Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Last night I went to beermats housewarming party, down in Woking. I was there early having gotten myself lost in the wrong bit of Woking – too much reliance on technology, I had no backup plan for when my navigation system didn’t know about his road, so had to phone to get directions. Twice. It would have been a third time but I just spotted their road when I was looking for somewhere safe to pull over.

We spent most of the night experiencing small world syndrome – with various people independently known to other party attendees, I’m not sure if its just the internet thats done this to us, or whether the world has really always been like that and I’m just noticing it now.

Still, there was a nice amount of geeking, to the point we were offered a whiteboard to help consider build tree annotations, an offer we politely declined. The boysenberry juice seemed to go down quite well with varied success in attempts to mix with available alcohols.

A fun night, made all the more disturbing by the collection of My Little Ponies in the roof.


15 comments

    • Oh, hundreds of ’em, right from the early ones through to modern by looks of it (not that I’m an expert…) – Claire showed us her earliest one which was about 18 inches tall and had a lever to operate the eyes.

          • I’ve passed your comments along to Claire. :-)

            She’ll be at our Halloween party here in Woking if you’re free that evening…

            (Neil – will you be able to make it over?)

          • I make the 31st a Monday – so I’m guessing you mean a different night :) I don’t seem to ahve anything booked the weekend of the 29th though. If you don’t mind inviting a total stranger I’d love to come :)

          • No, it is on Monday so that we can scare the trick-or-treat brigade with our costumes. :-)

            It’s not the ideal day for a party, but the alternative would be hiding in the back of the house with the lights at the front switched off like we normally do…

            If you’re a friend of Neils, you must be ok. Do also feel free to bring a partner/special friend etc. Let me know if you can make it and I’ll get some directions to you…

          • Right – interesting :) A chance to dress up too..

            Woking is quite a drive from Cambridge on a school night; I’ll have to consult the Dear SO (who has the long-distance car) and see if he’s willing.

            By the way if you want to carry the conversation on without spamming Neil’s LJ, I have a paid account so you can contact me on my username @livejournal.com :-)

          • Possibly….I’ve discovered I’ve got ten days of holiday to use by the end of the year… is of course welcome to a lift if I’m gonna make it.

  1. Good to see you! Thanks for explaining that I was annotating the build tree, I honestly thought that I was just hacking the soure code. ;-)

  2. Did you make it out to the fens?
    We decided to postpone, considering that most people involved were not really organised enough to get it together….so I think we’re aiming for next month, since I’m otherwise occupied for the December date.

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