The bus from Yosemite made good time and actually arrived at Merced Amtrak station early. The station itself is just a small building, and there’s no café - but you can buy drinks and unhealthy snacks from a machine, so I naturally made use of them. The train was perfectly on time, but I did [...]
An interesting presentation of a collaborative online ‘game’, Q-CSI, from Questacon in Australia using Flash Communication Server. Nice humorous delivery (typically Aussie, really), and in many ways it looked pretty cool - check it out yourself. Of course there are many issues associated with using Flash, of which the developers are well aware. I wonder [...]
There are times when I feel like a set of actuarial tables (see title of this post). But it did occur to me to wonder about the demographics of the conference attendees. From a class perspective resolutely middle class - but we would be that defined by our profession. As for other categories I don’t [...]
Breakfast this morning was a ‘Birds of a feather’ affair. That is you choose to sit down at a table dedicated to a particular topic or theme. I have an interest in the idea of Creative Commons and licensing our content for re-use by the public (whoever they may be). The table was dominated by [...]
Talking to my children in real time via a webcam every day. A fantastic way to keep in contact (especialy as my phone doesn’t work in the US), but I guess I am of an age where I still look at something like this and think it is utterly fantastic (in the unbelievable sense). My [...]
I have seen the future - and it’s worse. A presentation about using handheld devices to supplement a museum visit seems harmless enough, but somehow the idea of using ‘intelligence’ to drive content to the visitor (rather than enabling the user to make these choices) seems to me at least to be the very converse [...]
…in Albuquerque. The elevation (over 5000 feet above sea level), combined with the dryness of the atmosphere means that I am a) continually thirsty and b) I have an almost constant headache. Add in the fact that my body still seems pretty confused about what the time of day is, and you will understand that [...]
Wednesday am. I couldn’t sleep. My body thinks it is 1pm when it’s 6am, so I have to get up. Dealt with a couple of emails from work, and sent another to my daughter. Then downstairs to register. I discover that I hadn’t booked in for any workshops (why are these extra?), so I spent [...]
Travelling to Museums and the Web 2006 (or mw2006 as it calls itself)…
[At Chicago O'Hare]
Got up at 5am. Now in Chicago O’Hare Airport. The clock says 4pm, my body insists it’s really 10pm. It also says ‘Sleep!!!’
An observation - I really do mark myself out as a museum professional. Strolling through Terminal 2 on the [...]