Travel

I had the pleasure of spending ISO Week 42 in the beautiful Portuguese coastal city of Porto, attending the NDC Porto 2024 conference for software developers by NDC Conferences. It’s been a long time since I attended a multi-day conference – perhaps even as long ago as Software Architect 2007 (where I first learned about Dependency Injection and IOC Containers) which makes me feel quite ancient. Having been a freelancer since 2008, it’s often difficult to justify taking time out to attend conferences, no matter how valuable they might be to one’s career in the longer term. The face cost of the conference ticket is usually dwarfed by the loss of contract income (real or perceived) whilst being unable to bill a client. ...

Day One – Saturday 26th May 2018 Twenty years after bagging my first Munro – the dreary Meall a’ Chrasgaidh – and somehow developing an affinity for the Great Scottish Outdoors, I found myself heading northwards once again. Not this time in the company of my university friends, but instead with a ten-year-old boy in tow, namely my eldest Son, Benjamin. It was half-term holiday, he had just finished SATs, and I was hoping to prise him away from screens for a few days and to pass on some of my latent enthusiasm for the Highlands. ...

I keep intending, and forgetting to post a couple of videos from our US holiday last April. I suppose I was hoping to get round to writing up my paper notes from the holiday, but it’s becoming apparent that won’t happen anytime soon, so let’s skip forward to the funny bits: We spent a couple of nights at the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas, which is the tallest observation tower in the United States. Atop the tower are three “thrill rides”, and I foolishly tried all of them whilst Jocelyn videoed proceedings from a safe distance. ...

On our first morning in California, we headed out to breakfast, which was preceded by a short session of Breakfast Prep’, courtesy of Jocelyn. It had been a couple of years since I’d last had Breakfast In America, and I’d forgotten how to respond to the awesome number of choices and options that would be flung in my direction by the waitperson. Here’s how you order breakfast in Britain: <td> “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_English_Breakfast">Full English Breakfast</a>, please.” </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Waitress: </td> <td> “D’you want tea or coffee with that?” </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Diner: </td> <td> “Tea, please.” </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Waitress: </td> <td> “OK.” </td> </tr> In due course, the standard, empire-forging breakfast is served, and is consumed heartily, perhaps after a little trading with your breakfasting companions (“I’ll swap you my tomatoes for a rasher of your bacon?”). Everybody knows what is expected, nobody has tricky decisions to make, there are no surprises, and everyone enjoys what they get – and if they don’t enjoy it, well, they don’t mention it, because complaining about such things just wouldn’t be British, damn it. ...

Monday 10th April 2006 The sun was still shining as we touched down at SFO, about 22 hours after we’d woken up. If every day could last that long, I swear I’d get more work done – or maybe I’d just spend more time playing Civilization… We picked up the car – a Pontiac Impala which initially seemed unfeasibly huge compared to our Focus, but it’s funny how quickly you adjust and get used to the size, making use of the available space – then it was off down US 101 on the final leg of our journey. Despite it being rush hour, we had a swift journey due to being able to use the Car Pool lane (by virtue of not being a single-occupant vehicle). I was amazed how under-utilised this lane was, and started wondering how much of an incentive would be needed for more Bay area commuters to start sharing rides – there’s another good question for the economists to ponder. ...

_Monday 10th April 2006 Travelling West during the daytime is a blast, especially on a sunny day. Time it right and you can experience daylight for 24 hours, which afforded me time to catch up on some reading. For Christmas Joce had given a book entitled Freakonomics – A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Eveything, and now I finally had time to read through it. I surprised myself by finishing it by the time we reached Chicago – this may be a chunky hardback book on economics, but it’s also really interesting and easy-going. ...

Last month Jocelyn and I took a trip to the States to visit friends and family, attend Teri & Jimmy’s wedding, and take a vacation to Nevada and Arizona. So, there we were, sitting at the departure gate at Manchester Airport on a bright Monday morning, having awoken at 0430 to make our way across the Pennines. A few seats away were a group of teenagers. They were from Michigan, and they were annoyingly noisy. Thus began our American adventure. ...

Holy cow, one of the limestone towers at Australia’s Twelve Apostles park has collapsed into the sea! It was the one in the foreground of the photo to the left. Seeing this fantastic set of rock formations (and flying over them in a helicopter) was one of the many highlights of my vacation to Australia in Dec 2002 / Jan 2003. You always hear about coastal erosion and the way landscape changes over time, but never really expect significant changes to occur during your own lifetime… ...