Anyways… Yesterday in London I checked out Greenwich. Unfortunately there was a lot of construction and fences put up for the Olympics. In that area they’ll be doing the pentathlon and equestrian races, kinda killed some nice photography options, I went to the maritime museum and the royal observatory, both of which were pretty cool. Also checked out a brewery which my crashpadder host had recommended for me.

Final picture count is around 950 I think. Will post them when I get home to my Flickr account… and a few choice ones to Facebook.

I had a few general observations over the course of the trip, but I can’t remember most of them. The burner phone was awesome, but it would’ve been way more useful to have a smartphone with maps. That was what I missed the most… Not the Internet but just having a map and search function to find places easily. To overcome this, I had to do a lot of day planning. I would look up the general area I was going to and would take a screenshot to store on my iPhone. That way, I could pull up the pictures as I went around. A bit crude but it worked.

I know I said I was going to… But I really didn’t practice my English accent here much. I did kinda naturally change the way I said some things… Changing the tone slightly but still saying it the American way, if that makes sense.

Good trip though, a little long, but that’s fine by me. Tomorrow morning I leave my apartment around 5:00 AM to go up to New York via train to my friends wedding that I’m in. I’m finally home on Saturday night for two weeks before I go off to training. I think right now I stand at I’ll be home for 2 weeks, gone for 2, back for 1, gone for 2, back for around 2.5-3.5, and gone for 1.5 (vacation!/Oktoberfest)… Then back for good!

Cheers

Rachel and George in London.

Still in London at some church

George in Cambridge

Oxford…

There are some more, but they aren’t formatting correctly on here. The actual picture count is around 800. George isn’t in most of them.

Per usual, I’m travelling. This time I’m on a train to London… My final destination before going home. I’m going to try and meet up with some redditors and maybe some CSers to celebrate ‘mericuh. I’m sitting at a table on the train and the lady sitting across from me is using almost the whole thing. She just plopped down and started plugging into ALL of the outlets and takes out this massive laptop, etc.

I’ll try and find an appropriate picture from yesterday and post it. Can’t do that offline, and the train doesn’t have wifi. Probably should have taken the bus from Oxford to London, oh well.

Oh, and I got a gplus account, so I’m looking forward to messing with that when I get home.

Oddly enough, the bus won’t let me post anything to the blog, but I can still write offline. (edit: figured out a workaround by logging in via my VPN, which i shouldve been doin anyways since it encrypts my traffic) Anyways, Cambridge was pretty interesting place. By the time I got there a lot of the unis were closed to the public, but I did get a lot of pictures of the buildings and the scenery.

Note if you travel to Cambridge: rent a bike. Would have been soooo much easier and they’re pretty cheap too. I ended up walking at least 10 miles and my hosts place wasn’t that close.

Clare, my couchsurfing host, was very nice. She even cooked me dinner and we had some wine and interesting conversations. Her air mattress apparently had a very strong leak as it wouldn’t hold air for long. 30 minutes at most. So, my first CS experience was a success I would say. And, I didn’t get murder-raped, so thats another plus. For Oxford I have two offers… Or I have one as a backup at least. It’s a very unusual experience overall. A bit awkward at first, but I guess you get used to it? Clare said she’s hosted 6 people, including me, over the course of a year.

Side note: there are a lot of old people on this bus.

Today I will be staying with Erin and possibly meeting up with some other CSers at a carnival that’s going on in Oxford. Apparently a group of them are getting together for it, so that should be fun. Still not sure what I’ll be doing for the 4th, there’s been some talk on Reddit and CS about getting together and possibly doing a pub crawl. I need to figure out how I can store my bags until the place I’m staying is ready. Found London’s place on crashpadder where people can rent out spare rooms essentially. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be as social as CS or not though.

Pic I forgot to post while I was in bath…

Also, the full English breakfast I had with Cat:

Next I’m off to Cambridge. I am realizing I didn’t really leave much time for it. I’ll have the afternoon and evening I guess. At least it stays bright out late.

Had a full English breakfast this morning, was pretty good. Took a picture but it’s on my iphone. I think it’s going to be a mostly quiet night in Cambridge. Did a lot of drinking the last two nights. My host in Cambridge said she might turn in early. Hopefully she has wifi. I’m on a higher speed train that goes from kings cross in London direct to Cambridge, so that’s pretty convenient. The one that went to Bath made a few stops.

I’m not sure, but I’m probably up to about 500 photos now if I were to make a guess.

Getting to Oxford tomorrow is going to be tricky. No direct trains… Have to go back to London and through Reading to get there… 3 or 4 transfers, about 3 or 4 hours too I think. Bleh.

Personal notes: Non-work related business cards might be a good idea at some point. Definitely need to get back to the gym.

The conference went well. I presented my paper yesterday and wrote up some notes during other presentations that I may post once I clean them up. I got a lot more questions than I figured I would. Post conference we checked out wagamama, a noodle chain that’s pretty frequent around these parts. Then we went back to the pig and fiddle and had a pint with the work guys. We went there every day in bath, it was a pretty popular/young-ish bar… Not much else to do in Bath, its a pretty tourist town if you’re into the touristy stuff. Afterwards we decided to grab a drink at the pub next to our hotel and started hanging out with some of the locals, who were hilarious.

Oh, back to the meeting Rachel and Josh thing… I only have a vague idea where to meet them and they don’t have a phone.

Another comment on fashion here. Women apparently love low cut shirts and mini-skirts, which is alright by me.

Ok, that’ll do for now. Cheers mates!

More later, need to write some more conference notes.

Personal project: Look into building an underwater snakebot. Looked pretty damn cool in the video.

How the hell did / do people type on these bloody things?!?!? It takes like an hour to say four words! It also took me a while to find a store that sold pre-paid mobile phones and then I had to figure out how to “top it up”. Its surprisingly easy actually. That phone in particular is a skype phone, so if you call me, using my skype user name OEHokie we could have a chat. Keep in mind that I’m 5 hours ahead. I’m waiting for it to get dark out at 930 and it’s 430 back home.

Other observations from London… Lots of foreigners (as in non-British people). I feel like most of the conversations I overhear are American accented, which is very disappointing.

It’s dangerous crossing the street here. I didn’t realize how ingrained into me it was to look left first before stepping out into the street. Guinness seems to taste the same… But I’m not in Ireland anyways so maybe that’s the difference. The underground isn’t too complicated. Very convenient anyways and I’m definitely glad I bought an oyster card, which is equivalent to dc’s smart trip card.

So yeah… My phone has skype, twitter, facebook, email and phone/texting functions and it will be a lifesaver. All of that on that tiny dumb-screen and numeric keyboard. Not that I’m complaining…

During the day I took about 200 pictures. Some good, some bad. My prime lens seems to be blurring things for some reason, so I’ll probably avoid it. The fish-eye lens adds some interesting effects, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. Might mess with it more tonight.

Cheers y’all

June 27 – land in London, spend the day there
June 28 – train to Bath, spend the afternoon there
June 29 – conference
June 30 – conference / present paper
July 1 – London, meet up with Cat
July 2 – Cambridge, meet up with Clare
July 3 – Oxford, meet up with Erin
July 4 – London, trying to do something with the Reddit London Social Club too
July 5 – London still
July 6 – fly home
July 7 – train to Albany for Cooney’s wedding

Whew.

Un-exciting view from the airport… Just messing with the app at this point. Another hour til my plane boards…

For biceps, I started with 35 pounds and worked up in 5 pound increments waiting 1 minute between sets. Did three sets at 10/8/3 reps respectively.
Waited another minute and did hammer curls… 25/30/35 pounds at 10/8/6 reps respectively.
Waited a minute and did the seated row, starting with 100 pounds (way too low apparently) and did 100/120/150 pounds at 10/10/7 reps respectively.

I would’ve done more, but there was some old guy taking his sweet time on all the equipment I needed… became impatient and left.

I drank a liter of water (with one gatorade packet in it) while doing this and haven’t eaten yet… I’m getting pizza (and beer probably) with Chris later and had chipotle last night so I’m definitely not starving myself.