Bristol Snow - Frostie the Snowman uses Apple

Bristol has just returned to normal after what must be the longest period of snow-cover for the best part of 30 years. My road, which runs east-west and has tall houses on the southern side, had a good covering of snow before Christmas and didn't clear before the post-Christmas snow arrived a week and-a-bit ago. Last weekend Bristol really was a winter wonderland with all sorts of un-Bristolian things happening. There were people kite-skiing and -boarding on The Downs, and on the Ashton Court singletrack mountain-bike trail I was faced with the unusual hazard of cross-country skiers.

Of course the snow brings out the sculptors. I saw any number of snowmen but I missed this one, found near in Bristol University. A little bit of image enhancement shows that Frostie is using a MacBook - I'm not sure that Steve would be impressed by the headphones though.

Thanks to Trevor Parsons/Alana Cowan for the use of the photo.

Television in Trouble

Richard Taylor's "Build and Break" makes some very good points. Although he writes about the US, I have no doubt that we are likely to see big changes in the near future in the UK as well. The biggest barrier to the revolution is the lack of broadband in many area of the UK; this needs fixing. Oh, and by broadband, I mean something fast - we should be aiming for 100 Mbit/s in to and out of the home at least. (Why so much upload? I'll addresses that in a blog post some other time).

Inmos Reunion

I was going to blog about the Inmos reunion but as The Omnivorist has done such a good job on his blog I won't say much here except that it was good to see so many people there despite the short notice and the busy time of year. It was particularly good to see Brian Collins who I hadn't seen, or heard of, for well over twenty years.

Christmas has gone but my birthday is coming

www.wiiwaaworld.com

Winter

The recent wintery weather here in Bristol reminds me of my recent trip to California. I've been there enough to know that, despite what people think, they do have poor weather occasionally.

It seems they had the coldest weather for a decade while I was there. The picture on the left shows snow on the hills to the east of San Jose. I've seen a light dusting of snow on the hills before but not a blanketing.

However, in twenty-something years of visiting Silicon Valley I've never before had to scrape ice off my windscreen which I had to do for two days running.

It was really good to get back to the mild climate of Bristol.

Scoble again

I recently posted about Robert Scoble's comments about how Europe is lagging behind the USA in its usage of the leading edge communications. Well, he's been at it again, with what seems to have been an attack on French entrepeneurs. I fear that, once again, he's right - we Europeans need to get our act together.

[As an aside, my previous post has attracted a lot of Japanese comments which, according to Google translate are of rather dubious content. I wonder why?]

Breakfast

Inmos

Contact Claire DOT Maudsley AT clairejayne.co.uk