Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Bright Sparks

After spending 11 hours at work on Thursday setting up everything for Bright Sparks and Blue Fusion, the first day of the event (Bright Sparks) for the year eight age group occured on Friday. The day had a bit of a bumpy start with everything just pulling together in time, but once the ball started rolling the rest of the day flowed like clockwork.

Blue Fusion (previously known as Young Visions) attempts to inspire children about Science, Technology and Engineering and is run during National Science and Engineering week. The event is run be recent graduates to IBM Hursley, with 5 of the previous years graduates making the lead team and twenty most recent graduates making the rest of the organising team. The event is run during the week by around 200 volunteers from all over IBM UK, and we have 80 schools, each bringing six children over the week.

Each year develops new activites to be used during the event, and many of the activities are reused for other events in IBM like Bring Your Child to Work Day, and University Challange (previously known as Thinkpad Challenge). We have six new activites this year, and I will hopefully get the chance to describe some of them in depth later.

I will put up some photos later, but for now just wanted to warn you that most posts over the next week will be Blue Fusion related.

Nine Inch Nails

On Wednesday night I went to see Nine Inch Nails as a christmas present from my little brother. We got to Brixton Academy shortly after 7pm, having paid over £30 for the train, when the gig tickets cost only £25! The first band was not on until eight, and I should have gone into the pub just outside that had advertised NIN starting at nine as the first band was rubbish.

Nine Inch Nails played an awesome hour and a half set, with lots of new and old songs. The theatrics of the performance were the best I have seen. An incredible amount of lighting, including more strobes than I have ever seen and enough smoke to completely hide the band at times made it quite a spectacle to watch. They also had several hanging lights, just over the heads of the band and they swung these around so that the lights flashed on and off while moving, making the whole performance quite different and dark.

This gig was most definitely one of the best I have ever been to! One of the best received songs was probably Hurt, which started with just Trent Reznor singing and playing piano, and the rest of the band only joined in right at the end. If you have not heard the Johnny Cash cover of this song, it is definitely worth a listen too!

9 Laws of Physics That Don’t Apply in Hollywood

Ever wondered what Hollywood makes up for your entertainment? This list is the most common laws of physics that are ignored in movies, from exploding cards to sound in space.

Neatorama » 9 Laws of Physics That Don’t Apply in Hollywood

Ultimate Game

Yesterday morning the Hursley Ultimate Club played a friendly against Southampton Skunks. We both turned up with 2 teams, and played 2 games each.
It was really good fun, and nice to play different people for a change. The hall at Southampton is much bigger than the one we have to play in, so it took a while to get used to the extra space. We drew two games, won one and lost one, so all in all a fairly even game.
I am looking forward to playing a few more games and maybe entering a tournament at some point.

Desert Island

An IT Systems Tester decided to take a vacation. He booked himself on a South Pacific cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life…..until the boat sank!
He found himself on an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing… just bananas and coconuts.
After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day, when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore. In disbelief, he asks her, “Where did you come from! ? How did you get here?”
She replies, “I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”
“Amazing,” he says. “You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you.”
“Oh, this?” replies the woman. “I made the boat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branch and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”
“But, where did you get the tools?”
“Oh, that was no problem,” replied the woman. “On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of pre-cambrian rock is exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable, ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware.”
The guy is stunned.
“Let’s row over to my place,” she says. After a few hours of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf.
As the man looks to shore, he nearly falls out off the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please. Would you like a drink?”
“No. No, thank you,” he says, still dazed. “Can’t take any more coconut juice.”
“It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replies. “I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?”
Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk.
After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower andshave? There is a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet.”
No longer questioning anything, the man goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a
hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside a swivel mechanism. “This woman is amazing,” he muses. “What next?”
When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines and flowers strategically positioned, and smelling of gardenias.
She beckons for him to sit down next to her. “Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for a really long time. You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months?”
She stares into his eyes and takes his hand in hers…
He can’t believe what he’s hearing. He swallows excitedly, tears start to form in his eyes, and he says……………..

“You mean… I can check my e-mail from here?”

Bored?

 This will amuse you for a while, and if you have a go could amuse you all day long!
http://www.beseechfanclub.com/bored/