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 😉 .
It’s Easter, holiday time! Those beautiful extra long weekends where we can all relax and take some time off work.
Well, almost.
I got called into work on Friday for a meeting which took up most of my daytime though I was home a few hours earlier than I would have been if I had been at work as normal which was nice.
Saturday I was working as Normal. Given we now open until 1am however it was a rather late one so I didn’t end up getting home until well after 5am and didn’t end up getting to bed until 6.
Sunday I went back to work to cover someone’s shift which turned out to be just as long as Saturday nights though I did get home a bit earlier. Working Sunday also pushed everything else back so I’m now working today as well. Fun times.
Last week myself, Norm and Nicola went down to the Yorkshire Evening Post to do an interview as they wanted to do a feature on Leeds Atheist Society. It came out in Thursday’s issue and was good coverage for us – very positive compared to the stuff we normally get (which isn’t saying much as we normally just get attacked in the media but it was geniunely good) and it was a full page piece too.
If you missed the paper edition you can read the article online on the YEP website.
Continuing the ongoing efforts to get the technical set ready for Rationalist Week I’m currently busy installing software and configuring the computers that will be used during the week. As such they now have matching wallpaper so they look nice and pretty 😀 .
Speaking of Rationalist Week preparations, our lounge is now home to a large selection of food products, as per the picture below. Interesting this is just one of several big piles of stuff which is now ready for the week though I think both I, and my housemates, will be glad to get out of the way next week.
