Haunted Vaults

Next on the agenda was the tour of the haunted vaults under Edinburgh. I was asked if I believe in ghosts and I replied "I shall suspend my disbelief". :-D

The tour was ok, though not quite the ghoulish terrifying tour and stories as promised.

"Discover Edinburgh’s history at its most chilling. We save the darkest, most sinister, most unsettling tales to our last, late night ghost tour."

It probably would have been more interesting if they skipped the haunted ghost factor and talked more about the specific histories. Those that were revealed were interesting, but were mostly backdrop to some scary ghost that inhabits some part.

Although... I did manage to photograph something that looks like a ghost......

It may however have just been a blurred handheld shot of a person holding a candle. 

Time: 0008h (the witching hour!!!)

Location: Bed

Temperature: 7°C

Welcome to Scotland

Time: 1630h

Weather: 8°C,gloomy 

Thanks to a very thorough list from a new friend in Amsterdam I have a virtual encyclopaedia of things to do in Edinburgh. 

I've knocked off one item on the list, the visit to the Palace of the Holyroodhouse. The next I plan to do tonight, a ghost tour of Edinburgh.

The Palace was surprisingly interesting. The audio self-tour was well done, and the place was amazing. Photography was not allowed indoors, but I can say that it was well worth the visit.

The Palace is the official home of Queen Elisabeth when she visits. One thing that did stand out was how gloomy it was. They did have the lights turned down, but the beautiful drapes, wall hangings and paintings all contributed to a relatively dark setting. 

At night the palace looks gothic but beautiful with the lighting.

Edinburgh

So I've recovered from NYE. Rather than muck around further in Amsterdam, I've decided to add Scotland to my list of countries I'm visiting, this brings that list to 21. To that end, I've just landed in Edinburgh. I'll be here 2 full days then fly down to London to begin my big bus tour.

Welcome to Amsterdam of the Future!

Date: 1st Jan 2016

A quick 6 hour train ride took us from Hamburg to Amsterdam. In hindsight, given the lack of airport security, boarding, etc. it probably wasn't that much longer than flying.

Our hosts were great and we had no problems navigating the Amsterdam public transport system.

I've yet to go actually explore Amsterdam and see the sights etc, but I shall Endevour to do something that resembles tourist activity before I go. That said I do return through Amsterdam on my bus tour.

New Years Eve was, as expected, loud and colourful. Even though I was safely bunkered down at a house party, I didn't lack for a view of an enormous amount of fireworks. TV revealed the city centre as been an entire exploding ball of fireworks that went on for minutes. It was like a collapsing star repeatedly imploding and exploding as it attempts to work out if it's going nova, or dwarf.

A brief forray into the outside world this afternoon has revealed what's left of the night. A few kids wandering around letting off crackers, some house pets tentatively making their way outside, coloured paper scatter all over the street. 

The Dutch it seems generally try to tidy up most things as this pile was the "worst" I could find in a most photogenic sense. Do remember we weren't near the city centre, and there was certainly lots of red paper around (the wrap around the fireworks)

CCC Day 4

The intense pace is starting to take its toll, along with the promise/threat of an upcoming long train journey and NYE.

This afternoon things are starting to be packed up. Empty space and marked mats are all that's left to remind you of the awesome that stood there not long ago. I suppose by tomorrow this place will look like a ghost town, with a few residents packing up the remainders, sweeping out the remaining rubbish.

On that note, I'm not sure if it's really good cleaning staff, good mannered hackers, or just German nature, but there isn't much rubbish. The bottle drops are occasionally overflowing with returned bottles, but that's really a good thing.

But back to the content, there are still stands that show no sign of disappearing. I suppose they will sneak out later, like a thief in the middle of the night.

I plan to attend the infrastructure talk in an hour, to get an idea how they managed to pull this scale off. 

At some point I'll return to the hotel for a few hours sleep, uplift the pack, and board a train on my journey to Amsterdam.

Time: 1658h

Temperature: 5°C

Location: Rest Area, level 3, CCC, CCH, Hamburg, Germany, Earth, Sol System, Western Arm of the Milkyway Galaxy

CCC hour 2072

This conference is really amazing. Not for the talks (I'm sure they're great, but I've not been to a single one), but for everything else. The "hallway track" is the conference. The talks are there if you're bored (which you'd have to be pretty jaded to be), or if you're exhausted but want to pretend you're doing stuff.

I've met many interesting people from many places. So far I'm the only Kiwi I've met here. 

I've worked out more on how to take photos whilst respecting the rules (see previous post), so I include some more here.

Forgive me if I repeat myself as its pretty exhausting. I've spoken to people who made autonomous robots that self navigate both indoors and outdoors using a laser sweep on the front to detect and avoid obstacles. A guy who makes art out of what amounts to toilet rolls, grease paper, a TV and a camera. I've spoken to physicists about time travel and drunken a slushie drink that's basically caffeine, alcohol and tea.

I honestly can't remember everyone I've spoken to, but everyone has been awesome (well, let's ignore yesterday's rant).

A functional (at least movement wise) GLaDOS. She doesn't yet try and test people with the promise of cake, but I'm assured that is next on the agenda.

Pretty lights

A cocktail mixing robot - this thing makes cocktails - and they aren't bad. It's not quite Tom Cruise in Kokomo, but it's not a bad start.

Yes, the phone works. Yes, it's bigger on the inside.

Pixels. No really.

The Lounge last night. It's intense, and awesome.

Wow, I keep getting "interrupted" by interesting people sitting down next to me. Clearly I need to get up and keep exploring.

Also this place is like hogworts. It keeps changing. I swear there are new escalators today.

CCC

Wow, I've not written anything for a few days. So I'm in Hamburg at CCC (Chaos Communications Congress), which is one of the largest conferences of its kind in the world. They reckon it's around 12,000 attendees this year, maxing out the largest convention centre in Germany, coincidentally named CCH (and on that note - CCH is closing for renovations in 2 years, so people are scratching their heads as to where it should go).

Anyway, enough of a half-ass Wikipedia article - what am I doing here and how did I get here?

Well, from Tankavaara it was a bus trip to Ivalo (pronounced Eee-Va-Low), then a flight to Helsinki. Overnighting in Helsinki then a flight to Hamburg via Frankfurt (thanks Lufthansa). That was yesterday.

Eventually I made my way to the hotel where I'm staying for the duration of CCC, about 5 minutes walk away.

CCC is a hacker conference so in that spirit it opens each day at 11am, and goes till around 1am, though from another point of view, it just never closes till the end, with hackers here all night (please note; hackers as in people who do technology stuff, not people who break into computers).

It's pretty full on. I did almost zero research on what to expect and what I was confronted with I could not have possibly imagined. 

Here is where I normally would include lots of photos of what I've seen so far, showing a glimpse of the extravaganza of sight, but photography is a bit frowned upon. You can take photos but you must make sure everyone in the photos agrees to it. This makes wide shots somewhat difficult and the general feeling is to avoid it entirely except where the background is walls, etc.

Even the official camera crew go out of their way to avoid inadvently capturing unknowing attendees.

But a post wouldn't really be complete without at least a photo of a sandpit with a projector and a kinect; 

That's sand you can sculpt that has the contour map projected on to it.

My view from a hammock as I lie here posting this blog.

Temperature: 8°C

Location: Hammock with big ferns in it, CCH, Hamburg, Germany