Sugru

At London BarCamp 8, I was given a sachet of sugru. Some people made keyfobs out of it, but I did not know what to do with it, so took it home. Sugru is kind of like Fimo, but instead of baking it in an oven, you just leave it to set.

I thought about attempting to mend my shoes with it, but then the strap on my watch broke, so instead I used it for that. I had to leave it to set, which annoyed me, as it meant I was without a watch for the weekend. (I have been wearing a digital watch since I was about 5 years old and rely on it.) Now it seems set, now it seems fixed and I have been wearing it for a few days. I have no idea how long it will last.

Oxford Geek Night 19

Last night was Oxford Geek Night 19. At first I stood around feeling awkward as I did not recognise anyone, then sat on the floor at the front feeling awkward (I knew I would be unable to see anything if I was not right at the front as it is always far too crowded), but then luckily the talks started and the first talk was by Leila Johnston.

Leila talked about Making Things Fast. She said that it doesn't really matter so much what we did in the past, what matters is what we're doing now, and that we should try to create things quickly. She gave examples such as podcasts and newspapers. She also mentioned projects such as creating something every day for a month (including Dominic Wilcox who created random things such as bread lampshades). Leila has written books such as How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People and Enemy of Chaos, a choose your own adventure book about a middle aged man.

It made me think that now NaNoWriMo is over, I should figure out what to create next, and actually get on with it.

The other talk that I found particularly interesting was Matt Thorne talking about the Scribblybot, which is an industrial robot that writes tweets on a whiteboard. (The talk had the title: Industrial Twitter Robot Slays Oxford Geeks; Total Carnage at Local Tech Event.)

There were also talks on other topics, such as content management system interoperability, J2EE vs Python, Mobile Oxford, and other such things, as well as an appearance of Santa, free beer, and interesting conversations with various people.

The next Oxford Geek Night is on February 9th 2011, and hopefully will be just as good.