TAM is a yearly conference about science and skepticism, and has lots of panels and talks by scientists and the “big stars” from the skeptical community (those tend to overlap).

Day -1 (The trip)
Traveling from Norway to the west coast of the US is a major pain in the ass. I got on the airplane early as shit, having only about 2-3 hours of sleep, and only carrying my plastic grocery bag containing 2 tshirts, 1 boxer and 1 pair of socks, as well as my camera and charger (I decided to travel light). The aircraft rolls out from the gate, but something strange is happening. After a couple of minutes the captain announces that the computer system is refusing to start one of the engines, and they have to reboot the aircraft.. So everything is switched off, but rebooting the computer system of the airplane takes a long time as it has to do lots of tests and configurations at startup. After about 30 minutes the computer decides to start both engines and from there the flight to Amsterdam went quickly (about 2 hours), then I had to wait at the airport in Amsterdam for 4 hours. Not that I did mind, it’s a really nice airport, and I could listen to my favorite podcast for the whole time.

Traveling light

The flight from Amsterdam to New York went much better(quicker) than expected, never been on such a huge plane before and I’m sooo glad I paid the 10% extra to get economy extra seating (only 1 seat next to you, and more room for arms and legs). Can’t really remember much of the flight, except the vegetarian meal was excellent and the desert awesome (go KLM!). Spent the entire flight using the in-flight entertainment system, Think I watched ‘Battle Los Angeles’, ‘Ant Bully’ and some tv shows (Curb your enthusiasm, Seinfeld, and a few others).

However when I landed at JFK, the so far pleasant trip took a turn for the worse. I had done the whole ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) thing, so I expected to just walk trough the immigration area. So I stood in line for 1 hour, just to find out I had to do the paper version as well (which is just asking for exactly the same information again).. Back to the end of the line and wait for another hour. I make it through immigration, but for some reason the guy just stared at my passport without blinking for at least 45 seconds, and was starting to freak me out a little.

Now I’m trying to find my flight, but of course it’s not listed on the board. I go to the Delta place and after them trying to send me to another terminal, they finally locate the flight (apparently there was some mix up of the flight number between KLM and Delta) and I have to run trough the airport and literally get on the plane in the last minute. On the plane I get flabbergasted by some people from the Norwegian skeptical society that I somewhat know from online.

Flight to Las Vegas is like 5 hours and I was half asleep the entire trip. I land around midnight and take a taxi to South Point hotel and casino, where the conference is taking place. I make my way up to the room, set my alarm clock and go to sleep faster than you could say ‘snapple’.

This bed was a sight for sore eyes that had been traveling for 28 hours

Day 0 – July 13th.
My first day in the new world, I’m up at 6 am (2 hours before my alarm goes off), tired confused and looking out into the desert trough my hotel window.

It's the wild west, and I didn't bring a gun or a hat

I go downstairs and quickly gets something to eat from the hotel gift shop before I head into town:

Traditional american breakfast

I take a taxi into town to get some supplies (I came bringing only 1 carry on). So with a long shopping list I headed to the place where the american dream turns true: Walmart.

However right across the road from Walmart I found “The Gun store”, so I got to play with some weapons (AK47 and MP5) that it would be hard to get to try in Norway without joining the army.

Skinhead with beard and foreign accent rents AK-47

Certified Nazi Zombie killer

After shooting zombies, I bought lots of stuff at Walmart (luggage case, netbook, boxers, socks, tshirts, shirts and a couple of shorts, toothbrush, shower gel, deodorant, sunblock + food and snacks).

Can haz loot!

I have no idea what happened from noon to midnight, by looking at the photos from that time it appears I just went back to the hotel and did nothing (damn you sleep deprivation + jet lag).

Day 1 (June 14th) – First day of TAM
Fuck me, it’s 05:00 and I’m awake! I tried going back to sleep, but instead I ended up going out and taking pictures of the area around the hotel while waiting for the convention to start.

Las Vegas sunset	Desert! I am in you!	Flowers are purdy
Red and shiny car being all red and shiny	South Point hotel and casino	More desert, now with hills in background
A random building	yaaay,a crosswalk! this is awesome	South Point hotel and casio from the front side

Registration opened at 7:30, I got my badge and wandered around waiting for the first workshop. The workshop was about examining UFO photos, and faking UFO photos without using photoshop. After that I attended a workshop called “Investigating monster mysteries” which was about cryptozoology (Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, etc..)

After that I had lunch and I think I went up for a nap. I woke up in time for ‘The Rebecca Watson Game Show and Variety Hour’, which was really funny. After that I went straight to bed.

Day 2 (June 15th)  – Second day
Yesterday was kind of a slow TAM day, no panels, just the workshops.

This day however started with what I think was the highlight of TAM, a live recording of the podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. This was followed by the official opening remarks by James Randi himself.

The SGU crew

Following that was an awesome panel with James Randi, Richard Wiseman, Phil Plait, Joe Nickell and Michael Shermer

Panel about skepticism on TV

After that I wandered around a bit, got some lunch,visited the vendor booths and got myself a couple of pet Trilobites

at 14:00 I was back in the main hall for a series of great panels/lectures.

A skeptical look at aliens by Biologist PZ Myers.

A panel with Astronomer Pamela Gay from Astronomy cast

This was followed by an extremely awesome panel about our future in space, with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay, Bill Nye (the science guy), and Lawrence Krauss with Phil Plait as a moderator.

This was immediately followed by Neil Degrasse Tyson’s keynote speech which was in lack of a better word, EPIC!.

I went to the Skeptics guide to the universe dinner at 18:00, and actually ate some real food. After that I was going to take a quick nap before the ‘Penn Jillette’s Rock & Roll, Doughnut and Bacon Party’, but dozed off and missed it

Day 3 (June 16th)  – Third day
This day there weren’t that many panels that I had to go to, so from I woke up at 7 (seriously, is jetlag supposed to last this long?) I headed into downtown and walked the strip and took lots of photos:

A hotel/casino with a rollercoaster, never got around to trying it	A casino/hotel that's a fucking castle!	Walking up the strip
Caesars palace! If this was Fallout 3 New Vegas I would go in there and kill everyone	Looks vaguely familiar	Yay, I got to see the Eifel tower without going to Paris
A place for the statistically illiterate	I rode the monorail! But saw no cat

I made it back to South Point and TAM just in time for the second half of the Skeptics Guide Live podcast event.

Steve, Evan, Jay, Rebecca and Bob

This was followed by the second Keynote speaker, Richard Dawkins. Again, the word Epic! comes to mind.

Day 4 (June 14th) – Final day
Day 4 had a few panels I wanted to see, but I had to make a flight to Los Angeles at noon, so left the hotel pretty early.

I’ll write about my LA trip in a while and put a link to it >>> HERE <<<

Anyway, this was the best image I could find, but it’s kinda old, blurry so I fixed the colors, contrast, sharpness removed artifacts, etc.. in photoshop and I think the end result is pretty good considering my photoshop noobness. So if your looking for a large good picture of Carl Sagan (And let’s be hones, who would NOT want such a picture??) here it is:

original to the left.. shopped to the right (The improvements don’t really become visible until you view the large version)

Click to view larger

But I promise this will be the last (at least for a month).

This image needs no caption

So I spent about 40 $ on some cheap camera equipment from focalprice.com and dealextreme.com (both cheap hong kong stores with free shipping).

Tripod – 14.47 $

http://www.focalprice.com/detail_DT011S.html

Cheap, light and folds nicely into a small bag that came along with it. Used it at home a couple of times, but if used with caution I think it will survive a couple of trips to the big outside world as well but will probably not last indefinitely like the other items I received. Very useful for setting up images with long exposures.

Shutter remote – 4.14 $

http://www.focalprice.com/detail_DI134B.html

Compared to the official one for my camera, it’s dirt cheap, and worked perfectly with my Canon EOS 1000D. Perfect for use with the tripod when I don’t want to shake the camera while taking pictures.

Lense Hood – 3.29 $

http://www.focalprice.com/detail_DI024B.html

Used to combat lens flare, I’m not J.J. Abrams. Makes the camera look cool, but I’ll probably never have a need to take pictures at an angle which will require this hood

UV Filter – 3.88 $

http://www.focalprice.com/detail_DI004B.html

Pretty practical to keep the lens safe. Was a bit skeptical to the low price, but could not see any difference in pictures taken with it on/off in lots of light settings. I hope this will prove itself useful sooner or later by taking a hit for the camera lens

microfiber cloths – 1.8 $

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6842

Extremely useful for cleaning the lenses as I always get fingerprints on the while changing. Also great for glasses, laptop screens etc.. Comes individually packed into cute little zip lock bags.

Polarizing filter – 7.89 $

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.14517

Prevents reflections from water/lakes, and makes the sky blue (read here how it works and see some examples, pretty fascinating).

(Left = without, Right = with polarizing filter).
Click for larger image

8X Macro lens – 9.14 $

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.17324

Good for taking pictures of small crap, but the field of focus is pretty small, but I’m sure this is true for all macro lenses

(Left = without, Right = with macro lens).
Click for larger image

The only downside is that with both the macro lens and UV filter attached the lenses will make a shadow for the internal blitz. Maybe I need a new blitz

All in all I’m pretty satisfied with the purchases I’ve made, and if you’re looking into getting some nice equipment for your camera it might be worth checking out focalprice and dealextreme instead of using hundreds of dollars. And IF it breaks or turns out to be rubbish, at least you’re only out a fiver.

The box itself is great, and much bigger than my older boxes, however my helmet is quite large so there is no way this box would fit 2 of them. But it could probably fit two smaller full face helmets.

To attach the backrest you have to tape on a template, and drill two holes in the box, and the brake lights looked kinda complicated to install (for me at least).

The internal document holder

I’ve seen on forums and stuff that several people have had problems with this, the locking mechanism (see image above) kinda tricks you into believing that you are supposed to squeeze it someway, or even to remove the center pin.

The way you’re supposed to do this by the way is just to pull (using quite a bit of force) on the red plastic around the lock, to open it. Maybe I’ll put up a video when I get my new camera.

And as well all know ferrets go completely insane when they get to play with water, which resulted in some pretty interesting pictures of Pinky looking retarded:

Running around with her tongue hanging out

Rolling around grabbing her own feet while showing off all teeths

It was pretty reasonable and  the pictures was way better than the old compact digital camera, here are a few test pictures I took during the day.. Click to see the LARGE version

1) A bullet hitting a small pond (no fishys were harmed)

2) A flower close up

3) A trio of ferrets, Pinky, Nemi and Buffy

4) Buffy posing for the camera