New Year at Hornsea

First, a happy new year to both my readers. At Chateau Miles, we have been know to celebrate the arrival of a new calendar by heading off to the seaside at Hornsea. Today the weather looked reasonable, and so we set out. On the way there it seemed like a bad idea, in that we drove along underneath some very nasty looking clouds and the odd smattering of rain.

But when we got to the coast it was wonderful. It was very blustery, but this really seemed to blow out the cobwebs at the start of the year. It was also pretty busy, and one or two valiant souls had actually gone for a paddle. I'd taken the big camera, and so I took a bunch of snaps.

New Year seaside

Arcadia

Lights

Early Riser

A nice way to start the day

York Under Water

We went to York today, the weather was nice, but bits of the city were under water.

York city wall

The top of Micklegate (I think)

We used to park the car near here

The river is a lot wider at the moment....

Early but not bright

Went into Hull at 7:00 am this morning. Not because of some confusion updating the clocks (that was weeks ago) but to review the papers for BBC Radio Humberside. I've been doing this for a while, and I usually take the camera in case any nice photo opportunities arise.

Early Hull looking good

I managed to muddle my way through the reviews OK (note to self, you seem to run a bit slow on Mondays - go for other days of the week in future) and with a bit of luck they'll ask me back so I can get up early all over again.

Make your own jigsaws

My first ever test..

Moosaic lives! I'm about to embark on a new project and so I'm going round finishing off some old ones. And the first result of this is that you can now download my Moosaic program. This lets you create image jigsaws out of your Flickr pictures and then get them printed onto little bits of card. Fun for all the family and just in time for Christmas..

Find out more here.

Barcelona by bus and foot

Done a lot of walking today. And a lot of top deck bus riding. After we had signed in at the conference centre we went on a tour of the city by open top bus. We took in the cathedral, which is the most impressive building site that I've ever seen, and Guadi park, which was very nice. Also a whole bunch of other, highly interesting, places which are all shut on a Monday. I've put a bunch of pictures up on Flickr. No doubt I'll take more.

Cathedral spires

Tomorrow the work starts for real.

Pictures of Hull

I like the roof of this arcade

Fancy a burger?

Sunset and Steak Pies

We went out for tea tonight. On the way to the Ferguson Fawcett in Walkington (they do really good food) we went past a rather nice sunset.

Worth going out for

Hull Fair

We went to Hull Fair tonight. We tried to go last year but it was pretty much full. So this time we set out early. We took the camera along, but minimal funds - just to be on the safe side.

The Freak Out ride. Scary, and one of the smaller ones

I just love the classy artwork on this one.

More "Hook a Pooh" than "Hook a Duck"

What you win if you aren't careful

I think this is my favourite fair picture

The one ride I actually went on. Note the attractive price and the fact that it does not seem capable of leaving the ground.

Or not

Look carefully. I'm third from the left. Yeah. Right.

We managed to escape only nine pounds down on the trip. But a cuddly monkey, four donuts, some nougat and some peanut brittle up. And it was a great night.

Foggy Morning

A bit foggy this morning. But sunny. Fortunately I had the camera with me....

A view across the sports field

A walk through the woods....

The back of our large lecture theatre

Just some trees

The back of our building

I love autumn.

Pinball Wizardry

I'm going to have to have a go at taking some pictures as good as these.

Hi for Collectormania

And so it was another Sunday of rising at 4:30 am and the zooming off down the motorway to mingle with the stars and buy silly bits of overpriced plastic at the Collectormania in Milton Keynes. We've been going to these for a while, initially to meet up with hobbits and the like, but now more likely to have a drift around the many stands selling all sorts of stuff. Of course I took a camera (or two)

..of course it is cool - I'm there

Maggie Grace signs her name

Amber Benson tries to get us to sign it for her

They have Krispy Kreme donuts at Milton Keynes now. "A heart attack with a hole in it". And free samples. Yay!

It was very tempting, but it wouldn't fit in our toilet and 60 quid is a bit expensive. I've no idea what the thing on the right is.

Then it was back into the car to trundle back to Hull.

Shiny Doncaster

Went to Doncaster today for a presentation. The university has a relationship with Doncaster College, where we accredit two of their degree courses. The students are based and taught at Doncaster but we award the degree.

Anyhoo, I went down to say hello to the Business Computing crew and give a presentation about final year projects. They are a nice bunch and the talk seemed to go OK, although I may have spoiled the atmosphere a little by telling the undertaker joke right at the end.

The brand new Doncaster campus is very shiny - and this is just the back of the college

Live Writer Flickr Inkifier now available

I've finished writing the code for the latest Live Writer plugin. It lets you grab images from Flickr, annotate them with ink and then post them back. It also has a few image processing feature, including a "wild" thing which is quite fun. You can find out more here.

Update on 2006-09-03 10:34 by Rob

I've fixed a couple of issues with the plugin. It now responds sensibly if you use it on a machine with no network connection, or a non-tablet device.

Roman Holiday

Last week I bought a new camera. I really shouldn't have. But this was a real bargain and so I liquidated all my ebay assets and sallied forth to Currys to make the purchase. I wanted the camera because it has a very long zoom lens.

So today we went off to Sewerby Park, where they were doing some Roman re-enactments. And out came the camera...

Sewerby House looking good

A local parrot

They do have some superb gardens here.

Bridlington Bay

And looking the other way..

Apparently it is rather hard to shoot an arrow from horseback.

Testing the troops

The Flick Inkifier Lives!

Groovy!

This is the first post from the new Flickr Inkifier Live Writer plugin. I've added ink annotation and a smidgeon of image processing. Oh, and local file upload.

Just got the setup project to write now......

Good Weather for Ducks

On holiday today. Went to Slimbridge, a duck sanctury. On the way there it rained. And I mean really rained. We were driving through flooded roads and everything. Real frontier stuff. I was almost wishing I had one of those horrid 4x4 type cars that some people think are cool.  Almost, but not quite.

When we got there the place was pretty packed. Lots of little kids in shiny (but not for long) wellies. Lots of parents looking out of the restaurant window at the driving rain and wondering what on earth to do for the next three hours. As we walked in they announced our arrival with a fire alarm. Which was nice, and did make the queue for the food a lot shorter.

Fortunately, and for reasons that I can't fully explain, the weather brightened as I ate my baked potato with cheese (and very nice cheese too) so after our meal we were able to go out and take some pictures of the birds. I was trying a new "down and dirty" technique with the photographs which involves holding the camera very close to the ground. Makes the snaps a little more interesting.

Some birds (no idea of the names)

Some Flamingos (pretty sure on this one)

Probably ducks, and pretty big ones too

...and the winners are...

Today was the ground announcement of the winners of the software deveopment competition.  In the end the team from Norway came third, Brazil was second and Italy came first.  Well done folks, and good look with your applications in the future.

Joe Wilson and the winning teams

After that there was the grand Imagine Cup party, but unfortunatly I was feeling a little too fragile and anyway we needed to be on the road at 3:00 the following morning, so I thought I'd stay in the hotel room and sample a little Delhi hospitality. So I ordered a burger from room service. After 20 minutes there was a knock at the door. An immaculately dressed waiter with white gloves handed me his business card and then deployed what I can only descibe as the best presented burger I have ever seen. It arrived on a trolley, with four different kinds of mustard, proper HP sauce and all the trimmings. And coke. Talk about a morale booster.

Delhi for burger

It was delicious.  So, after packing all my precious electronic goodies into my suitcase (there is a security alert on at the moment and I won't be able to take any toys into the plane) I was able to turn in feeling extremely well fed.

Dash to Delhi

Today was the day of the dash to Delhi. When we leave our lovely hotel in Agra and head of to a, hopefully equally lovely, hotel in Delhi. I'll miss this place. Everyone has been really nice to us, and it has the best bowling ally I've ever been on. We had to get up at 4:30 am to get on the bus. The organisers rather thoughtfully set off all the phones at 4:20, 4:25 and 4:35. Thanks folks.

The journey back was much smoother than the journey out. This driver didn't use his horn anything like as much as the other guy, and this seemed to make us go faster. The slowest bit was the road around Delhi to the hotel. This was the busiest road I've ever seen, with all the drivers ignoring just about every rule of the road and camel powered trailers mixing it with luxury coaches, motorbikes, mopeds, Mercedes cars, cows and pedestrians.

Family transport

Then we got to the hotel and my luggage decided to go walkabout. My suitcase has a kind of wanderlust. Everywhere I go it finds a way to escape from me. It has been around Los Angeles and Las Vegas and I am now more surprised to see it than not. This time it vanished from the coach. Fortunatly it turned up in time for tea, and a change of clothes.

In the afternoon we watched the Software Development presentations. By gum, but some of them were wonderful. What young people with drive and imagination can achieve is amazing. Whenever I go to one of these things I reflect that the the future is actually in quite safe hands. And the presentation skills of these people are highly impressive. To have such confidence in front of an audience is just amazing.  We didn't find out who the winner is, that comes tomorrow. I tried to stay for the presentation design and short film parts of the competition, but the early hour and the lure of the most luxurious room I've ever had got the better of me and so I caught the shuttle bus back to my hotel and turned in.

Hard Bargaining

We had a special party event tonight. There were dancers, puppets, stalls, even someone selling magic tricks (I bought three). The atmosphere was great.

Party night

There was a chap selling small bags. Since I've not got anything for the ladies back home I thought I'd take a look. I picked up a couple of likely looking specimens.

"How much" I asked, handing the bags to him.
"You want?" he said, putting them into a carrier bag ready for me to take. Then he named a price.
"I've not got enough money" I said. This was true. I'd blown it all on magic tricks. Story of my life.
"How much have you got?" he asked. I opened my wallet to show him. He deftly removed the notes he wanted, left me around 50 rupees which I could use for tipping purposes, and let me go on my way.

What a salesman!