cartoon Art Museum – which was actually pretty amazing to look through, and I’ll be going again next time I come to the city.

Pictures form my flight and these first two days are available here.

Sunday I decided to go, after going on the internet on the morning sorting some items, exploring the Paridiso – I took a bus to nearby, then walked to the visitors centre, then out to the Crissy Field Center north of the area where the beach was. After this I met up with Robin at Pier 45 – where there was a delightful Musee Mechanique – which included some videogame systems even. We checked out the Sea Lions at Pier 39, then back to pick up our badges and bags for GDC on the tram system.

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Some more pictures from Sunday here.

In these three days I’ve also seen plenty of the city I’ve not mentioned – as you can see in my photos. Hidden public private gardens, Chinatown, the closing-in-June PlayStation store, and other bits and pieces. Got plenty to do next weekend, 3 days from Saturday to Monday to fill up, all planned out (a little better then these days). Should be good relaxing fun after the hectic schedule I’ll have at GDC.

One thought on “GDC 2009 – Pre GDC Days in San Francisco”

  1. for the true frisco experience, i recommend going to the Mission, grabbing a Pastor burrito and eating it (with or without a tallcan) in Mission Dolores park.

    also, if your plans take you to San Jose, holla at me, I run a restaurant downtown.

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