work

here’s simon looking very smart.  he made a cake for the office today as he lost the competition to guess the birth date and weight of a colleague’s wife’s baby.

they take their punishments serious here in new zealand.  great cake though !

the party itself was very good actually with people dressed in all sorts of comedy costumes doing comedy things in a nice friendly kiwi manner

this is what i see on the way to work

this is it with the tide out, often it’s almost lapping up at the road

sure beats the M4 back in the UK

most of last week was about saying goodbye and handing things over to Sky colleagues, but yesterday was about my old easynet chums.  it was great to have lunch and chat about fun times.  and we even recreated some of the classic slidey man game ?

so, a nice way to finish things off.

i went on an excellent bike ride yesterday lunchtime in aid of general fitness and wellbeing.  i’d forgotten it was a bit dangerous to take pictures whilst riding a bike, even if you are wearing a tabard.  so here’s a picture of us stationary at a lock. 

i can confirm it’s much better than writing regulatory documents.  jolly good.

those who track my twitter feed will know that i ended up presenting an award at an industry awards show on Wednesday night.  carol thatcher was the compère (her mum is mrs thatch) and we briefly discussed the volume of the music that was playing when winners were announced.  luckily that stopped my inadvertent boogie !

here’s the luxury waiting area behind the scenes for those about to present awards

this is how my dessert tools ended up after a wine glass collision

and this was the route to my starter

a nice night out

people generally don’t say goodbye to equipment in these modern days, preferring just to buy the latest newer or more exciting thing, so it was refreshing to be able to say goodbye like this.

i got to flick the first set of power switches to start the beginning of the end

this wasn’t part of the proper switchoff procedure, but it was great to see a switch with a little plastic protective covering, so was worth a press anyway

i guess part of the reason for saying goodbye to this piece of equipment was just how big it was.  you can’t just walk away from something the size of a ground floor of a building.  your iphones/pods etc can’t compete with that for size

there were some excellent retro computer type things about to look at whilst the procedure to suck the life out of it continued

more corridors between cabinets

these were some good buttons

pete did the penultimate one.  or it might have been the last but one

and john, keeper of the equipment did the final final one which involved clipping some cable ties

and all too soon it was over.  system x.  good night.

oh, and here’s walter pointing at some very neat wiring he once did.

those who have been reading the blog since it started will remember peter, john, walter and harry from when the blog was more spontaneous and even updated in real time.  feels like an age ago.  because it was.

you can see a few more photos here

a strange chain of events concluded with me stumbling across these stirrers on double yellow lines.  it started with me finally listening to a podcast from stephen fry which had been sitting on my podcast for months.  it was all about broadcasting (specifically this) although i hadn’t realised in advance it would be.  so rather than being just fun, it was unexpectedly work-related and fun instead.

in the podcast he referred to a sketch he did in his old fry and laurie days about multi-channel television involving plastic stirrers which is on youtube here (relevant bit is around 2mins, then  just after 4 mins – language on video perhaps completely safe for work)  

Anyway what should i see yesterday, but a load of stirrers.  if stephen fry had been standing next to them then it would have been a perfect circle. 

(disclaimer – views expressed above are not even my own, let alone my employer’s!)

i can see me using this photo in some work presentations feedback consumer research or somesuch

this would make a good begging sign.  worth remembering for the future perhaps.