Nick Gibbins

Britain, yeah, beautiful country, shame we can’t run a railway In Bath this evening, since I’ve just gone to see David Hare’s new play The Permanent Way at the Theatre Royal. sadly couldn’t make it (she’s on duty tonight, covering for an unwell RT), but the good news is that it is still touring the country before going to the Cottesloe Theatre at the NT in the New Year. The play concerns itself with the development of the British railways in the post-privatisation years, punctuated by the crashes at Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Potters Bar, and is told as… Read More »The Permanent Way, or La Voie Anglaise

Started reading Francis Spufford’s Backroom Boys (late birthday present from my folks), and completely agree with . Buy this book! I’m finding that I’m having to slow myself down so that I can enjoy reading it for longer. Truly a joy… (all I now need is a few empty hours in which to watch my newly-arrived DVD of The Beiderbecke Affair (lbp from the in-laws), but spare time is currently in short supply)

The wonderful Caberet Mechanical Theatre, who used to be downstairs in Covent Garden, now have a shop which sells automata in both ready-assembled and kit forms. Those in London may be interested to know that they have a temporary exhibition in the OXO Gallery from 17 December to 11 January. Entrance is free.

Right, immediate life is now organised (thanks for your comments). I’ll be at the Rising Sun from 2100 onwards, or thereabouts. Look for a ponytailed geek in a dufflecoat.

I was planning to stir myself into action for the purposes of deGAFIAtion (or whatever the correct term is) and go up to London for this evening’s BSFA meeting. I had, however, bargained without the whims of fate and one of my colleague’s inaugural lecture (whose date I had temporarily forgotten). This is my choice: 1) I stay for the lecture, catch the 1923 train and get to the Rising Sun sometime after 2100, or 2) bunk off work at usual time, get to the Rising Sun at about 1900 and spend the rest of the evening feeling wretched and… Read More »Help me run my life!

As seen on Charlie Stross’s blog, an entire website of wedding dresses of eye-bleeding ugliness. (and yes, I will write up accounts of my travels and travails of the past few weeks)

Hong Kong airport has free internet access. Enough said. Would be better if they also had free 802.11b access, but I can’t complain (apart from the fact that this damned Mac has the wrong date set). Flight was okay. Managed to get some sleep, despite fat bloke in adjacent seat elbowing me in ribs/sitting with legs ninety degrees apart all flight. Bah. More tomorrow, provided I get onto the net from the conference.

Despite barely cooling my heels following the conference in the US the week before last (which I will write about when I get a chance), and spending all of last week working until midnight on a succession of papers, I’m off to Seoul in about twenty minutes’ time to present an invited talk at the PRIMA2003 agent school (I am being Jim Hendler), hopefully to return with many stories of feeling like an illiterate tourist. On the plus side, I get to cross off another two countries in my I-Spy Book of the World (only another 250 points before I… Read More »Lunch in London, dinner in Hong Kong, luggage in Dubai