Geekery Podery Castery

I decided to give the Sussex Geek Dinner a go.  A chap gave a talk on podcasting and there was a free buffet. 

Decent enough talk.  Mostly about the equipment used, and the software (he recommended Audacity because it's free and quite good), and the audio engineering to get decent results.  And how to set up RSS.  Interesting stuff.  I'd set up my own podcast if I actually had some content.  Nice lot as well, but not really the same tribe of geek as me. These are pro-geeks.  Their work is their life.  And they only seem to be really interested in that area.  There weren't the geeky jokes flying around that I was hoping for. 

I realised my geek credentials are failing.  I really don't quite get RSS.  Anyone familiar with it?  There seem to be Thunderbird and firefox plugins for it.  Which should I use? 

Parental presents

I need to get my mum a birthday present. 

Options are something dull but useful that she wants (from a list) - like a DVD player or a digital radio, or something interesting but not on the list. 

Thing is she'll never get round to buying useful stuff for herself.  My parents just don't do that.  They are incapable of grasping just how cheap electrical equipment is these days and just buying one next time they see one.  But I don't like buying stuff from a list.  It always feels a little unimaginitive.

The Geekette in Brighton.

Why did nobody tell me Develop was in Brighton?  Shame our company didn't want to pay for us to go.  Some of the top guys went though, to the lavish award ceremony where the game that I got an "additional thanks" credit won an award. 
Plus side was an online friend of mine went.  Shame I didn't realise she was in Brighton yesterday as well, but that's life.  We managed to meet up for a few minutes.  Went to the beach.  It was really windy.  Ska-girl has lots of hair (in lots of colours) she turned into Cousin It for a bit.  Not for long though because she wanted to go to catch a train.  Then her co-workers got distracted by some chance of gatecrashing a Linden Labs recruitment party.  We weren't invited but people thought it might be worth gatecrashing.  It's a recruitment event after all.  I would have tried to blag my way in with my disarming honesty (I'm a developer.  I have a business card). but Ska-girl didn't seem to be too keen, and that was fine. 

I walked her to the station.  We got detaoured to Ben and Jerry's.  She went for the coffee one and got a bit hyperactive.  This did mean that she missed the most immediate train so there was another 20 minutes or so to kill so we went through Brighton's North Laines. A few of the shops were still open. 

And she's a real hottie!  Alas she's only interested in a Nice Jewish Boy.  But it was fun.  And i think I've tempted her to come back.   Always nice to have friends.

And she wanted to know if Brighton has a Shakeaway.  Once again Brighton comes up trumps for fine dining!