Southend Air Show

This year I decided to attend the Southend Air Show. The show started at 2pm, and I arrived early, so I spent a delightful few hours on the cliffs overlooking the seafront waiting for the show to start.

The first show was the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight:

 

Then a display team called The Blades, all ex-Red Arrows pilots, came on:

Not bad. I retired somewhat early as there were suddenly a lot more people around, and load more when I got back to the station.

Software: The Past and Into The Future

Yesterday I went to see a presentation on the architecture of the ZX Spectrum at the BFI in London. This was part of SCI-FI London. The presenter had reverse engineered both the hardware and the software from several spectrums (I still have a Spectrum+ boxed up somewhere). I was somewhat dull, as you'd expect, but I respected the dedication!

I'm also watching "The Hunt for A.I.", a BBC Horizon program which shows how advanced the science is at the moment. In particular, pattern matching people in a crowd and evolving robots.