I had a very productive and enjoyable time at the ALICE workshop in Copenhagen, working with a great team, modifying and using a system that modifies its own programming language. We hope to get a paper out of it. Watch this space!
Unfortunately, the last day of the Workshop clashed with a prior engagement in London: Astrofest 2026. So I left Copenhagen on the last flight out on Thursday evening. I knew this was a risky decision at the best of times, and then it started snowing...
The flight was delayed by two hours.
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| In the queue to board. Brrr. |
That meant I missed the last train from Stansted to London. Saved by National Express! I got a coach to Paddington. I felt very 21st Century as I sat on the coach and used my Greater Anglia app on my phone to cancel my rail ticket and request a refund, for which I was charged £5.
I got to Paddington after 2am: the tube was shut, and there were no taxis. I downloaded a taxi app (not Uber), and summoned a black cab. That took me to my hotel off Kensington High Street (and cost more than my coach fare from Stansted).
I arrived at 3am (4am Copenhagen time), but I arrived. Five hours sleep, then breakfast (and a photo out of the window) ready for a day of astronomy talks.
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| no snow! |
The talks were very good, covering the JUICE mission, the Herschel telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (and its relationship to K-Pop; yes, really!), landscape astrophotography (marvellous photos), the history of Guillaume Le Gentil's tragi-comic failure to witness two transits of Venus, and galaxies in 3D (I thought the Hubble Deep field photos were mind-blowing enough; seeing them in 3D takes that experience to another level).
Well worth the travel hassle. And more tomorrow!
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