2019.11.12. Sounder's Rally

11/12, Tuesday. I unknowingly walked into the green-blue parade on my way from DOL. Had to ask a police for what's going on. Seattle Sounders won the 2019 MLS CUP last Sunday. To be honest, I couldn't remember which sports Sounders played, nor what MLS stands for. Quite a crowd gathered on the lawn at Seattle Center. Is everyone here not working or skipping school? A few local dignitaries spoke briefly on stage, including Mayor Jenny Durkan, majority owner Adrian Hanauer. A perfect occasion to sell team merchandise.

2019.11.10. Dracula at ACT

11/10, Sunday, 7pm. I met with a couple of friends for the dramatic adaptation of Dracula by Steven Dietz at ACT. Nicely staged, single act, packed with action, color and lights. Accompanied by a cello, and the player also sings. Quite enjoyable.

2019.11.8-10 NFJS Software Symposium

3 weeks ago, at a local Java User Group Meetup, I won a ticket to No Fluff Just Stuff's 2019 Software Symposium held at Redmond town center this weekend. A regular ticket costs ~$1000. No vendors, just software classes held in 4 classrooms concurrently. Two 90 minute classes in the morning, and two in the afternoon, no repeat, starting at 1:15pm Friday. Dinner on Friday, breakfast and lunch on Sat and Sun. A raffle after Sunday lunch. Snacks during the breaks. Food is acceptable. I attended these classes:

Friday
9:00-12:00 free class by Gradle, promoting gradle scan
13:15-18:30 Kubernetes by Johnathan Johnson (fundamentals, containier pattern, operator pattern). His online training classes at https://katacoda.com/javajon/courses/kubernetes-fundamentals

Saturday
9:00-10:30 Gradle by Kenneth Kousen
11:00-12:30 Thinking Architecturally by Nathaniel Schutta
13:30-16:45 Machine Learning by Brian Sletton (overview, NLP). References: https://tinyurl.com/bs-ml-gist

Sunday
9:00-12:30 Machine Learning by Brian Sletton (deep learning, TensorFlow)
13:30-15:00 WebAssembly Salon by Brian Sletton. webassembly.org
16:00-17:30 Decentralized Web by Brian Sletton. WebRTC, WebTorrent, IPFS. More reference.

I liked Brian's talks and Kenneth's gradle session Sat morning. The last two foretells a revolution of web in data hosting and presentation. I didn't care for the other classes, even though all of them are good speakers. My biggest obstacle is work, because I took my laptop to the classroom and was working on the side. Free also hurts concentration.

Puget Sound public transportation is a pain. The government/system simply doesn't care. Due to the east on-ramp closure of 520, bus 545 is rerouted via I-90, but none of the stops had any indication that the bus is rerouted, nor any alert on kingcounty.gov/metro website. Saturday, the bus was 12 min late, probably due to the reroute. Sunday morning, however, I waited for 43 minutes for the bus which is scheduled on a 30 min interval. I arrived 5 minutes ahead of the schedule, and the bus never came. A couple of very angry passengers on the next bus got off at Overlake which is many miles away from where they wanted to get off, simply because their stop is not serviced this weekend.

2019.11.3. Blanca Lake

11/3, Sunday, partly sunny. Blanca Lake is the most easily accessible glacier-fed lake if you live in Seattle, now that the access road FR63 is open all the way to the TH. Some pot-holes, not too bad.

14 of us met at Ashway P&R at 7am, one lady was almost half an hour late. After a stop at Safeway in Monroe, we met the 15th person at the TH, ~2000'. There were about a dozen cars. The trail starts easy, but soon gains elevation in a series of zigzags, to ~4600'. Snow/ice at the last ~200'. I brought spikes, but didn't use them. Good view of Glacier Peak near the ridge. Short descent to the frozen Virgin Lake. Soon past Virgin Lake, the snow disappeared, a few muddy spots. Not bad all the way down to Blanca Lake ~4000'. The best view is when you first saw the lake, rather than by the lake shore. Many logs at the lake outlet.

Spent over 1.5 hour at the lake. Back to the TH ~3:15pm, waited for the rest. Back to the P&R a little after 5pm.

2019.11.2 Kenmore Camera Digital Photo Expo

11/2, Saturday. Kenmore Camera's annual photo expo. Many talks showcased knowledge/work currently, and vendors sell everything you can think of. I really liked it, wish I could attend both day, even though I don't want to own a real camera. Definitely will try to attend its future expo. The talks I went to are:
Art Wolfe on his recent works: Wild Elephant, Human Canvas, and ongoing projects. He recounts the scenarios and anecdotes of some of the photos.
Charles Glatzer, a Canon Explorer of Lights, on some tips of his wildlife photos (anticipate!).
Tyler Beck on Video Basics.
A few minutes of Paul Van Allen, Nikon Trainer, on the new Nikon Z series camera.