While the rest of the country was busy watching Super Saturday and the British “great haul of China“, I joined 167 other scavengers solving cryptic clues, seeking out items and performing tasks all across Edinburgh for the Festival Scavenger Hunt. If you saw people running around the city carrying obscure items like kitchen sinks yesterday then it’s a fair bet that they were also taking part.
Unfortunately we didn’t win but we did have a lot of fun along the way.
People initially asked which charity the hunt was in aid of but were more curious when we explained what was actually going on. I’m looking forward to seeing what has been made of all the submissions for a week-long exhibition at the City Art Centre that starts tomorrow.
I’d like to say a big thank you to the following people and businesses who helped me out during the day: The Dress Fabric Shop, Twigs Florists, The Bruntsfield Hotel, Cockburns Delicatessen, Greggs Bakery, Witchery Tours and the friends I pestered with phone calls and text messages. Twitter proved useless yet again. Obviously thanks also go to the organisers, my team mates and Whitespace for entering the teams and allowing us to use the office as a base of operations.
A full list of the clues and their point value follow.
Continue reading ‘Seek and ye shall find’
I’ve just boarded the train that will take me on the first leg of my journey and have realised that I neglected to include my laptop power brick when finishing off my packing this morning.
I stopped off at Waterstones to pick up some books to read while I’m away and then passed the O2 Memory Project to record the start of my trip. I strolled through the East end of Princes Street Gardens, past the Scott Monument, pausing to take a look back at the National Galleries, Edinburgh Castle and the beautiful architecture of The Scotsman and Balmoral Hotels, the Edinburgh HQ of Halifax Bank of Scotland and made my way down to Waverley station.
Today’s (and probably the last of the year) Edinburgh Coffee Morning was the busiest it has been for a good while. The cryptic promise of some gifts that Ewan McIntosh left in a Facebook message last night turned out to be some really nice signed Hugh MacLeod posters for Stormhoek. The season of goodwill and giving continued with some warmed Panettone and some chilled Prosecco courtesy of our hosts at Centotre. Many thanks to the aforementioned for their generosity.
A couple of stand out things from this morning before the conversations paired off as things are wont to do in group dynamics. Ewan briefly demoed Seesmic which seems to be some kind of video Twitter. I’ve never sent a “tweet” in my life and do have difficulty of seeing the point of it if I’m being honest. At least with Seesmic, there is an element of a two way thing going on.
Via Will Richardson, I found this video of Johnny Chung Lee turning the tables on the light sensing aspect of the Wiimote to produce an interaction whiteboard for around £40 much more interesting:
I’m aware that I’ve mentioned the Edinburgh Coffee Morning a few times in my blog before but have never really expanded on what it was.
Basically a loose affiliation of people from various professions gather on a Friday morning in Centotre to chat about social networks, Web 2.0 technologies and related topics before we scuttle off to our places of work. Web developers like myself, IT professionals geeks like Jamie Clague, marketing bods like Mike Coulter and Mark Gorman, teachers and educators like Ewan McIntosh and authors like Bill Coles (who has a book out: The Well-Tempered Clavier). You don’t have to be a web geek — all are welcome and it generally proves to be a thoroughly enjoyable and diverse start to the day.
I spent the afternoon watching the Hearts vs. Falkirk match on Saturday (while nervously keeping an eye on the Australia vs. England Rugby World Cup quarter-final — third victory from three matches I think, which means we get to keep them or something).
After a couple of pints debating the offside decisions which led to the late surge from Falkirk, I made my way down to the Grassmarket to meet some friends and catch the Edinburgh urban downhill night finals which were a part of the 2007 Fat Face Night Series. Judging by the turnout I wouldn’t be surprised if this was repeated again next year.
I was amazed by just how quickly the top guys were flying down the course. It was very exciting to watch but I think only because of the great view we had. We were so close you could feel the breeze from the riders passing by you. It could have been a bit tricky to catch anything than the occasional blur if you were elsewhere. Head on over to Flickr or check out my friend’s shots for some photos.
No, that’s not my new chimpanzee impression but the sounds uttered last night by the 250,000 people who watched the annual Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert that marks the end of the month-long Edinburgh Festival.
I’ve watched the show from various vantage points over the past few years: South of the castle on Bruntsfield Links, Queen Street and had a great view last night on Princes Street, at the junction with Castle Street.
Around four tonnes of fireworks were let off over a period of 45 minutes and five pieces of classical music that was annoyingly barely audible. Maybe I’ll try and get tickets for the band stand next year.
The most impressive view however was last year when I was flying back from a friends wedding. The flight was delayed enough for the Fireworks to be going off just as we were circling Edinburgh on approach to the airport. Of course I couldn’t hear the music from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra but the unique view more than compensated for this!
Yesterday I completed the Edinburgh 10k in a time of 58:24. I was aiming for a sub-hour time but hadn’t trained for over a month thanks to a pain in my knee which happened on my first run without my iPod. I’m not sure if my knee always hurt and I never noticed it due to musical distraction or if it was just coincidence.
To be on the safe side I made up a quick 60 minute iTunes playlist to keep me going:
- We Will Become Silhouettes, The Postal Service
- Carolyn’s Bootie, The Presidents Of The United States Of America
- Float On, Modest Mouse
- Going Missing, Maxïmo Park
- Let Forever Be, The Chemical Brothers
- Pounding, Doves
- Never Had So Much Fun, Frenzal Rhomb
- Empire, Kasabian
- Mr. Brightside, The Killers
- Hungry, Kosheen
- Do Your Thing, Basement Jaxx
- Up The Bracket, The Libertines
- Knights Of Cydonia, Muse
- Crash, The Primitives
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face, Coldplay
- Spitting Games, Snow Patrol
I got home from work this evening to find the usual mound of flyers, pizza menus and a few pieces of mail for the completely wrong address. Nothing out of the ordinary there – at least my junk direct mail amounts to next-to-nothing after opting out with both the DMA and the Royal Mail.
But buried among the dross was a sample packet of chocolate digestives from McVities! Result!
I’ve just come back from a weekend away with friends to a most distressing sight. I thought that I would check out the write-up from last Fridays weekly coffee morning at Centotre. One photo in particular caught my eye – the elevated group shot. Now not many people usually see the top of my head due to my height but now even Mark Gorman is calling me “follicly challenged”.