Five of us are in Los Angeles for a virtual reality conference. Caroline, not wanting to be left out, has come along but has her own plans. Before we each go our separate ways, there’s the matter of needing to share at least a bit of time of just her and me, and so it was that we left our motel early and headed down to the Santa Monica pier.

You may not have known it, but yesterday was Caroline’s birthday, and keeping with tradition, we did absolutely nothing out of the ordinary to not celebrate it, just another day in the cascade of every day being worthy of celebration.

After dropping Caroline off at a secret location in downtown Los Angeles, I’m returning to our motel to pick up my crew to start our day immersed in tech.

This is Ariana Alexander checking out someone else’s idea of how we might enter virtual worlds. This is the first-ever VRLA conference being held on a couple of small soundstages this weekend.

Meanwhile, Caroline is divulging her location by sending out these images. She’s over in Little Tokyo for an afternoon of browsing and shopping.

It never fails to surprise Caroline that the Japanese took such a liking to this German treat called Baumkuchen, even keeping its original name. Tree cake would be a reasonable translation, and while it’s been popular in Japan for more than 100 years, it never caught on in the United States. But John, it’s right here in Los Angeles? Sure, here at Marukai Grocery, which specializes in all things Hawaiian and Japanese.

Back in the realm of the virtual, Rainy Heath is trying on a full-body tracking setup that demonstrates how to bring realism to motion in reality to VR.

Seriously Caroline? You have a day to yourself and you are geeking out on Spam? [I had no idea there were so many kinds! Caroline]

Brett Leonard, director of the film The Lawnmower Man back in 1992, was maybe one of the most obvious people to be on hand, considering his defining piece of film using some of the earliest computer graphics. A year after his movie (which cost $10 million to make) came out, Caroline and I over in Germany produced a short 3D animated music video that earned us about $8000. While the graphics of both works are highly dated, I better understand what he was up against trying to use state-of-the-art tools that were, in actuality, quite primitive for what we were trying to accomplish.

Brandon Laatsch (center) with his girlfriend, along with Luis Chavez of TimefireVR. Brandon got his start with Freddie Wong at Corridor Digital before they went off to do their own thing. Like myself, Luis was a big fan.

With both of our middle-of-the-day adventures coming to an end, Caroline stopped to take a pause after grabbing an Imagawayaki – red bean stuffed pancake and a coffee next door and then patiently worked on knitting my next pair of socks until we picked her up. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, we all dipped into a nearby ramen shop before my side of the group had the opportunity to explore Little Tokyo.