Tech Adventure Feb 2009 (by sarah)

Saturday saw us at the 3rd Tech Adventure in Bristol at the Trinity Centre. We attended the last one in the summer which was loads of fun and useful besides.

This one I got up at 6 am for and me and Al were wending our way to Bath by 7 am - why Bath I here you cry when it is in Bristol? The answer lays in the fact we have a van and that we had volunteered to help the organisers this time.

So we arrived after only a minor getting lost incident and begain loading the sound equipment and assortments of other tech gear.

We drove to Bristol with our navigator and then after a quick unload headed off to pick up John Honniball who has an amazing collection of old computers which I somehow failed to take a photo of :( He also had a cool bubble car outside his house!

Oh and I had had to try and repair my glasses and had managed to cover about 30% of my hands with superglue - I was not a happy bunny.

The exhibits themselves where fun and I think I'll need to do some seperate posts for some of them plus I have vidoes I need to sort out of them.

There was a motion sensitive BB gun, with a targeting laser.

Guys with hand controlers that meant they could produce sound from motion resulting in me wanting to play with the concept and come up with a theatre production :/

Me reading Geek poetry and giving away Wiggly Pets to those who counted the correct number of programming languages in my poem.

The cutest robot ever which behaved like an animal, the camera looking like a little hamster nose and which maybe good research for a book me and dad are writing :) Just a little fun fiction.

There was a random pirate duck but then what sort of event is complete without a mascot?

A 3D printer which had me @ndy who we dragged up from London, and Alaric all got very excited about.

Here are some of the things it made! It can make parts of itself too which is kinda cool :) I really really want one for various craft applications.

There was a Wii set up, more old computers with ancient games on, a logic puzzels and game table, a swap shop which seemed to mainly consist of things we had brought with us - of which fortunatly all but one thing went from, DJ dudes, people with guitars and filming equipment.

Of course Andy got roped into cabling without even being asked if he was a tekki!

Plus there was a talk on high performance from computers - by a guy who was there last year - I ended up actually asking questions and talked to him afterwards - I feel this definatly deserves its own post however!

Alaric's Chicken Scheme T-shirt arrived just in time for him to wear it for tech adventure which he was really chuffed with - again somehow I failed to take a photo - sigh!

The Programmers Lamment (by sarah)

I want feed back on this poem - I'm not sure how to set it out for a start - I was supposed to be writing in two line stanzers - free verse but I dont really under stand what that means so I gave up with the formal structure and wrote what came into my head - warning it does sort of contain a swear - not my fult blame the programmers.

Would lovew feed back - be harsh

Tap, tap, tapping away, Fingers flying, strange graceful dance

Notice not as light fades, consume all energies, forking demons, spawned zombi child

Dance logic, time

Tap tap tapping away, polish finger tips over letters worn

Hunger burns, Sandwitch forgotten, cat licked, stale,

Animalistic, persuing prey, Python here, Chicken there

tap tap tapping, wrist support frayed, mundane treasures, Ruby, Perl

Water sits, bubble strewn, littering your domain

Intently stare, bugs annialated, or so you prey

tap tap tapping, spinning ball, shift to corner, back again

3 am, time for sleep, red eye raw

cup of coffee, jar of beans

headaching, back stooped, so much to sort, so much to do

tap tap tapping. between the sheets, misty bruised dawn, comes and creeps

Power low, reserves giving out, drowsy talk, lisp, dialected, scheme

thought process hard, more tests more

Leached knowledge, sleep, dream, Brainfuck, But still keen