I went to Dubai for a business meeting, a get together of Sun’s EMEA pre-sales leadership. The business agenda is confidential but I reflect on the experience. Dubai’s airport is only open at night, and for those that don’t know an important hub. While there, I went on a motorised desert safari, and rode a camel, all of 15 yards. …
The biggest wine rack in the world.
I went down to the Mandalay Bay again to visit the Aureole. This is a wine bar with a four story wine rack. The bar staff use a trapeze to retrieve the wine. It has to be seen to be believed. And now, you can see it!
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Hot Stuff
Over the weekend, I went to the West Dean “Chilli Festival”. I had no idea what a big industry chilli growing was in this country. …
Sailing
Down to Poole in Dorset very early this morning. I have finally got my act together to take the RYA Day Skipper course and spent the day learning to navigate using charts, pencil and paper. The maths reminds me of the boys’ A-Level homework and although despite being geeky enough to look up the cosine rule, drawing scale models of the “triangles of velocity” is probably quicker . 😉 …
Improving my mind
I’m have returned to California to attend Sun’s top technology conference, and I shall be travelling on to Menlo Park and visit Sun’s campus for the Sun Labs Open House. Once again, I have failed to improve my mind on the plane and instead of watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, I watched “Shut up & Sing”, a documentary about the Dixie Chicks. They are not a band I’d listened to before, but I did read about the furore created when they stated on stage that they didn’t approve of all the policies being pursued by a certain American politician. …
Back in the USA
I have arrived in Palo Alto, after my flight since I am spending the week at Menlo Park for some readiness training. I wasn’t feeling very intellectual, so instead of watching the Al Gore’s polemic on the environment, “An Inconvenient Truth” I checked out Mitchell & Web, who you can see asking if any of the Nazi’s Wermacht questioned the fascist imagery of the Nazi state, and advertising Macs [See Charlie Brooker’s comments at the Guardian…] all over the world, I then watched Tenacious D: the pick of destiny. Jack Black swears a lot. The journey was made more exciting by forgetting to move my clock forward and the worst queue for security I have ever seen, but I made the flight with a couple of minutes to spare. …
On my way to NWN 2
This is now leaking out and was reviewed in Empire’s January 2007 edition, where they gave it 5*’s. It certainly made me want to get it. I still need to get a second copy of NWN and the guys & gals at rpgdungeon recommend the Platinum Edition. Gamespot review NWN 2 here. NWN 2 is now on sale at Amazon (.co.uk). …
The Beauty of Grass
I visited Bury Court yesterday which claims to have two of the finest contemporary gardens in the country, designed by Christopher Blakely-Hole & Peter Oudolf. It’s been explained to me that ‘contemporary’ means lots of grasses, and a ‘Tea House’, …
Che Guevara: Revolutionary & Icon in London
I visited the V&A’s Guevara, Revolutionary & Icon exhibition. This exhibition is based on the famous photographic image of him and its use, so less political and a bit more design. Lawrence Lewellyn Bownen does socialism. Sadly the V&A prohibited photographs, even of the plaques they made themselves. So here is a re-sized copy from wikipedia and some comments about some of the other exhibits. …
The New Statesman, Episode 2006
We, that is Mrs L & I, went to see “The New Statesman, Episode 2006”, staring Rik Mayall as Alan B’stard on Saturday. Marsha Fitzalan also reprises her role as his wife Sarah. Sadly, no new jokes, its the same old B’stard, using politics to make money, and have as much, if a bit too fast sex as possible. He’s joined New Labour and works in No. 9 Downing St now. …