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It's an Exciting World

The life and times of David Geisert

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Zurich

Steph was working in Zurich for two weeks, so I visited her on the weekend between.

I had an early morning flight on Saturday so I got up at 4:30 and headed to the airport via Victoria station. There weren’t any major issues getting in so I met up with Steph at the train station in Zurich in the morning. I was in a desperate need of a coffee so we found a cafe before heading up the mountain nearby. We took the trolley up to the lookout point, and had a long walk through the park. There were some great views of the lake and Zurich. We walked through the park to the next trolley station and went back to twon for a nice lunch next to the lake.

At the lake we walked along the waterfront and saw some of the migratory birds that were just returning. They were great to watch as we sat by the lake and had a lovely lunch. We continued our walk to downtown Zurich, stopping at the opera house square. We also stopped by the cathedral, which had some pretty windows made with slices of geodes. We’d wanted to go to the Lindt factory, but hadn’t made reservations in time and they were sold out.

We relaxed a bit at the hotel before heading to dinner at one of the great fondu restaurants. It was delicious as expected, and we walked along the river a bit before heading back.

The next day we med up with Amy and Adelaide for coffee. They brought their young daughter Heloise, who was adorable. She was very active for most of the time until she passed out in the stroller.

Then we headed to the park north of the train station next to the museum. It was really nice and in full bloom. We wanted to take the glass top boat along the river and lake, so we went to the train station to get the right ticket. While there we walked around a food truck area that had some interesting international food. Some of it was interesting because of how vague it was, like the “Asian Food” stand.

We went along the river in the boat, then out onto the lake. The marathon was winding down, but it was still nice to see everyone along the lakeshore. We did the full round trip and it was really lovely.

We then wandered the alleyways some in search of some postcards, but eventually made it back to our hotel and decided to just relax until dinner time.

We went to a beer hall for dinner, and it was a great atmosphere. The food was mediocre, but the beer was delicious. That is what I would generally expect from a beer hall.

Monday I went in to the Zurich office, although I had to hang out at Starbucks for an hour before I could get the right permissions. It was pretty easy, and I went to have lunch with one of the teams I had worked with before. The office there was very small compared to the London offices.

Steph and I had dinner at a nice Vegan place before I hopped on the train for the airport. My flight was somewhat delayed, so I got back a little after midnight. The kitties were so happy to have me back and were amazingly cuddly.

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London, Week 21

Steph flew to Zurich for this week, and it was a hard week. Everyone at work was getting nervous about the planned layoffs that we expected to happen on Wednesday. Monday I was hoping to have some people over to play around with AI. I had stayed up to 2am the night before getting my new animation system working, but everyone ended up pulling out last minute. It made for a really lonely night since Steph was also gone for the first time since we’d gotten to London.

Tuesday was better with some MTG Commander, and I had a great time playing the deck I always play. I didn’t win, but I did make everyone go after me a few times. I purposefully didn’t play the deck to the limit, as some of the things it could have done just wouldn’t have been fun.

Wednesday was the reckoning at work. It was a hard day. I still got a sizable amount of work done, despite it all. The announcements were timed for US West Coast friendly times, so it was a lot of waiting for everyone. I had some coworkers back to my place and we played Codenames. I really enjoyed having people over and chatting with people over a few drinks at a bar a little later on. I came home somewhat relaxed and pretty sure I wasn’t getting laid off. I also got to have some much needed conversations with my siblings on Wednesday afternoon. I had a night of refining my AI animations a bit more, and then had a long soak in the tub. Archer cat was worried about me and wanted to cuddle me, he is so sweet.

I called my parents the next day, and the prepared for the Zurich trip this weekend to visit Steph while she is there. I also relaxed with the Archer kitty while listening to a book in one of my favorite series.

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London, Week 20

London this week has been particularly nice. The flowers are coming out and the trees are getting leaves. It has been a good deal warmer and sunnier than March was as well. I’ve really enjoyed the walk into work and the walk around the neighborhoods.

As part of walking around and flowers blooming we finished the planters and put them out on the balcony. They make me happy to see the flowers and plants in the wooden boxes. The nice small pots that are left over will be kitty grass growing locations, and I’ve planted the next round in the oval one.

Steph and I went to the National Gallery as well. It was a great visit, and we got to see a lot of famous paintings. We’ve seen a number of them on the historical and art based youtube channels we watch. I was amazed at how detailed some of them were in person, and how big others were. I got to see a number of nice Canalettos, but they were all of Venice, surprisingly. We saw some still lifes by one of Steph’s favorite painters. There was a small gallery of well done art by famous people, with the subject of ugly old women. The exhibit was called the ‘ugly duchess’ and features some Da Vinci sketches and similar paintings by other famous artists. I was also quite impressed by the building itself.

We played some grounded with Michael and Michelle. The game was a lot more complete and stable compared to the previous time we’d played it. We made some bad choices on base placement, and got overrun by spiders. We moved to a better placement and called it a night.

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Amsterdam (and London Week 19)

Little happened of note on Week 19, other than it being a short week due to Easter. Steph and I took the long weekend in Amsterdam. We had planned in advance to see two of the major attractions of Amsterdam, the limited time Vermeer exhibit, and the tulip festival.

Steph managed to get tickets to the Vermeer exhibit at the right times, as she was ready when the ticket sales opened. We had an evening ticket for Saturday on Easter weekend, which was perfect. I set up for us to go to Keukenhof on Easter, and we managed to get a small group tour that was biking through the flower fields on the way to Keukenhof.

We arrived in Amsterdam pretty late on Friday, with about a 30 minute walk through the center of the city to our hotel, near the museums. We got in and then headed out for the evening through the red light district and the main squares, just to see the city. The red light district especially was stupidly overcrowded, so much so that the entire street was taken up with pedestrians and it was one way walking traffic. We got out of there quickly, as neither of us like crowds. We found a lovely hotel bar that was cozy and had good drinks and relaxed there while talking over the rest of the trip.

The next morning we went to the National Maritime Museum, which had a number of great exhibits. The main exhibit was the Amsterdam, a ship replica of an old merchant vessel. They also had sections on navigational equipment, ship decorations, tapestries, ship models, and maps. We especially like the section on maps, and how the European understanding of what the world looked like slowly changed with the passage of time. They focussed on the shapes of different countries over the different iterations of maps. Japan’s shape was especially strange to start with, and nothing like what it actually is.

We walked the city for the afternoon, as the normal entry to the Rijksmuseum was sold out. We had tickets that gave us entry to the special exhibit for Vermeer, and then afterwards we could go around the rest of the museum. That particular detail of it being only after wasn’t on the ticket, but in a FAQ on the website. Our entry to the Vermeer exhibit was after the main museum had closed, and there were lots of guides ensuring that nobody from the special exhibit wandered from the prescribed section.

The Vermeer exhibit itself had most of his known paintings. It was amazing to compare his work over his lifetime, and see the props and rooms he painted several times. The details were exquisite and seeing them in person showed the layering and details in a clearer light than can be captured in a photo. We had missed the ‘girl with the pearl earring’ by a week, but the rest was still fantastic. Afterwards we got some great Eritrean food and called it a night.

Easter Sunday was another morning of wandering around Amsterdam. We went to a rubber ducky store where Steph found a tech diving rubber ducky, although it uses back mounted doubles instead of side mount. I insisted she get it. We also grabbed some freits at a small chip shop.

We headed to the train station where we met up with Hans for an amazing tour of the flower fields on bike, then a jaunt around Keukenhof. The bike ride was amazing, and the weather was pretty much perfect for it. Hans said that the tulips had started blooming only a few days earlier, and there were fields of orange and red tulips. It was a surreal sight. They also had many daffodils, from almost a orange gold color to a pale yellow. My favorite were fields of hyacinths in deep blue, purples, pinks, and whites, which smelled amazing.

The Keukenhof was full of flower beds that were arranged in all sorts of layouts. The place was a huge garden, with many different types of flowers mixed in all sorts of interesting arrangements. It was clear they took the timing of the blooms into account and layered them so that each bed had something interesting no matter the week. It was one of the most magical places I’ve been.

We had a lovely sunset bike ride back to the station and Hans herded our group back onto the train and back. I had a great time and would highly recommend the tour.

We took it easy that evening and just had a drink at a bar around the corner from our hotel before going to sleep. The trip back was uneventful, but I couldn’t help but notice the times involved. In theory it is about a 3.5 hour train ride, but the timing for the flight is 5 hours from the same Amsterdam Central station all told. We’ll have to tally up the costs, but even if the train is more expensive it might be worth it for the additional convenience of not switching transport, and time.

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London, Week 18

Work was still crazy this week, but I was able to break away for the important things, including going to the Science Museum with Steph on Wednesday for Lates. The museum was huge, and had a lot of interesting exhibits. They had one on science fiction that had a lot to say about AI, while saying not much about AI. I was a little disappointed they used actors instead of putting the work in to have it truly be AI, but I can understand that it is risky to rely on that kind of tech for a museum with children in it.

They also had a deep fakes booth set up for people to sit down and get their face changed to some famous person’s in real time. It wasn’t great resolution or that accurate, but it was a great example of the tech. It was a booth and not a normal exhibit. There was also a silent disco, which is the first one I’ve seen in person. I would be up for participating next time. It was especially amusing as everyone sang along to the music.

We also went through two other sections in the museum, one on clockmaking/watchmaking and the other healthcare. They were both fascinating and fun to go through.

I played around with AI a lot more. Steph thought of the idea for historic rap battles. We need to get the visuals and voices more polished, but the content comes together really nicely with GPT4, The pictures are from Stable Diffusion, and the voices are Microsoft Azure.

We didn’t do much over the rest of the week, and on the weekend we went to see Bakeoff the Musical with Nancy and Punit. We of course had to pregame with some baked goods. The musical was significantly better than I was expecting, and it was clear the cast was having a great time. They had one of the most touching scenes I’ve seen in any media in a long time. They also had a twist at the end that was completely on theme and made it so much more feel good. They had terrible campy moments, but went so over the top with it that it was no longer campy and was good again. I think it would be better if they went that over the top with the actual campy moments on the show, but that is a lot to ask.

Sunday we went to the Yonder climbing gym in Blackhorse with Punit and did the competition routes. We made it up to route 5, and then route 6 was a limited finger overhang route, so we were too tired to really attempt it. We then went to Big Penny Social, a brewery/restaurant. My food was great, but I guess the others didn’t really like theirs. The beers were pretty good and the atmosphere was great. I’d for sure go back, especially after another Yonder session.

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London, Week 17

I was able to take Monday and Friday this week in lieu, since the last week I’d worked a lot.

Monday we went to the Tate Brittain and saw a lot of great old artworks. I really enjoyed the bronzes by Henry Moore. Steph especially enjoyed the paintings by JMW Turner. There were a ton of paintings by Turner across 5 or so rooms. He had a lot of periods and styles he used that were drastically different.

Work was still crazy, but I was able to get things together well for it.

Friday we had a call with Irene (Hi Irene!), then went off to the Museum of Egyptology. It had some amazing artifacts including shirts that were over 4000 years old. I also especially liked the cat objects, and there were quite a few.

That evening we went to see John Wick 4 at Everyman.

I also had some great experiments with Stable Diffusion + CharTurnerV2 + ControlNet for consistent characters in different poses. I was amazed at how well it worked, with these results being about a 1 minute generation for each image. I need to see if I can get the same character to show up in a subsequent generation with Image to Image. I also want to get the same character in different outfits.

I went climbing wiht Punit and Roel at City Climb in Aldgate, which was a pretty nice gym. I had a good climb, and did some great routes with Punit. Roel was able to do some of the routes with better handholds.

We had a great conversation about AI and I played with AI for most of the rest of the day.

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London, Week 15, 16

We got back from Madeira late on Monday and had to wait a bit for a train up to King’s Cross as there were some transit issues. We got back to the kitties who were so happy to see us.

Tuesday was a lot of work, and I played one commander game of MTG.

Wednesday it snowed in the morning, but by mid-morning it was a slushy mix coming down. Steph was kind enough to meet me at Hiden, the Japanese curry place in Coal Drop Yards. It was pretty good, but Andrew’s mom does it better. I worked late again, and got a good bit done.

Thursday was a crazy day. The landlord had a guy come by to look at a leaking window, and then the sea shipment with most of our stuff finally arrived. As you can see in the title of the post, it was 15 weeks for it to get to us. The sea shipment was mostly unboxed and we just had a ton of stuff on all the tables and couches and bed. Steph and I got to work putting things away. I took breaks of work meetings, and then we also got deliveries of our gifts to ourselves for my yearly bonus payout. I gave us a budget of £500 each to spend on high quality things that would make our day to day life better. Steph chose a nice bedside lamp / phone charger as well as a really nice set of dishes. I chose a cat tree and planters for plants along the windows. She went over by a bit, and I went under by a lot, but maybe I’ll think of something else that would improve our daily lives.

Friday Steph finished unpacking as I went back to the office. I was able to get my work done earlier than expected, and I came back to work more on my AI Storytelling app.

Saturday we went to the Yonder climbing gym to watch climbing videos about women for international women’s day. We also got a good bit of climbing in. It was a really cool space that was climbing gym with coworking space above it. Saturday we got some more of the way through The Crew.

The next week was a lot of work, and hanging out with people from work. We had some great food at Dishoom and Little Georgia, but I worked a lot and didn’t do much outside of that group.

We finished The Crew on Sunday with Michelle and Michael, so we now need to find another game to play with them. I might be able to use my work computer to play on Steam, but it would have to be pretty late.

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Madeira

Friday morning we headed to the train to then head to the airport for a flight to Madeira. We went the long way around King’s Cross as we still haven’t figured out all the trains that leave from there, and we got on the wrong train. Luckily the train we actually wanted stopped at the same next stop, and we did a quick swap. At the airport we also went to the wrong terminal first, but then we made it to the correct terminal and waited in a lovely lounge area before the flight. Gatwick airport is our favorite airport so far, as we get direct trains and the waits there are decent. The flight was one hour delayed as well, but we made it just fine.

We got to Madeira, and were met at the airport with a ride into Funchal. The ride was gorgeous and the roads in Madeira are windy and have lots of bridges and tunnels due to the deep valleys all over the island. We got a great Airbnb in the middle of Funchal, and were able to walk all across the city. We had a great time of it. The first night we met Jeff, Patty, Elizabeth and Patty’s uncle Bobby and Aunt Katrina. Dinner was great, and it was great to talk with Jeff and Patty to hear their thoughts for the future and how it has been not working for a few months.

The next day Steph and I went to our dive excursion. The resort area was very pretty up on some cliffs overlooking the ocean. We went out on a small boat with one other buddy pair and did a quick dive along the marine preserve. Steph got to scratch the chin of a big grouper that was just chilling on the bottom. The guides know the two groupers in the area are very docile and they showed us what to do with them. I really enjoyed the large schools of tropical and subtropical fish. We were surprised that there were parrot fish on the island as it wasn’t a coral reef, but more of a rocky bottom.

We walked all along the ocean front of Funchal that day, as well. It was a great walk and a lovely town. Funchal is amazingly lush, and the streets are pretty. They have mixed cobblestones of white and black and make amazing designs in the streets. They also have footpaths made of oval pebbles that they lay in patters based on the longways of the pebbles. It shows an amazing attention to detail with something simple, and I really appreciated how lovely it made the island.

The island is a great mix of the things we like about Portugal, Vigo, and Hawaii. I’m not sure we could live on a small island, but Funchal has a lot of what we are looking for in a place to live.

Dinner was with Jeff, Patty, and Elizabeth in one of the random squares, and it was great food. The portions here are much larger than expected, and the food has been great.

We got through pretty much all of our food list:

  1. Pastel de nata, a staple of Portugues food.
  2. Honey cakes (we found tortoises but no honey cakes on their backs)
  3. Passion fruit pudding, a specialty of Madeira
  4. Scabardfish, a fish that is supposed to be the standard Madeira fare
  5. Tomato egg soup, a common food item
  6. Galic bread, a special Madeira bread specialty that is like a thick english muffin

The third day we headed up the gondolas to near the top of the mountain and got great views. We took a second cablecar to the botanical gardens, and spent most of the day walking around the expansive set of different styled gardens. I really liked the walls with flowering vines, and the ponds scattered around the gardens. The turtle pond was the most naturalistic, but I liked the frog pond the most, with its paths over the water. The more standard topiary and gridded European style gardens were also nice. They had a large arrangement of cacti as well, which was surprising. The gardens was halfway up the mountain, so it had some amazing viewpoints overlooking Funchal.

We took the gondolas back down and walked along the ocean some more before heading back to the Airbnb for some rest while it rained.

I had a great book club discussion of Man’s Search for Meaning. I really appreciate the people who are reading and discussing books with me. I appreciate the diverse opinions that each person brings and the thought they put behind their preparation for the discussions.

I was just in time to join Jeff, Patty, Elizabeth, and Steph for dinner. We had a great discussion and I hope to see them again soon.

The morning flight back was uneventful except for the most amazing rainbow over one of the deep valleys as we drove by on a high bridge. The rainbow persisted to the airport, but that view over the valley with the rainbow was phenomenal. I decided to get Steph’s attention to it instead of taking a picture, as she was looking out to sea at the time.

I would certainly go back to Madeira, although I’m not sure I would do that strictly for a dive trip. I would want to do some hiking around the mountains and coastlines, as well as spending more time in Funchal. Possibly go out on their old style galleon. It obviously has a propeller, but still looks cool.

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London, Week 14

Sunday we had a fun day with Nancy, Punit, and Roel jamming on some AI projects. Punit was getting his puzzle game to use AI instead of specific intents on AWS. Nancy was making a short stylized video. Roel was doing 3D scans of the environment and trying to get it in an unlit state for importing into a virtual scene. Steph was finishing her manuscript for The Blue Fairy Book. I worked on a story telling AI that had a choose your own adventure style. I was able to get it mostly working, but the web version won’t load the images, and the stories aren’t always coherent. I’m still working on it and it is a lot of fun. Nancy and Punit also made lots of amazing food.

Tuesday Steph and I tried to go to the comedy night in the evening, but the bar was rented out for filming something. Instead we went to a mini golf course in the nearby shopping center, which was pretty nice. Steph was leading by 4 going into the final hole, but it had a -4 to +2 swing based on pure chance, as it was just a funnel with 4 entry points. I had a good time, and some of the holes were pretty visually stunning with their lighting.

Wednesday morning we went to the Wellcome Collection in Euston. It was two main exhibits. The first was a loosely tied set of pieces based on the theme Human, but it was a really loose theme. The ones that had some interesting science or direct political commentary were very interesting. There were also some that were harder to interpret, but still visually interesting. The other exhibit was on binocular photography. They had special viewers to look at images taken from slightly different angles to give the illusion of a 3D object. It was very well done, but had fewer images than I was hoping for. They also had a selection of some of the earliest binocular viewing devices, which were very interesting to see. We then went for a lunch in Coal Drop Yards. Steph got grilled cheese and I got the everything bagel at Morty & Bobs.

Thursday I stayed at work for a MTG draft, and had a good time playing. I had a loss, a draw, and a win. Friday morning we got ready and headed to Madeira.

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