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!

Taj Mahal

OK. Let’s try a few words out for size. Huge. Beautiful. Awesome. Blimey. Hmm. Let’s start again. In England we think we can do impressive buildings. We’ve got a few lying around which are pretty cute. I’ve been to some of them, Castle Howard, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Millennium Dome, etc etc. But now I’ve been to the Taj Mahal and, sorry guys, this one caps you all.

It is not just the scale, the colours, the materials, but it is the design of the place. This will probably seems bonkers to you, but if you want to look at something where design is everything, go see the Taj Mahal. The design of the place is doing things with your mind before you even know it.

When you arrive the only way you can get your first view of the Taj is through a particular gate in the redstone courtyard. The arch is carefully proportioned to give you the perfect view of the dome which unfolds before you and then recedes slightly in a way which seems magical, but is actually some very clever manipulation of your viewpoint as you move through the gate.

When you get your breath back you can begin to take in the shape and proportions of the dome and the balance of light and shade as it falls on the carefully positioned marble and semi-precious stones laid into it. If you stand and watch, as the sun moves through the sky the shadows on the surface change slightly, so that it looks different.

Look away for a few minutes and then look again and you will see a yet another Taj Mahal. When the mists roll in from the river at the rear of the Taj Mahal it appears to float above the ground because of the way it is built on a platform above the grounds. In the moonlight it is said that it appears to glow. (we didn’t get to see this unfortunately, but one day I’m going to go back and check).

The redstone buildings around the Taj Mahal are apparently designed to be the imported “ugly sisters” that you would place around your daughter so that she is the one that gets picked by a calling suitor. I must admit the guide invented this analogy, not me. Of course any one of them on its own would be pretty special, but next to the Taj Mahal…

The architect has used every trick in the book to make a building just look beautiful in every sense. By design.

Of course I took a bunch of pictures and of course they don’t do the place justice, but here they are anyway.

The money shot

One of the “ugly” sisters

Side view

Another ugly sister

View of the river

Akbar’s Tomb

Today was the big day. Taj day. Been looking forward to this for a while. It isn't every day that you go to see one of the seven wonders of the world (and if it was, the following week would be pretty lacklustre I guess). Anyhoo, today is the day that we were see the Taj (which I think means "crown" by the way).

Now with any great dish it is important to have an appetiser, to get things started. It just so happens that the Imagine Cup organisers had set one up for us. But we would have to work for it. Just outside Agra, where we have been staying, is another mausoleum called Akbar's Tomb. The tomb was built in the 1600’s and word was that it was in need of a little restoration, so to speak. Microsoft had volunteered the services of a whole bunch of students and mentors, i.e. us. So after breakfast we piled onto busses to drive out to Sikandra and the tomb, to go and give a hand.

I was a bit concerned about this; a place can get a bit overgrown and dusty in 400 years. However, I needn’t have worried. When we arrived the group was split into four teams, sweepers, gardeners, cleaners and restorers. The sweepers team looked a little depleted, so myself, Andy and Mark joined up with them and off we went.

Andy and Mark hard at work. Or something

It took me back to my days of vacation work in a frozen pea factory, where I arrived at sunrise, was given a brush and told to sweep up, spent most of the day hiding from the foreman and then returned my still clean brush at the end of the shift. It seems that I still have those skiving skills and they have now become a kind of reflex, and so I was able to give the appearance of doing something useful whilst probably not achieving a great deal. The problem was that I had to keep stopping and taking photographs (not something I used to do in the pea factory). The place was beautiful, and on a scale that was breathtaking.

The entrance to the mausoleum

There were lush gardens, peacocks, monkeys, a beautiful courtyard, etc ,etc. It was truly wonderful. The heat was quite oppressive though, and I was glad for the chance to take a break from my non work and get a drink. The restorers had been really busy, you could see the stonework where they had dug out the old mortar and replaced it with new. I felt a bit guilty about not doing that task, I’ve a feeling that the wind has  probably already undone most of my brushwork, but now a little piece of an Indian monument is forever Imagine Cup thanks to them.

Monkeys finding shade

One corner

View from the top

After the break we climbed wearily back into the bus for the ride back to the hotel. I lay down on my bed for a couple of seconds of rest. Two hours later I woke up and it was time for the Taj.

Amazing Fact

Did you know that every year at least two thousand roadsweepers drown in Venice?

Note - this is one of my favourite jokes. Perhaps say number three or so. Now you can all live in fear of numbers one and two....

Puffin Spotting

Note to self. Get longer lens for camera..

This morning we went up to Bempton Cliffs to see if we we could see any puffins. We could.

Whitby and Robin Hood

A good place to eat a "Whitby Kipper". And a nice fish mobile too. But I think they would taste a bit woody.

Last time we went to Whitby it rained. All the time. But we still enjoyed it. So this time we went in the dry. Even better.

Whitby Bay looking good.

I think the captain was just showing off for us.

After we went to Whitby we stopped off at Robin Hoods Bay. No idea why it is called that, but it is a wonderful place.

A view of the bay

This season blue is the new black for fishing nets

Weekend Away

So much for Bliss....

We are having a weekend away. This weekend. So the car has been loaded with essentials and some beer (or is beer an essential?) and we have scooted off to Flamborough, a village on the coast about an hour's drive from our house. Arrived just in time to wander down to North Landing and take some pictures. The evening was very kind to us. The sea was like a mill pond and I got some rather nice shots.

You can't beat a sunset by the sea...

Lilies

Taken fresh this morning.

Cool Photos

You find some amazing things on the internet. How about pictures taken with a lens made of ice?

Durham Piccies

Went up to Durham to fetch number one son today. I take my little camera everywhere, and so some pictures were kind of inevitable.

Some flowers near the station.

Sweeeties...

...and garlic. The new taste sensation.

Hull in Good Looking City Shock

Nice eh?

Went up town today. Must admit that the place was looking rather splendid. Took a bunch of pictures with the little camera. There are more on Flickr.