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After two days in Silicon Valley I transferred up to San Francisco. My stop in the city was a short one – a whole day Saturday, plus half of Friday and some time on Sunday before heading to the airport – so it was bound to be a case of picking a few things to check out rather than an exhaustive tour of the area. So what did I learn? Well..

Take walking shoes

I like walking, and I've always thought walking around a city as far as you can manage in a day is a good way to get a feel for it – I've tried this in just about every place I've visited over the years.

In San Francisco I arrived at 1pm, so carved a path down Nob Hill, through Market Street to the Ferry Building, up to the Coit Tower, down to Fisherman's Wharf, along the coast to Golden Gate Park, South to Haight/Ashbury and then back via Isotope Comics on Fell St. Coit Tower gives you a nice view over the city – here's looking towards the Ferry building:

.. and in the West I passed the splendidly mad Palace of Fine Arts, sadly surrounded by chain-link fence and signs soliciting donations to help save it:

The whole circuit, including long stops at various museums, restaurants and, er, to buy comic books, only took the afternoon, but it took in some pretty lengthy hills – especially ascending to Coit Tower from the East, and coming up North towards Haight from the shore. If I'd been wearing fancy shoes instead of a pair of battered New Balance my feet would have died.

You also get to stumble across interesting stuff that you wouldn't otherwise find, from huge signs:

to tiny ones:

Four wheels bad, two wheels good

I'd heard that it was easy to rent a bike in San Francisco – and having visited I can confirm that it'd be hard *not* to rent a bike in San Francisco. The tourist-trap that is Fisherman's Wharf (more later) is covered in huge bike rental stands with young men and women hollering for customers to BIKE THE BRIIIDGE in a way that seems likely only to put you off the idea.

Anyhow, on the second day – with the fog burning off and a few hours to kill – I picked up this Marin bike for $8 per hour. The brakes were a bit loose and the handlebars needed straightening (I got a few odd looks doing that), but hey – $8 per hour! Bargainous.

The journey to Golden Gate Park is easy thanks to a long cycle path that covers most of it, and heading across the bridge to Sausalito is a really easy ride – if you've ever ridden for more than an hour or so there are no hills that'll trouble you, and there are several lovely views. It surely beats the alternatives:

.. and even if you have no intention of crossing the bridge it's far quicker to ride to Golden Gate Park than to walk. Having left San Francisco rather late at 3pm I caught one of the last ferries of the day back across around the bay around two hours later to return the bike before its 7pm deadline, but if you set out in the morning you could explore far further around the headland and back.

Do go across the Golden Gate Bridge

There is, as you may have heard, a lot of fog in San Francisco. Quite often this completely obscures the Golden Gate Bridge – here's the view from around ten minutes before I crossed it:

And yet when on the bridge: sunshine!

The fog was still there of course, being whipped around the towers by the wind:

.. and it was pretty chilly, but the views were fantastic nonetheless. There's a scenic view point on the far side – if you cross on the West side of the bridge there's a path underneath (with steps – you'll need to be able to carry a bike comfortably to use it). In summer I'd recommend attempting to cross even if the fog does look a bit grim – just take suitable clothes for cold/wet weather.

Skirt around the tourist traps..

Fisherman's Wharf is, at dusk, kindof pretty:

.. and great for fans of illuminated signage:

By day, though, it's a bit of a dump – aside from the bike rental shops and a branch of In-N-Out burger there's not much that I'd want to see again, with piers dominated by craptastic novelty shops (including one selling pseudo-spiritual tat called "Enlightenment" – my irony gland committed suicide on the spot).

Similarly, here's Haight / Ashbury:

Yes, the corner is now what must surely be the world's most-photographed Ben & Jerry's. The only thing I'd recommend around there is a branch of KidRobot on Haight.

.. but do cross to Alcatraz

Besides crossing the bridge, the one really touristy thing I would recommend is visiting Alcatraz. I wasn't too interested in the idea of visiting the prison (reason 1: it's a prison, reason 2: it uses the dreaded audio tours) but bought a ticket because I thought the island and ferry crossing might be pretty.

As it turns out I was right on the pretty bit and wrong on the prison. You can cross every half-hour or so on one of these:

from which you get a great view of the island (notice how sunny it was by the time we were arriving – that's not Photoshop):

and then you get as much time as you like to explore the island, which is now mostly a bird sanctuary, and the surprisingly small prison block:

Even the audio tour, narrated by a number of ex-guards and convicts, is interesting, and I was intrigued by the many signs of the Indian Occupation, about which I knew pretty much nothing at all:

All in all, I'd thoroughly recommend it. Book in advance, though – the day I crossed most of the boats were filled up.

.. and do see the Museums

On Sunday I had only a few hours before heading for the airport, so I visited the museums around Market Street. If you're interested in photography, and documantary photography in particular, SFMOMA is unmissable. It also had some later Roy Lichtenstein works on show, and a rather lovely atrium:

Around the corner the Museum of Cartoon Art is also brilliant – when I visited it was dominated by an exhibition on Beetle Bailey (meh), but also included the original copies of the first Japanese Batman comic (bonus fact: in Japanese, Batman likes to use the expression われわれ! quite a bit, just like Kyon) and an amazing collection of feature strips from the golden era of newspaper cartoons – including an original Peanuts strip in its huge A3 original format. There's also a section dedicated to small press comics and a great bookshop – this, together with my visit to Isotope, turned out to be rather expensive for me.

Also interesting was the San Francisco Fire Department Museum, which is chock full of old hand- and steam-powered engines, photos and bits and bobs. Here's the front of one of the oldest engines there:

Pop in, gawk at the stuff, make a donation. It's worth the trip, and the Swedenborgian Church is just a few blocks away.

Eat at In-N-Out

This is an In-N-Out Double Double meal. Costs about £4:

Depressingly, its is better than any burger you'll find anywhere in the UK. Ever. And here's the secret menu. You're welcome.

Don't queue for the cable cars

Three of the old cable car routes are still running, more as a tourist attraction than any kind of useful public transport (for those see the BART and MUNI services, which are comprehensive). With only three lines there are a handful of terminus stations, and each one normally has a massive queue. It's certainly worth riding the cable car at least once – if you're standing on the side there's a great view:

.. but I found that jumping on at one of the many intermediary stops meant far less waiting around – just pick one a few stops into the line so somebody will have left the car to make room for you. Tickets are $5 a ride.

Drink the local beer

California is home to some great beers – Sierra Nevada, for example – and San Francisco has its own in the shape of Anchor Steam. Both are fantastic and available everywhere, and there are some other, smaller brews too (I quite liked Fat Tyre). If you like beer, it's a great place to sample loads. Apparently the Anchor Steam brewery runs tours, but these must be booked ages in advance. Also, if you're under, say, 35, then be sure to carry ID.

And finally, go visit

And that's about it. I brought my heart back to London, arteries slightly fuzzier than before thanks to the Double Double, but San Francisco certainly is a great place, and a far better city to explore on foot than, say, San Diego. If you're on a longer trip or tight budget you can see a few great parts of San Francisco in a few days, but a week would give you time to look around properly.

Back in 2008 I was lucky enough to find myself with three days to drive around California, starting near San Diego. California's a big place, though, so in the end I was only able to cover the south of the state: San Diego, LA, the desert around Palm Springs and the Laguna Mountains. San Francisco and Silicon Valley, both places I've wanted to visit for some time, were hours out of reach. This week, however, I found myself flying into the north of California for a press event in Silicon Valley, with time to take a brief look around.

The event itself was in Mountain View, CA, but at 3pm the day before I found myself down the road in Palo Alto. Any web nerd knows that Google's based in Mountain View, and Mac fans know that the temple of Steve can be found in Cupertino (on Infinite Loop, no less), but Palo Alto is home to the grandaddy of all Silicon Valley locations: the (previously Xerox) PARC, home of Ethernet, GUI systems and more. Sadly PARC is some way south of where I was, so with no car – more on that later – and with only a few hours I walked into the town instead.

The centre of Palo Alto is a nice place to kill a few sunny hours, but I'm not sure you'd want to be kicking around there for much longer without something to do. Besides the restaurants, chain shops and boutiques there's an old cinema:

and in the square down the road a young woman was singing while people browsed a market full of posh foodstuffs. Priuses abound, and a Tesla (license plate: NUCULER) was pulling up. In short, Palo Alto is pretty much every west-coast stereotype you could call to mind. The only thing that stood out to me was the amazing Methodist church:

Sadly I couldn't get a photo inside – a service was taking place – but it's quite lovely, with those tiny windows filled with stained glass picking out coloured spots to illuminate the cavernous interior. Heading out into suburbia you pass lawn signs showing support for green energy, and posh residences complete with landscaped gardens and flags up for sale:

and beyond that to the North, the freeway and then the bay. And that was it – a flying visit to Palo Alto in just a few hours before the jet-lag killed me and I had to sleep. Oh, but what's on TV in Palo Alto? Mainly this, looping every few minutes:

I'd vote for the guy. The next day was all work, reporting from a Symantec press event in Mountain View, but on the Friday I moved up to San Francisco – more on that here.

2010 is, we're told, the year of 3D television, so February 2010 was the month where I travelled to Vienna to see some of the new sets they'll be selling very soon. These are actually quite impressive, with the two caveats that they'll cost a fortune (in the region of £1500-2000) and there's very little to watch on them right now. And, obviously, the effect is somewhat better when you stack nine humongous sets on top of one another, like so:

But with that all dealt with I had three hours or so to see Vienna itself. Fortunately we were put up right in the middle of the city, at the rather posh Do and Co hotel, so I was able to stroll in a kind of circle around the town centre without wasting any time getting there in the first place.

The centre is dominated by the cathedral – huge, covered in scaffolding and with a remarkable roof that appears to have been made out of coloured Lego bricks. Past that, there are the usual shopping streets, stuffed full of horrible Mozart-themed tat shops and guarded by giant bears:

.. but then a block or so further and you hit the rather grand architecture. Incredibly grand buildings are to Vienna as fried chicken shops are to South London – one around every corner, and soon blending into one despite having actually quite different facades.

In fact, there are so many staggering bits of old architecture that people don't really seem to care – somebody was so nonplussed by this building and the statue in front of it that they saw fit to dump a huge ugly industrial generator there.

Note also the piles of snow: it was bitterly cold. Freezing slowly to death I headed further to Parliament and the Museums Quarter, which includes several apparently excellent art galleries placed around one square:

.. but it was cold, empty and desolate, and most of the galleries in the modern art museum were closed for rehanging. Not quite what I was hoping for.

Fortunately, there's one area in which Vienna can be guaranteed to excel: coffee and cake. Three of us took a trip to Café Central, apparently a favourite of Leon Trotsky, and stuffed down some of this:

And then it was time for the rush back to the airport, full of caffeine and cream, and a long time spent circling about London waiting for a landing slot at Heathrow. All in all, an interesting place – but if I ever go back I'll try to do so in summer and with time to check out the palaces properly. More photos here.

I spent Tuesday rushing to France and back on the Eurostar, attending a Dell press conference at Versailles. About three hours in I spotted this plaque: it turns out the hotel ballroom was used to draft the famous Treaty – now it's a site for business meetings.

At the end of the afternoon a few of us had an hour spare, so we went around the corner to the palace. It's predictably spectacular:

.. and the gardens are something else:

.. but sadly we had no time to do any more than take a quick glance around. At 7pm it was back in a taxi, back to the Gare du Nord, back on the Eurostar and back to London. Eighteen hours, about 1,000km, three press conferences, one interview, two news stories, three glasses of wine underneath the channel and twelve photos here. Not bad for one day.

The Easter-themed segment I filmed for the BBC last week went out this morning and repeats over this weekend. It's not yet on iPlayer, so here's a low resolution clip:

(Video)

And while on the subject of shameless self-promotion, here's the thing I did for ITN the other week:

I went, I saw, I nearly concussed myself by walking into a signpost (top tip: if trying to compare a map in one hand with an email on your phone in the other, do so while stationary), but I escaped Cebit. And here's what I learned, in pictoral form.

First, the show. It's as large as everyone says: around 30 halls, each about so big:

.. so you walk for miles and miles each day back and forth. Inside each hall there are around 200 booths. Finding the one you need is a nightmare – often it pays to get a view from above, if possible:

.. and work-wise, the show went well. Everyone's there, and once you get inside the booths and out of public view there's some fantastic new stuff planned for the next year or so, some of it secret for the time being. Outside it's a deranged mix of exhibitors (many), businesses (many), press (a few) and the public (amazingly, loads – not entirely sure why). So, the Cebit show scores 8/10. No holiday, but it does what it's there to do.

And what of Hannover? Well, it's quite nice: fairly small, but with a nice central district and some beautiful places in the old town. Get away from the "Irish" pubs, for example, and you can find little places like this:

Sadly I can't even vaguely remember what that bar's called, but you'll find it a stone's throw from the old church. Hannover itself picks up 7/10: if going as a tourist them head to Berlin instead, but it's quite nice.

So, what went wrong? Well, apart from nearly decapitating myself, the one key thing I learned is this: if going to Hannover, first purchase a map. And, preferably, a car to go with it, as the transit system is totally, utterly baffling. We spent hours standing on train platforms, in the cold, waiting for a train with that sinking feeling that comes from being entirely unsure whether it's even going to take you in the right direction:

In fact, during three days in Hannover we managed to get on the wrong train entirely (some stations, we found, had no maps, and the platforms do not list intermediate stops), the right train only to find that it was turned around and sent back the way we'd come (I was shamefully pleased that we weren't the only people caught out by this), a train that turned out to be a tram and then went underground (WTF?) and trains that, for some reason, were not covered by our tickets (not an ICE train – we knew about those, at least).

And all this on top of at least 2 hours of train travel per day because we had to come in the (reasonably nearby) town of Celle, which was similarly devoid of rail maps. Compare this to Berlin, for example, where the complicated transport system (S-Bahn, U-Bahn, trams and buses all overlapping) is cheap and easy to navigate. Hannover scores 2/10 in the "getting around without a car" category.

So all in all, last week was a mixed bag. Good show, nice city, godawful trains – oh, and really, really bad coffee. Still after four days, it was time to leave:

.. and I can't tell you how good it is to be back in London. I may not complain about SouthEastern Railways ever again.

Technology trade shows are really, really odd. Most include dozens of halls, thousands of people, not all of whom seem to have any reason at all to attend, millions of electronic doodads worth approximately bazillions of dollars and all soon for the landfill, REALLY ANNOYINGLY LOUD NOISE, meetings conducted despite language difficulties and, every few hours, bizarre bits of advertising-cross-performance-art like the one snapped above (from IFA Berlin, 2006, more pictures on Flickr if you click it). Reporting from shows is a test of your walking shoes, the tenacity of your laptop's wifi adapter and your ability to function with very limited sleep, while flying back home again is usually a great relief.

The biggest tech show in the world is Cebit, held annually in Hannover (Wikipedia has all the baffling visitor and square footage figures), but so far I'd always managed to avoid attending. Not this year, though. My rucksack is once again full of electronic crap, tickets have been booked and I fly out tomorrow.

Photos of confused looking people milling around in one of many exhibition halls will follow shortly. In the meantime, I'll be covering the whole thing – wifi and 3G permitting – on Twitter, here.

Courtesy of a Google Alert (link):

"Windows7的揭幕距微软上一代Vista系统面世已有2年时间，在此期间Vista一直恶评如潮，被大多数用户冠以 “灾难”的称谓。英国著名电脑杂志《ComputerActive》的汤姆•罗耶尔就表示，此前的Vista系统给微软公司带来了巨大的“公关灾难”，其 在发布的第一天就运行得很不顺利，因此Windows7必须具备绝佳的性能，才能赢得广大用户的认可。针对各界的质疑，微软英国的Windows主管约翰 •柯伦表示，在对Windows7的研发改进中，他们已经充分借鉴了Vista的经验教训，因此人们可以放心使用Windows7操作系统，而不用对之前 Vista存在的问题有所顾虑。"

Somewhere in there lies my name in Chinese, but I'm so ignorant I don't even know what Chinese language it is (Mandarin?), let alone which characters are mine. Life can be strange.

Somewhere in Bavaria lies the city of Augsburg. Somewhere in Augsburg lies a Fujitsu-Siemens factory. Somewhere near that factory lies a conference centre. And in that centre, on Wednesday…

.. you could find this charming room, and me inside it. One conference keynote plus one interview plus one photo plus one comment from Greenpeace (and after factoring in about ten cups of coffee) you have one news story, and so before flying back out on Thursday I had time to check out the city. And here it is:

It's all rather pretty, actually, with cobbled streets, trams everywhere and fountains. Fountains that, for some inexplicable reason, are all covered by pointy wooden hats, as if to protect them from the rain (because, as we all know, fountains and water don't mix). And then there's the Fuggerei:

The Fuggeri was founded in 1516 by the Fugger family who, being both breathtakingly rich and Catholic, wanted to keep in God's good books and were able to blow vast sums on doing so. They did this by building a whole city district, comprising of really rather nice homes, and renting them out for a tiny fee – plus three prayers a day – to poor, Catholic residents of the city. It's still running today, funded by tourism (4 euros to enter), the Fugger family and, to some very small extent, the rent (just 98 euro cents per resident per year).

So, once you've seen the social housing and the Fujitsu factory, what else is there in Augsburg in November? Not much. The worst thing would be this fellow, staring out of a hunting shop window:

And the best thing? That'd be the cake:

If you like cake, you will like Augsburg. We found dozens of cake shops, including the one above, whose cake counter must have been almost 100m long. Hedgehog shaped cakes, cherry cakes, fruit cakes, cream cakes.. it's all a bit bewildering. So, we ate cake. And drank coffee. And bought more cake. And all very nice it was too. And then to the airport, through a slightly demented security check that took exception to my camera, and home.

So, Augsburg. Worth flying there? Not really. Worth a couple of hours if you happen to be nearby? Sure. Is that a glowing recommendation? I suppose not.

Hunter takes off – in HD from Tom Royal on Vimeo.

Hunter does his bit for science, helping me test the EX-F1's 60fps mode. This was shot as 60 6mp JPEGs in a one second burst and then smooshed onto the interweb, hence the dubious image quality (technical smooshing details: JPEG images resized to 960×1,280px in Photoshop, stitched into an AVI with JPEGVideo, converted to H.264 in Quicktime Pro then uploaded).

(NB – he did actually land safely about a second later. And he caught the snake, too.)