Colorado Software Summit 2008

After a year's break, it's again my turn to visit the Colorado Software Summit in Keystone, Colorado.


I arrived on Saturday to fantastic weather and took the opportunity to do some hiking and geocaching (GC82F4, GCPPTV, GCWYDB) before the conference started.


When my colleague Hans arrived on Sunday (after a number of flight delays) we took a drive over to Aspen to sort out the car rental. It turned out to be a 6 hour round trip, but certainly worth the drive to see the scenery, and cross the Continental Divide at 12095 ft).

Channel 9

Back in the world of the mainstream airlines, I discovered one (and possibly only one) benefit of flying with United - "channel 9".

On my flight from Chicago to Vancouver I was able to plug my earphones into channel 9 and follow all the communications between the cockpit and air traffic control. Listening to the communications on the ground at Chicago was certainly an eye-opener - whilst the airport didn't look so busy, there was never a break in the communications are all the aircraft were shuffled from the terminals to the runways. Once we were cruising, the communications were of course rather thin, but on final approach things livened up again. Something I particularly noticed was that every turn or deceleration of the aircraft was in response to instructions from the tower - a fact that I had never really thought about before.

Domestic Bliss

For all my plans to publish a triumphant blog entry on September 1st, announcing possession of my very own house, it's taken over a month to find the time, and internet connection, necessary to do so.

There's a loaf of bread, fresh out of the bread machine. The dishwasher (how I love the dishwasher) is gurgling away in the corner. The room is bathed with low-level lighting (the only sort I have at the moment, not helped by the fact that every IKEA lamp purchase involves me buying the wrong sort of light bulb).

Whilst the house is still looking a little minimalist, I have now taken possession of a few key domestic items - washing machine, dryer and vacuum cleaner, all of which I have been testing out today. Some of the more basic items - sofa, bed, etc are still near the bottom of the shopping list :-)

Mum and Dad visited two weeks ago, and gave a hand with clearing the garden, some DIY and various painting jobs. In return, I cooked for them and served them food on paper plates. Possibly not a fair exchange.

Photos will follow eventually, but not until I manage to bring together the correct combination of computer, memory card and camera. A bit of challenge when most of your possessions are in boxes still.

Certificate in Health Sciences

Well, I've done it! Passed my first longer OU course "Introducing Health Sciences: a case study approach" with Distinction, and gained the Certificate in Health Sciences.

The next step will be my first level 2 course, "Human Biology", aiming for the Diploma in Health Sciences.

Polar travellers

Some weeks ago when I had some time to kill at Rotterdam Airport (flight delayed because of a WW2 bomb found near London City Airport), I headed off on my bike to a local geocache and dropped off my first ever travel bug - "Polar Traveller - Please help a Polar Bear", with the hope that fellow geocachers will help it on its goal to reach Svalbard, in the Arctic.



A week or so ago, I received e-mail notification that it has been picked up, and is on its way to Norway with a family who are vacationing there (come to think of it, I could of cheated and taken it to Norway myself, but that would be no fun!).

Today, Mum, Dad and I attended the UK's first geocaching mega event at Harrogate, in Yorkshire, and whilst we were there, dropped off my second travel bug "Polar Traveller - Pick up a Penguin", whose goal is to travel to the Falklands, South Georgia and Antartica. I wonder if it will reach there before I do?


The event itself was very well attended, and as well as plenty of geocaches in the area (we found three - each of which was marked by a ring of 10+ cachers... not too challenging), there were a number of stalls selling geocaching products. Having seen the new Garmin Oregon, I think I now know that I'll be upgrading my gps in the not too distant future.

Postscript - I received notification this morning that the penguins have been picked up, and will be dropped off in a new location soon.

Forward Prize Shortlist

I'm not really up to date with recent events on my blog, but this deserved immediate attention.

Jen's book Nigh-No-Place has been shortlisted for this year's Forward Prize Best Collection:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7535456.stm
• http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2008/08/forward-poetry-prize-2008-shortlist.html
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/01/poetry
• http://robmack.blogspot.com/2008/08/forward-poetry-prize-shortlists-2008.html

The winner will be announced on the 8th of October.

Norway 2008 - Andenes

The campground at Andenes looked like it had a lot of scenic potential - the spot was by a beach, with some impessive looking jaggedy hills. Unfortunately, the mist never really cleared during our stay, so we never got to see the hills in all their finery.

At 10.30am, we headed up to the Whale Safari office to see if we'd been moved off the wait list. After a rather agonizing half hour, watching the office fill with people, we discovered we were in luck!

The tour started with an introduction in the museum - before we went any further we were all (or nearly all) dosed with seasickness tablets. This proved to be a wise precaution.

The museum tour proved to be interesting, as the guide was very knowledgeable about whales, and sperm whales in particular. One room was dedicated to the skeleton of a beached sperm whale. This photograph shows the "hand" of the whale - an evolutionary reminder.


Out at sea, we were very quickly glad of all the layers we were wearing. The skies hadn't cleared and there was a lot of wind. Sperm whale watching quickly proved to be somewhat less spectacular than the whale watching trip that Fiona, Darby and I had been on last year - sperm whales spend up to half an hour underwater at a time, hunting squid, they come up for air for about 5 minutes, basically just treading water, and then, with a flick of the flukes, they go under again. Nonetheless, we were lucky enough to have 3 sightings of two different whales during the afternoon.

Back at the campsite, it took quite some time to warm up again, and after dinner we quickly rellocated to the common room to read. Our quiet evening came to a quick end as the room was overrun with a horde of Dutch people - 24 caravans from the Dutch caravanning club, and they were staying at our site! Fortunately their plan to prepare pancakes for 48 people in the kitchens was quickly shot down, and they left us to drink our hot chocolate in relative peace.