Yesterday, I went to the Academy of Science museum in the Golden Gate Park. It was a 3rd Wednesday of the month, so it was free day. I arrived there 1 hour before opening time, but there was already quite a long line, I guess that those who arrived later might not have been able to enter at all, since there's a limit to how many people they allow into the museum at one time.So you can guess how popular it was, probably because usual admission fee is quite expensive, and also since it's holiday season, so lots of school groups, summer camp groups, and families with children.

I didn't take any photos, so here are some I found online.

Apparently the museum has just been renovated, and incorporates a lot of green building solutions, like the rooftop garden here, that insulates the building and collects rain water. They also have solar panels, glass windows to maximise natural lighting, and wall insulation made out of recycled jeans.

The planetarium was something I haven't seen before. It's sort of a 3D theater, but instead of glasses, the ceiling is a screen that is a 180 degree dome, so you feel like you are enveloped in the movie.

The entire lower floor of the museum was the aquarium. The saltwater for the aquariums is pumped from the sea (which isn't far away) and filtered before being used, so it was pretty clean. I quite like looking at water dwelling things; jellyfish, tropical fishes and other unusual things, so I spent quite a long time in this section. They also had a small tidepool section where you can touch some of the animals (supervised by staff, of course)
I didn't get to see all of the sections of the museum, partly because I walked around pretty slowly, but also because of the crowd, I couldn't get into the rainforest section. I'll probably go back next month, and check out some of the other sights in the park.

More video tutorial stuff. This one is from Digital Tutor's interior rendering tutorial.Global illumination(for the day scene), final gathering and mental ray shaders.

Fresh from the oven. A headset modeled while I was watching Digital Tutor's product visualisation lesson. Took 1 hour 5 mins to render this one frame, because of the high quality settings to get rid of pixelisation, and because those small holes are all modeled in, so pretty heavy poly count.

Yesterday was the first Wednesday of the week, so I went to the SF zoo, which has free entry for SF residents on that day. It was kind of impromptu, I just found out about it the night before when I was sleepily surfing for cheap or free stuff to do around the bay area. Just have to bring anything with your address on it, like a bill, and a photo ID to confirm your name is right. I managed to walk there, since it's not that far from where I live. 1 hour's walk, which I counted as a replacement for my jog around the lake, with the cool weather and listening to my iPod, it wasn't that bad.

Early in the morning, some animals still asleep.
One of my favourite parts of the zoo was the petting zoo/small farm which had some more uncommon breeds of domestic animals, which you can go up to and touch, or buy some food to feed them.
Since it was free day, there were many school groups at the zoo too, so lots and lots of children running around and making lots of noise. Luckily since they are shorter, you can kind of wade through the crowd. But I felt sorry for the animals, at one point, a group of kids decided to start screaming in unison. Some enclosures had signs saying to be quiet, but most kids and even the adults are too excited to notice.
The goats' eyes were kind of weird, their pupils are like rectangles, not circles.
The zoo also has a volunteer program where kids can become members and help to showcase animals to the visitors, like sitting in the open with some (domestic) animals and letting the visitors touch the animals, and tell them some info.
An alpaca with a uber-posh hairstyle.

Some of the bigger enclosures.


They had a part of the zoo with sick and injured animals adopted by the zoo. This one has only 1 wing after being involved in a car accident.

Usually I wouldn't visit a zoo if it involved spending any money there. I'm still not sure if I'm for or against zoos, I guess it depends on which zoo it is. Some of them do have breeding programs for endangered animals, but then again how they got some of the animals in the first place is kind of dodgy, and might be causing the animal populations to become endangered in the first place. I was also wondering how the zoo(and many other tourist attractions) can manage to financially have free days. Seeing the crowd, the shops and cafes in the zoo were making very good business, for one, as well as things like sales of food for the petting zoo, rides on the kiddy train,etc. And the high taxes in SF as well, which is why residents have so many free and discounted benefits.

Yesterday was 4th July, Independance day, so I thought I'd go out to enjoy the atmosphere. The original plan was to go to Fisherman's wharf to see the fireworks with Mandy, but she fell ill, apparently the upstairs people at her dorm were creating a lot of noise the night before and kept her from sleeping.

Oh,well, no problem, this calls for impromptu change of plan. I went a bit earlier to check out the Musee Mechanique at Pier 45. I've heard a lot of good reviews about it in the papers and online. It's a free entry 'museum' that houses antique and retro coin operated Victorian parlour toys and arcade games, which are still in working order. Somehow I managed to walk by it several times when I was at the wharf (it was nestled behind a row of very packed seafood restaurants that I avoid walking thru because of the crowd)

Stealing a look when someone else put in a quarter.
Monkeys that play music.
A zoetrope, old school animation.The drum rotates and the mirror in the middle reflects the cards stuck to the side, so it creates kind of a screen where you can watch the animation.Laughing Sal, the most famous machine in the museum, that laughs and moves when you put a quarter in. It's even more scary because it's life sized. Funny what people in the old days would laugh at. I guess those were the days before It and Chucky were in the cinemas.
There are a few types of machines there; fortune telling machines, dancing dolls, music machines, skills (like arm wrestling or shooting) games, machines that mould coins into souvenirs, what the butler saw (boxes which you have to peep through to see photos or early technology short films), besides more recent machines- arcade games like Pacman or Street Fighter. That reminds me of my childhood when there was an arcade room at the club.Am I getting old? No wait...I think there's still Street Fighter in arcades nowadays right?
My favourites were the doll type machines, some of which tell fortunes; they move about and blink and the fortune falls out the slot at the bottom of the machine, and some that dance, or laugh, or play music. Mostly I like them because they are so creepy and quaint, kind of like old world technology, some of them are really well made and nice to look at by themselves too.
This one is a huge scenery which you can walk around and see the characters in it move. There were 2 of these kind of machines, one was a fun fair, the other a farm scene. One thing good is that the museum was so crowded, so if you are feeling stingy, you can just keep walking around and you'll be able to see some machines in action when other people put in money.
My favourite. The doll inside was really well made.
One of the music machines. Kind of like an antique jukebox, but the fun part is looking at the parts moving inside.
A mechanical horse, which apparently is supposed to mimic how a real horse runs.
This was the farm scenery I was talking about. The quaint thing about it was that there was a family of black farm hands at one corner of the scene, which I think, if it was made today, would be politically incorrect.
More moving dolls.

The museum is housed in what looks like a warehouse, probably a little more crowded than usual because of the celebrations going on.
I have no idea what this does, but it looks good anyway.
Outright freakishness; skeletons playing musical instruments. I guess this is what the Victorians call memento mori. Or maybe more related to the Spanish tradition of celebrating death.
Most of the dolls move by mechanisms controling each limb, like old school robots, but some of them are marionettes.
And some of the machines are just beautifully made.


Some 'what the butler saw' machines (I forgot what they are really called) They either had photos or (old technology) videos of the San Francisco earthquake, or old school porn(nothing much, this is Victorian after all, probably just women dancing in their underwear). Old technology as in the machine lights up and flips photos quickly to produce the illusion of movement. One of them even had 3D !
A bit of an odd one out, but there was an antique steampunky bike in there as well.

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Back out in the open air, the sun is setting, making for good lighting for photos. Here's the stretch of seafood restaurants. The bay area is well known for sourdough bread with clam chowder, and dungeness crabs.
The streets were packed with people. There were many street closures and traffic jams, so #1: don't drive here. #2: public transport is a little iffy as well, I had to walk a few blocks away from the festivals area to be able to catch the bus back (it was probably 10 or 11 something, luckily it was safe because of the crowd, and similarly lost passangers looking for bus routes that are running, so just follow the crowd towards the general direction you are headed to.#3: use the toilet before coming here. There were extra outdoor toilets put up, but even then the line was so long, it's probably faster to actually wait until you go home and use the toilet.
Ahh, the liberating feeling of walking right down the middle of a usually busy road right in front of traffic police.
Decided to try something from Coldstone, since I've heard about it from other people. This one is their no fair funnel cake, I also haven't tried funnel cakes before, so the experience was worth the price, to my cheapskated mind. In the US whenever there's a fun fair or street celebration, there must be funnel cakes. Actually at the end, I was a little bloated, it's a little too big a serving for a dessert, but besides that...guess what? It tastes like yau char quai. I'm not kidding. It's a nest of yau char quai with ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, syrup and icing sugar on it.
One of 2 stages set up for free open air concerts. Lots of people turned up to picnic. San Franciscans really know how to enjoy their celebrations. Some people even brought tents to the grassed area in front of the stage. And they wear the weirdest things imaginable in the spirit of the celebration; funny light up hats, flag shirts, flags meant for car windshields stuck to their sunglasses (I'm not kidding, I passed by a woman wearing that and overheard her saying that someone thought she was a freak) as well as the more normal red/white/blue dress code.
Lots of boat rides too, probably bringing passengers out for dinner on the ocean and a good view of the fireworks later on.
The shops were doing very good business too, looking at the line outside some cafes, I wonder why people even bother. This pic I just took because of the lighting.
Lori's Diner, the one with the vintage American interior.
Ghirardelli square, looking especially romantic. There are a few classy restaurants and shops open for business.
The cable car turnaround spot.
And more cosy lighting pictures of the wharf.

And then fireworks! I didn't take pictures because of the long exposure time making everything blurry, this pic is from the video I took.
And this pic will represent all the other fireworks on show. It was very good, especially with the crowd providing the oohs and ahhs and cheers, and impromptu anthem singing. Just that tripodless pictures won't do justice.
And so on the way home, I took some pictures of the City Hall building as well. I was a little concerned because going back I had to pass by the edge of Tenderloin, but at least there were a lot of people outside as well, so it wasn't so dangerous. It's true what they say, you can smell the unwashed people and drugs in the street.

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And an epilogue: My guide to dressing for the occasion. So you want to dress the part for the celebration, but you worry that flags made into t-shirts will make you look fat (among other things) or that utter flamboyancy might get you killed by haters or the fashion police. So here's my guide to subtle (cheapo) dressing for the occassion, a.k.a. I bought a pack of colourful hair bands and found a new way to wear them.

It's good if you, like me, brought few and basic clothes for your studies and want to dress up a little by wearing lots of shit on your wrist. But otherwise you could use your chosen colours in their original purpose to tie your hair up. Incidentally, the 4th July combination can be used for many other countries as well (red and blue are used in many flags, right-they are the 2 most aggressive colours) France, Italy, Russia, Australia, etc.