Iceland

Flew up to Reykjavik last Wednesday for the Eve online Fanfest event. Mostly great fun with lots of news about upcoming changes to the game along with discussions about what direction it should take in the future. I was also on one of the panels, which was enjoyable too. being the report-back session of the Council of Stellar Management Didn't like Iceland in Winter though. Going down to breakfast at nine am and then seeing the dawn start to turn the view through the windows turn from pitch black to dull grey — and then the afternoon turn back to black around 3pm — is not my idea of a good climate. I like sunshine every day, indeed it was one of the reasons I really liked flying all around Europe daily in the late 90s — at 30,000ft you are guaranteed to get sunshine (except at night, obviously!)

My spaceship is docked

About four months ago I was elected to the 'Council of Stellar Management ' in the Eve Online MMORPG. In the summer this meant a four-day trip to Iceland to meet with the folks at CCP who develop the product. Today is time for the second meeting (the New York Times wrote about the first one ), but this time it is taking place via an in-game chat room with 'our side' sitting at keyboard in their homes in the UK, Denmark, The Netherlands, Eastern Europe and Australia. At some point the USA will be added to that. On the CCP management side they are also mostly at home, but in Reykjavik! And so far, so smoothly (but so slowly too!) Of course, because we aren't face-to-face during the meeting I can run that on one machine while continuing to write and test new code on another... and drink coffee... and listen to music... ;-P