That Was The Week That Was!
And what a week... melting ice caps, penguins, space shuttles and hurricanes.
The week began last Sunday evening with a train journey from Ely to Birmingham New Street Station. In fact it began with a delayed train journey from Ely... (you get the picture!). My boss, Paul Ruskin and I were off to the National Circuit Riders Conference with another colleague, Chris Bailey who we were due to meet on the train at Ely.
Anyway after a delay caused by over running maintenance, over head power problems and lack of drivers, we set out for Birmingham an hour or so late (yes I know it could have been worse, but...) we arrived at Birmingham New Street with instructions that the hotel, The MacDonald Burlington Hotel was "a 2 minute walk from New Street Station" and it is, if you go the right way and exit the station from the correct side! Still it was nice to have a walk round and get some air!
The conference itself was very interesting. Especially for me as a newbie circuit rider. I got to meet a lot of people I'd heard about, spoken to on the phone, come across on the UKRiders List etc, and also met up with some people I actually knew!
As you can imagine at a Circuit Rider event the talk was mostly of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) and how it can be a viable alternative to more common 'off-the-shelf' packages! Unfortunately those that wish to promote and champion FOSS can be almost evangelistic about it and become that very thing they are trying to avoid - offering only ONE solution to the IT community! It's quite interesting to see. That Other Well Know Brand of Software and its creator are very much seen as the baddies (that sounded a bit like You Know Who in the Harry Potter books, whilst circuit riders and their open source bag of tricks are the fellowship of the ring out to defeat the evil Sauron!
Sauron (yes I know it's the eye of Sauron!)
vs
Gandalf & The Boys (Aragon, Gimli and Legolas)
Anyway enough already. The Circuit Rider Conference was great fun. I learnt a lot about the way the sector works.
On the second evening most of the delegates met up at a bar in Birmingham for a drink and to decide where we would go for food later. Sounds good? Yep, so far, so good!
Anyway, research was undertaken to see what peoples culinary preferences were. After a very length consultation process it transpired that no one really minded, (as long as they didn't have to make the final decision). Eventually someone suggested a good Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant so a party of about 15/17 of us went off to the restaurant. Having arrived and been given a table the next stage was to decide what we all wanted, but before that was the question of where could we apply for the funds and where there one or two strands to the project that would need funding (i.e. one big bill split x ways, or one for food, one for drink and people pay for what they have). Eventually after several meetings this was agreed in principle. Then came ordering the food - (what do we spend our funds on) - this took nearly 50 minutes!!!
The food, when it arrived was awesome and well worth the hassle.
Once the meal was complete we moved in to the final report on the project phase. We collected all the funding, did a final expenditure breakdown, and found that despite all our funders commiting to provide enough funds to properly finance the project, we were in fact short of our required target and had to seek some emergency 11th hour funding to bail us out!
Waffle, waffle, waffle... The Melting Polar Ice Cap - apparently, this week the state of the Polar Ice cap was so bad that if the continuing 'warm' weather did not stop and re-freeze the ice there would be a rise of 1/4" (nearly 6.5mm) in the levels of the worlds oceans.
Whilst on the subject of freaky weather, what about the winds on Thursday (18th Jan) - wow. They got up to 78mph in out part of the world. This was also the day we had our space shuttle in for a new 'paint job' (check out the pictures). Moving it out of the hangar at the end of the job was a job no one was looking forward to as the shuttle was in danger of toppling over. Anyway, a safe haven, sheltered from the wind was found round the side of the hangar and the shuttle stayed there overnight and was moved back to its usual location the next morning. See further posts on the shuttle!
Penguins...? Linux!
On the second evening most of the delegates met up at a bar in Birmingham for a drink and to decide where we would go for food later. Sounds good? Yep, so far, so good!
Anyway, research was undertaken to see what peoples culinary preferences were. After a very length consultation process it transpired that no one really minded, (as long as they didn't have to make the final decision). Eventually someone suggested a good Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant so a party of about 15/17 of us went off to the restaurant. Having arrived and been given a table the next stage was to decide what we all wanted, but before that was the question of where could we apply for the funds and where there one or two strands to the project that would need funding (i.e. one big bill split x ways, or one for food, one for drink and people pay for what they have). Eventually after several meetings this was agreed in principle. Then came ordering the food - (what do we spend our funds on) - this took nearly 50 minutes!!!
The food, when it arrived was awesome and well worth the hassle.
Once the meal was complete we moved in to the final report on the project phase. We collected all the funding, did a final expenditure breakdown, and found that despite all our funders commiting to provide enough funds to properly finance the project, we were in fact short of our required target and had to seek some emergency 11th hour funding to bail us out!
Waffle, waffle, waffle... The Melting Polar Ice Cap - apparently, this week the state of the Polar Ice cap was so bad that if the continuing 'warm' weather did not stop and re-freeze the ice there would be a rise of 1/4" (nearly 6.5mm) in the levels of the worlds oceans.
Whilst on the subject of freaky weather, what about the winds on Thursday (18th Jan) - wow. They got up to 78mph in out part of the world. This was also the day we had our space shuttle in for a new 'paint job' (check out the pictures). Moving it out of the hangar at the end of the job was a job no one was looking forward to as the shuttle was in danger of toppling over. Anyway, a safe haven, sheltered from the wind was found round the side of the hangar and the shuttle stayed there overnight and was moved back to its usual location the next morning. See further posts on the shuttle!
Penguins...? Linux!
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