Thyme and Slime

[danohu]

Great few days - as I keep saying, they always come in clumps. Lots of things I'd like to write about properly, but I know I never will. So I'll jot them down here, and if you're (un)lucky I might come back to some of them later...

Wild Thyme Cafe was excellent, mainly becuase it was full of people I haven't talked to nearly enough. Most of them don't have livejournals, so I can't point and giggle. The usual Cambridge small-worldness culminated in me being asked if I knew mjg59's girlfriend. There was also the joy of seeing lavendersparkle for the first time in 9 months or so; I just hope it wasn't too unpleasant being the civil servant in a roomful of anarchists ;)

Then I went off with writinghawk and Francis and emerged four hours later with a lot to think about. In brief, so I don't forget:

• Why so many geeks are big on civil liberties
  
• Faith schools + 'modular religion' --> state-funded Summerhill
  
• A bizarre horizontal tetris variant that I have no hope of ever describing
  
• Links between Intentional Communities and Social Software
  
• The Wireworld computer, a cellular automaton that must have taken a great deal of time for somebody to dream up. [Edit: As Gareth points out below, the people behind this were David Moore, Mark Owen, and friends]
  
• Collective fanboying of Chris Lightfoot, who is like Freakonomics only better, and should really be given a column somewhere
  
• Why web services are bad news for open-source software
  

Before that, Slimelight was also very good fun; elixir_zero has already written about it. I'm getting to understand why some people don't like it: the druggies, the over-pushy people, the falling-apart building, the 6am exhaustion. But none of those are really downsides for me personally - ymmv.

Comments

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

d'oh, ignore. found it on the rocksoc website. Turns out there is life beyond livejournal; who knew?