Ask yourself this: can you ever remember being willing to pay £16.99 for a CD?

I wanted to take some time to reflect on what I liked and what I disliked at The Edinburgh Festival 2009.

Randy’s Postcards from Purgatory

An outstanding, entertaining, and engaging puppet-show. I strongly recommended it to everyone who would listen, however, I think the stigma of puppet-show was too much to overcome. (A alternative reason is my friends don’t trust my recommendations!) Randy was a children’s entertainer telling us about this life and relationships and how it was all messed up. The writing was excellent and the performance was brilliant. I’m sure from time-to-time I’ll fondly remember Randy shouting “WHERE’S WILLIAAAAAAAAAAAM?”

Orchestre des Champs-Elysees

I have been building an interest in Classical music since living in Bristol – Jim regularly listened to BBC Radio 3 when he drove us into work. Seeing a live orchestra was an great experience, there was much more energy than can be conveyed over the radio or on a CD.

Power Plant

I didn’t know anything about this until I saw a 5-star review on somebody else’s newspaper on the Glasgow Underground. Power Plant was an incredible light and sound exhibition at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens Glasshouses. There were some beautiful touches like the flame pipes producing rhythms and sitting on the couches looking over the disco ball palm trees. It’s difficult to explain this exhibition but I strongly recommend seeing it on tour. I didn’t take any photographs because it wouldn’t do this exhibition justice.

Fireworks Concert

I queued for tickets to watch the concert from Prices Street Gardens and I would do it again. Hopefully I will remember ear buds for next year because fireworks have never sounded so loud. A friend managed to take some great photographs of the display and this is the best quality recording of the concert I have been able to find:

We recently attended the free Banksy Exhibition at Bristol Museum after queuing for just over two hours.

The only restriction on taking photographs was that you couldn’t use a flash. Here are two pieces I particularly enjoyed. Overall, the exhibition was playful and I liked how you were forced to explore the entire museum to see everything.

The exhibition is on until 31st August and entry is free, however, you are advised that you may need to queue for at two-to-three hours. See twenty-one more photographs in the set.

In April, I visited Trento for an EU project meeting:

We stayed in a hotel in Sardagna and had this beautiful view from the balcony. The Grappa was fantastic and I loved eating pizza with freshly cut Speck. See a few more photos in the slideshow.

I visited Toulouse in April to present a workshop paper at the European Conference on Information Retrieval:

Toulouse had a wonderful atmosphere and the confit du canard was delicious. See a few more photos in the slideshow.

Finally, in June, I visited Madrid for an EU project meeting:

A colleague recommended a particular cafe for churros, and we were not disappointed. I also managed to visit some friends and see parts of Madrid that were a little off the beaten track. See a few more photos in the slideshow.

I recently filled in an online request to return my iPhone headphones for a replacement. Apple quickly sent a jiffy-bag containing return instructions, the replacement headphones, an envelope to put the defective headphones into, and a pre-paid return envelope.

For a company that seems to be taking steps to focus on the environmental impact of their products, as can be seen in the Environmental Status Report of the iPhone Tech Specs, the size of the pre-paid envelope is absurd.