Abigail Brady

I fulfilled a long-held ambition today, that I've had since I moved to east London, of going to Southend-on-Sea: the natural holiday resort for people in this part of London in days gone by. It was alright. There was a credible seafront, a groovy-looking fun park, and best of all: an actual sand beach. The pier was long (we walked there and then caught the little train back), but there wasn't as much at the end of it as I might have hoped. But hey. We didn't do much then a recon, was too tired. Would go again. Definitely worth taking a bucket and spade.

One curious thing is the new (or apparently refurbished/expanded) Victoria shopping centre, which was very shiny and clean and new, but had very poor occupancy and was virtually deserted at what should be the busiest shopping time, Saturday afternoon. I know this isn't exactly the best time to be opening retail, but Westfield London and Highcross Leicester have managed much better occupancy rates.

We got the train from Liverpool Street-Southend Victoria. For the way back I got the idea to get an excess to make the return ticket valid from Southend Central-Fenchurch Street, thus going on a different line, but the person at the Southend Central ticket office refused to sell an excess. Also seem to have got a Network Railcard, which is a pretty good deal and I should have got before Eastbourne.

have to get up early tomorrow to catch a 0840 flight from Heathrow to Amsterdam - going to IBC. at least i'm on the piccadilly line...

i've realised B-Movie is next weekend, not today, so i can go! woot! i am pondering dressing to theme (v for vendetta/generic superheroes) some of these are more complicated than others

[Poll #1051731]


eep: squirrel girl is winning so far... she is utterly awesome, though, having pwned Doctor Doom's ass.

back home now. will write long update tomorrow. briefly -

• wearing steel toe-cap boots through metal detectors is a bad idea
• apfelwein (frankfurt/hesse cider) is bitter but palatable. for some reason, it is offered diluted as well as neat. when i drank some at the funfair i was mocked as if they could not believe a foreigner would have neat apfelwein. this would make sense except it tastes quite weak.
• some wikipedians aren't geeks!
• a crazy man wants to start up sign language wikipedias, featuring video footage of people signing articles. this i think will be very interesting to edit!
• tlh.wikipedia.org has a limited life expectancy
• richard stallman is still mad
• i should make openid support for mediawiki
• jimbo can dance.

yawn

Flying to Frankfurt for Wikimania on Thursday, on BA0904. This will entail leaving the house at 6am on Thursday. Erk. Still need to pack/sort out my E111. And get money.

There are apparently going to be terminals there so will be able to update (and indeed to edit) a bit.