The conference started on Saturday and I was lucky enough to have my presentation on the first day. I was a bit nervous but luckily it was soon over. After that I had a chance to enjoy presentations from others – among who the Google was the best. They presented their system which won game of Go early that year.
Computer beating humans at game of GO.
It was not all work – if you can actually call it work. We had several social events in the evening like visiting the Modern art gallery where they had paintings from famous artists like Van Gogh, Picasso and many others I don’t recognise.
The conference was interesting, yet very intense. The lectures were happening in parallel in at least 5 different halls and you had to be careful you didn’t miss the one you wanted to hear. It was very intensive mentally, a lot of presenters had strong accents combined with in depth math theory behind their programs it was hard to follow. Luckily there were some easy, more fun oriented, topic covered also. For example there was a competition in Angry birds game where humans were pitted against computer.
Presenting my article at IJCAI
Trying to beat computer at angry birds
Did not perform to well
Briefing at coffee break
Invitation for next year. Who would guess I will be able to go again!
IJCAI Invited talk
The conference was held at the Hilton hotel on 5th Avenue.
Next day (Friday) I met with all my co-workers who have arrived previous day, we had a short meeting, over super expensive breakfast in hotel (20$ for bacon and eggs), to plan the following days.
But before “real” work really started we had one more museum to visit. Natural history museum – one of the most known museums in USA, being featured in many movies among other in a “Night in a Museum”.
Natural History Museum, New York
The museum is extremely large, it spans multiple floors in a very large building. If you download their app you actually have indoor positioning system where it guides you around the museum – as a virtual guide and tells you your exact position. We were quite impressed by this thing and are now trying to implement it at our institute. Exhibits range from prehistoric cave man, dinosaurs to the modern day mammals. The museum has a lot of exhibits about different rock formations and also features some astronomy exhibits.
Gorilla
Traditional yellow bus in front of the museum.
Blue whale. It’s enormous.
Dinosaurs, hard to believe how big they were.
My weight on some star
Some human ancestors
I think I saw something similar to this in Hong Kong.
Turtle
Dinosaur
In the following days we were working most of the day. We started at around 8-9AM and finished around 7-8PM. We didn’t have much time to go sightseeing anymore, only on short excursions in the evening before sleep.
Time Square, behind our hotel.
One of such excursions was Madame Tussaud where we had a chance to take some photos with wax figures of famous people. Supposedly the exhibit wasn’t the best as you could clearly see that the statues were made from wax. I was told that in London you can barely tell the difference between a real person and his statue.
Late in the evening we arrived to the Canadian border, but that wasn’t our destination. We came to see one of the most famous falls in the world – Niagara Falls. It was quite late so we only had a quick look at the falls and then retire to our hotel nearby.
Niagara falls in the evening.
Next day we spent whole day on the falls, we walk all over them, above them, below them, under them with a boat. If the ravines from previous day were nothing special the falls here were amazing, I have never seen such a wide falls with so much water before. In Slovenia the biggest waterfall (with most water) is Fall Boka, Niagara Falls must be at least 40 times larger.
American side of Niagara falls.
The smaller one is american, the one in the distance is just between the border.
At Niagara falls.
Niagara falls
The boat ride just below the falls was interesting experience, you get a blue poncho (red is for Canadian side) and then you get soaked below the fall.
Boat drives literary below the fall.
You still get soaked a bit.
Riding the boat at front
In the afternoon we went to visit , which is located down the river before the great lakes. Sadly we didn’t have much time to visit, but we did see a guy firing a musket.
Old fort Niagara
Old fort Niagara
Old fort Niagara
Old fort Niagara
With this we ended our tour and departed toward New York. I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked the waterfalls and how I hated the tour guide who was always rushing us everywhere and had the stupidest accent ever.
In the evening we arrived in New York, this time 1 block away from Time Square, my vacation was over and work began – well almost.
Long time ago, my French teacher (from Paris) was explaining to us how friends came to visit her in Slovenia. At one point they asked her how far the Venice is from Nova Gorica, and when she said 1hours they couldn’t believe it’s so close and in no time left apartment for a drink in Venice. It was 11PM.
Abraham Lincoln
It’s hard to imagine for us Slovenians what far really is. Washington is considered close to New York, yet it took us more than 12 hours with a bus to reach it. On our ways we stopped in Philadelphia, where Declaration of Independence was signed in the late 18th century. Movie connoisseurs will know Philadelphia from The Rockly movie as well.
Rocky
It’s where the declaration of independence was signed.
It took us a couple of stops to get to the Washington and at each stop we couldn’t get accustomed to the size of the cars they drive in the USA. If you would look at the cars you would imagine they are driving in the Himalayas each day with all the 4×4 they have.
At the gas stop
In the middle of the city. Because you need to cross those sidewalks.
It’s hard to imagine how that tiny car can pull such a large trailer.
Trucks on the highway
In Washington we had whole afternoon to walk around the sites. It must have been 40 degrees C that day, sweat was dripping from us as we were walking from Lincon memorial to the Aerospace museum and Capitol on the other site. The aerospace museum was particularly interesting, they had models of German jet, from WW2, mars rover, which is much larger than one would imagine from images, some rockets and so on.
At the Abraham Lincoln memorial.It was so hot. It must have been 40C
American flags
No drone flying.
Lincoln memorial
Street performances
Rockets
Lunar lander
Rocket exhaust
It’s much larger than one would thought.
German planes
First jet plane
Hidenbourg
We finished the day with the visit to the whitest of the houses.
Veronika and I in front of the White house. Wonder if Obama was at home.
White house from the other side.
White house
White house in the distance
White house
White house
White house from the other side.
In the evening we boarded the bus again and set our course toward north. Next day we were driving whole day, stopping in the middle of nowhere in the Glass museum. It was interesting to see how they make different products out of glass and you could also try to make some glass figurines yourself.
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning Museum of Glass
After few more hours we arrived to some ravine and falls, nothing to special compared to what we have in Slovenia.
After few weeks of planning and numerous calls to USA I managed to get a perfect gift for Veronika’s birthday. Luckily whole USA nation celebrates her birthday, so I didn’t have to worry about fireworks.
Despite sitting in a “safe” spot we got soaked.
Our day started with a ride on a speed boat, again to the Lady Liberty. Seeing it for so many times almost lost some charm to it but the boat ride was fun nonetheless. The boat was fast, there were waves so in the end we were as wet as we would go swimming.
Waiting for take off.
After franticly trying to dry up in half of hour (luckily weather was very hot) we had our main attraction ready – helicopter ride around Manhattan. After quick briefing we were equipped life jackets and escorted to the helipad. Veronika was seated in the front and I was at the left doors. We soon took off. It was a strange feeling flying in a helicopter, it felt like being on some kind of a rollercoaster, very loud a bit bumpy and very light.
This time from the air.
They put their flags everywhere.
Our first destination was nothing else but the Statue of Liberty. Despite seeing it so many times already I can say that from the air it was the best experience. We flew right over it and hovered around a bit before continuing up the Huston river up town. We were flying quite low, there were probably some buildings higher than us at some points but the views were amazing.
Empire State Building from the helicopter.
This truly had been one of the best experiences we had in NY albeit quite expensive.
Manhattan and Lady Liberty from the helicopter.
In the evening we prepared, just as about 3M other people, to go see the fireworks from the Brooklyn bridge. It was only 9PM when the fireworks were supposed to happen, it’s weird, because in Slovenia I think we always have them at midnight, but it’s good for the children I think. The weather got quite bad toward the evening and there were some thunderstorms right at 9PM. Luckily they quickly went by and we could enjoy about 30 minutes of fireworks.
22 °C
12:00 am 
7:54 pm 
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