2007
Ireland
31 July 2007 Filed in: Travel
I hadn’t been to Ireland before, no idea why, so now was a time to correct that situation. Dublin was the easiest place to get to so I based myself there but took a day trip to Belfast on the train. I had no agenda for the visit although I had been told to go to the Guinness Storehouse so I was compelled to do that and sample some of the black stuff where it’s really made.
Only having a half day in Belfast, after I finally got there, made taking a tour seem sensible. Taking the tour reminded me why I don’t do tours. I like wandering around and looking at stuff that is “interesting” without taking much account for time. Going to uninteresting places, what is it with the Titanic?, and zooming though the interesting ones is just frustrating. Walking around is probably faster too, it certainly was in Dublin, as the traffic is nuts (I should have expected that based on Boston 🙂
Leaving America
25 July 2007 Filed in: Travel
Took the Swiss Business Jet from Newark to Zurich after experiencing the USA’s “high speed train “Acela” between Boston and Newark. Acela is a nice enough service, although it’s no Shinkansen, but having to run more frequently would be good as would finding a way to allow it to run faster. I guess the latter is difficult if it needs to share the lines with freight and commuter trains.
The business jet is a 737-800 fitted with 56 sleeper seats (all business class) operated by Privat Air (who also do a similar service for Lufthansa). Not a bad way to fly but a 737 can seem to be a little cramped on a long journey.
Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo
21 July 2007 Filed in: Travel
A trip to Buffalo, New York, with Paul Love and Hollie Bowen allowed us to visit some of the Frank Lloyd Wright sites around the city. First we went to Forest Lawn Cemetery to view the Blue Sky Mausoleum that has been recently built although the design was discussed between Darwin D. Martin and FLW in the late 1920’s. We then took the “In-depth” tour at the Darwin D. Martin House complex and rounded out the day at the summer residence, Greycliff. There is plenty of work still to do at both houses.
iWeb Annoyances
19 July 2007 Filed in: Software
I’ve been using iWeb to create the new site and it is a fairly painless web tool to use but it would be nice if the templates didn’t have their own default image. This is especially annoying for the Blog type page since you’ve got to remember that it’s not just one page but three pages and you need to “fix” the image in all of them. This is even more annoying than not being able to change the template for an existing site or adding some hierarchy to the site. Also not every blog entry needs an image but the format of the page makes it look pretty weird without it.
Joint Techs at Fermilab
19 July 2007 Filed in: Conference
The Joint Techs meeting at Fermilab (just outside of Chicago) has just finished up. A few interesting talks (and some fun ones too, check out Alan Whinery’s lightening talk). I got a chance to tour the Collider Detector Facility. The Detector itself is installed in the Collision Hall (behind some serious blast doors) but in a brilliant stroke of PR the Fermi folks took a photograph of the Detector just before it was installed and then got a company that makes billboards to produce a full size image of it which hangs in the Assembly Hall.
IPv6 accessible web site slightly different
12 July 2007 Filed in: Update
If you access my web site via IPv6 rather than IPv4 you will get slightly different content.
The new toy
9 July 2007 Filed in: Photography
I decided that I wasn’t taking enough photos because it was a pest to carry around an SLR all the time so I’ve bought a pocket hiding Canon IXUS 850 IS (yes a Canon not a Nikon). I’m not convinced that a LCD panel can really replace an optical viewfinder even though every P&S camera except the Canons are built that way. In this trip I’ve also got the Nikon D70 but the shots in Vancouver are all taken with the Canon.