I am in Nottingham today, attending the eSciences All Hands Meeting until thursday. It's an interesting meeting, though the scope of it is not really my thing. Any conference that can gather archeologists, astronomers, social scientists, computer scientists and biologists under one roof is bound to be a bit ecclectic. There's some interesting tidbits, but most of it I find uninteresting. I'm here to give a demo on PRIDE/OLS, so basically I'm losing 3 days of useful work time to give a 25 minute presentation and waving the flag a lot. Ah well, thems the breaks.
Getting here was interesting. Taking the train is still a novel experience, especially when it's not a route I'm used to. I'm always worried I'm on the wrong train (this is especially confusing when the trains are identified by their final destination and it's not always obvious you need to take the Norwich train to get off at Ely to then take the Liverpool train to get off at Nottingham). Still, I made it in one piece on time, though at one point I had to disturb a One employee who was busy oogling a rather bust-enhanced page 3 girl.
The hotel I'm staying in is ok, but you'd think I'd be used to differences in classifications and ratings between Canada and the UK. You'd think a 4-star hotel would be a bit more posh than having plastic cups in the loo and small, lumpy beds. Still, it's clean and the food is good.
Speaking of, you'd think I'd know better by now to steer clear of the full english fry-up. But no. I'm stupid that way. I went a bit overboard with the bacon this morning and my body is now voicing a rather harsh opinion that this was indeed a very foolish thing to do. I'm going to be drinking a lot of green tea today to try and bring my GI system back in line. For now, I just hope that my subsonic gas releases aren't disrupting the keynote speakers.
In other news, we're seeing the light at the end of the wedding prep tunnel. We finally heard from our cake decorator last night, and the last things to do are getting Katy's hair cut, the music and the final fittings for the suit hire. yay!