Modern Cambridge

Our old Pong game for the tv

Moving to modern times,  last weekend we visited  the 2 year old Centre for Computing History.  It is a quirky place - in a hangar like structure in some industrial park.  It is filled with some guy's collection of old and largely working machines, many of which Mark and I were familar with being old ourselves.

This was capped off with a viewing of Shaun the Sheep. Since one of us is into sheep, seemed like a must do here in the UK. The film is from the creators of Wallace & Gromit and is based on a tv show.  Before the film, it was interesting seeing all the UK ads geared to British children.

This weekend is Cambridge's e-Luminate Festival.  Much of it was kind of disappointing, just coloured spotlights, but there was one very cool dynamic installation at the Senate House.  The timing for this exhibit seems a bit off as there are noticeably less hours of darkness these days, so we are already in a festival of natural light.

Snow!

It has actually been snowing here, which seems to make people a bit giddy.  Although by snow I mean some squalls when you look out the window.  It hasn't been sticking which is too bad because I've seen pictures and it is lovely.  The most we've seen is some snow sticking to parked cars. As previously noted, it rarely gets below freezing here.  Despite this it does seem rather cold which is a bit puzzling.  Is it the wind?  Perhaps the damp?  We are not sure why but even if it hasn't rained, when we go out in the morning the streets are soaked.

On Friday we went to a string quartet at Emma.  Someone subsidized a free recital every term, and this time it was the Cavaleri Quartet playing the Mozart Quartet in D minor K. 421 followed by the Shostakovich Quartet in C minor, op. 110.  Despite being free and told to get there early as it fills up, it was rather empty.  We thoroughly enjoyed the program of two very different pieces.  We then went to the Chinese restaurant from the week before for dinner, but without our local host we didn't order as well.

On Thursday we went to the Microsoft Distinguished Lecture talk to hear Tony Hoare.  He is known for amazingly many things (he is a Sir after all) - including the Dining Philosophers problem which was influential in my choice to go into computer science.  Microsoft Research is in a fancy new building which is actually on the same street as our flat and reminded us of the new CS building at U of Edinburgh. After the talk there was a very good canape and drinks reception where Mark's inner grad student went crazy and free dinner was obtained.  The "canapes" were all sorts of Asian inspired hor d'oevres and were admittedly quite tasty as these things go.