War of the Worlds

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The eve of the war.....

The eve of the war.....

Some time ago I went to see "Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds" performed live at the Sheffield Arena. It was awesome. This year I found out that they were doing it again. In London. With a stage show. And David Essex. So I booked tickets, completely forgetting about Three Thing Game on the same weekend. 

Idiot me. 

Anyhoo, this morning we set off bright and early, arrived in good time, and discovered that in celebration of our trip the good people of London had closed the underground (or at least the Circle line that we needed), moved the bus-stops and hidden all the taxis. And the weather was a bit chilly too. Fortunately we are made of stern stuff and managed to find our way to the venue with only a bit of extra walking. 

The show was excellent. It was perhaps a bit more "stagey" than I would prefer with more expressive dancing than I think it really needed. And I've never been a fan of singing children in "full-urchin" mode. But the loud pieces were properly loud, although not as loud as the performance in Sheffield. When that one kicked off I watched the first three rows actually move backwards six feet.....

David Essex was the star, and made sure that we knew it. The rest of the cast filled their roles with gusto. Even the tripod that lurched around the stage was suitably menacing.  Great fun and well worth the price of admission.

Shame on you Uncle Joe

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While we were in Whitby a while back we bought a can of Uncle Joe's Mintballs. They are really really nice. Great to have around when you are writing code. I opened the can today and discovered something a bit naughty. In the "Good Old Days" (tm) you would find a bag of mintballs. Nowadays you have a much smaller number of flashily wrapped, individual mints. The weight of minty goodness you get has gone down from 200 gms to 120 gms. And the price has gone up slightly too. 

Shame on you Uncle Joe. Shame on you. 

Good Food at Harogate

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Last week it was gadgets, this week it is food. Who says I don't lead a cultured existence?

Anyhoo, today we headed off to Harrogate in search of cheese and other comestibles at the Spring BBC Good Food Show. There was lots of great stuff, and much fun was had trying samples. I wondered about taking a selection of disguises next year so that I can go round multiple times, tippling gin and eating cheese off toothpicks. But it is probably easier just to buy the stuff that you like, and so we did. We also went to a cooking demonstration that was very entertaining and very slick. 

Michel Roux Jr. gave the demo that we saw. The trick, apparently, is not to care whether or not your soufflé rises. Then it takes care of itself. Great day, great fun. And some great food.  

Once more unto eBay.....

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... but for how long...

... but for how long...

I'm doing some camera shuffling again using eBay. This means taking pictures, packing boxes and posting things. I hope it all ends well. It seems to have got a lot easier to send things abroad now, one of my cameras is heading off to Spain, but I only have to worry about getting it as far as the eBay transit place, which is really nice. I just hope Manu likes it. 

Hyper Busy Open Day

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If you want to see a higher quality version of the picture, and find yourself on it, you can click though the image to the version on Flickr

If you want to see a higher quality version of the picture, and find yourself on it, you can click though the image to the version on Flickr

Another hyper-busy open day today. Thank you all so much for coming to see us, hope that it was worth the trip. Everybody left clutching their free copy of the "Bananas" edition of the C# Yellow Book that we are using with the First Year at the moment. On the right you can see an exclusive image of the latest printing of the book, with the hyper-realistic 3D rendered cover art. 

.. and we're back

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Cottingham station at 6:30 am. Looks more model than real. 

Cottingham station at 6:30 am. Looks more model than real. 

Monday was not a great day. I staggered home after my last lecture and went straight to bed. And stayed there. Mostly. Yesterday I found out that the same thing had happened to number one son. And we'd both eaten at the same burger place on Saturday. 

Oh well. 

I'm back at work now, which is nice, frantically trying to catch up with two days of this'n'that. 

Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age at the Science Museum London

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Just go. Go now. It has a little while to run. You can book tickets and find out more here. We went today. It is a breathtaking exhibition. They've got some stunning things to see, including the actual capsule used by the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. It looks more like a wrecking ball than a spacecraft, covered with insulating material and with a hole where you get in and out.

There are things I wasn't sure were still even around, prototypes of satellites and lunar landers and some completely awesome artwork and drawings. I'm just about old enough to remember some of this when it was happening and I find it amazing that all these years later we can go and see the actual stuff. The only snag (for me) is that you aren't allowed to take pictures. But you'll bring back a whole bunch of great memories. 

(and a few postcards and T shirts - which are half price at the moment)

In the future, your TV will know where you live

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I bought a little TV today. It's a "Smart" TV and rather nice. I plugged it in and did the setup thing. It started by asking for a network connection and, once connected, quizzed me about my name, address and lots of other things before doing the tuning thing and finally showing me a picture. 

I guess this is the way the world is these days. If I watch loads of DIY shows then perhaps I'll start getting emails from paint companies, or seeing adverts for orbital sanders appearing around the web pages I visit. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. But it is definitely a thing.  We are going to be surrounded by lots of devices that are spying on us and sending stuff back to build up the ever growing databases that are held on each of us. 

I wonder how much of the attractively low price I paid for the TV is subsidised by cross-marketing deals that the manufacturer has in place for all this information they are planning to gather. I didn't have the nerve to select "Not agree" to any of the licence terms that I encountered on my way to BBC 1. Perhaps if I had rejected some of the conditions I'd be asked to stump up some cash to pay for me opting out and wanting a little privacy. 

I kind of hanker for the days when things where everything was dumb and nobody knew (or cared) what you were watching. Perhaps in the future you'll be able to buy a "personality" remote control that you can leave by the telly when you go out. This will select all the posh channels you'd like people to think you watch so that you can watch a few episodes of "Man vs Food" without your TV thinking ill of you. 

Sending Money the Scary Way

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 Mobile banking is wonderful. The way that you can send money to a distant account by just tapping a button is really nice (once you've done the shenanigans with the card reader thingy and set up the account first of course).

However, I always fret that one wayward digit might result in me sending the plumber's payment to some other lucky person. I wonder what the legal situation is if this happens?

Anyhoo, no worries, and all is paid for. I am now the certified owner of a properly shiny boiler.