So where have you been?, I hear you all asking. Well, amongst other things, I've been down to London as a guest at the Imagine Cup UK Finals. When I got into the city the first thing was off down to Picadilly Circus to meet Andy and talk about Slide5. I had the big camera with me and so:


We had a good chat about Slide5 and sorted out the final content. There is some hot stuff there people. If you've not signed up you'd better be quick 'cos we are going to have to finalise the numbers soon (so we can get enough beer in!). Get down to www.slide5.com and register for some really good mobile stuff.

 Then off down to the final. Which only happened to be at the top of the BT Tower. Shot up in the lift, ran to the window and took a photograph.

And another


Oops. Tea time now. I'll send this up and add the rest later tonite.... Mmm. Salmon and new potatoes..
..And we're back. And another.

And (not boring you am I) another

Then on to the competition itself. We got to wander round and chat with the teams. And what a bunch. Sometimes I read the papers and I worry about the future. Then I go to things like the Imagine Cup Finals and cheer myself up. I know that these were the top 8 teams from all over the UK, so you would expect them to be good. But they were great. Very savvy, very focused and very knowledgable. And such great presenters. The winners were Team Bitshifters, who's worldwide blogging application beat a whole load of very well thought out entries. I knew they were onto something when one of them told me "..and of course we use the Avalon graphics subsystem from Windows Longhorn to drive the user interface...". Good luck Adrian, Andrew and Joseph. I think Japan is going to be fun...

The competition was made all the more interesting for me by the fact that number one son was in one of the teams taking part. Team Serenity didn't end up making it Japan, but from the sound of things they impressed a few judges and with the lad being one of the younger participants there is always next year. And the year after..

Then it was back into one of the fastest lifts in europe (it really does make your ears pop) to head back down to ground level.

The lift control panel. Apparently you don't want to see that needle too far over to the right..

For those of you who don't know it, the BT Tower is one of the landmarks in London, England. As a schoolboy I was actually lucky enough to get to the top of the tower on a family trip to the city in 1970, before a security scare forced the Post Office to close it to the public. It was opened in 1965 and is 198 metres high. It's lifts travel at 7.5 meters per second. I khow this stuff because I am a generally knowledgable chap and they gave us a really nice certificate and guidebook as a great memento of the visit.