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So the day before yesterday didn’t go quite as I’d planned. I didn’t go and see Dinah or her kittens, but I did get to give Flakes to Heather and then go with her to Taco Bell where we consumed about $16 worth of faux Mexican cuisine between us. Then there was the car wash, and the drive back into the city to go say hi to Derek, two chihuahuas and a cat named Spoo before wandering off to kid robot (dumb toys purchased: 2) and then Giant Robot in Haight Ashbury. Then there was a nice “Blue Meanie” smoothie in a wifi-enabled café which was pretty bloody pleasant, all things considered. The next planned excusion was the epic walk over to the Tonga rooms, which would actually have been pretty bloody epic if I hadn’t walked in completely the opposite direction for the first twenty minutes or so. So I got a cab with a driver who listened to light country and suffered manfully the hell of Tim McGraw’s My Next Thirty Years (and I quote):

My next thirty years I’m gonna settle all the scores
Cry a little less, laugh a little more
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear
Figure out just what I’m doing here
In my next thirty years

Oh my next thirty years, I’m gonna watch my weight
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers
Maybe I’ll remember my next thirty years

You see what I’m talking about? Anyway – so I got to the Fairmont a bit early and so decided to loiter around a bit in the foyer and read my new book while all the smartly dressed people looked at me strangely and tried to remember my face just in case they’d need to identify me in a Guantanamo tribunal later in the year. And then the event began and I got to talk to a couple of dozen neat cool web people that I just don’t get to see enough. I danced (badly) with Mena and Dinah and Heather and chatted a lot to David about what it was like to be an Englishman living in the States at the moment which was extremely interesting. I felt a bit sorry for my poor ex-flatmate Mella who had just got off the plane in San Francisco and come straight to the bar because she didn’t know anyone, but I think she enjoyed herself. And of course the bar’s fake thunder, lightning, rain and floating boat/island/band were as awesome as ever…

Yesterday started a little more sedately with an enormous cooked breakfast over at the Pork Store with Leslie, Lance (also here) and Mella. Mella and I then wandered up into town, up Valencia and past a few second hand stores up to the Civic Center and then up Market for a bit of an explore. (This feels a bit like a ‘what I did on my holiday’ tract, so apologies for that.) And then after a few confusing disorganisational miscarriages, we ended up with a friend of Mella’s called Emily driving through Chinatown, then walking up to Coit Tower and then down to Pier 39 for Oysters and general seafood. Then Mella wandered off to meet Emily’s parents, while I returned back to Leslie’s (past the San Francisco Bear Fair), met up with Ben Cerveny and Webb, drove around the city in a convertible car before wandering up to Molly’s place and drinking a few glasses of wine and basically passing out. Nice evening!

And what’s next over the next couple of days?

• Visit Six Apart
• Meet up with Kevin Marks for lunch
• See Ben Cerveny and Jim Speth and talk about geeky shit
• Try and do some gay stuff of some kind

Well frankly, last night was bloody good fun. I’m just going to throw out a quick good morning to David Galbraith, Jish, Heather, Derek, Ben & Mena, Rebecca B, Lance, Sippey, Webb, Ezra, Jim Speth, Ben Cerveny, Min Jung and the other million other people who I can’t quite focus on or remember at this precise moment because of slightly too many cocktails with long straws.

So I kind of slacked off yesterday, if truth be told. Not a lot of exploring, not a lot of drenching myself in San Francisco – just a fair amount of doing things I like to do that I don’t really often get the opportunity to do. So I went to see two films (the other one was the Manchurian Candidate – much recommended), bought a couple of books, a case for my iPod, had a really nice Clam Chowder and portion of Fish and Chips at San Francisco’s best American restaurant and sat in Starbucks for a bit (thanks Anil) starting to catch up on all the cool stuff that’s been going on around the web in the million years since we started working on representing programming on Radio 3.

Today I think is going to be more about getting some of the flavour of the city – or at least starting to ramp up my mucking around with local geeks. Hopefully I’m going to go see Danah’s kittens in the next couple of hours, go see Heather at Taco Bell around lunchtime, and then go see a movie with Leslie this afternoon.

But all of this is really preamble to the main event which should be happening this evening – a drink and catch-up with local geeks at San Francisco’s famous Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar from 8.30 this evening. Come along if you can. It’ll be fun…

So I’m in San Francisco. It’s 9am. What shall I do today?

Thought around 11am: There are lots of films I would love to see and I am pretty wiped out after Los Angeles… Maybe one of these would be a ncie way to spend the early afternoon? Collatoral, Alien vs. Predator, Bourne Supremacy, Manchurian Candidate, The Village, I, Robot. Or I could go book-shopping. I want to get that copy of All The President’s Spin that I saw on Jon Stewart last night. And I’d like to go down to Kid Robot and look around there. And I really fancy some good seafood (been obsessed with fresh shrimp ever since we stopped off on the way back from Malibu the other day). And I need more T-shirts.

1pm: Oooh – The San Francisco Apple Store is really awesome. It looks like someone dumped an enormous Apple box in the middle of the street and filled it with lovely lovely shiny mac-related products. I’m going to have a quick explore around here and see if I can get my iPod a new case. Then I think off to the Metreon to look at film times. God you guys must be fascinated. This stuff is pure weblog gold…

5pm: So I just went to see The Village and goddam it if I didn’t think it was pretty okay actually. I mean I think I had the twist spoiled for me a bit by a stray comment I heard the other day, but generally pretty watchable. And now I’m in the Starbucks over the road trying to work out what to do next! Will it be Aliens vs. Predator? Or a bit of shopping? Or a bit of a walk? It’s all so terribly exciting…

Ping. Now in San Francisco after cool drive with fun people in which I mostly slept and pointed at wind farms and acres of densely packed cows. Had subsequent great fun at the SixApart Mixer thing where I met loads of people – some for the first time, others not. Looked slightly nervous around some people who do really good work. Touched a couple of them without them noticing (or at least without them calling the police – hey Doug!). Got a free USB dongle thing and saw the 3.1 release of MT which doesn’t seem overly dramatic at first but kind of sits in the back of your head and wiggles its tush in the direction of interesting things. Cab back to Leslie’s place – talking about The O.C. and TV shows in general when I get to pull out my trump card – super-secret super-cool thing that made Leslie go oooooh. Don’t think I’m going to make it to LobbyCon now though. Shame!

I’m quite enjoying not taking this weblog as seriously as normal for a few days. It feels pretty liberating, although possibly not very productive or good in the longer term. God knows what it’s going to be like going back to London. I can already feel it on the horizon and must confess am vaguely dreading it.

Briefest of updates:

• Last night: had lunch with Erik and Tim, before saying goodbye to Erik and wandering down to the Derby with Tim for drinking and band-watching and to chat to Alex who works there…
• Today: lounging around, lunch with Sean, hopefully some kind of big gay drinking this evening in West Hollywood where I will (no doubt) look like a beach whale next to all the local gym bunnies
• Tomorrow: hopefully joining Jen from Blackphoebe to drive up to San Francisco for the SixApart Mixer, and staying with the lovely Leslie Harpold. Terribly exciting.
• Friday – dunno.
• Booze-up with geeks at Tonga Room! Nice!
• Sunday – Wednesday… Er… Dunno

So I got to America several hours late and was then taken off to Immigration because some American doofus with the same passport number as I (except from America rather than from the UK) had his passport stolen. Hence I had to be taken off into this little room for an hour and a half while they checked that I wasn’t trying to steal American children and sell them into slavery or something. I left home at 11.30am UK time and actually got out of the airport in the states at around 9am UK time the following morning. That’s a full seven hour delay! Grr! Which was annoying for me but more annoying for Kerry and Erik who were waiting for me in the arrivals lounge…

Since I’ve got here though, things have got much more entertaining. Let’s see:

• Thursday: Flying to states, visited Rob…
• Friday: Wandered around, watched TV, had breakfast and milkshakes and stuff before going out for a few drinks and spending the whole night playing Jenga and Uno with drink around Sean’s house…
• Saturday: Slacking off on the beach in Malibu, followed by fresh sea-food by the ocean and then a house party at this house around Outpost…
• Sunday: Went to Pasadena to do some shopping and stuff to the Apple store, and then went to Target and stuff and then I went out drinking and eating with Tim – a friend of Kerry’s who has just done extra work on The O.C.
• Monday: Teaching a friend to build websites, followed by gentle drinking…
• Tuesday: Today! Slacking off! Writing crap on websites! Trying to work out how to get to San Francisco…

Hmmm. And I talked too soon, it seems, because here I am stuck in the bloody airport as the flight has been delayed three and a half hours. Which means I’m left at the mercy of T-mobile’s extortionate £10-for-three-hours Wifi in an enormous room without any bloody power sockets. And there are queues everywhere. And it’s really hot. And… And… And…

Right then! I’m off on holiday. If I get any free time, I’m going to try and polish off the rest of the New Musical Functionality series on the plane or in a caf√© in San Francisco, but no promises, because frankly I need a bit of a break from all this web nonsense. Updates are likely to be sporadic in the meantime and when they occur are likely to be more chatty and journally than normal. Otherwise LA, San Francisco – California in general – here I come!

Quick brief apologies to people who are waiting patiently for the next part of the New Musical Functionality series. I’m off to Los Angeles and San Francisco in the middle of the week and this means I have to get a number of work and home things sorted out quickly before I go and and hence I’m a little behind. I wrote the first draft all the way through about a month ago, but the more I look at it the more I want to enhance and extend it without doing the same thing I did to the portability and access section (ie. drown it in detail and almost completely lose the core point). Anyway, hopefully I’ll get the rest of the series out before I leave for the States. Thanks for being patient!

On the subject of the USA, I’m probably going to try and say hello to a few of my favourite geeks while in San Francisco – probably culminating in some kind of frenzied uncool geek-out booze in somewhere cheesy like The Tonga Room sometime between the 12th and 18th of August (I love the Tonga Room). So there’s a possible date for your diary…