Yesterday we went to visit The Sphere, in Las Vegas. It’s a gigantic spherical building covered in LED. You can’t miss it.
We were there at the invitation of Smasher, the first user of d3, back in 2005. There’s a few more machines in the rack these days, but the smile is just the same.
Our machines, possibly even including a few lines of code written by yours truly, are driving video for U2’s Las Vegas residency. The show takes place inside a spherical LED screen that looks like the inside of a nuclear power station.
It’s so wide that it fills your entire visual field, taking you somewhere else. Even jaded old me will admit that it’s pretty spectacular.
This experience forms a fitting, and surprisingly emotional finale to this journey : a little trip back to the very beginnings of my career as an engineer.
I had literally no idea what I was doing then, and I’m not sure I do now. But I did know when I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. And that’s what this trip to Silicon Valley has felt like.
To work!