London Visit June 2007

While my parents in law are visiting we decided to take a trip down to London. I have been before as I even worked there for a year so it wasn’t new to me but we took the chance to do all the tourist things you do when you goto London.

We started with the British Museum. I have been there already, about 3 years ago. Its well worth going if your ever in London, for one its free, also its huge! They have a bit of everything for the complete History of the world, the Museum is split into sections based on location, so there is an Asia room, Europe, Roman and Egypt, etc…

They have some impressive stuff, including an entire Roman building and a room full or slightly scary mummies, with accompanying x-rays to prove there are some disturbing things inside them.

We then went along to have a look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Then on our way up to Trafalgar Square we noticed something interesting. At Horse Guards Parade they were, well, parading. There were a few police keeping the small crowd back from watching the guards and horses too close. But what happened next was the most interesting as a line of police bikes came barreling down the road, blocked off the traffic and a minute later the Queens car came down the road and into Horse Guards Parade. It was neat, we managed to get a really close up picture of the Queen. Not many people get that close, and all by chance, great. Check out my Flickr picture album to see the picture we took.

Once again, while in London, we took the chance to ride on the London Eye. It worth it for the great views and the London Eye itself is an amazing structure. It takes 30 minutes to get all the way around it. The weather was nicer on this day too so we could see much clearer, all the way to Wembley actually.

We finished the trip with a guided tour of the Tower of London. We got the chance to see the crown jewels and look around the tower. To be clear its not just a tower but an entire castle including a moat and complete surrounding outer defense wall. Also it was not apparently a prison but used as a royal castle. It was a great tour, the the guide was a real Yeoman Warder, nicknamed the ‘Beefeaters’ they are the Royal Guard.  The one giving the tour was quite entertaining, real fun and made the whole of the history of the Towers really enjoyable and he told some wild tales. If you ever go there make sure you wait around and go on one of the Yeoman guided tours, there are usually a couple going on each day.

Well thats it, London was a blast. Almost forgot to mention we got a good look at Tower Bridge and went down Oxford Street. A recommend a trip to London to anyone who has never been, Visit London.

Cebit 2007 – Hannover, Germany

Spent the last few days in Germany, Thursday to Sunday, attending the CeBIT electronic trade show. I managed to find a free wireless hotspot and post a blog entry while I was there but I thought I would write a full account of my trip here now.

Traveled to Berlin from East Midlands Airport on Thursday evening.My first time on a budget airline and I have to say it wasn’t that bad, I got a seat and the plane didn’t fall apart so that was all good, but I haven’t been on many planes so can’t really compare it to anything better.

Our Hotel was a 1 and a half hours from Berlin and a further 1 and a half hours to Hannover, which meant a lot of driving, but since I wasn’t the one doing the driving that didn’t bother me.

CeBIT was great, it was massive for a start. We had a look around hundreads of stands for a multitude of different companies. We managed to talk to a lot of companies in a mobile sector and get a few good contacts. I did my best to promote www.GooSync.com as much as I could and managed to hand out a good number of business cards while I was there.

Of general interest there was some good stuff about Augmented Reality systems in the future technology hall.
(How Augmented Reality Works) There was a face recognition system that would pick out a face from a video image and display on screen that persons mood. There was also a system that displayed a 3D bird on a live video feed that you could interact with. A Camera was set up facing a blank space of floor, a screen showed the live video of this blank floor, the augmented reality 3D bird was then shown standing on the floor on the screen. If you placed a blank piece of paper in front of the camera on the screen the bird would jump up onto the paper. It looked great.

I got a few pictures of the event and so did some of the guys I went with, I will upload them to Flickr when I get a chance. On the last day we traveled back to Berlin and stopped by the Autostadt in Wolfsburg (Autostadt) which is a visitors museum and visitor centre for the VW factory. It was amazing, it has a regular museum full of old cars and then each of the comapnies in the VW group, Audi, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bentley and VW all had their own building with different attractions in them like the Light and Laser show for Lamborghini and the 360 degree cinema for VW. If you ever go to Germany I recommend you stop in at the AutoStadt you’ll have a great day.

We traveled back home on Sunday night, I got back to my flat about 1am. But I’m back at work now and chasing up some of the leads we got while at the show. Maybe I’ll get to go again next year, it would be nice.

New SkyScrapers and Trams for Birmingham, UK

Work has started on two new sky scrapers next to Snow Hill Train/Tram station in Birmingham city centre. This work also includes a new side entrance to the station opposite the Police station. The work will then link into the expansion of the tram to run through Birmingham city centre past New Street Station all the way down Broad Street to Five Ways.

Its an exciting development and I pass it every day on my way to work. Its just a pile of mud and some Concrete stairs at the moment but can’t wait to see it when its finished.

This picture shows the four planned buildings at the bottom of the image. The two squares will be office blocks, the other two rounder plots will be the two sky scrapers, one hotel, one residential.

In the top left is St Pauls cathedral, which will get a new gardened area infront of it making it a really nice pedestrian area. At the moment the giant roundabout that is there isn’t great. As you can see above the roundabout is going and the roads will be redesigned, much neater and more pedestrian spaces.

This is a neat model showing the buildings in front of Snow Hill station. They look fantastic.

Check out this picture for a look at what they will really look like. I will really enjoy watching these being built and think Birmingham city centre will look amazing when its done.

The extension to the tram line will also start development soon. Not sure when but the building of these sky scrapers will more than likely take into account the tram extension.

I think if you look at the top image the white extension to the bridge is where the new tram line will run, between the sky scrapers and the station and behind the office blocks, then I think it will join the road near the front of the station.

The route plan from there means the trams will run down Corporation street, then upto Victoria Square and down Broad street to Five Ways.

Below is a picture of the new trams the extension will use, they look pretty nice. Won’t be riding on them till at least 2010 though so hope i’m still around here then to catch a ride.