In the rear parking lot of an unassuming office building, unsuspecting parkers stumble upon two sections of the Berlin Wall.
The wall segments are enclosed by a low fence, and feature a large plaque which memorializes the 1989 fall of the Wall as “a tribute to American resolve.”
2685 Marine Way
Mountain View, California
Northwest corner of the rear parking lot
A real estate developer in Phoenix, Arizona named Ira F. Brilliant donated his extensive collection of 75 first editions of Beethoven’s music to San Jose State University to form the basis of a library and study center devoted to Beethoven’s music and humanitarian accomplishments. The Center’s primary mission is to “celebrate the ideals and achievements of Ludwig van Beethoven.”
The Center’s collections include original Beethoven manuscripts, documents, and materials; first editions of Beethoven’s music; art; and other ephemera, including a lock of Beethoven’s hair. (http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/beethoven/hair/hair.html)
The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192-0171
Phone: (408) 808-2058
FAX: (408) 808-2060
Email: lvb@email.sjsu.edu
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/beethoven/
The Beethoven Center is located in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library on the campus of San Jose State University in downtown San Jose. The King Library is at 150 E. San Fernando St., on the corner of S. Fourth and San Fernando streets. Public parking is available in the 4th St. Garage across the street (at 44 S. Fourth St.), and other nearby garages and lots. Visitors may also park in the University’s Seventh Street Garage for $8 daily on a space available basis (this garage is often full when classes are in session).
Hours:
Mondays 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Tuesdays 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Wednesdays 11:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Thursdays 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Fridays 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturdays 1:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Services will be limited on Saturdays and some weekday hours. If you wish to use the research collections or request photocopies, please contact the Center at (408) 808-2058 in advance of your visit.
]]>“San José Semaphore” is an art installation at the Adobe corporate headquarters in downtown San Jose.
Located within the top floors of Adobe’s Almaden Tower headquarters, Semaphore consists of four ten-foot wide illuminated disks composed of 24,000 Luxeon® LEDs donated by Philips Lumileds in San Jose. The disks continually shift and turn, engaging viewers on a visual and kinetic level while providing a steady, glowing, and purposefully moving presence on the San Jose skyline. The giant illuminated disks rotate to a new position every eight seconds and pulse out a message using a visual coding system that is intended to be deciphered. An online audio broadcast will provide a soundtrack of spoken and sung letters, numbers and musical tones that may help decode the message. A low-power radio broadcast also provides the soundtrack, audible within 2-3 blocks of the Almaden Tower on AM 1680. Cracking the coded message is posed as a challenge for the public.
Intended as a meditation on the coded nature of communication, Semaphore’s illuminated disks can each assume four distinct positions: vertical, horizontal, and left and right-leaning diagonal. With four wheels and four positions each, Semaphore has a vocabulary of 256 possible combinations, creating a way of communicating its encrypted message, known only to the artist and those involved with the installation. Cracking Semaphore’s coded message will be posed as a challenge for the public. Challenge details are posted online at www.sanjosesemaphore.org.
The digital artwork is designed to be visible from many streets, freeways and local buildings and will become a significant feature of the San Jose skyline. Commissioned by Adobe in collaboration with the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs, San José Semaphore engages the public with transmission of a coded message. The artwork’s unveiling coincided with the beginning of ZeroOne San Jose: “A Global Festival of Art on the Edge” showcasing digital art from around the world August 7-13, 2006.
Adobe’s Almaden Tower is situated directly beneath the flight path for aircraft landing at the Mineta San José International Airport, and the San José Semaphore is sensitive to the passage of aircraft above it. When a plane flies overhead, Semaphore reacts visibly to the disturbance, and its steady rhythm is broken. After the plane has passed, the disks resume their steady, purposeful transmission.
Semaphore was created by noted new media artist Ben Rubin, whose exhibitions have appeared at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Skirball Center in Los Angeles (in a show organized by the Getty Museum). Rubin teaches at the Yale School of Art and is represented in New York by the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.
The San José Semaphore pays homage to a century-old local landmark called the San José Electric Light Tower, erected at the intersection of Santa Clara and Market Streets in 1881 by local businessman J. J. Owen to illuminate downtown San José. The light tower remained a beloved presence above downtown San José until it blew down in a 1915 windstorm.
San José Semaphore also connects contemporary digital systems with the earliest practical telecommunications network: the Chappe semaphore telegraph developed in France in the late 18th century. The Chappe system employed a visual code created by the Chappe brothers that used wooden panels, moved manually by ropes and pulleys, to transmit messages between relay towers 5-6 miles apart.
Modern digital communications use coding systems that trace their lineage back to this earliest system of “high-speed” data transmission. Morse code, binary ascii character representations, and ultimately Adobe’s PostScript all represent evolutionary leaps from Claude Chappe’s original code.
San José Semaphore is part of the City of San Jose Public Art Collection. The work is 70-feet (21.3M) long and 10-feet (3M) tall, and situated on the 18th and 19th floors of Adobe’s Almaden Boulevard office tower. The San José Semaphore is visible from Interstate 87, and from a large part of downtown San José California.
http://www.sanjosesemaphore.org
During summer and fall of 2006, the San José Semaphore operates daily from 7 a.m. until 2 a.m., 7 days a week. Its hours of operation may change; please visit the web page for up-to-date information.
]]>Welcome to Silicon Valley Visitor, an encyclopedia of interesting sights and events in the greater San José metropolitan area.
What is Silicon Valley?
Silicon Valley generally encompasses the communities surrounding the southern part of San Francisco Bay, including—but not limited to—Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San José, Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos, and Milpitas.
Silicon Valley earned the name from the silicon chip innovations that began here. Today, Silicon Valley is one of the world’s major technology hubs. Read more about Silicon Valley history at Wikipedia.
This website is currently in the beginning stages of construction. Content is limited, and some sections or links may not yet be functional. But thanks for stopping by!
Categories
• Architecture
• Art
• Day Trips
• Entertainment
• Events
• Food
• History
• Kids
• Museums
• Oddities
• Recreation
• Religion
• Tech
• Shopping
• Transportation
One of the icons of Silicon Valley, Apple Computer, Inc. is based in Cupertino, California. Apple helped start the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with its Apple II and continued to shape it with the Macintosh. Apple is known for innovative software and hardware, such as the iMac; its iPod digital music player; and the iTunes Music Store.
The Apple Campus is not open to the public with the exception of the Company Store.
Apple Computer - The Company Store
Open to the public Monday through Friday, this store features products with the Apple logo—but ironically, doesn’t sell Macs!
http://www.apple.com
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Google Earth Placemark: File:AppleCompanyStore.kml
]]>Originally conceived as a family residence, the Byingtons welcome you into their home-away from-home. The winery was established in 1987 by entrepreneur Bill Byington and the family is still actively involved in the day to day operations of the winery.
Bill and Mary Byington, in 1958, purchased 95 mountainous acres surrounded by redwood forests as a family retreat. In the early 1970s, a well-known Santa Cruz Mountains winemaker approached the family, wanting to lease a portion of their land for vineyards. A keen wine collector, Bill was intrigued, and the seed for future vineyard cultivation was planted. Almost twenty years after leaving his family farm in Idaho, Bill returned to his farming roots and planted nine acres of pinot noir on the southernmost tip of the rugged Santa Cruz Mountains terrain. Byington Vineyard & Winery was established with its vintage 1987 release.
Byington Winery welcomes visitors for complimentary tasting from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm daily.
Private tours and tastings are available for groups of ten or more by appointment only. Tours are $10.00 per person and include a 45-minute educational and entertaining tour through our vineyard, our production facility and into our wine cave. During the tour, your host will present you with a selection of our current releases.
Picnic facilities are available on a first come first serve basis. However, on parties of 10 or more reservations are strongly recommended. Our facility provides picnic tables, cloth-covered round tables with chairs and umbrellas. We also have gas and charcoal grills but you need to bring BBQ tools. In addition, we have a Bocci Ball Court and provide you with balls and instructions.
From the Bay Area take Highway 17 to Santa Cruz. Exit at Bear Creek Road and travel uphill for 5.5 miles. Look for us on the left side of the road.
From Santa Cruz take Highway 17 to San Jose. Exit on Summit Road and turn left over the Highway. Continue on Summit until it dead-ends at Bear Creek Rd. Turn left on Bear Creek Rd. and continue approximately 2 miles. Look for us on the left side of the road.
]]>Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is one of the world’s leading research laboratories. Established in 1962 at Stanford University in Menlo Park, California, its mission is to design, construct and operate state-of-the-art electron accelerators and related experimental facilities for use in high-energy physics and synchrotron radiation research. SLAC is enriched by over 3,000 visiting scientists from universities, laboratories and industrial concerns from the U.S. and foreign countries.
SLAC hosted the first webpage in the U.S., and the above-ground klystron gallery atop the beamline is the longest building in the United States. It can be seen from I-280, which overpasses the beamline.
http://home.slac.stanford.edu/visitslac.html
2275 Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 926-2204
Tours of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) are available to everyone 12 and older. Tours last about 2 hours and generally include an overview of particle physics research conducted at SLAC, a view of the giant detectors required to observe subatomic particles and a stroll down the Klystron Gallery, the world’s longest building. Advance reservations are required to join a tour.
The SLAC Main Gate is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All visitors must have a valid photo ID to enter the Laboratory.
Visitors: Security Officers at the Main Gate will provide visitors with SLAC personnel contact assistance, directions and maps. If a SLAC contact cannot be reached, visitors will be asked to wait in the Visitor’s parking lot until contact is made. For more information, contact Security at 650-926-2551.
]]>The area’s first railroad, the Santa Cruz & Felton, began carrying tourists to the Big Trees and the beach in 1875. In 2003, the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge RR celebrated its Ruby Anniversary (40 years) and the Santa Cruz, Big Trees & Pacific RY has been operating along the 1875 Santa Cruz & Felton route since 1985.
ROARING CAMP & BIG TREES NARROW GAUGE RAILROAD
Adult Fare (13 & up): $18
Child Fare (3 through 12): $12
Under 3: Free
SANTA CRUZ, BIG TREES & PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY (Beach Train)
Adult Fare (13 & up): $20
Child Fare (3 through 12): $15
Under 3: Free
Parking at Roaring Camp: $6
Directions from Silicon Valley (San Jose, East Bay, Peninsula, San Francisco, Marin, Sacramento, points north):
Take State Route 1, U.S. 101, or Interstates 280, 680 or 880 south to I-880/SR-17. Continue southwest on I-880/SR-17 to Scotts Valley. Exit at Mt. Hermon Rd. and drive northwest 3.5 miles to Felton. Mt. Hermon Road ends at Graham Hill Road. Turn left on Graham Hill Road and drive 1/2 mile to Roaring Camp (on right).
2333 South White Road
San Jose, CA 95148
(408) 238-9900
See website for this season’s operating hours.
2006 Season Prices:
Adult - $25.99
Junior - $19.99
Senior - $15.99
Children 2 and under - free
Parking is charged by the City of San Jose. Rates for the 2006 season are $6.00 per car and $18.00 per bus. All rates are subject to change without notice.
]]>The facility boasts the largest Immersive Theater on the West Coast. The theater presents panoramic views of Mars and Saturn’s rings as well as other eye-popping movies and special effects on a curved 40 foot wide screen. Content includes a true-color panorama taken by the rover Spirit of the “Cahokia” site on the Columbia Hills and images taken by the Cassini mission of Saturn can be viewed on the large screen. Some of the alien images are seen at twice the resolution of high definition television.
School and other groups are welcome, but please call in advance of your visit if you plan to bring a group of more than 20 and to ensure the most current information to allow us to provide a better visitor experience. The NASA Exploration Center is FREE and open to the public.
There is a gift shop outside the NASA Exploration Center that sells NASA and space related clothing, patches, posters, videos and more. All purchases at the gift shop, operated by the nonprofit Ames employee association, are tax-exempt.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/exploration.html
NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, California 94035
(650) 604-6274 or (650) 604-6497
Tuesday - Friday: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Weekends: 12 noon - 4 p.m.
Closed Mondays and Federal Holidays.
From Highway 101 Northbound:
1. Exit Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway.
2. At the stop light, turn right.
3. Turn right at the stop sign, before the main gate.
4. The NASA Exploration Center is on the right, proceed behind the dome for Parking.
From Highway 101 Southbound:
1. Exit Moffett Blvd./NASA Parkway.
2. At the stop light, turn right.
3. Turn right at the stop sign, before the main gate.
5. The NASA Exploration Center is on the right, proceed behind the dome for Parking.