Just a normal day on Whitefriargate
Went up town to Hull today. They were advertising a GeekFest in Trinity Market. It was lovely. Not the largest collection of stalls, but everyone was very engaged and seemed pretty busy. The market is on of my favourite places in the city with great coffee and a really nice atmosphere.
I think the meter is working OK now
Today found us in Hull shopping for Christmas presents. Hull tip number 1: There are some lovely gift shops in the Fruit Market in Humber Street. Hull tip number 2: Have lunch in Ferens Art Gallery café. We had a great time and I took some pictures which actually came out OK.
A nicely exposed Hull Deep
I think the horse is called “Jedi”
I’ve been going to Hull Fair for a while. Take a look here and here and here. Today we went in beautiful sunshine. Hull Fair is awesome. They have multiples of things that most fairs struggle to attract one of. And we must have counted around 10 “Hook a Ducks”. Perhaps the hold the annual “Hook a Duck” convention at the same time as the fair.
This is just a small part of the fair
I went up a Ferris Wheel to take some pictures. They look a bit better in night,
They had three of these
When we left it was just starting to get mad busy. With nougat, fudge and of course brandy snaps. Great stuff.
I probably shouldn’t let too many people know about this one, and from the crowd there today it seems that the secret is probably out there anyway, but the café in Ferens Art Gallery in the middle of Hull is a very nice place to get lunch. Great prices, great food and great service. And a chance to look at some wonderful artwork while you are there. When we went they had an Open Art Exhibition which was fantastic. You’d look at a lovely piece of work and then discover it was made by a six year old. Gives you hope for the future.
Looking south across the humber. On the left you can see “The Deep”.
I just happened to be up town with my camera, going past Hull Minster when I noticed a sign saying “Tower Tours £6”. I knew they could be booked on-line (you can do it here) but I thought there was no harm in asking if we could go up today. So I asked the question, and a guide was found who told us “I can take you up know if you like.” We liked. The staircase up the tower is a bit tight. My strong advice is make good use of the rope that hangs down the middle. But the views at the top were more than worth it.
This is the view west. On the left you can see the humber bridge on the horizon.
It was fascinating to hear how the bells and clock worked.
These are the bell ropes, ready for action.
Hull Minster has 12 bells, which apparently is a good number. The walls of the bell room were covered in plaques commemorating different peals rung in the past. Some of them can take three hours to complete. Although, as our guide told us, “Sometimes we just stop and head off to the pub..”
A workbench with a view
We climbed right to the top of the tower, stopping off at the clock room. This was a great experience. We were there for about an hour. If you’re from Hull you should go along and do the tour. If you’re not from Hull you should come to Hull, and then go on the tour.
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.
Found myself in the middle of Hull for the first time in a while today. The light was very good and I wish I’d had a bit more time to take pictures. But this one came out OK.
I’ve decided that I really want to do this. If I take a camera or two I think that my desire to get a photograph might able to offset my fear of heights.
Trinity Market in Hull is a wonderful place to visit. Lots of very interesting things to buy and great places to eat and drink. And all indoors and heated. Plus a nicely set up meeting space they use for all kinds of things. Including half-term crafting events for little people. Lovely. Count us in.
The event was organised by Hull Libraries who do some lovely stuff around the city. And in the library. They had coloured paper, feathers, stickers, glue, pipe cleaners and all the crafting stuff that kids (and me) like playing with. Thanks very much for organising it and making one little lady a very happy bunny. Whose happiness only increased when we swung by Dinsdales in Hepworth’s Arcade to buy a joke on the way home.
We also grabbed a coffee in the market from these folks which was excellent and extremely good value. They do very nice de-caffeinated too.
I was up town yesterday for the hardware meetup and the lighting was rather good. So I took a few pictures of the place. Above is City Hall, where I used to help with degree ceremonies back in the day.
This is part of Hull Maritime Museum, which is just undergoing a massive refurbishment.
This is an awesome mosaic which is now being preserved.
The design looks even more impressive close up.
They were having a discussion on Radio Humberside this morning about the future of Hull. They asked me to contribute some thoughts. I made some notes (most of which I never used). So I thought I’d pop them on the blog. The question posed was something like: “As a person who has lived in Hull for a while, what do you think of the state of the city and potential for the future?”. These are my answers in bullet point form:
There are amazing things going on at the Fruit Market . I’ve been involved with c4di for ages and their building is now fully occupied with people making stuff and doing things. With more coming.
We’ve got super fast fibre networking, something which other places have just started to realise might be a good thing.
We also have a city wide LoRa network which is free for anyone to use for connected product development and a couple of local companies, KCOM and Connexin, who can provide you with a paid network service you can use to commercialise your solution.
Humber Street is awesome. The new pedestrian bridge will make a huge difference to access to the area.
We must give give local students a trajectory that encourages them to say in Hull when they graduate. As I said this morning, “It’s cheap and nice”, a killer combo. Students tend to be quite conservative about where they go in their local area. We need to encourage them to take a look at the lovely places we have where you could build a good life..
Hull Makerspace is a great development which lets anyone from the community explore technology.
It’s a crying shame that this nasty virus has come along just as we were getting up speed with all this, I really hope that progress is not knocked too far off beam by it.
It’s nice to have a service that promises speed and then delivers….
With everyone now confined to their houses and living their lives on the internets it’s great to be in Hull. This is the performance that I was seeing yesterday when I was downloading the games that we wanted to play. Awesome.
I really love Ferens Art Gallery in the middle of Hull. They have some pictures that are a bit like old friends to me, in that I just like dropping in and seeing them every now and then. At the moment they have a microbes exhibition that is well worth a look, particularly if you have kids.
Despite arriving a tiny bit late, I had a great time at the evening event at Ron Dearing UTC today. A whole bunch of folks came to see me to talk about technology and I showed off some Hull Pixelbots, my silly goggles and the prototype air quality sensor that we’re working on over at Connected Humber.
Of course, I totally forgot to take any pictures at the event. Silly me. That’s why there’s a rather splendid picture of Whitby pier at the top of this post instead of anything relevant to the night.
Anyhoo, I talked to a bunch of folks and gave out a bunch of advice. Summarised thusly (posh prose)
If you’re into computing, start playing with the Arduino device. It’s cheap to get started (much less than a video game) and extremely creative. Buy a Sintron Arduino kit (search ebay or Amazon for “Sintron Arduino” to see a selection of kits. The one that is around thirty pounds is good value. If you want to start cheaper, come along to a Connected Humber event (we have them on the first and third Thursday of the month at c4di starting at 6:00pm in the evening). We’ll sell you an Arduino and some hardware for five pounds and give you some things to do with it. You can find out more here.
Start learning about 3D design. Lots of people that I spoke to were already doing this. The ability to think in 3D will stand you in good stead whether you go into fields ranging from video games to product design. There are lots of free packages you can use, I quite like FreeCad, although it can be a brute to get to grips with. If you’re a programming type, take a look at OpenScad. If you want to use a free, professional level, tool take a look at Blender. It will really make your head hurt, but you can do awesome things with it. Take a look online for howto videos for these tools. If you don’t like the ones that you find, make some better ones of your own.
Which brings me to my third point. Lean to write and talk. When you start doing something, start writing about it too. Put your writings into a blog, a personal diary or a log. I don’t mind. The important thing is that you do this. I made the point lots of times that you can learn a good living, and have fun, as a programmer. But if you also have the ability to write well and are good at communicating your ideas this makes you much more useful and interesting to employers, getting you even more interesting and rewarding things to do. So you should work at getting those skills. Deliberately do things that take you out of your comfort zone. Practice talking to people (networking is a big part of success) and try to force yourself to speak in public. Trust me. It really pays off.
By the end of the evening my voice had just about worn out, as had the batteries in the robots. But it was great fun. And then I went home and had bananas and custard for supper. Such fun.
The Humber Street Gallery has a splendid new exhibition on at the moment. It runs until the end of September. On the ground floor they've got some neat little devices but further upstairs they've got this awesome cityscape made up of computer circuit boards and lights. It's constantly changing and just looks amazing. I've tried to take some pictures of it, but I've not really done it justice.
The exhibition is free, and there are loads of lovely places to eat or grab a coffee in the Humber Street area too.
I was really pleased when they made Hull Trinity Church into a minster last year. It hasn't made the building any more beautiful, but it does give it the status it richly deserves.
They've done a lot of work on the building inside too, removing pews and really opening up the space. That, plus the renaissance of Hull Trinity Market (definitely worth a look) makes this part of the town a must-see.
Click through for the full-sized version
Went for a walk today down to Hull Marina. It was looking lovely. I was surprised how quiet it was, they were selling ice-creams and there was a whole bunch of yellow knitting on display.
It's all part of #yellowdayhull. I wasn't wearing or carrying anything yellow (which I feel bad about) but I'm going to eat some custard the first chance I get.
They're installing a new piece of artwork in Queen's Gardens. It's an intriguing structure of laser-cut steel, welded together and painted white. It looks really good and it casts really nice shadows. I'm not sure of the proper name for it, but us locals have started calling it the "Cheese Grater". I took some pictures of it today, Rather nice.
I just hope they can stop birds from building nests in it. Then again, that might be part of the art.
I must admit that I've never really thought of a place like Hull as having architecture. It's just got lots of nice buildings.
However, I've found out a lot more about the area from this book, which even told me who designed the place I'd spent nearly 40 years of my life working in at the university.
This version was published in 2010, which means that it was just in time to be able to give the low down on places like The Deep.
It's a great reference and even has guided walks around the city. If you're coming to Hull for something City of Culture related, and you want a well written, well researched and good to read guide to where we live then it is well worth a look.
The university was looking especially splendid this morning.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
Make your own programming language. Find out more here.
