So, what do you do when you are in the city of dreams, when the day dawns full of sunshine, wonder and promise? You stay in your hotel room and write Visual Basic courseware. That's what.
Mind you, after the excitement of yesterday I could probably do with something a little more sedate. And I did nip out to City Walk for a burger. And of course I took the camera.
I call this one "Water Pipe and PDC bus"
I'm not very good on fairground rides. And I hate heights. So why not jump out of a plane at 12,500 feet?
I blame Iain. He mentioned that, seeing as we were out in LA a day early, and he knew of this ace skydiving place down the road, why not drive down there and maybe do a jump?
Iain is a proper skydiver, with his own parachute and everything. I would be travelling with a partner who would do all the important bits and make sure that nobody died. Having signed one of the scariest waivers I have ever seen in my life, forked out a goodly sum of cash (including the video package where they give you your own cameraman up there to film the whole thing) we set off.
I felt really sorry for my instructor. There were three of us doing tandem jumps. Two charming, beautiful and petite young ladies. And me. If he did draw the short straw, he took it with good grace, and was excellent. How you can make a career out of strapping yourself to total strangers and leaping out of planes with them is a mystery to me, but by gum, he was good.
Forced jollity at ten thousand feet
After this it is downhill all the way
The instructor even let me drive for a while.
Bank on terra firma.
I can't describe what it was like. How it feels to be falling at 120 miles an hour is a difficult thing to put into words. I can say only it was like nothing else. And if you get the chance you should do it. I've got a video of the whole thing, nicely set to Frank Sinatra. I'll put it up once I've transcoded it.
Thanks and kudos to instructor Adi Blair, videographer Herbie Loureiro and everyone at the Perris Valley Skydiving School who made the most frightening thing I've ever done in my life so much fun.
So, this morning Iain and I headed off for Humberside Airport (my favourite) for the first leg in the trip to the 'states. Even managed to get a leg roomy seat on the long flight, which was wonderful. Then into a taxi for the ride to the hotel.
The driver didn't think we were worth putting his tie on for......
My hotel is right next to Universal Studios, which is nice
Artistic roof shot
My kind of guitar
What I should probably settle for.
The hotel is great, with a good, fast network. And I've just done a couple of hours of email and blog posts at four in the morning. So the jetlag is coming along nicely.......
..and not just the football team...
You do get nice colours in Autumn.
Went off to Hull Fair in search of pictures. I do this every year. I've been taking progressively more expensive and complicated cameras up to Walton Street for a while now. I guess this will continue until I go up there and drop or lose one, at which point a rethink might be in order.
Anyhoo, I went on the big wheel to try and get some high level snaps.
Yep. That's a big wheel
By pointing the camera through a gap in the floor I managed to get some images, which, once I'd post processed them within an inch of their lives, I'm quite happy with.
"Fair from the Air"
Another day, another party. This time it was the turn of the postgraduate students. So it was out with Rock Band and the rest, and another set of specially "Jon Purdy proof" quiz questions.
These folks came first, with a rather impressive score, in spite of the horrid questions.
One point behind came this crew.
..and we had three teams that tied for third.
Well done everyone. Great stuff. And I still managed to get away without singing. And managed two ace serves in a row at Wii Sports Tennis.
I love it when we have good weather at the start of the semester.
Today was the day for number one's daughter to dangle from a rope in a good cause (actually the day was a few weeks back, but it was cancelled due to inclement weather). I was actually quite pleased when it was put off, it gave us another excuse for a trip to London.
Today the weather seemed anxious to pay us back for last time, it was the best we've had in ages. After the early morning mist the day was an absolute belter. We had a walk round Oxford Street before the off.
I liked these reflections.
Then it was time to go up to Guy's Hospital and the main event. The building looked even higher than last time we were there, but daughter gamely went off to do the deed.
Well, would you abseil down this?
This time there were no hitches, and they even had a height immune cameraman at the top to record things properly.
View from the top
If you want to sponsor number one daughter retrospectively, (and after seeing this picture you must think she has earned it) then visit here.
This might be the last hurrah for our trips to Milton Keynes. We've found out that after today the whole shebang is moving to a football stadium. We've been going for a while, and the mix of celebrities and interesting stands has held our attention up to now and because there is also a Lego shop (and an Apple store) at the shopping centre where it is held we've seen it as worth the trip.
Anyhoo, we got up at an early hour and set off. Number one son was meeting us there and wanted to snag one of the Serenity cast.
Morena puts pen to paper..
So, who is this cool gentleman?
..and this chap (a clue, his part is going to get a lot bigger in the future..)
Not sure if we'll do this again, but it has been fun while it lasted. I bought another watch, and then we retired to a Travelodge to watch "Strictly Come Dancing" (although I was more pre-occupied with checking the score in the Hull City match - which we won. Yay!).
London tomorrow.
Went for a walk in the woods today.
This is what you seen when you look down.
This is what you seen when you look up.
We had our second barbeque of the year today. This is a bit late (the first one was on Monday. Snag is, we have just not had the weather for standing outside admiring the miracle that is fire. Anyhoo, it went well enough.
Firelighter power
In the field next day they were getting in the harvest.
I wanted to complain, because according to all the research I performed at the age of five, a combine harvester is red. Not camouflaged. I had a play with the macro lens whilst the burgers cooked.
I think this is a thistle.
And this isn't.
Went to the American Museum in Bath as part of some birthday celebrations. It is a wonderful place. And we didn't get rained on.
I like the shades of green.
We like to go to the art festival in Hereford. Last year we turned up on Monday and found that the main exhibition was shut. So this year we did the same thing, which was a bit daft really.
Anyhoo, we did find some artists who were doing little exhibitions at home, which was very nice. If I was rich I'd love to invest in a few bits and bobs.
Showing style in the face of adversity. And yes, those are guys in sumo costumes in the distance.
We went off to see the ducks at Slimbridge today. We go there every year and always enjoy it. I took the big camera and tried to get some snaps.
These are not ducks
We set off this morning for our week away. I'm only taking two computers, which must count as some kind of a break. Hopes are high for the weather, in spite of the disaster that was last week.
Not a bad view from the bedroom window
Took a day off from worrying about water, and went up to Sewerby Park in Bridlington. Great place.
It's a grand little pile of bricks....
They were playing cricket outside the hall
It's a beautiful pitch, right on the cliff tops.
And they were playing something a little more violent inside the grounds....
Now that's what I call a garden.
Anyone know what kind of flower this is?
Sometimes you can't beat being in the right place, at the right time, with the right lens. Our front was covered in butterflies this morning.
And the orchids are in bloom again
..very scary looking plants...
I've never had the chance to be in at the ground floor of the creation of a new kind of media before. But today I found myself watching a presentation of a really neat new technology which is now available for anyone to play with. Photosynth has the potential to provide a new way of displaying visual information and allowing you to navigate around it by combining multiple images.
At this point I was ready to yawn, in that I've played with photo-stitching programs in the past and found them to be OK, but hardly ground breaking. But what Photosynth does is a bit more than that. By analysing the content of the images, finding the same content in each and then building a "point cloud' that describes the position of these items in 3D it manages to take all your photos and combine them into a navigable scene that recreates the geometry of where they were taken. You can move in or out of the scene, go from place to place and get a really strong sense of being there.
There are some lovely scenes on the Photosynth site that show how this can be done properly, I thought I'd have a go at the university, so this morning on the way to the office I took around 130 pictures. I've not read the documentation, I just took loads of photographs trying to make sure that there was a bit of overlap between each. And I came up with this.
You can move around by clicking on the arrows, and also on the panes as they appear. You can also zoom in and out using the scrollwheel on your mouse.
Apparently the picture is 78% "synthy", which I think means that the system couldn't figure out where some of the pictures go. However, it is quite like being on campus, and one part, where I took a load of pictures of a flowerbed, does let you actually walk around the flowers and see them from different angles. With a bit more care, and a tripod, I reckon I could have got something really impressive.
Anyone can sign up for a Photosynth account, download the program and start building synths to upload onto the Photosynth site where you have 20G of space to share your creations with the world. Microsoft are hoping to build up a community of "synthers" - a sort of "Flickr you can walk around" and I can think of all kinds of useful things we could do with this. You could put a synth of your ebay items up, so that people can take an all round look at what you are selling. When your kids leave home you could take a synth of their bedrooms to remember them by.
I'm certainly going to get into the habit of taking along another little camera when I go out for "synth shots" and posting them up here. It is really easy to embed the synths in your web pages too.
Have a go with Photosynth. It really is great fun. And free.
My Uncle Tony and Aunty Iris have been married for quite a while. Apparently I was at the wedding, but I cried so much I had to be carried outside. Doesn't sound a bit like me actually, but my recollection of the event is a bit hazy to be honest.
Anyhoo, to celebrate this we were invited down for a do, and as soon as I heard the magic words "Free Food and Drink" it was out with the satnav and into the route planning phase.
The party was held at cousin Lindsay's super house, which has a wonderful view out of the back. And the weather was fantastic. Food was eaten, stories swapped, speeches made and champagne drunk. Fantastic.
I've hidden a clue as to which anniversary it was somewhere in this picture. See if you can use your skill and judgement to work out the answer.
One thing that came out of the do for me was that technology is now everywhere. Digital cameras were being produced and compared, there was talk of email and SMS and Vista and many things technical. I talked quite a bit of "shop" (sorry about that) and it turns out that my cousin Sue is actually an Internet entrepreneur (try saying that after a few glasses of champers).
She runs myblankets.com which sells personalised gifts, baby presents, even stuff for your horse (if you have one). She also does a roaring trade in "taggies" which are cuddly comfort blankets for the very young.
I really liked the colours on this one, but I've been told I'm a bit old for them.
Anyhoo, thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the party great, and best wishes to Tony and Iris.
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.
A proper developer conference in Hull. Find out more here.
