San Francisco (part 3)

This evening, I had dinner with some colleagues at an Italian restaurant on the other side of Chinatown. They had a delicious mushroom risotto. Like I've said before, I don't think there is bad food anywhere in San Francisco. It did make for a long walk back to the motel but did get me to Union Square and Powell Street. This is the area where I have stayed in the past and it is very busy and touristy with lots of expensive stores selling things that no one really needs. I did end up stopping at the Apple store as my iPhone had zoomed the screen and I didn't know how to turn it off. In case it happens again, the solution is triple tap with 3 fingers to bring up a zoom menu assuming that the zoom feature is turned on within accessibility.

With all of the walking around today at Moscone West, going to the Whole Foods store for breakfast and lunch, and through Chinatown for dinner, it added up to a lot of steps. I hadn't walked this far in a while. This screen is from the pedometer app on the iPhone. That's almost enough walking to offset dinner. I had gone by the Piston & Chain storefront but there was some sort of private party going on by the time I had gotten there so I didn't stop.

There were several UAV vendors showing off their wares as well as quite a few presentations and posters where they have been used to collect data. I gather that there are some real challenges to using UAVs to collect data but in many cases the lower cost still make it pretty attractive option. I found this model interesting as it has 4 electric motors for vertical lift and a twin cylinder gas engine for flying. The gas engine gives it a lot of time in the air and a large payload but still retains the important benefit of vertical take off and landing. Pretty slick.