New experience this morning. I talked at a conference by remote video link. Its the first time I’ve given a talk sitting on my bed. Appropriately the conference in question was .Astronomy-2009, held in Leiden. (Thats “dot-astronomy”.) I was sorry not to be there, as I have never been to Leiden, it looks like a fun meeting, and it claims to be an un-conference, which is a bit Lewis Carroll. You can follow the meeting on Ustream and on Twitter.
This turned out to be much harder than I expected. I had sent them a PDF of my talk, and called in by skype. So far so good. The organisers suggested I follow my own talk on Ustream so I could see when my slides changed. However… this turned out to have a three second delay. As a result my own voice was overlapping itself in the most gharssly manner and it was hellish hard to concentrate. I suspect I sounded like a complete buffoon. My kids tell me I was loud as well as stumbling, and apparently sounded like Ron Weasley’s Dad on the telephone. Hopefully the written words made some sense. If you want to see the PDF, I have uploaded it to my ROE page.
Meanwhile, I have a link for all those people who over the years I have heard complaining that Swindon is the most mind-numbingly boring town in the world, with the possible exception of Newport Pagnell. In fact, I will have you realise, Swindon is at the very bleeding edge of the internet revolution.
The e-Astronomer 
I was in Leiden last week for the previous LC conference (saw the poster for yours, complete with ethernet cable taking over the universe). From the point of seeing the place you didn’t miss much, since most of what we saw was the 20-minute walk from the hotel to the university campus across a building site!
I did see some tweets from spectators expressing astonishment that you appeared to be in bed. I had visions of you all tucked up and too lazy to get up.
yerss… that was ON my bed, not IN my bed, but I think what I said at the time was FROM my bed, hence the ambiguity.
It was great to have you Andy, the talk was excellent.
Martin – well that’s a shame, Leiden is a lovely town – maybe not at its best in November but if you didn’t visit the old centre you missed out!
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Sarah has a cool blog too. Click on her name above and you will get there. Oh wot a bunch of luvvies.
Swindon seems to be advancing by leaps and bounds. Did you see this? Well worth reading!
Coo. I’m sure there is a joke in here about the Magic Roundabout, but I can’t quite find it.