Heading for the Lakes

It’s been a while since I’ve travelled somewhere with the express purpose of doing nothing when I get there. Heading off to Imagine Cup, TechEd, Campus Europe or whatever is always great fun, but there is always that underlying concern that you might not have the right kind of VGA adapter for the Surface in your bag when you get there. And they might not laugh at the jokes.

Anyhoo, today we are setting off for a week in the Italian Lakes. Actually, not in the lakes, that would be silly, but in a carefully selected, economically priced establishment just on the shoreline. Of course, I’ve not completely released my grip on my iron work ethic, there will be blog posts and pictures.

But I’ll do them when I get back.

Hull Freedom Festival

Hull is one of the cities in the running for “City of Culture 2017”. On the showing of the Freedom Festival event we went to today I think it is there already.

It. Was. Awesome.

They had these fluttering flags all around the city centre.

And the museum up town had been suitably decorated.

I’m ashamed to admit that this was my first trip down to the festival. We are not normally around this time of year, but having seen some of the preparations and with a good (but not great) weather forecast we decided to go for it tonight.

I’m so glad we did. Everything was wonderful. You just walked around a corner and there was another great band, playing superb music. We bounced off various stages and I took some pictures.

This is Kirsty Almeida, with her brilliant band. Great jazz singing, amazing musicians.

I’m not sure who these guys are. But by gum they were good. And loud.

And this is acrobatics to a driving African beat.

Around the streets we had some donuts that were cooked before our eyes (and were yummy), went round an art show and visited the Museum of Club Culture who had a special David Bowie exhibition. Then we bought some strawberry sherbet bon-bons a pig shaped bag from the craft stall (not for me) took in a few more acts and headed home.

The festival is on for the rest of the weekend.

Get. Down. There.

Scary Lifts at Campus Party EU

This is the last day of Campus Party down in London. Andy and the crew will be judging the Hackathon Entries and I’m back in Hull. Oh well. Good luck to everyone. And I hope that some of the things that I said on Tuesday (it seems such a long time ago) were useful.

One more story from the experience: We were carrying some stuff back to the “base camp” room with one of the O2 Dome security guys. As we were heading for the lifts the chap was talking about a science fiction film he saw ages ago about this futuristic society. Every year they took the brightest and best of their people and put them in a lift to “ascend to the next level”. Of course there was no next level, just a horrible fate. He finished his story just as he punched the button to close the lift doors.

I made the point that with me as one of the party, everyone was completely safe from anything like that…..

Early Hull

One of the, few, good things about being up town at 6:00 am is that you can take some quite nice pictures this time of year. I took these on Tuesday morning and today I got around to fiddling with them a bit.

Our train to London.

Campus Party EU Day two (for me)

For those of you who that aren’t convinced by the camera in the Lumia 1020 I say Ha! and Ha! again. I’m going to print out an A3 version of this, and I reckon it will look awesome.

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m surrounded by people working through the night, making things and talking tech. And last night at eight thirty in the evening I toddled off to the hotel to watch CSI: NY and turn in. I blame it on my advanced years and the fact I was up at 5:15am yesterday to catch the train here. A poor excuse I know, but I did have enough stamina left to figure out who the killer was A clue: It was mum.

Anyhoo, here are a few more pictures from the event..

A blimp giving some sound advice.

I bought these from a shop here. Sure takes you back..

Awesome quad copter with eyes that can follow you round the room. Literally.

Completely amazing steampunk retro computer.

Picture Puzzle: One of the people in this photograph is wearing a hideous wig. Using your skill and judgement draw a large X over them so that you can’t see them any more.