Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Eventually, this will connect the Hilton Bayfront parking structure with the Petco Park parking lot. It’s not exactly an ideal spot for the convention — they really need a bridge near 5th Street — but it should help a little when it’s completed.
At Comic-Con International ← Check out my write-ups.
Looking up at the antenna on a TV news van.
At Comic-Con International 2010 ← Check out my write-ups.
Composite of two photos of the University of California, Irvine Student Center: One taken in 1997, the other in 2007.
The biggest difference (aside from the time of day) is that the Student Center itself was torn down and replaced with a new complex, which is why I focused on the center area for the cut-out. The Irvine Barclay Theatre, Administration Building and Student Services II, ring road, and the office building in the distance are all still there.
See also my write-up about taking the second photo.
This building is brought to you by the letter e.
It’s the Anaheim Convention Center again, taken during Anaheim Comic-Con 2010.
The walkway between the Hilton Anaheim and the Anaheim Convention Center. The blocky wall to the right is a large area full of staircases at one end of the convention center.
Taken this past April, during Anaheim Comic Con. The convention center was also host to a much larger coffee convention.
Looking north across the park on a spring afternoon during WonderCon 2010. It rained most of the weekend, but the one day we were (mostly) indoors was the one day that the sun came out.
The tiered building to the left is the Marriott Marquis, the convention hotel. The church across the way is St. Patrick’s. The tall building behind it is the Four Seasons hotel.
Photo: Yerba Buena Gardens
Another view of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.
Taken during this past April’s trip to WonderCon.
Photo: Pool.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. I intended to walk through the memorial behind the waterfall, but there was a photoshoot going on and I didn’t want to get in the way.
Taken during this past April’s trip to WonderCon.
The fountain in front of the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, taken late in the afternoon last October during a day at Long Beach Comic-Con.
I took a zillion photos of this bird as it stood around, and then tried to track it as it took off. Amazingly, I managed to capture this image.
This was at the Rainbow Lagoon in Long Beach during Long Beach Comic Con last fall. LBCC was one of two successors to the canceled Wizard World Los Angeles convention, last held in 2008. The other was Wizard World’s Anaheim Comic Con, held for the first time last week. You can read my writeup of Long Beach 2009 and my report on Anaheim 2010 at K-Squared Ramblings, and see my convention photos at Flickr.
OC Fair from Above at Night, originally uploaded by Kelson.
Looking down at the carnival area of the 2009 Orange County Fair from the top of the Ferris wheel. This was the end of a busy afternoon and evening at the fair that encompassed “Weird Al” Yankovic’s 3-D brain, a concert, and the horrifying realization that at the fair, people will fry anything. Is the world ready for the Zucchini Weenie?
The Marriott Hotel in Downtown San Diego, right next to the convention center.
Hotel reservations for Comic-Con International go on sale at 9:00 Pacific time tomorrow morning. For the last several years, demand for hotel rooms has been so high that hours spent redialing a phone or trying to get into the website have been typical. The travel agents have set up an entirely new procedure to counteract it. I’ve posted some thoughts on the change over at K-Squared Ramblings.
I guess we’ll see tomorrow how well it works.
Update: Better than I expected, at least for the first part. Here are my thoughts on how the process worked.
Update 2: The request may have gone smoothly, but the rest of the day turned out to be an exercise in frustration.
Update 3: I’ve posted some tips on how to get a hotel for Comic-Con if you couldn’t get one through the convention.
San Diego, looking down Pacific Highway toward Harbor from the Holiday Inn on the Bay. The tall blocky building at the end, with the peaked roofs, is the Manchester Grand Hyatt. The shorter one is the Embassy Suites. I believe the taller buildings are all high-rise condos.
This was taken last year during Comic-Con International. It seems appropriate that I’ve worked up to this point in my photoblogging project, since hotel rooms for this year’s con go on sale Thursday at 9:00.
Update: I’ve posted some tips on how to get a hotel for Comic-Con.
Here’s a flashback to another Friday the 13th, three years ago. That evening, my wife and I went to the nearest Borders to pick up The End of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and Neil Gaiman’s new short story collection, Fragile Things. We ended up crossing the bridge over to the main section of the mall, turned around, and saw an amazing twilight display with clouds silhouetted against the blue.
We stopped to take pictures. We weren’t the only ones.
Perhaps an hour later, the rainstorm arrived.
The main outdoor swimming pool at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Taken on a tour last February.
This was at least the third time I’ve been to Hearst Castle, and the second time as an adult. I vaguely remember visiting when I was eight, or ten, or somewhere around that age. Years later, in 2008, my wife and I planned a trip to San Francisco and decided to do it in stages, including a stopover at Hearst Castle. We only had time for one of the four tours, so when we planned another trip this year, we made sure to include another stop in San Simeon. This time we had a little more sense of how much time was involved, and managed to fit in two of the remaining tours.
At some point, we need to head back during spring or summer when they’re running the garden tour.