Rob at Dot Net North

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I’m back on the road again. Dot Net North have kindly invited me to be the speaker at their first in-person event since the pandemic kicked off. Really looking forward to the event. I’m going to be talking about making music with hardware. There will be devices you can build, devices you can marvel at and hopefully devices that work in front of an audience.

The event is in Manchester on the evening of Tuesday 20th September. You can sign up here.

Back to the Forbidden Corner

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The buildings have eyes here

We went to the Forbidden Corner a few years ago. Today we went again. It still rocks. They don’t give you a map. They give you a page with pictures of things that you might see on the way round and then just turn you loose. It’s probably the worst place in the world where you could say “Let’s split up and search the place”. You might never meet again…..

It is in a beautiful area and we were blessed with lovely weather (although it did get a bit hot in the afternoon). If you’ve not been, an you’ve got kids you want to amuse, it is a great place to visit. The café is great too. You have to book in advance though.

Hull is Awesome

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Culinary innovations at Ferens Art Gallery cafe. We call it the “shot sandwich”.

What do you do if you have a five year old that you want to impress. Why, you take them to Hull of course. We started with a coffee (we had coffee - she had juice) at the amazing café in Ferens Art Gallery. Then on to the next room, where they had a fantastic Lego exhibition. Then down to the Museums Quarter to scoot round searching for robots and dragons. Then back for lunch in Ferens, a look at the fountains and then back home for a rest.

Hull is awesome.

CSI is back

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The CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) franchise goes back a long way. I’ve still got some of the original DVDs that we bought ages ago. One or two still have the crime scene tapes around them. They must be worth a fortune. Or not.

Anyhoo, after starting in Las Vegas it then moved to New York and Miami. Then it kind of stopped. And now it is back. Unfortunately it is only showing on the Alibi network in the UK, which is not one I have access to. But we managed to get to see an episode last week and it has retained all the bonkers science it used to have, including a rather interesting use for a 3D printer. Worth a look if you can get to watch it.

To the Science Museum...

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Our trains leave mid-afternoon. And the Science Museum has luggage lockers, so it was back to South Kensington for some Science Museum fun. When we arrived the ground floor was a bit of a zoo, but we skipped up to the first floor (medicine) which was lovely and quiet and they had some fascinating stuff. Then up to the information technology floor for even more stuff. Panels from the original Leo computer? Yes please. We went a few years back and the computation stuff was terrible. Just a tiny model computer room from the early eighties. But now they have loads of stuff. And they had a really good game which showed how infections spread around.

Good lunch too. And then we braved the ground floor, at one end of which was a huge and expensive looking exhibition about carbon capture. Which was horrible. It presented this as a viable solution to the policy of burning things for energy. Which I’m not convinced it is. They showed this hugely expensive looking industrial plant that they reckoned could get rid of the emissions of six households. Which is tiny. Why not spend a fraction of the cost of this thing on insulating twelve households so that they only use half the power. One of the worst examples I’ve seen of “green-washing” I’ve seen. In the Science Museum. Wah.

Then we grabbed our luggage and headed for the train. Found a nice nature park near King’s Cross for a drink and then got on the train which left right on time, connected right on time and got us into Cottingham right on time. Everyone was great, trains were clean and shiny and the seats were comfy. And now we’re back.

Prom night

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Up early-ish. Then off to the Tate Modern. Tube travel with an Apple watch is great, you can use it to pay for your trip as long as you hold the thing right up against the reader and wait for the beep before you try to walk through the gates. Otherwise you just bounce off them, which other folks might have found funny if they had time to.

The art in Tate Modern was good, although I’m not clever enough to understand most of it. And there is a disturbing tendency for them to whack a video projector in a room with white walls and call it art. Another nice coffee though….

Then a walk through London to Foyles bookshop for lunch which was great. They didn’t have my books in the shop though. Then up to Leicester Square (Lego store closed – wah) for a look in the Japan Centre, Covent Garden (quick look in the Apple store) and then back again to the flat to rest up for the evening’s entertainment.

Then on to the Albert Hall. We were sat in “the choir” which is a posh term for “behind the orchestra”. However, it was fascinating to watch the players at work and the sound was really good. They played some stuff I knew, plus one “far out” piece that, if I heard it again, I probably wouldn’t recognise – although I’m tempted to have a go at the game in question just to discover what it sounds like there. It was interesting to see how game music has gone from “whatever we can squeeze from the hardware” into an art form in itself. And, like true art, it now has the capacity to be a bit “up-itself”.

I really hope they have another event like this. It was great. And I think I know the best place to sit…

Design Museum and Selfridges

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Headed to the Design Museum which had a lovely coffee shop (something of a theme) and some good things to look at. Staggered back and grabbed some food at a splendid little place in Notting Hill. For the afternoon we headed to Selfridges on the promise of a look at a Superfutures exhibition. This turned out to be a bunch of things around the shop, and arrows on the floor, but the shop was awesome.

They had a ground floor tech place that was stunning. Even managed to buy a Divoom pixel factory. Then a coffee and brownie in the pinkest coffee bar I’ve ever been in, followed by a walk home for a really good pub meal. I’m calling to day a success. If only I could still feel my feet….

Pink brownie

London here we come...

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Neat mural in the coffee shop

We’ve had our London trip planned for weeks. Always liked video game music? Always wanted to go to the Proms? Why not do both? On Monday we are going to the first ever BBC Prom featuring video game music.

But of course, first we had to get there. Today we were sitting on a bus for four and a half hours because of the rail strike. Two things stuck me about bus travel. First thing: It saves you a lot of money compared with train prices. Second thing: You earn that money. When we set out from Leeds the driver said “Next stop London. We have an emergency toilet on the bus if you need to use it”. Well, would you want to use a toilet marked as an emergency resource? I think the answer is yes, but it would have to be a proper emergency.

Anyhoo, the journey went smoothly enough. They put me in the “king seat” (the one right at the back in the middle) so I could have stretched my legs 20 feet if I’d needed to. Snag is, the king seat is not that well padded. So I arrived with something of a numb bum. But apart from that, all good. Then it was off for a much enjoyed coffee before heading to our rented flat.

The next few days are going to be fun.