Went to London over the weekend. Thanks to my MVP status (and Lorna the hard working MVP lead) I had a chance to look around the "Microsoft House". This is a house full of Microsoft stuff (hence the name). Every room seemed to have a Media PC in it and they were all linked together so that all resources could be shared around the house. You could video chat to chums in France (or perhaps the next room) whilst you cooked your steak (secret ingredient nutmeg) and program the whole house to shut down on the stroke of 10:00 to encourage the younger ones to turn in at night. In the master bedroom there was a magic mirror which turned into a TV screen at the flick of a remote. The whole affair was determindly not ultra-futuristic. You can buy everything in the shops and it all works today. Very nice.

I took a bunch of pictures, but the nicest one is not hi-tech at all.


... unless you spot the teeny tiny WIF antenna on the hearth. Many thanks to everyone for giving us such a warm welcome and informative patter.

On Sunday we went on to Covent Garden. Again, I took a bunch of pictures but only one seems to stand out.


These are just candles, but the colours are rather nice. And I did manage to buy a wind up, walking, robot.