Archive for April, 2009

After the AGM on Tuesday we headed down to The Victoria for a few drinks before going over to D-Fusion for a bit of karaoke. The usual suspects opened the set and Jonni also did a few numbers plus twenty minutes after I commented to Jonni “I’m just waiting for Rich to get drunk before he opens his set with It’s a Sin” it kicked off with a rendition of a certain Pet Shop Boys number which I’m sure you can guess 😉 .

Tuesday saw the Atheist Society AGM. It was very well attended, probably due to the offer of free pizza but then that was the plan so we’re not complaining. Congratulations to everyone who got elected, especially Sophie our new president! I was elected vice president and I would also like to thank Norm for nominating me for honory life membership 🙂 .

Last Sunday we headed down to The Mill to celebrate my dad’s birthday. It being full though we decided to leave. True story. We ended up at the Brown Cow, now known as the Brown Cow & Dragon for some Thai food. Not that I got Thai food of course but it was nice to know I had the option.

Afterwards I headed down to grab a quick drink at The Mill with friends from work before heading for an early night, of starting work 🙁 . I ended up getting to bed just before 4am but caught up on most of my work. Fun times.

Well that’s it kids, Rationalist Week 2009.

What a week. If nothing else it has been incredibly tiring, I arrived on site at around noon on Sunday and didn’t leave until 2am Wednesday! Not to mention it ended in a 22 hour shift on the Friday. I haven’t had time to catch up on sleep yet and given it’s now 1:30am and I have to be up for work in six hours and still have loads of work to do first it doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon.

In terms of attendance we probably hit the same numbers as last year, the weather was great which was really nice in terms of keeping us warm and be able to setup and take down in nice sunny conditions but probably didn’t do us any favours in terms of attendance.

Unfortunately the week was tinged with an ugly side as members of Leeds Islamic Society mounted a campaign of hate, violence and attacks against us but beyond that the week passed by with no major problems.

I will probably blog more about the various events we ran throughout the week but for the moment I would just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped out during the week to make it just a fantastic week!

The April meeting of Leeds Skeptics saw Dr Antony Lempert from the Secular Medical Forum deliver a talk on what they do and the issues surrounding religion and medicine. It was really interesting to get into some of the details of the issues they are concerned with and indeed we all need to be concerned with including long talks about both female and male circumcision – not for the squeamish!

I was heading down to the April meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub when I came across the Sikh new year celebrations on Millenium Square. Having got down there quite early I decided to hang around and snap a few photos. It seemed quite well organised and attended though I did like the fact their PowerPoint presentation on the big screen used the generic ocean theme we use for everything at A-Soc 😀 .

The Thursday before Rationalist Week myself and Rich headed out for our usual Humanist Action Group antics.

Turns out, we’ve solved the problem in like a month 😀 . There was hardly anyone out that night which we decided must be down to our excellent work even though we don’t really help to get people off the streets in any way. Go HAG!

Heading over to the April meetup of the York Brights group I was finally able to get there while it was daylight. Therefore I took the opportunity to get a few photos in as I walked past the Minster.

The group meetup itself was excellent as usual and rather well attended this month so it made for plenty of interesting conversation. Plus it was a chance to talk about Rationalist Week to a whole new group of people 😀 .

With the final Tuesday of the Easter holidays seeing the union closed, we headed off to The Library for the final RW planning meeting. In the end we got a rather good turnout, something like a dozen people or more eventually showed their face including the long awaited introduction of Zoltan’s girlfriend. She looks quite mature for a 15 year old.

While having a dig around to try and get Leanne out of the whole she had got herself into I found an interesting trick I can do with my laptop (and perhaps with my desktop but I don’t want to try it because I’ve got a dual monitor setup and all my applications positioned just as I like them).

If I hit Ctrl+Alt and an arrow key it will change the orientation of my screen so I can turn my laptop screen on it’s side. While this is fairly common with the new crazy swirly screen laptops and indeed fancy flat screen monitors, I had no idea I could do it with such a wide range of machines includng my laptop.

Of course, being a geek, the fact that this had virtually no practical value and nor would I ever really find it useful or want to do it is irrelevant – it’s just, because I can 😉 .