my name is mwd

One of the things I liked about Ireland was their road signs – they had a somewhat ad hoc feel to them, indicative of a more relaxed out look on these things. I captured a small selection below: Some need a bit of pondering – bottom left presumably indicates a tree in winter ahead, bottom right is a workman sat on wall. Top right, well, answers on a postcard… ;)...

Laura and I have just been to Ireland for a week – specifically to areas around the south end of County Mayo and Galway. It was a beautiful place, and quite nice to get away. Flying the flag 29 April 2008 Ireland was an interesting place to visit. It reminds me both of central France and California in places – I think it’s the fact that all three places have more rawness to them than the UK – the UK population density is so high that there’s not really anywhere where you get any sense of wilderness or humans only starting to make an imprint....

A random shot from atop Ely Cathedral. Alas I didn’t have time to get much of a better shot as it started snowing on us :)...

This weekend Laura and I went camping again, only this time, with a spirit of adventure about us, we took the bike rather than the car: This was a bit of an experiment, and I was worried that Laura would suffer at the hands of my biking obsession, but it all seemed to work well. We only missed a couple of items, and those were just forgetfulness rather than lack of space....

Laura all helmeted up, watching an aerial display at Duxford from afar. There was a range of big and small planes from around World War Two doing fancy manoeuvres quite low down. It was quite impressive stuff to see so close; the larger planes seemed to be really on the edge at times, moving in ways that made me feel odd watching them, so I’d imagine it’s worse inside. It’s unusual you get to see such heavy flying machines up close (given their intended purpose, certainly that’s a good thing with regards to these specific planes), and there’s a degree of inspiration that they give, which I think you get less of a feel for now that modern planes are just too fast to see (though Laura correctly pointed out that vertical take off/landing is still quite impressive)....

Laura and I have just returned from a week up in Scotland, staying up in Inveruglas at my parents’ caravan up there. It was nice to have a quite week in the wilderness. We even managed a Munro. I’ve only ever done one Munro, but I’ve now done it three times, but this was the first time I’ve done the climb in the day – previously I’ve climbed up to fail to see sunrise on the longest day....

Spotted in the Highlands of Scotland (Luss, on Loch Lomond, which is just in the Highlands…) – a sign of the modern world:...

Last weekend Laura and I went camping in Suffolk. I was hoping to take the bike camping for the first time (I even had it kitted out), but the weather looked rough, and in the end we took the car. Quite disappointing in some way, but I’d rather we had a good weekend away. We went to a camp site that was very near the beach, and a nice quite stretch it was too....

Laura and I spent a few days in Paris last week – she had to attend a work event there on her birthday, but otherwise we had a great time walking around Paris for a few days, which I found particularly interesting as it was my first trip. Some more thoughts on it later, but for now Laura has put up a set of photos we took on the trip. There was so many she had to make a page per day, so you can look at day one, day two, day three, and day four – phew!...

On another nice weekend, having done our various Sunday chores, we headed out to Ickworth House, which is just past Bury St Edmonds. Ickworth is set in very nice grounds, but interestingly it’s very nice inside. Usually I don’t get very excited by looking inside old houses, finding them very uninspiring, but Ickworth was a noteable exception to this. This is probably due to the Bristol family, who had the house built and owned it until recently, all seemingly being slightly eccentric (to put it politely)....

Oxburgh hall – it was wonderful blue skies, but alas my phone doesn’t have a polarising filter. Probably fair to say that we were more impressed with the outside than the inside. But then inside had stiff competition given the weather....

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On the weekend I got a new bike after much umming and ahhing, and today I cycled it to work for the first time. Partly this is partly as it’s greener and partly as I no longer get free gym membership. Given how much you have to wrap up at the moment and then cycle in, I’m glad there’s a shower at the Ndiyo house....

One of the things about being in a foreign land is that all the signage is different. This gate warning sign amused me in its attempt to capture the dynamics of being crushed by a gate…...

Good luck to Dave who sets off on his world trip tomorrow. Dave’s been dreaming of this for many, many years, so it’s great that he’s finally getting to to go. Hopefully he’ll have time for the occasional journal entry, but I think we’ll understand if he just gets on and enjoys himself :) All the best Dave!...

I’ve managed to put up the pictures I took whilst in Portland recently up here. They’re not very exciting, and they’re a bit random, but there you go. If you want you can compare and contrast them with these pictures from last year and see how mobile phone cameras have improved over the last 12 months....

Made it back from my trip to the US. After my first abortive attempt I managed to get to and from Portland relatively painlessly, though I failed to visit Seattle like I’d hoped – another time perhaps. For the most part I was attening an Intel Research Symposium at Skamania Lodge, which is up about 20 miles up the Columbia River from Portland. We spent most of our time in a window less room, and this might explain why I had a bad time with jetlag – no visual clues to help my body adjust....

After the weekend’s failed attempt to leave the country, tomorrow I’m trying again. This time I have a 5.30 am pickup for my 10 am flight to PDX via SFO on United – let’s see if I can make it this time (the first hop is UA0955 if you want to see if I made it or not – though if you figure out how to work the Dashboard flight tracker widget then you’re more deserving of a seat on the magic bus than I)....

My flight was cancelled after all – oh dear. Just made it home, after spending most the day in Heathrow – a fun day out for all the family. Haven’t managed to get through to BA to try and reschedule my flights. At the airport I was told essentially to go home. There was a multi-hour queue for rebooking, but I was told that priority was being given to people trying to get home over people trying to leave the UK (which is fair enough), and thus there wasn’t much point queuing....

Next week is IRSYM – internal work symposium held just out of Portland. Last year’s was good – as much as it’s a pain to move us to the US for a few days, it’s good to see all of what IR is doing, and meet with other researchers, and also to get out and see the mothership. In addition, that part of the world is beautifully mountainous and covered with trees – really amazing....

Was in London at the weekend, doing various things. One thing we did do was attend Fruit Stock, which was over there: During the day it was suitably quiet, and we got to listen to music whilst eating very nice food and watching the world wander by. There was a huge range of good food to be had there in fact, it seemed more like a food festival at times than a music festival :)...

I’ve taken the pictures I took with my phone on my recent trip up to Glasgow and shoved them here. Quality sucks, but there you go. /me adds digital camera to wish list…...

Yesterday I woke up aching a bit, and decided against doing any long journeys that I’d had in my mind. The walking up hills and comfort of the 996 had taken their toll a bit :) However, the best laid plans etc… I started off with a bike up to the BMW Motorrad centre in Bishopbriggs and the Ducati garage in Glasgow. Although I’m not really in the market for a new bike (I think/hope) I’d have to go to London to try and find the nearest such shops to Cambridge, so I went to drool....

This weekend was spent up to Norfolk camping – an excellent choice given the weather, if you ignore my patches of sunburn. We stayed at Deepdale Farm campsite (hint to campsite owners – a layer of rubble a few inches down makes it hard to drive tent pegs in), and spent the weekend dotting about the north Norfolk coast. Not only was it very warm (up to the 30s), but we also happened along some nice beaches and some nice food – we hit the Deepdale Food and Drink Festival, and we found a most excellent deli called the Picnic Fayre in small village of Cley-next-the-sea (why aren’t there more places like this in Cambridge?...

I thought I’d bore you all with a little bit from my recent trip. I’ll spare you the work details, they’re really dull, but I was impressed both by the Eurostar and Brussels itself. The Eurostar first. On the way to Brussels there was about seven of us, spread over the train. The train itself is very nice, clean, well kept - more so than most trains in the UK and, indeed, most budget airline planes....