my name is mwd

Yesterday Laura and I joined other Cambridgeians in attending Opentech 2008 – a random nerdy conference held at the UCL Union in London. I have to confess I was a little disappointed with the content, which failed to be as interesting as the recent Geekyoto event. Perhaps my brains just a bit over worked, but for the most part I failed to find it engaging. The one highlight was Danny O’Brien’s talk (he of the original Wired UK and NTK) which was both entertaining and thought provoking, looking at how to decentralise things like Facebook and Twitter.

Thankfully, the dull sessions turned out to be a reasonably fortuitous, as it lead to me going for a wander around UCL, and discovering a London Festival of Architecture event, in which Montague Place, the street behind the British Museum, had been turfed over and there was live jazz, a farmers’ market, and a elevated walkway:

It was delightfully random – with people making custom embroidered shopping bags, a car turned into a garden (including a pond), and nice food. I picked up a booklet detailing other LFA events, and it goes on until the 20th of July, so keep an eye out for such events. Alas the turfing of Montague Place was for this weekend only.

It was also a good excuse to go and stare once more at the amazing roof in the Great Court of the British Museum:

Mathematical ceiling

5 July 2008

To end the day we had a nice dinner at a small French eatery in St Pancras, and then disaster struck – the shoulder strap for my camera bag decided to work itself loose, and the bag and contents plummeted to the floor. I got home to discover this:

Thankfully, I hope, it is only the UV filter that has been damaged. I’ve managed so far to remove the broken glass (but not the UV filter ring, which is currently wedged on the lens), and a quick check shows it still takes pictures, but I’ll need to perform a closer examination to see if it’s survived. Poor camera!

Update: bah. I can see at least one scratch on the lens itself :/