Happy Birthday Me

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Another year older and deeper in debt. As the saying goes. But at least I got to go to Alton Towers. (being the birthday boy and also the driver means that you do get some privileges it seems).

I’m not a big fan of big rides, I just like the attention to detail and the general atmosphere of these places. Of course Disney do it best, but Universal Studio and Alton run them a close second. Alton Towers doesn’t have a huge stable of TV and film back story to beef up its act, but it more than makes up for this with fantastic grounds around the park itself.

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A good place to be

We had a great time. I went on some of the less demanding rides and the weather was kind to us. What more can you ask?

Oh and many thanks to the people who flocked to my FaceBook page and wished me all the best. It almost makes me wish I posted stuff on there. Perhaps I will one day, just before it goes out of fashion…

Horizontal Rain and Degrees

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Number one daughter got her degree today, so it was off to York to sample somebody else’s degree ceremony for a change. It was a great occasion and a good time was had by everyone although the experience was slightly marred by the cloudburst and he horizontal rain that we got as soon as we arrived which persisted until we left.

The ducks (there are lots of them about at York) looked like they were really enjoying the weather, but I think they were the only ones. After this lot my suit definitely has an appointment at the dry cleaners. In fact, anything with the word dry in it sounds good to me at the moment.

Graze at your Desk

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Number one son is with us for a few days, which is nice. Today he is working from home. In this case our home. In these situations he has his lunch sent in, so today he had it delivered to our house. The lunch itself comes from http://www.graze.com/ who will post you a balanced box of nuts and fruits that is designed to keep you going through the day.

I must admit it looked rather nice, and it is supposed to provide 3 of your five portions of fruit too. Number one son looks quite well on it, and reckons that their delivery is very efficient and the system works well.

Me, I had an enormous cheese sandwich…

It Felt Like a Kiss

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Adam Curtis makes scary documentaries. Not “Man coming up behind you and shouting ‘Boo!’” scary, but “How on earth did we get ourselves into this mess?” scary.

Now he has made something which is a mix of both kinds of scary. In an office block in Manchester. It Felt Like a Kiss is a walk through interactive event with a movie in the middle. Number one son and myself made it all the way to the end and I must admit it was a fascinating way to spend a couple of hours, with some really scary bits here and there. It tells you things you didn’t know about the way the world works and gives you the odd fright, including one bit where a man with a chainsaw chases you down a darkened corridor…

Open Day

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Today we had a university Open Day. I like giving talks at these, and despite my condition (which you really, really don’t want to know about) I went along to do my bit.I took a picture of the audience at the start. We were in the vertigo inducing Physics lecture theatre.

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Thanks very much to those who turned up, I hope you enjoyed the visit.

Klaus at Pixel Creations

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Many years ago I used to work with Klaus. This was when robots were wildly fashionable. You wouldn’t think that things like engineering research have fashions, but they do. Klaus was doing things like making robots weigh chocolate bars, figure out where they were and all sorts. Great fun.

That was a while back, and I met him today when he was buying a flash gun. As was I. I’ve not done any flash photography for a long time. The first flash gun I ever bought was a Sunpak DC3. This was solid state, made a fantastic whistling noise like the scary bit at the end of the Silence of the Lambs, and was very optimistically rated by the manufacturer. So much so that the first roll of, very expensive, colour slide film that I used it with just showed lots of pictures of eyes and teeth glinting in the darkness. I’ve not been that keen on flash photography ever since. But I’m told that the new flashguns can do very fangled things by talking to the camera and you can use them for fill in effects and all sorts. So I thought I’d get one.

Klaus was buying one for his business. He now works as a professional photographer and is really enjoying his work. You can find him at http://www.pixelcreations.co.uk/.

Paul Moves On

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Paul Chapman left us today. He did is degree at Hull a while back, went off and did a lot of Seabed Visualisation (that is what is PhD is about), came back to Hull, taught a bunch of courses, did a lot of work on the Venus project and even found time to play some music. And jump out of planes. And build the world’s first paragliding simulator. And then buy his own motorised paraglider and fly it over the university taking pictures.

Paul is taking up a position at Glasgow. They are very lucky to have him, and we are very sorry to lose him.