As well as the Pinkerton Lecture, I made my way to a few other events this week. Mobile Geeks of London. Run by Whatleydude, this event is a drinking and connecting event, run every few months or there about. I got there later in the evening, after my trip to the IET, to find the […]
London 2012 and Social Media
On the one hand, the Olympics are the most wonderful celebration of humanity, of striving to be the best, faster, higher, stronger as the motto says. On the other hand, I find them – the organisation behind the games – to be one of the most cynical and grasping of organisations, historically prone to corruption, […]
Survivors – What would you do
Survivors, a re-imaging of the 70’s series devised by Terry Nation, started last night on the BBC and there was a minor Twitter flurry of discussion about it. There’s been mixed reaction to the episode, including these from Jason, and from Savage Popcorn. One common question that popped up is what would you do in […]
Books September 08
More Library, more scifi. Cosmonaut Keep Ken Macleod. another story of humans out there creating new worlds. Great story, approached from different angles until you put the whole tale together at the end about using alien tech to build new ships and bestow immortality. Revelation Space Alastair Reynolds. Took me a couple of goes to […]
Omnivore’s 100
I like lists and here’s a list of 100 foods that Andrew from very good taste thinks every one should try once. As usual with these lists, bold are those food I’d try, strike through are those I don’t really want to try. I’ve annotated the list to give a little background. (via CC) The […]
Les MisBarack
Les Mis is one of my favourite musicals (I’ve seen it about 3 times), so I love the song here. But it works on more levels than that. It would be great if UK politics was as creative
LHC makes headlines
And isn’t that gorgeous. This is a science project, a hard physics project and it’s got the world twittering and blogging and just generally talking about it. How often does that happen? It’s mainstream as well, it’s not just the geeks, with the Google logo changing and BBC pushing it as the number 1 headline […]
Bre Pettis and History Hacked
My friend Bre from New York has just made a pilot TV show for the (US) History Channel. In it, he hacks historical inventions today, using items out of his closet. I sublet his room in NY for a few months and have seen his closet, so can believe it 😉 So congratulations are due […]
August Books
I finally joined the library this month, so getting through a lot of new authors I would not have usually read. Battlestar Galactica, Jeffrey Carver. Another free pdf from Tor, this was good as I’ve never seen the mini-series/pilot for the re-imaged series. That said, the book was a little too much like a transcription […]
Scarborough
Last week, I was up in Scarborough with an old school friend. As I’d not seen her for about 10 years, there was a little concern, but it all went great and lots of fun was had. She usually lives in Moscow, but has a holiday home up in Yorkshire, to get back to the […]
A Girl’s Guide to the Great British Beer Festival
It’s the Great British Beer Festival this week at Earl’s Court, a huge cavern of a place that is full of beer and beer drinkers. As part of their ongoing campaign to widen the appeal of beer CAMRA are running some free tours, a Girl’s Guide to the Great British Beer Festival. They’re curated by […]
Blogging, Touristing and Fetes
Got up to some interesting things this week. On Tuesday, I went to the London Bloggers’ Meetup; it was sponsored by Stella, who did a grand job. They bought the drinks and offered some free trips on their new airship for the most entertaining description of your local pub. (I didn’t win). This is all […]
July Books
I got a whole load of books from a fete, so I’ve been working my way through these. They reflect my favourite easy reading – thrillers. Deja Dead, Kathy Reichs. I’ve rea a few of her books and always like them. The protagonist is Dr Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist. This is one of the […]
A trip out sculling
I went sculling yesterday, probably the first time in a single for about 2 years. I’ve spent a lot of time coxing crew boats and in the bigger boats rowing, but never really cracked the single sculling thing (falling in and getting wet not really being my favourite thing – I like scuba diving but […]
Going Solo is hiring
By all accounts, the Going Solo conference in Lausanne earlier this year was a success and Steph is running a second edition here in the UK. She’s also looking for help in the form of a sponsorship person so if you’re interested, what are you waiting for? Availability: as soon as possible Remuneration: 20% commission […]
Firefox 3 Launch Party
Firefox was the star of the party last night, when it was awarded with a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a single day, over 8 million. A good time seemed to be had by all, with the free drinks flowing, sponsored by Glaxstar, eBay and Glubble. It was interesting how there were […]
Henley regatta
Off to Henley for the Henley Royal Regatta. Should see some good racing and lots of hats. But hopefully not too much rain although it did not start too well today
June Books
Death Watch – Mark Billingham. Reasonable thriller. Operation Certain Death – Damien Lewis. I didn’t buy this but found it in the back of a truck I was travelling in. The tale of a hostage situation in Sierra Leone in 2000, the book describes the rescue mission by the SAS/Paras. Good story, but definitely needed […]
Battersea Power Station
I was supposed to be doing some biz dev today, but the meeting got cancelled after the other party spent all night playing werewolf (I still don’t see the attraction in that game). I thought I’d try and do something a little bit different and Annie Mole came through via Twitter, after she’d just written […]
Mashed 2008
After my day at Interesting, I jumped on the Tube up to the BBC run Mashed, up at Alexandra Palace. This was a 36 hour or so hacking festival, with people all over the place coding and building new tools, most of which had something to do with a whole load of BBC feeds/API/data that […]