The cold, rainy weather has returned to the Austin area, so it was a good day for an indoor activity like “Once Upon a Cake” presented by the Capital Confectioners. This was their “11th Annual Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition”. The challenge was to create edible works of art pertaining to fairy tales, nursery rhymes, or fables. Imagine a sports complex full of decorated cakes. I could have shared a ton of photos, but here are a few of my favorites. The artists were truly exceptional!
I wasn’t a very good MAPJAM participant today. Too much stuff going on. KUT offered up 9 great bands in 4 awesome venues, and I only caught two bands. My favorite today was Rattletree Marimba – a super fun band that “plays high energy fully acoustic music from Zimbabwe on GIANT wooden xylophones.” If you see these people in your area, be sure to check them out!
Today’s entertainment was The Zoo, a musical folly by Arthur Sullivan and B. C. Stephenson. It was presented by the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Austin. Here is how the story goes.
A gentleman attempts suicide at the zoo because his love’s father doesn’t approve of him. A young lady tries to stop the suicide so it won’t adversely affect her refreshment business. A Duke in disguise enters the zoo to woo the young lady, his love. The gentleman’s love arrives at the zoo to find her lover. Everyone cavorts around, meets calamity, and then all ends well after a narrow escape from certain death for the gentleman in the Bear Pit.
Overall, a very fun afternoon!
This Solo Piano Recital was nothing short of amazing. If you ever have the opportunity to see Michael Schneider, please take advantage of it. Plus if he has his very own page-turner, you know he must be awesome. 🙂
In the spirit of trying something new, I attended the Excessive Noise Concert in the Fine Arts Library at UT. It was fun, and all the musicians were great!
One of my most anticipated events at the Artificial Intelligence Open House was to witness the Robocup Soccer Exhibition. One of the teams was from The University of Texas – The Austin Villa Robot Soccer Team. The goal is to “build fully autonomous cooperative multi-robot systems that perform well in dynamic and adversarial environments.” How much fun it was to watch these little guys roam the soccer field, chase the ball down, tumble around and get back up on their own, pass the ball, and score goals. The robots are all a Standard Platform (identical except for programming and jersey color) and “Aldebaran Nao” robots. They receive no programming assistance while on the field, but must find the ball and play soccer on their own. Too much fun!
I had a fun opportunity to visit the Hyatt Regency this afternoon for a conference on Artificial Intelligence. The host organization was the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). I sat in on a talk by Moshe Vardi from Rice University who spoke on the topic, “If Machines are Capable of Almost Any Work Humans can Do, What will Humans Do?” Thought provoking…
The highlight of the day was Boomerang’s and their food truck full of meat pies. I had a couple of Southwest Chicken pies to support their cause. I should have entered the Pie Eating Contest to get a free one on the sly. 🙂
The Austin Rugby Club set up a celebration for Australia Day this afternoon at their club house. It was a beautiful sunny day to celebrate. I wandered around their three pitches and took some photos, of course.
earthrobert 