Out of the way

I was a speaker at Fundamentos Web recently. Apart from being one of the best conferences I have been to in the Northern Hemisphere, they also had the best spaeker's present I have got in ages. A remote controlled dragonfliy that actually flies. Part of the new generation of little electric flying things, this is heaps of fun. It works happily outside - it must use radio or something rather than the Infra-Red that Facundo's helicopter seems to use - although being an over-sized dragonfly it doesn't handle wind very well.

Indeed, the only bad thing about the whole exercise is that while George Oates of Flickr kindly gave me hers to give to Facundo, the staff at the Abba hotel in Gijon, having confirmed it was there with my name on it, have since managed to lose it Hopefully it will turn up somewhere, but that was not a very impressive effort - the more so given that I had asked a friend who is close by to go there and pick it up, and she ended up making two trips and getting the run-around from them for nothing.

I also bought a keyboard for the new version of the Opera browser on Eva's games machine. It's nice - I can blog from the machine, search for things more easily, and it makes the browser much nicer to work with. It makes me want even more of the advanced features available - despite the fact that I love the simplicity of the default interface (I could give it to my granny if she were still alive, to read this blog), as a power user I like to have a whole lot more. Oh well, we'll see what developments arise in the future.

But overall I have had a 48-hours weekend where I barely touched the computer - I started to write something on Friday evening, but changed my mind. A break is sometimes really valuable.

I also got a present I have been after for a while. A microwave/grill/convection oven. It isn't quite the family-size monster that my Mum has, because I went for the one that had a bit of surface damage (a bump in the corner and a scratch on the lid) and was therefore waay cheaper than anything else, but was also small. On the other hand it fits easily in the kitchen, there is room for the old electric oven if I want to make a big dinner, and it's busy cooking cauilflower cheese and parsnips and carrots right now...