Boston robot party (and tea)

Last weekend, I flew over to Boston for a couple of stories. I stayed at Bill’s fantastic lake-side home (lovely swimming, if still a bit chilly). Spent a great weekend looking at art, and the bonkers Higgins Armoury – a huge 1930s steel factory with a fake mediaeval Great Hall housing an extensive collections of arms and armour. Splendidly cheesy, especially the rather camp dog armour.

But I was there for ‘work’ as well as play, and on Monday I visited the labs of iRobot to have some hands-on time with their latest $100,000 remote control toys robots.

The next day I interviewed Dean ‘Segway’ Kamen, and visited the charming Revolutionary towns of Concord and Lexington. Amusingly for the birthplaces of American independence, there were about as close to quaint English villages as you could imagine. Popped into Sleepy Hollow cemetery, too, which tends to the cute side of Gothic.

Bunch of story links

In case you missed any these, here are a few links to stories I’ve had published recently (just click on the title):

RealDVD DVD copying court case

Hindenburg disaster and the future of airships

The Real Terminators (cover story, but this link will expire)

Kurt and Ginger weekend #2

The first weekend in May was meant to be a half-marathon run for Bart and I in Eugene but a knee wobble saw me cheering from the sidelines. We stopped in Portland on the way down, dropped Karen off and continued on to Eugene, down an extremely straight and boring I5 (note to biodiesel drivers: fill up before you go!).

Bart’s pal Alyssa showed us this fantastic butte above town (Eugene’s original name? Skinner’s Mudhole), as well as the spot where Steve Prefontaine “ran” off the road.

 

Here’s Bart looking knackered and Alyssa looking slightly guilty at having missed his big finish. Whoops. It was a bit rainy.

Kurt and Ginger weekend #1

The guys headed up to Seattle to give Kurt’s brother Chris a whistle-stop tour of the city. Handily, it coincided with Raleigh taking Ulithi around Magnolia to its summer berth. Here’s Chris at the helm.

We zipped over to West Seattle for a HUGE pizza on the Saturday night, and enjoyed a spot of steam punk nonsense at Gasworks Park on the Sunday. I also got stuck up a pole.