Last night we attended one of the best classical perforances Ive ever seen at the Albert Hall.

 

Over 250 performers took to the stage and the Royal Albert Hall resounded to the world's best classical music including brand new pieces as well as all time favourites, including:

Rule, Britannia!, Jerusalem, Nessun Dorma, Land of Hope & Glory and many more, ending with thundering cannons, muskets and indoor fireworks of the 1812 Overture.

 

These were performed by the ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, the Royal Choral Society and the Band of the Welsh Guards - Amazing.

There is another event in Nov 2004, more details at http://www.raymondgubbay.com/cs_nov.html

 

 

 

Tracking Polar Bears

The net has been used for many things, however this seems to be one of the more unusual instances where technology meets wildlife.  Two polar bears. One million nine hundred thousand square kilometers of frozen arctic wilderness. Where are they? It should be like looking for needles in a haystack, but it isn't. The bears are tagged with radio collars, which beam their positions via a satellite to this web site.

Gadgets

Im always interested in gadgets and had long been putting off purchasing an iPod because although it looks smart and is cool, I hear it is short on battery life and is still very expensive.

Whilst fight off another buying urge this gadget caught my eye.  It is NextBase's SDV17-A.

Its a DVD player with sterio output and a 7 inch 16:9 widescreen output for around £290.  Whilst this seems clever on its own it is also an MP3 player and supports the a huge number of formats below.  It seems to me that you can get rather a lot of MP3's on a 4.7Gb DVD! 

The formats it supports are DVD/MP3/CD/VCD/SVCD/MP3/CDDA/JPEG/CD-R/RW, DVD +/- R, DVD +/- RW player.  It has 2.5 to 3 hours playback and car kits and loads of accessories. 

Review here, and link to manufacturer Nextbase here.

Also whilst looking for the best price for this I stumbled on some impressive WiFi 802.11G audio headphones and other goodies at Shenzhen Wisebona Technology Ltd with their products at Wireless Entertianment & DAB.  Ive not found a uk supplier yet.

USB wireless digital audio transmiter 2.4G wireless digital headphone

Bloggers Dinner

On learing that I had missed out on a 1 day Microsoft Conference on LongHorn with Don Box, Chris Anderson and Bill Gates that was taking place today, I was a little miffed.

I was somewhat surprised then to be told that both Don and Chris had posted an open invite to have a curry with them on thier Blog!  At first I dismissed it as a whacky idea, but by lunchtime had put mine and a good friend (Clive Crocker's) name down.

We turned up to 2 tables of about 20 people, and I completly missed Don not having seen him since he lost his long locks in the summer.   Given he couldnt seem to keep his eyes open and he was the first to leave at around 9:15 I think this has sapped him of his strength.

Sitting at one end (furthest from Don), ordering blind and hoping for the best we sat next to an exuberant French developer, who spoke a lot but didnt listen much.  Cest La Guerre!  The food was excellent and I'd highly recommend the Marsala Zone.

Chris introduced his wife and sat opposite and a lively conversation ensued on all topics from Curry to Wiki, Bliki, Transactions in Indigo and English Pubs.  It turns out that Don is the Curry fanatic pledging to eat curry every night whilst in the UK.

Talking Wiki - it seems that Chris wrote the first version of FlexWiki but has passed it over to Dave Orenstien and there doesnt seem to much of Chris's code left.  Looking at the Wiki/Blog convergence Martin Fowlers Bliki offers one direction with Kwiki as its open source.

Things like Indigo Transactions and CLR process locking and DirectX10 were discussed, however it was late and conherant conversation ended when the evening was adjourned to the pub opposite!

Having read these guys Blogs earlier, snippets from their accounts dropped into conversation and Chris made the remark that it was spookey to hear stuff comming back, such as the sleepy Don.  It is a really powerfull medium to get to know what someones up to and to share information.

   A Cheerfull but sleepy Don after yet another curry

(Ref Flex Wiki Editor by Omar Shahine & the Elgin Marbles)

Testing BlogJet

I have downloaded and installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a Windows-client for my blog tool (as well as some for other tools).

Actually, it was not me who wrote this text: when I launched BlogJet for the first time, it's edit window already contained this text and the program asked me to click Post and Publish button to post this text to my blog in order to test the connection (yes, and the text above is not mine too! :-)... So, I did.

Now I'm gonna learn all that cool features of BlogJet (don't ask me, there are too much - go to their website and read).

Robert Burns:

I have long had an interest in Robert Burns as an extraordinary poet and the fact that there is a very traditional ceremony on his birthday, namely the Burns supper. Anyone who could write a poem which was an Address to a Haggis has to be admired and I for one am very happy to keep this tradition alive.

Here are the best links I can find for burns information

"Robert Burns
'Rabbie without a cause?'

Article by Arnold Kemp from The Observer, 1/20/2002.

Exploring the World of Robert Burns

Essays, critical analyses, and the Burns Supper.

Robert Burns: A Bicentenary Exhibiton

A virtual tour of the G. Ross Roy Collection of Burns artifacts.

Robert Burns: Life Stories, Books, and Links

The Today in Literature website features original biographical stories about great writers, books and events 20 literary history.

The Bard: Rabbie Burns

Biography, links, more recipes, and a mouth-watering article on haggis.

The World Burns Club

The official site of the Robert Burns World Federation.

Welcome to Burns Country: The Official Robert Burns Site

Complete text of Complete Works of Robert Burns and The Burns Encyclopedia, translations into English, a discussion forum, recipes, and a family tree. "