We called this home for a while. We were living in McDowell Mountain Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona.
This was our view looking northeast.
Siggraph 1999
While we were here at Siggraph for two days, apparently, I didn’t shoot anything yesterday. Siggraph is a computer graphics trade show that is most appealing to those in the film industry. Because we are in love with computer graphics for the sake of art, we decided to come over from Phoenix to check things out. The Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics holds its show yearly, not always in California. This was the second most attended conference held by the group; this year, over 42,000 people attended. Two years earlier almost 49,000 people were in attendance. During the conference, we had a peek into the future, with many of the displays focusing on cyberspace, while on the conference floor, over 300 vendors showed us everything from 3D graphics software to virtual reality gloves. The 21st century promises to lead humanity into the machine.
With no recollection of exactly what this is we are looking at, I just remember that it was astonishing at the time I saw it. Computer graphics have been a large part of our lives for the past ten years, starting with a Commodore Amiga, Deluxe Paint, and TurboSilver, which became Imagine in 1990.
Disneyland
Robert Bell, Caroline Wise, and Grant Wiggins at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. We arrived in California a day early as we were going to Siggraph at the Anaheim Convention Center the next day; why not play a minute at the Happiest Place on Earth first?
There are other photos from this trip but the poor nature of the images are better left accumulating digital dust on some hard drive, but the memories elicited from photos of friends and family are worth sharing.
I look huge in this image; it must be the low pixel resolution.
Caroline Wise and Grant Wiggins. I met Grant the year before while he was working for the Scottsdale Airpark News; he interviewed me for an article about our work building computers and some of my thoughts regarding Linux and how it could be a platform for education (if I’m not mistaken).
Waiting to ride Space Mountain.
Watching the parade at Disneyland back when we were young. Caroline was 32, and I was 36.
Going Nuclear
I present you with the oldest digital photo we could find in our collection since we first started taking digital images. Caroline, Robert Bell, Grant Wiggins, and I were on our way to Los Angeles to visit Disneyland, Siggraph, and my father, though our friends wouldn’t be making that visit with us. There’s some ambiguity if this photo was taken on this particular day or the day before and I have no way of reconciling that. Still, one thing is certain: this is the first travel photo taken with said digital camera.
UFOs and Aliens
We just recently started a new company called Alienzoo. Its original name was supposed to be Alienzone, but somebody snagged it before I could, so we compromised. This new web entity was supposed to function as an all-things alien portal with an ultimate focus on an artificial intelligence-driven alien lifeform simulator that would one day migrate into a virtual reality world. Needless to say, we were far too ahead of what technology was able to deliver.
Along the way, we managed to attract some interesting talent, sponsor some raves, publish some books from Jim Marrs, and get featured on the popular radio program from Art Bell.
Memorial Day Weekend
Writing this in 2021 without a shred of notes nor dates of exactly when this was, the best we can figure is that this was during Memorial Day Weekend. This would have been our second trip to the Page, Arizona area, with our first one being with Ruby and Axel the year before.
On one of the days staying up here, we revisited the Glen Canyon Dam to get on a raft for a 15-mile float down the Colorado River.
Out on the river for the kind of Colorado River adventure we can afford.
Another part of this trip was a return to Antelope Canyon.
Finally, we got out on Lake Powell to go to Rainbow Bridge.
To the left in the background is Navajo Mountain, and directly behind us is the famous Rainbow Bridge. By the way, it was difficult to calculate where this trip fell on the calendar as neither Caroline nor I could figure out if we did these things solo the first time or did we went with Ruby and Axel. Pre-digital cameras, our film didn’t come with date stamps, nor did we always make notes regarding spontaneous travel. The giveaway was Caroline’s length of hair. When we moved to America had long hair just until after Ruby and Axel’s wedding. Initially, her hair was chin-length, and that was reflected in other scanned photos with us in some of these same locations. Here, with very short hair, we realized this had to be after that other trip.