SIGGRAPH last week was rather boring. We were excited about the youth and hipness of the attendees this year until we realised they were actually the X-Games spectators heading to the Staples center next door. The cutbacks were annoying; no buses were running in the middle of the day making lunch difficult or undigestable, and the Electronic Theatre was in Exhibit Hall K - not a movie theatre experience by any stretch of the imagination.

I didn’t go to many technical presentations; the Weta course was an exception, and it was very good. I spent a lot of time at the booth where RenderMan for Maya got a lot of interest. While there I was able to catch up with random acquaintances or meet people I’d communicated with only via e-mail - for some reason, a lot more than in years past. The higher attendance this year probably helped a lot. And the User’s Group meeting seemed to go very well despite ourselves.

The CirculaFloor and the LumiSight Table were probably the coolest things I saw, both in the Emerging Technologies exhibit. The latter was being demoed with a video poker application. I can already see this being adopted by Las Vegas real soon now.

After Thursday we visited Jeff and his now-fiancée Cathy in the OC. We went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center and ogled plastinated human bodies. The pregnant woman and the guy holding his own skin ala Michelangelo were particularly disturbing. After a walk on Long Beach and dinner at Roscoe’s, the week was over and we were soon back to work.

It’s been quiet this week. Greg and Agi visited Tuesday on their way to Disneyland, Lohengrin was at the opera on Wednesday, complete with animatronic swan and mystical Grail knight references. Off to Vancouver today to visit family this weekend, and pay respect to the General (uncle) who is not doing very well with cancer.