Spontaneous London Adventure (epic Geek Day Out)

Fair warning: we three are Geeks. Serious Geeks. So this day out might not appeal to everyone. Teehee. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

We braved the snow this weekend for a day out in London, suggested at the last minute by the Husband. Stowmarket was having rail upgrade works, so we drove to Ipswich to catch the train from there. Because the tickets weren't as expensive as we had anticipated (but were still eye-watering), due to some jiggery-pokery with two sets of singles between Ipswich and Manningtree, and an offer running on tickets from Manningtree that included a day travelcard (yes!), we upgraded to first class. No, we didn't win the lottery. Husband was reading the railway mags, the Boy is reading It's Not Rocket Science, while I'm plodding through The Magicians. 

::Capsule-review & mini-rant starts::

It started strong and has faded somewhat. I'm nearly done, so I'll finish it, but unless something very exciting happens I'm not going to either recommend it or read any more Lev Grosmann. I was vaguely irritated from the beginning with the main character's obsession with "Fillory," an extremely thinly-veiled Narnia. As far as I'm concerned, get the rights and refer to actual Narnia, or don't bother. Or make Fillory different enough that I don't keep picturing scenes that C.S. Lewis (who is a better writer, thankyouverymuch) created so brilliantly. Ah. I'm not the only one.

::Capsule-review & mini-rant ends::

Anyway. We visited an extremely crowded British Museum, where John and the Horus appeared to be having a fascinating discussion. I think there was nobody else paying any attention to the Horus because he decides who gets to see him and who doesn't. We're some of the lucky few, obviously.

We headed over to Chinatown, stopping at Forbidden Planet and the Orc's Nest on the way. Obviously.

Then, thanks to TripAdvisor, we hit Joy King Lau, for dim sum. The steamed pork buns were the best I've ever had. (Sorry, Nom Wah, you're a close second.) We made a suitable mess on the table.

We walked up to Oxford Street, where we stopped at the local Games Workshop, Muji, and Cloth House to admire the fabric.

We then hopped back on the tube to head down to Waterloo, where we went to Ian Allan, a specialist railway and transport book and model shop.

Added to the list of oh-my-gosh-there's-a-market-for-that? These cab-ride DVDs of railway journeys across the UK.

Shut up.

I even found the one for my commute. However, I felt no need to buy it, since I ride the damn train all the time. Who buys these? Do they make some popcorn, grab some beers, and plop down on the couch with their friends? Do they secretly watch them when nobody else is home? Do you buy ones for routes you know? Routes you don't? Routes you wish you knew? Do you buy them for trainless friends?

Please, feel free to explain (or guess) in the comments. Also, there were several browsers full of these. Different brands filming the same routes, different routes, and a whole section of the same general idea, but for busses and bus routes instead. I understand not.

Then, since we were relatively close by, we went to the Tate Modern to make fun of the "art." Ok, so maybe we're uncultured philistines (see above non-comprehension of filmed railway journeys). Or something. It was truly, truly, crap.

This was the least-crap of all the crap. At least whoever the artist was had some skill with his or her jigsaw, and the planks made nice shadows.

At this point, we were tired, cold, and hungry. We trooped across the Millennium bridge, hopped on the Central Line at St Paul's, and subsided in front of warm, savoury bowls of Pho. Back on the train, through some snow on the A14, and into bed by 10.

Phew. An excellent day out was had by all.

GeekFest

After more of my usual madness during the week, yesterday I had time to get caught up on week three of the quilt-along.

I watched two episodes of Glee and an episode of Hairy Bikers on Saturday morning, which resulted in this:

A little more sewing machine time this morning, and the top is finished. WOOT! Week four (quilt sandwich, according to the rumours on the interwebs) here we come!

John was clearing out some old files and came across a bunch of old pictures. Judging by the leaves on the trees, these were taken in Spring '05, right after we got engaged. Awww. We were both looking at this picture and decided that I look REALLY young.

I don't have any pictures of my own from about 2003-2006 - my old mac's hard drive gave up the ghost (and no, it wasn't backed up), so it was fun to find these. I love the one of Rrufus. Standard issue tennis ball, unphotographable black dog, standing in an odd place with a "play with me?!" expression.

Anyway, after the quilting (and finding the pictures), I went to Old Newton to ring a quarter peal. Lots of different methods, which caused the odd small panic (mostly me). We're getting there.

We then all came back to the house, where we had a veggie dinner (with no cheese for John and no mushrooms for Jo), followed by brownies, ice cream, and BOARD GAMES!

First, Carcassonne, which takes on a whole new dimension with 6 players. We didn't use any of the expansion packs, since John and I were the only ones who knew the game. More next time! Then we played Alison's 80's classic: Escape From Atlantis. It's on Board Game Geek, and it's old-school! Finally, we played about a million rounds of Harry Potter Uno, with Lesley's special house rules. They are a definite improvement, in my book.

1. If you play a 0, you can pick a person to switch cards with. Muahaha. 

2. If you have a card that's identical (number AND color) to the one that's just been played, you can ignore any other players and slam your identical card down. You then get a bonus turn and the people who were skipped just have to lump it. Again with the muahaha.

We all turned into pumpkins around midnight. Very entertaining and exceedingly geeky!

Computer Geek-In-Training

John's been tinkering with Ubuntu Linux on his computer for a few weeks now (he's having a blast...), and keeps threatening to install it on my mac. Not a chance.

I'm helping out in another department at work, in addition to some of the stuff I was doing in my other job. Part of what I'm doing involves using a different interface to access the same data that I used before - I'd been told by the IT geeks that it was much faster but I hadn't given it a shot until last week. And they're right, it IS faster, although I had one problem.

I'm addicted to the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste (if you don't use them, you're missing out), and the interface that I was using didn't seem to support them - it would error whenever I pressed CTRL C or CTRL V. BAH. So I asked the programmers if there were any hacks or workarounds, and they said no.

John said that he thought it could be done, although he didn't know exactly how to do it. So this morning after using my mouse to paste something in for the umpty-leventh time, I started digging around under the hood of the interface. And found the keyboard remapping section. And remapped my keyboard (and my colleague's) so that we can use our keyboard shortcuts. And then marched triumphantly into the programmers' office to tell them that not only was it possible, but I'd done it. By myself.

I was more excited than I should have been...but it was one of those little nuisances that was making a really good interface annoying. FIXED!