Journal
[2010/05/11 10:51 am]Back at work after a 10-day holiday, which consisted of:
Oggcamp
This nice little 'unconference' saw it's second running, this time in Liverpool.
Lots of interesting talks again this year, ranging from geek politics to women (or the lack thereof) in technology, software patents and MQTT (including an oggcamp success story - the mosquito message broker which was born out of a "wouldn't it be nice if there were an open source version of this" commment from @andysc last year).
As with the first oggcamp the social side was a big draw as well - nice to see some familiar faces from last year, meet new folks and put some faces to IRC names.
Bath
As we were bookending this week with two trips we decided that rather than coming home we'd just find somewhere to chill out for a few days, and decided to visit Bath. This turned out to be an awesome idea as we had a wonderfully relaxed and lazy week in a great hotel, along with some interesting culture from the Roman Baths and the Fashion Museum.
All Tommorows Parties
Back in Minehead for another installment of this most awesome music festival. This time it was curated by Simpson's creator Matt Groening who is also a massive music fan and had lined up a fantastic array of interesting acts.
Amongst what I saw were Iggy and The Stooges (incredibly at 65 Iggy still moves like an 18 year old), Spiritualised (epic performance of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space), Joanna Newsom (only caught a bit of this set, interesting but her voice jars a little), The Tiger Lillies (the musical embodiment of a victorian freakshow, darkly comic), She and Him (60s rock'n'roll brought bang up to date), Deerhunter, Toumani Diabate, Boredoms (totally awesome - 8 drummers going at it, Taiko-style, on modern kits), Broadcast (beautifully ambient sound and visuals).
[2010/03/30 3:12 pm]
This weekend was a fun, and very refreshing one.
We visited Northampton for Kitacon, an anime convention running in the Park Inn Hotel (formerly the Northampton Moat House) which played host to Ayacon in 2002 and 2003.
I've been attending conventions since 1997 and with a handful of exceptions have been volunteering in some capacity at every one, however this time I decided to take a break, 'just be a punter', and enjoy the con.
I even watched some anime - I think the last time I did so during a convention was in 2002.
In it's second year, Kitacon has a very fresh feel to it - lots of new faces, an incredible quantity and quality of cosplay and a nice varied programme of events. The hotel layout provides a nice environment and it was fun to just chill out, eat, drink and be social.
[2010/03/02 10:19 am]
Yesterday I spend some time delving into sync.
( This is long, and probably boring )[2010/01/24 10:42 pm]
The first stage in a project to build an interface between my Ford Focus' steering column radio controls and my Kenwood stereo, which lacks a wired remote interface but does support infrared.
The control stalk turned out to be a simple array of switches attached to a resistor network, meaning that it appears as a different impedance depending on which switch is pressed.
The stalk is connected to one of the Arduino's analogue input pins via a simple voltage divider.
[2009/10/22 11:14 pm]
As if playing with radios or computers on their own weren't geeky enough activities, I've just finished rigging up an interface to allow one of my computers to tune my radio.
[2009/08/19 5:12 pm]
A while back I took a fancy to getting myself a new wristwatch. A particular Seiko pilot's watch caught my eye, and the lovely
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ljquin kindly decided to buy for me as an anniversary present.[2009/08/18 8:33 am]
Over the weekend months and months of planning and discussion came to fruition in the form of the sixth of the Ayacon series of conventions which started in 1998, of which this is my second time working as a committee member (although in 2005 my role was mostly 'in name only' as I was on honeymoon the weekend of the event)
Seeing ~1200 people (many of the sporting absolutely fantastic costumes) take over the University of Warwick conferences facilities and have themselves a great time was heartwarming.
Our guests and event organisers provided us with a wonderful programme, and the Warwick conference and technical staff were more than we could have asked for in providing all the assistance we needed.
Needless to say I'm now sore an exhausted, but overall very pleased with the way the weekend went.
[2009/07/24 10:56 pm]
My exercise in breathing new life into old hardware has taken another couple of steps forward - the first being the arrival of some drive belts for my Amstrad 3" floppy drives from PCW enthusiast John King, the second being the resurrection of my external 3.5" drive (the voltage regulator which provided a 5v supply for this had apparently gotten fried at some point, fortunately I had a suitable PSU with which to replace it).
The latter, and the fortune of having one other computer left in the household with a floppy drive gives me a means of data transfer to and from the machine.
[2009/06/28 12:07 am]
Spend most of today catching up on the housework - a bit dull and domestic but fairly unavoidable, and had a nice meal in town with Laura (marred slightly by a bit of a headache which had been creeping up on me all afternoon).
Inspired by seeing the film we've finally made our minds up and booked tickets for Ten Years of ATP this December, which from the (likely to expand) line-up that's been announced so far is looking like it will be a cracking weekend.
[2009/06/25 10:06 pm]
Had an evening that was in different parts fun and eventful.
The eventful part came before the evening had really started - whilst driving to the train station we had another car run into the back of ours at a roundabout with a very attention-grabbing bang. Fortunately the damage seems to be limited to some small scrapes on the bumper.
A blissfully uneventful train journey to Edinburgh brings us to the fun part of the evening - A screening of the 'All Tommorow's Parties" film. Pulling together material from a staggering number of contributors (ranging from professional DV to mobile phone video and super-8 film) the filmmakers presented a musical montage of the festivals ten year history offering a glimpse of both the on-screen performances and the off-screen character of the festival. Not quite as good as actually being there, but a reasonable second.