I was going to call this “XML Abstracts” because the reason we were in Atlanta was the XML 2005 conference, which came off pretty well and which has been sufficiently reported elsewhere. I’ll write up my Why not to invent a new XML language as a big piece here some day. But instead, here are a couple of pretty pictures of not much at all from Atlanta, plus an O’Hare interloper.
Atlanta is probably a nice enough place, but three days in a downtown hotel don’t leave much of an impression. The heroic skyline pictured at sunset below would be more impressive if the streets at the towers’ feet weren’t so empty and nondescript and loveless.
You’d think that a neighborhood packed with expensive hotels would be correspondingly full of restaurants, but you’d be wrong. We ended up going to Pacific Rim (Japanese/Thai) two nights out of three, and it’s OK but it also doesn’t have much competition. Anyhow, on the second night Liora Alschuler and I were sharing sake, which came in this rather remarkable bottle; I won’t name the brand because it too was only OK.
I covered myself with glory at dinner while, eating my Chirashi in a hurry while talking fast too, I absent-mindedly loaded up my chopsticks with a big glob of wasabi and stuck it in my mouth. That’s some pretty severe pain. Harrison Ford did that once in a movie but nobody at the table could remember which.
On the way home we passed through O’Hare, a building I’ve always kind of liked, and snapped a shot in Concourse B, looking up. While I was photo-editing it, a slip of the finger pulled the Levels control way over to the right, and I liked it enough to leave it that way.
It’s an arrow, for most people on a Friday afternoon it’s pointing home.
