At last the nights are getting shorter and days are getting longer.  I can actually feel in the mood to do something that isn't sitting infront of a TV screen.  Of course, the television selection has improved (+ Life on Mars, 24, Lost, Galactica, Top Gear, Heroes, Virgin's OnDemand offering) and then fallen again because of a pissing contest between Virgin and Sky (- Lost, 24, Galactica) but there's still a net gain, so I have less need to pull myself away from the telly. 

Nerd Con 1

Picocon was quit good fun.  Mostly a lit. con, so has some very intellectual discussion.  Actually they're a little up themselves at times.  But it's also a Student convention so there's some silliness involving games and things.  Imperial College's Sci-fi people play a crappy game of Just A Minute.  Someone should have picked up on repetition in the phrase "lots and lots". 

Anorak Exhibition

Brighton Modelworld.  Great fun.  They have toy trains there!  And combat robots.  And a big model of the Titanic.  I can't help it.  I like trains.

Nerd Con 2

Redemption 2007!  Redemption does the Best. Cons. Evar!  Seems to be getting increasingly pervy in the panels though.  About a third of them were about slash or tentacle porn.  Went to a talk on the Orion programe, which was interesting but I wanted more time in the Q&A.   A panel on AI was interesting but got a bit bogged down on the nature of free will.  But who cares.  Most of the time was spent at the bar and chatting to various people. 

Toys

I got me a Wii.  Cheap because I work for a games company.

I need some games for it.  £40 per game is too much.  If they were half that I would have bought a couple already.  £40 is too much to risk on something that may not actually be all that good. 

I also got a Satnav system.  They've gone down in price a lot!  I'm not totally convinced by it.  It would be nice if I could tell it to avoid narrow country lanes like the plague, but rather handy for finding my way through London

And a new camera.  Canon A710.  More megapixels than I wanted, but it does have a 6x zoom and lots of manual controls.  The video mode produces quite reasonable videos too.  Why does a Jessosp memory card cost £70 and an amazon one cost £15 (in P&P)? 

Job

Got a phone call from an agent.  "Hi.  Not really interested.  Happy where I am.  Thanks all the same.  I'll call you when I'm looking again".  "Okay.  But if you are, some of these companies are paying £(MY_SALARY + 5000)".  Will have to consider this.  My 6 month contract is soon to expire...  Haven't heard anything about renewal yet.  And Creative Assembly (they did Total War) are hiring.