Bellevue Mist

The long range weather forecast for this week was rain. Thank heavens it was long range. And wrong. Today started really misty, in a fantastically photogenic way.

It must be like being up in the clouds in those buildings at the top.

We found this place that did great pancakes, and nearly failed to eat all of them. They had a great set of posters advertising upcoming events in Bellevue.

Hmmm. I’ve missed the bicycle conference.

Then we grabbed a car and went for a drive.

View over the lake

Highway and sky

Mountain, truck and sky

We went out to the mall and I bought another robot. A friend for Jason.

The summit proper starts tomorrow. I’m hoping to find out a bit more about Windows Phone 7 which was announced today. It looks really good. It is definitely going on the “want one” list.

Seattle Sunday

Imposing buildings

Went shopping today. I got number one wife a Lego Heart for Valentines day, and she got me this…

Managed to stay up long enough to take this picture from the hotel window. You can see the lights of Seattle on the horizon.

Hello from Bellevue

Well, after a boring (but in a very good way) journey I’m now in Bellevue, where the conference is based this year. The whole setup is very nice, with a king sized bed in the room.  I wonder if they measured it up against a real king?

Anyhoo, it is a very nice bed, although of course my body wants to use it at all the wrong times. I may have to do some “Jetlag coding” to get around this. The hotel is linked to a big shopping centre (how useful)

On the way to the mall I saw this really fancy glass sculpture thing.

Bellevue centre (or should that be center)

Packing for Seattle

It is that time of year again, when I head off to Seattle for the MVP Summit. I’m really looking forward to this year’s event. It is always nice to meet up with folks I’ve not seen for a while, and talk about technology.

Of course this means that I have to choose which gadgets get to go with me. I’ve left the trouser press at home. Three is a good chance that the hotel room will have one anyway…..

Hull Students: Freeside Needs You

If you are a CS student at Hull you might consider getting involved in Freeside. This is a student run organisation that operates out of our department. Their primary focus is on building systems that can host student services and they have been know to build the odd cluster.

They are also linked to Hull ComSoc and are involved in running game servers used in the department. Jon from FreeSide used some time in my lecture this week to give a short presentation about the group and recruit new members. He made the point that the skills you can get from Freeside will stand you in very good stead for future employment. Apparently big chunks of the server management team at Last.FM are ex Freeside stalwarts.