Neil Hopcroft

Some time ago I promised an update. But as you all know I’m useless, so I haven’t gotten around to it until now. And everything has disappeared in some kind of caffeine fueled haze where new memories replace the old before they’re successfully archived, maybe its a kernel race condition, maybe its just broken.

Now, where did I get to? …ah, yes, last seen (unsuccessfully) car shopping in Worthing, maybe another time. After that I headed up to Cambridge for the Last Dance/Rome Burns gig, which was fantastic, and noticably one of the slickest gigs I’ve seen for a long time – theres so many times when the schedule is all over the place, the sound man forgot his hearing aid and nobody wants to dance. I didn’t make it in time for Fire and Forget, I was still wandering around outside looking confused. Someone had leant Daevid a (rotary, floor standing) fan so he was playing rock star. Then the singer from Last Dance looked like his hair had been attacked by Mattis suboptimal scaling algorithm. Rocking gig. More like that please.

Tuesday I was off to Madrid for the S60 Summit…I was standing next to Matt Miller for the horse show (but hadn’t realised it was him, its been a while and either he’s changed somewhat or thats not the Matt Miller I know). The party on day one was at a hillside villa overlooking Madrid, a fabulous venue. It kicked off with a horse show, then a band and barbeque. The horses, while being appreciated for their traditionalism were not particularly well received amongst the techies – certainly I have little interest in horses, if anything they rather intimidate me.

The next day was the serious stuff at the conference itself, with a day of talking about the future of phone development and meeting some of the people behind the exciting things going on in this world these days. I’m not really that much of a socialiser, so I tend to tire quickly at these kinds of events and run out of things to say (which is something I’ve been doing quite a lot lately).

Thursday I took part in a focus group around a new piece of user interface (potentially) in a future version of S60, I can’t say much about it here, except that it was on the journey to this event that I was rescued by the chap from NEC. At the end of the day I had a choice of catching a taxi into the town centre, rushing to find some food and heading for the airport, or a taxi straight to the airport. So I ended up waiting for hours at the airport.

I finally arrived home at 2am on friday morning. In time to get up and head north for Whitby. I thought I had left a reasonable amount of time for that journey, but I hadn’t accounted for quite so many accidents on the M1 northbound. The scariest of which was actually on the southbound carriageway and was still in progress when I first saw it – there was a very unwell looking person in the passenger seat of a car embedded in the central reservation, he looked more frightened than damaged, but clearly wasn’t in a very good state. I do hope they’re all alright.

By 7 I rolled into Ruswap where I found the Cabbages and a Matti and we agreed a plan to head to the Spa where there were some bands. I don’t remember many of them. Soho Dolls stood out as exactly the kind of riot grrrl music I’m liking at the moment, she really didn’t have to take her shirt off to get us to remember the band (though she was cute so I wasn’t complaining too much) ((no nudity thanks to carefully positioned insulation tape)).

The next night Rome Burns opened proceedings which the most stonking set I’ve ever seen them play. They had a difficult slot, but there was plenty of crowd and enthusiasm. They were followed by some other bands who didn’t seem to matter, there was so much bass I had to escape to the lobby. Cruxshadows came on later but I couldn’t take them seriously, and I had to leave again.

I was amused by the introduction of the automatic doors into the lobby which seemed to mean that the door was always open letting in the finest the north sea could throw at us. When the door was wholly manual it would remain closed unless someone was actually using it, which seems like a better solution all around.

Whos up for 69 Eyes on 31st? Its a thursday night in an unspecified venue in London, but they’re really rather good and I think you should come along.

If you can read this sign its too late.

Stick it to ’em Rice Boy (or what not to look for in a car….amused by the appearance of a stock 1982 Datsun estate near the end which seems somewhat out of place against the background of ambient weirdness).

Scalextric heaven

When you’ve got to go

This is not a bomb

Repurposed

Learning curves for standard editors (particularly amused by EMACS)

A pheonix rising from the Post Punk Junk meltdown (or maybe nesting?)

I would like to say Thank you to South West Trains for the kind of Excellent Customer Service[0] that leaves a hundred passengers outside Epsom station just after midnight wondering where they might find a bus to their final destination.

I had a choice of waiting for a bus with the rabble or walking – the taxis were being organised by a very Surrey lady who looked like she spent most of her time organising things, whether they needed it or not. I figured the bus would take something like 20 minutes to get to Leatherhead and then its a ten minute walk from the station, so if I was likely to be spending more than about ten minutes waiting it was probably worth walking instead. And given that there was no sign of a bus and a large collection of fairly drunken people expecting to pile onto one when it arrived there was a reasonable chance that it would be more than ten minutes before I could get on one.

Still I’m home now….and my Saturday night/sunday morning paranoia has kicked in with the quiet time to think….I’m now half expecting to be, erm, ‘chosen by freedom’ (to use one of Grandis euphamisms) on Tuesday when I get back to the office. I’ve got a meeting with the saviour of the company who has already been primed by everyone else about how the thing I make isn’t core to the companies future. This would, of course, in many ways, be fortuitous timing for such freedom.

[0] While I doubt Google understands sarcasm yet it can only be a matter of time.

Mouse mouse

C is for cemetary

Rocking squirrels (or are they hamsters?)

Coming soon: a series of posts about some of what I’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks – I’ve been so busy doing things theres not been time to write about any of it

As too often seems the case i’ve arrived at the airport with a number of hours to spare. So i’m trying each of the coffee bars in sequence. Illy is the best so far, i think i’ll go back there later.

Also amused that the new c class merc has managed to pick up the styling of a cheap chinese copy. I’m really hoping thats just a quirk of the chrome on the spanish model but i’m not holding out that much hope.

Or so it seems. I made it to the nokia office, somewhat late and somewhat damp. But very grateful for the guy from NEC who saw me trying to get directions, took pity on me and gave me a lift. I don’t know his name, but he helped me when i wasn’t expecting it. Thank you.

I close my eyes and i could be in the final scene of the leningrad cowboys, the bassist has just thawed, but the crowd here are harder work.

And what kind of house has a private bull ring?

Damn, how did i let that happen? I’d forgotten how much i love travelling… And i’ve hardly even started yet.

Waiting in a cafe for boarding time, overlooking the taxiways, brings back so many memories, journeys to a bright new future. This isn’t one of those, of course, but the memories are there, the dreams, the anticipation, the feeling of tiredness even before the jetlag kicks in.

‘please wait’. No gate yet. Its rush and pause alternating. There’s an air of urgency all around, people late for their flight, not knowing what they are doing or where they are going. And there’s waiting. Watching. Feeling. Dreaming.

The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed there was actually a bright red convertible in the background of that picture, unfortunately that was a 1970s Triumph, which while being a beautiful piece of engineering is not quite the height of reliability I’m after. And the escort doesn’t count – can you honestly see me driving an XR3?

(Insert brief whinge about Orange data networks being clogged during the day so I’ve only just managed to get this off my phone….oh for the day when different bits of technology can all talk to each other – bluetooth was being miserable because somehow I’ve managed to end up with two stacks on this desktop, which fight over the adapter when I plug it in, then both refuse to let the other play).

Also, in an inspired piece of timing, I lost a crown today….I’m resigned to losing the tooth anyway but I was hoping it would last until some time when I wasn’t coming up to one of my hectic-est weeks and could be removed under more controlled circumstances. I’m going to risk it until monday and see how if feels by then.