It's easy to spend 3-4 hours on the ships various decks listening to the audio-guide. I could have done without the birds hovering over my lunch at the cafe, but otherwise this was an excellent visit!

I'm in San Diego for the SPIE Optics & Photonics meeting. More specifically Kishan Dholakia and Gabe Spaldning put together the Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation IV conference, where I was the last (but not least?) speaker. Overall the meeting has a dual character with a lot of technical content (like lens- or mechanics-design, CCD/CMOS imaging, etc.) but also a strong academic following with 'plasmonics' and 'nanobiotronics' being the buzzwords of the month. Supposedly the attendance is around 5 000 persons, but it felt less crowded than the Biophysical Society meetings (3 - 4 000 people), maybe because people were spread out over many more sessions.

Travelling via JFK my baggage was delayed about 36 h, but otherwise the trip went fine.