After a decent breakfast in the hotel of cereal, toast and boiled eggs, I set off to explore the local area. Firstly I needed to find where Saturday's concert was being held. The Shoreline Amphitheatre is situated near the Google complex in Mountain View and was therefore quite easy to find using the search engine.
The Googleplex, as it is known, stretches over several large blocks with the employees travelling between the buildings on brightly coloured bikes which are left all around the area.
One of the main reasons for visiting Google was to see the Android operating system statues that are situated outside their main buildings. These are all named after desserts, how many can you name?
This is the latest one - the Kit-Kat.
The next stop on this Geek Tour was the Computer History Museum which again is in the Shoreline area.
From slide rules and abacuses, through punch cards and the one ton 1959 microcomputer up to the present day this told the story of the computer. In addition to having examples of many of these historic machines the exhibtion had many audio visual displays with many of the pioneers explaining their part in the revolution.
The wiring in this early computer reminds me of our office at home.
This a great little museum in which I spent about three hours but could have spent a lot longer. I would recommend it if ever you are in te area. If you want to know how to get there check on Google street view.
The star exhibit was a fully working reconstruction of Charles Babages first computer which through a series of cogs and gears calculates the value of polynomial equations.
The next stop in the trip required a short trip up the Interstate to Cupertino and a visit to the Apple HQ or Mothership as it is known at 1 Infinite Loop.
I had a quick look in the company shop but otherwise there was little to look at. One interesting point was the number of Wi-fi hotspots there were in the vicinity of the building, it would seem that each section has it's own secure network. There was of course a free one for the general public.
I drove back to my hotel and decided to walk to the local train station to find where I need to catch the train to SF tomorrow. The station is about 1.5 miles from the hotel but easy to walk. In fact, after sitting on a plane for more than 10 hours it was nice to have a good leg stretch.
Mountain View looks like a nice community with a real city centre with a Main Street with lots of small shops and restaurants. The restaurants were a nice mix of national chains together with a variety of ethnic offerings. These included Indian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian and French. Not having eaten since breakfast I decided on Mexican , I hope I don't regret that!
Tomorrow I'm taking the train to San Francisco.
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