Well the last two days have been very very busy. I'd wanted to take my compter so I could blog about each day as they happened but as it turned out by the end of the day ALL I wanted to do was put my feet up, lay down, and drift off into oblivion. I don't remember being this tired after Disneyland when I was a kid but that was admittedly some time ago. Disneyland was of course alot of fun and it was great to see the faces of my kids now that they are at an age to enjoy seeing all the characters and the rides. Hanna even rode on a rollercoaster several times and enjoyed herself. Yuki wasn't so much about riding roller coasters but the more kiddie rides were all great for her. It was hot as crap, about 32 Celsius and humidity you wouldn't beleive. But we managed to have a good time anyway. I walked more in the last two days at one time than I have since transplant and felt great. Tired of course but nothing like the energy sapping illness I had before transplant. A bunch of pictures below from Disneyland which other than the usual had nothing SO important for me to blog about. Stay tuned though because after the pictures I want to tell you about one of the coolest things I saw at Disneysea. Branden especially with his interest in robotics and autonomous control will enjoy that portion. Pictures below:
At the Disney Ambassador hotel.
Breakfast at Chef Mickey's restaraunt.
I was yelling for Daffy to look at the infidelity Daisy was displaying but my Japanese was lacking and he didn't understand what I was yelling.
Molesting the duck.
Everyone with Pluto.
From this point on we'll talk about our day at Disneysea. Actually, to be clear, the pictures above where we are in the restaraunt with the characters, were all taken on the morning of our second day there at breakfast before heading out for the day to Disneysea. I saw several very cool things at Disneysea, (which is the only one in the world by the way) which I'm pretty excited to talk about. The first was a thing near the entrance called the Picture of a Million Smiles and what is so cool about it is that it's a large mural of a Disney scene and the pixels of the picture are actually small photographs of people having fun at Disneyland. Very cool. There were two of them, one at each entrance. Check it out:
The whole Mural.
A close up of i forget where on the mural.
The other large mural. The close up below is of Mickey's eyes.
Disneysea had lots of cool rides as well and was actually I thought a little cooler than Disneyland. That opinion probably had alot to do with the fact that the day was several degrees cooler and the lines for rides were MUCH shorter. Hanna went on the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" ride three times!! This was a magnetically driven ride and included a couple of fast roller coaster style drops and rises. The really cool thing about it is that with the magnetic drive we could actually accelerate like the dickens UPHILL! After the third time around we decided to go over to the Indiana Jones ride but it was closed for maintenance. Alli and I then went on the Indian Jones rollercoaster rather than theme ride and it had a loop and everything but as a rollercoaster was a bit disappointing. Luckily we only waited about 20-30 min for that one. I would have been really upset if we'd waited an hour for it though. We then went back to the Indiana Jones theme ride but it was still closed. After looking at the map we decided to head towards the Future Land or something and see what was there. Earlier when we'd come to the Indian Jones section via boat we'd passed by this area and saw what I assumed was a bumper boat ride. I thought the kids would enjoy that so we headed that way. It wasn't until we were actually in the line for this ride that I realized we wouldn't be controlling anything we were only along for the ride on what I assumed was a track. Standing in line I was watching all the boats go by in line in the loading area and then as they exited I noticed that they weren't all leaving on the same path which I thought was pretty interesting but not all that important yet. THEN as Hanna and I got into the car and we exited the loading queue did I finally notice what was really happening. Almost instantly a mental image of a video that Branden had once shown me of a robot swarm moving through a room rushed through my head. Sachi, Yuki and Alli were in the car in front of us and they peeled off to the left while we went about 20 degrees farther to the right. I looked down and saw under the surface of the water, some blue stripes painted onto the floor of the pool. NOT tracks, painted stripes and large boxes and circles. About as big as the car itself actually. As Sachi and my path's diverged I took a good look around and realized that NOONE was on tracks. And everyone seemed to be moving randomly. Rather than looking up and around at people I started looking down at the surface of the water and the blue stripes that were just visible a few inches below and came to the conclusion that these cars were actually partially autonomous. They follow the path they are on until the reach a decision point (which i determined was a square) at which point they seem to look around and determine best course of action. If that involves waiting for someone else's car to get out of the way, they spin place really fast until a lane opens up and then proceed. As I'm noticing this, I forgot to pay attention to surroundings though and got a jet of water directly in the chest and face. Frickin' robot must have been upset at me for figuring out it's secret! Anyway, no two sequential cars followed the same path although they would come close to each other several times. The actual ride lasted for about 3-4 minutes and once I'd grasped what was happening was very very interesting. All of the movments each car did brought it closer and closer to the end point. There were several squares around the end point and as each car got there it would wait until it was clear and then move into line to load back into the conveyor for the loading queue.
After we'd gotten off the ride I took a couple pictures trying to show the blue guides under the water and they are included below but they aren't very clear. I also took a couple minutes worth of video with my excellent narration of what was happening. All is included below.
Blue pathways
Cars backing into the exit queue
Decision Points
And finally, the video that I took. I apologize if it's a bit shakey, but well, I'M shakey nowadays. I still say it's better than being dead, bad videos or not.
I'll be back next week. Looking forward to seeing everyone again.
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