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.
I was a Cylon. (Or maybe I still am.) I played the Battlestar Galactica board game on Saturday and found that out. The humans were defeated.

I read Douglas Coupland's Player One. It was comforting to read somehow, and felt familiar due to the quotes from other books by Coupland, which were mixed in.

I went to Reading Geek Night last night and listened to a talk about Cyclepong (Pong that is played by pedalling exercise bikes) and an unusual version of Lunar Lander. The arcade machines are on Southwold Pier.

There was a geek quiz, which [livejournal.com profile] tackline and I came last in, which obviously proves we are not geeks.

The other talk at Reading Geek Night was on 3D photos and we all wore 3D cyan/red glasses to look at them and were given instructions on how to make our own 3D photos. How to build a digital 3D camera rig. There are some great anaglyphic photos on Flickr, which you need 3D glasses to view, such as this one: The Laboratory of Satan.

I started reading Undercover User Experience Design. I may become a secret agent (of UX).

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