My birthday present to myself in 2024 was a trip out to San Francisco to visit the Bay Area Maker Faire because I’m a huge fan of makers of all kinds and I’d heard of this faire from multiple sources for years. I also wanted to visit the Computer History Museum because even though I practically commuted to Mountain View, CA while I was working I never got time to see it there. When I was very young I went to the Boston, MA incarnation before it moved to the west coast.

I stopped in at the Computer History Museum first, it was a lot of fun seeing so many of the computers that were important in my career, Apple II, TRS-80 Model I, IBM PC, Compaq DeskPro, Cray supercomputers, ( they didn’t seem to have any of the Honeywell DPS-8 family of GCOS machines ), and even an Amiga. It was a lot more extensive than what I remembered from my childhood.

I have to say that Software history wasn’t very well done and was very biased towards gaming and towards Silicon Valley companies ( essentially whoever was paying for it ).

Bay Area Maker Faire is held at an amazing venue across the bay from San Francisco at Mare Island which is a former naval base. There are huge buildings along the water and big cranes and railway tracks. Most of the maker exhibits were in former coal bunkers where they used to store coal for the battleships. Every form of making was represented there, from costumes to programming, from wood working to metal sculpture. It was great to walk around and just see the imagination and self expression and inventiveness of each of the exhibitors. They even had a dark area for stuff that would light up, so cool.

I was there early on both days that I went and that was a good plan because everything got a lot more crowded than I was comfortable with by just after lunch. One issue I had as an older/heavier human was that there wasn’t much seating in the shade, as in none… I ended up finding a shadow of a building and a raised bulkhead door to sit on. I know it is a west coast right to always be warm and in the sun, but honestly I just burn up and get too hot in that situation.

I also got to have my birthday dinner with a couple of lovely friends that I hadn’t seen in a number of years. It was great to catch up with them and have a wonderful meal at my favorite steak house in the country Harris’ Restaurant. I’ve been going to Harris’ for decades and I just love the vintage interior, classic food, classic drinks, great wine list, amazing steaks ( from their own herd, aged by them ). They’re looking a little threadbare at the moment but still excellent. I think the pandemic may have done them some damage.

That’s the trip report finally, I really enjoyed it!