Day 2

Unusually for me abroad I slept quite well and did not feek it wa too ealy getting up. Nice easy journey in pleasant weather to the conference centre and onto commnet to get the slide decks for the next few days. Not so good - only 1 speaker out of 60 I looked at has posted any ppt. The abstracts are good, but a 62 slide deck for a 75 minute presentation is a bad sign, 12 good. I've lost that discriminating factor.

Went to Simon's presentation first (On the user in software design). Expectations exceeded with great content, imaginative slides and a good story. Good start to the day then.

Back to the exhibition and showed off my new APC "ups" for my phone (basically a compact battery with usb in and out that gives me at least 2 charges if not 4 whilst away from the mains. Too late for this year but they might for next! Also discussed the wifi hotspot detecting t-shirt. They'd sell that!

Off to do feedback for simon's session and a <g> at the end of the 'other comments' field crashed the sytem proudly reported to the commnet helpdesk and Cheesey came homself to repro (it did!).

Also hooked up MSDN's UI redesign project wtith simon - they need his help!

Bumped into Catherine and chatted about the improvements this year (and some niggles) felt bad about being a bit negative and emailed an apology later.

Then a Mobile SQL app session that inspires me to my CD database on my phone. Quickly followed by a sntched lunch and Mr Blatt's excellent software sucks talk.

A quick chat with Rafal about Bletchley Park, the Collossus project (http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/ And http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/), and the plan to challenge the world to beat Collossus to the decrypt. He agreed to publicise it on friday at the cryptography talk (if I remind him thursday!)
His next gen windows networking talk was, as always, good.

Saw some Hawai'ian shirts in the exhibition - good K Y's ones it turned out. BT manager with a hawai'ian shirt friday experience in charge!

More Sql offline improving my determination (especially for offline updates - now I have a reason for VS2008).
Then some crummy Sharepoint HOL (habds on labs).

Nearly an hour on the phone home with my wife to sort out my failed backups and then off to town. Chose metro to get straight to the centre, grab dinner, and then hotel

A great meal again at Tonorio on Passeig de Gracia.

Day done...