Hi! So I booked my ticket to London and figured I’d try one of London’s escape rooms or live puzzle games. Shadow Over Southwark looks like fun, but I’m not stuck on it. I figured I’d see if one or more of you want to get together for a bit of gaming? I was thinking Friday the 18th in the evening, the day before Wordplay.
Anyone interested? Feel free to post here or PM me!
Yay! Nobody else has responded, but we’ve time yet. The game I linked to above has teams of six, and it’d be great if we can get a full team together. But it should be fun either way.
I can’t do the escape room thing either. However, i could be around, at some point, on the Friday if there’s a meetup. In any case, i should definately be able to make Saturday.
Ok no worries everyone. I’ll probably buy a ticket for just me but will keep checking in case someone last minute decides to meet up. Otherwise I’ll see everyone at Wordplay/AdventureX! I’ll be the lost-looking American guy.
Under further consideration, I’ve decided not to attempt any live puzzle gaming. That said, I’ll be around if anyone wants to join me at a pub. I’m sure I’ll still need a drink.
Hi folks! I’m arriving Thurs morning & would be into meeting up sometime between then and 5:30pm on Friday (thus I’m out for Friday night gaming too). I wouldn’t mind checking out the Tate.
Tate Britain is good, but Tate modern is usually disappointing.
British Museum is good for ancient Egypt (ignore pots from Mesopotamia and rocks, except the Rosetta stone (probably fake)). Don’t know if anyone else saw that 3D CT scan of Egyptian mummies. It was awesome. Not there anymore, but if near you, go see it.
Checkout Wallace Collection (free), Manchester square if you like swords & armour. Also many oil paintings.
Science Museum is a bit dumbed down now, but V&A nearby is well worth a look. Natural history museum is kids’ dinosaurs and stuffed animals, mostly boring esp since dinosaurs are fake as usual.
For more classic art; the national gallery. medieval, Old men & Cherubs through to C20. Also nearby the National Portrait Gallery; dudes practising their stiff upper lip.
Tate modern is ok sometimes. Trouble is most of the time they’re trying to monetise the special exhibits to the detriment of the permanent collection.
Difference engine is worth seeing. Actually a DE2. I heard that sometimes they actually run it, although i also heard that it doesn’t work because it jams.
But, more interesting than the DE2 replica is the portion of the unfinished difference engine. This was 1/7th of the real machine that Babbage actually made as a demo to raise money for the real thing.
It’s the only thing he actually built after spending a fortune of government money.
So this is the only actual genuine Babbage thing to see (aside from his brain). The demo part used to be NOT in the Babbage section of the museum duh! Last time I saw it, it was downstairs in “making of the modern world”. That was a few years ago. they might have had the sense to move it by now.
Wellcome Collection is also a rather interesting one (medical museums are always on my radar) - it’s on Euston Road, which is really down the road from British Library.
I think it was in the same room as the replica when I was there a few years ago (I don’t want to work out how many as it may turn out to be well over 10.)
Great. I would very much like to see the DE2 working, if they ever run it. There’s a great book on the history of the DE if you haven’t read it; “The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer”, by Doron Swade.
[shameless plug]
If you want to learn more about DE2, you can watch this video of my dad running a presentation of DE2#2 (the second one, made at the same time, for Nathan Myhrvold’s private collection) from when it was on display at the Computer History Museum: youtube.com/watch?v=jiRgdaknJCg
(CHM presenters write their own patter, and I don’t think this is the best version of his, but it’s the one I can find on Google, so.)[/shameless plug]
wow! thanks for posting the vid. This is the new replica. Do you know if this is run on a regular basis, because one day I’d like to visit and see it in operation.
They ran it every day while they had it on display, for something like five years, but Myhrvold eventually finished reinforcing his living room floor and brought it back to his home last January.