HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG

Another part of my birthday was dressing up for the day and going to the sell-out Royal Ascot. Lots of horses, hats and Pimms were the order of the day :)

As part of my birthday weekend celebration Rachel organised a meal at a French restaurant where the room you eat in is completely dark and the waiting staff are all blind. The food was great but the novelty value was excellent.

When you arrive at the restaurant you are asked to put your valuables and anything that might emit light like mobiles and cameras into lockers. Then you are organised into a line with your right arm on the shoulder of the person in front of you and the waiter leads you into the pitch black dining room and navigates you to your table. At the table you have to orientate yourself and those around you to the space around you. We shared a table with a group of random Aussies and before Rachel realised this she called out to the waitress that she thought she was on the wrong table. Once orientated we realised that we were all yelling at each other. Something about losing one sense made us amplify the others to compensate I guess. Eating and drinking was also a challenge as we couldn’t see what we were doing. Of critical importance was organising the distribution of the red and white wine and not mixing them up. The end result was a fair bit of spilled wine and people who wore white shirts feeling silly. At some stage we were delivered additional wine that we didn’t order (and thus didn’t have to pay for) so it all worked out in the end :)

All in all a fun night with good food. The French staff were poorly organised and often rude which just added to the hilarity of the evening.

This is my best photo of the evening.

Recently I went to Nimes in France for a couple of days work. Nimes is a beautiful little city with beautiful old French and Roman buildings in the middle of town.

I have been to Nimes before so after I finished up on Friday night I went to see some of the other cities in the south of France.

First stop was Avignon which is a town that the Popes once lived in when the murdering and the warring in Italy got a little too much for them. When things calmed down to the normal level or warring and murdering they went back to Rome. Avignon has dined out on the legacy of once being Pope HQ ever since and as such is a bit of a tourist trap.

My second stop, Montpelier was a young student town that has a really party feel to it. The party atmosphere was considerably helped along by the gay and lesbian mardi gra that happened to be in town the night I was there. The G&L’s certainly know how to party, maybe that is why organised religion hate them so much, pure jealousy.

Lastly on Sunday I went to Perpignan which smells like pee.

There are other examples of this out there on the web but I cna never find one when I need it so have added it to my blog for easy access.

Usage

Targeting elements by getElementById seems pretty universal.

document.getElementById('x').style.backgroundPosition = '0 -200px';

Bundy, Laura and I went to Norway for the bank holiday weekend.

We flew into Oslo and had a look around the capital city. The next morning we took a very scenic train over the mountains to beautiful Bergen. From there we took a ferry up the beautiful fjords to Flam and back over the mountains to Bergen.

Crazy things about Norway include the sun was setting at 22.40 when we were in Bergen and it rose again at 04.30! Also a refreshing cold beer at a bar can cost SEVEN POUNDS!!

Another of the products I worked on called Analytics won a French i-expo award.

Some senior manager who I have never met said:

“We are extremely proud to be acknowledged by professionals for the innovating aspect of our LexisNexis Dashboard solution. Our technical team along with our consultants has managed to put technology … “

Anyway more recognition for more hard work.

One of the projects I worked on called Total Patent won a Codie award for Best Online Science or Technology Service. The exact blurb follows:

“The 2008 CODiE Awards recognize those companies providing the best new technology products and services across a broad array of industries,” noted SIIA President Ken Wasch. “The awards and their winners are a testament to the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions to American businesses and consumers. SIIA congratulates all of the CODiE Award winners and nominees, whose innovation is essential for continuing America’s leadership in the global knowledge economy.”

The winners are viewable on this site http://siia.net/codies/2008/winners.asp.

Its good to know that someone recgnises my genus.