Bandwidth!
Jun. 26th, 2010 08:46 pmSo far, after an hour or two of hotel wireless, the poor bandwidth-starved laptop (offline for a whole week) has slurped down four Norton updates, three Windows updates, a Firefox version and a Flash player update. This may be why I wasn't getting much of anywhere with it using the free Wifi at Saint Pancras Station, though I did manage to get Google to divulge the address of the hotel, of which I had unaccountably failed to bring a note.
I hope I'll be taking the train to Lille and on to Aix-en-Provence tomorrow morning. There was a rather worrying email this morning from a colleague who arrived in Paris to find he'd been bumped from his connecting flight due to knock-on effects from industrial action earlier in the week, which apparently affects the TGV as well, but we'll see. I can't find any information indicating I might have a problem tomorrow, and as the TGV seats don't seem to be reservable anyway it may just be a case of a more crowded train.
I had a nice week in Sheffield. The warm dry weather has been ideal for peonies; they were lovely in the Botanical Gardens, which otherwise seemed to be suffering somewhat from the lingering effects of the severe winter, or the recession, or both, and amazing at Chatsworth -- huge delicate confections of light and sweetness in white, pink, and red. Yesterday was all about the waterfowl on the Round Walk -- a heron at Wire Mill dam which took exception to being photographed and took off, complaining loudly, after one not very good shot, lots of tiny ducklings as well as adolescent ducks from earlier broods, baby coots, and a delightful bunch of tiny moorhen chicks, which I got the distinct impression that their siblings of an earlier brood were helping to feed.
This afternoon, after locating the hotel, I took off to the South Bank to drop in on some colleagues at the Royal Society science exhibition and take in some of the other displays. I was interested to see the UCL entry on ice and water -- including an iPhone game arranging water molecules. Back in my grad student days, I spent a lot of time contemplating arrangements of water molecules, with the help of colored pins, paper clips, and index cards. When I couldn't stand the heat and crowds in the exhibit hall any more, I wandered out onto the river bank, took some photos of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament, and crossed the Jubilee bridge to catch the tube back at Embankment.
I hope I'll be taking the train to Lille and on to Aix-en-Provence tomorrow morning. There was a rather worrying email this morning from a colleague who arrived in Paris to find he'd been bumped from his connecting flight due to knock-on effects from industrial action earlier in the week, which apparently affects the TGV as well, but we'll see. I can't find any information indicating I might have a problem tomorrow, and as the TGV seats don't seem to be reservable anyway it may just be a case of a more crowded train.
I had a nice week in Sheffield. The warm dry weather has been ideal for peonies; they were lovely in the Botanical Gardens, which otherwise seemed to be suffering somewhat from the lingering effects of the severe winter, or the recession, or both, and amazing at Chatsworth -- huge delicate confections of light and sweetness in white, pink, and red. Yesterday was all about the waterfowl on the Round Walk -- a heron at Wire Mill dam which took exception to being photographed and took off, complaining loudly, after one not very good shot, lots of tiny ducklings as well as adolescent ducks from earlier broods, baby coots, and a delightful bunch of tiny moorhen chicks, which I got the distinct impression that their siblings of an earlier brood were helping to feed.
This afternoon, after locating the hotel, I took off to the South Bank to drop in on some colleagues at the Royal Society science exhibition and take in some of the other displays. I was interested to see the UCL entry on ice and water -- including an iPhone game arranging water molecules. Back in my grad student days, I spent a lot of time contemplating arrangements of water molecules, with the help of colored pins, paper clips, and index cards. When I couldn't stand the heat and crowds in the exhibit hall any more, I wandered out onto the river bank, took some photos of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament, and crossed the Jubilee bridge to catch the tube back at Embankment.
