It’s getting toward the end of the academic year, and our students would like to get jobs of some kind (I presume) so we ran a ‘careers event’ this evening featuring students old and new. Annalisa, on the left, graduated from the degree a decade ago now: Irene, on the right, last year. Kenji behind seems excited about something. Good luck to them all in their various futures.
An exhibit in the Centre for Computing History, in Cambridge: basically a large unit on an industrial estate full of absolutely every old home computer and game system ever released (anyone remember the Jupiter Ace, for example?) — geek heaven in other words. This exhibit is, apparently, all real landfill waste from somewhere in the USA — disposed of after the Atari market collapsed in 1982, all because of a very cruddy E. T. game, apparently. So it can now seem a metaphor for our consumer society, or something. Good museum though.
I don’t do many road trips, I mean, using cars and motorways, but today, and the next few days, is an exception. That means I don’t often get to enjoy the delights of rest stops, service stations, whatever you want to call them. Not that these are places designed to inspire much photography, but I don’t mind this shot, taken through a screen at Markham Moor services on the A1, somewhere in Nottinghamshire. No endorsement of McDonalds’ is implied, although I think their 99p for a tea is fair enough (plenty of other similar places will be prepared to charge £2.50 for same).
An indolent day, still off work, and yes, I was in the pub at 3.30pm, although only for one. Well, maybe a couple. There is something melancholy about it, I know.
Poor weather kept everyone indoors on Easter Sunday and ways of passing the time needed to be found. Is there such a word as ‘origamist’ — ‘he/she who makes origami’? Well, there is now.
Generally the theme over the last few days has been relaxation, and this seems to be the state of mind of this lady on the train to London this afternoon, particularly as this shot was taken before we had even left Leeds station. I did my best to adopt such an attitude today as well, despite the need to go down to London yet again to hang around at an embassy (you might see this tomorrow)….
Found myself in the Physics and Astronomy building on Manchester today, named for Arthur Schuster, physicist and coiner of the term ‘antimatter’ whose bust in the foyer currently sports a rather fetching pink bow tie and fluffy rabbit ears. And why not.
With all due respect to its intellectual and conversational benefits, a day teaching at home online is not going to be the most exciting day photographically. Never mind. In a week’s time I shall be on my way to Japan.
The wife’s Lego fetish took us up to Newcastle for a day out, with the Centre for Life — a science museum, basically — containing a temporary ‘Brick History’ exhibit, with various historical events depicted in plastic. I have always said that should a time machine ever be invented, my choice for a return would be ancient Athens to see how democracy actually got started: I doubt it was quite as orderly as this though. (I’d stop off on the way in Manchester, 1979, to see Joy Division live, too.)
I spent the last few hours of the working week as an examiner for some assessed presentations. A stream of fresh and (usually) interesting 20- to 21-year-olds coming in to convince us of their plans for world domination. And you know? A few of them have a shot at it. I like this shot because of the tea ladies in the background (they had just cleared away the detritus of the morning shift), the left-hand student’s incipient bubblegum moment, the relatively grand surroundings of the very finely-named Whitworth building…. And that it’s Friday. I’ve had a 6-day week, I need a weekend.
Being 42 