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The fact I couldn't go to the science festival in York actually worked in my favour. On a mailing list of which I'm a member, one of the other subscribers wrote about a Python conference in Birmingham. It took place over the weekend when the science festival started, so I was able to go to that instead. I go the train up on Friday and stayed with bethanthepurple - t'was fab to see you and catch up.

Organisation-wise, having been to other cons in the past, two things of note stand out, and they may be of interest to other con-goers/organisers. 1) double sided name badges. (when on a string they tend to flap about and sometimes turn over) 2) lightning talks. These take the form of a long slot in the timetable for several speakers to have a 5 minute slot in which to make a short presentation, have a rant, whatever.

Reading over this post I realised that when I say going to this event instead worked in my favour, I missed out why. I ran a lightning talk of my own, on the subject of genetic algorithms. I ran out of time, annoying so was cut short at the 5 minute point. That said, I quite enjoyed doing it, and aroused some interest because a number of people spoke to me about it afterwards.

Interestingly someone else had written a python suite for GA stuff, though his app was to solve the timetabling problem.

I might re-run that as a longer talk at the London Python group. Ideally I'd like to record it and put it online because it's qute an academic subject and I'd like to make it a bit more approachable. If not at London Python then I'll record it myself.

It's odd - having done training in previous jobs, and teaching the Edgware band to ring, i'm still very nervous when doing the standup and talk style of teaching. Ì might book myself on a course, because it will be useful even though I don't do a lot at the moment.

Tonight is the last night I'll be spending in my flat. It's strange to think that I've been in London a whole year. I'll be spending the next few days with family not too far from here and, assuming all goes to plan, I'll be in my new house on Friday.
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Today xugglybug and I went to the Post Secret gallery in Foyles. It was quiet than I thought it would be, though admittedly it was the last day. I recognised some of the material from the book (which I pondered buying, but decided not to as it's comparatively close to Christmas at the mo). Having packed away all of the food and kitchenware from which to eat, we decided to go for a meal somewhere. This evening we went to the nearby Big Red. (Randomly passed drpoggs and ryll with a couple of others in tow.)
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Just to let you know that I'll not be online during the evenings for the coming few days, but I have provisionally arranged for an NTL engineer to come on Sunday so things should be sorted then.