I’m not that more awake than I was last night, but at least it’s daylight

First of all one observation I must make about these types of dinners, there’s an advantage that is especially obvious when in a private room: there are no queues to go to the ladies. According to the sign up sheet, the ratio of male:female was around 9:1, which appeared to be the case on the night.

On getting to the venue, it was obvious that the human herding instinct was coming into play. It was a reasonable sized room, but everyone was crammed into the space around the bar, making it difficult to get in, get your badge or move around at first. It was well organised, with Kalee on the door collecting money before you were allowed in to the crush. Later, as more people moved into the room and especially as the food started to be served, we expanded into the space. As a bunch of people who probably spend a fair bit of time in ‘solitary’ on the internet, we definitely like our gatherings!.

The food was good – fahjitas, the beer and margueritas were flowing and the company was intriguing in the most part. Lloyd Davies wandered around for an hour interviewing people – I’m on there somewhere; a recording was made by Kosso of Robert’s speech and Q&A session. After that people started to drift away. I probably spent about half the time speaking to people whom I knew (or had a least met once!) and the other finding new people to talk to.

Went to this months Geek Dinner this evening, arranged by Hugh MacLeod and with special guest Robert Scoble. A very pleasant evening it was, chatting with plenty of people whose names and links I’ll add in the morning! Meanwhile, photos are over here.

Go-karting was lots of fun. I’ve never done it before, so it was a good challenge. After a briefing about all the rules, with lots of safety tipos, we all (there were 12 of us) got kitted out and ventured out onto the track. You sit about 6 inches off hte ground, in front of 2 noisy engines, an a very snug bucket seat. With no seatbelt. There’s a small steering wheel and 2 pedals only. we had 10 minuts practice and then went out for a 30 minutes race. I couldn’t beleive how much hard work it was to keep the karts on the track – no power steering. I only spun to a halt once, which I think was a minor miracle and managed an average of 30miles/hour. Scary stuff. I was pleased to see I finished 5th, behind people who had done this before – a good result for me.