Colin Mercer On The Inter-Web

Ok totally distracted from posting my day updates by a massive thunderstorm. Well for me its massive, its tiny on the radar apparently and nothing that exciting for the locals. However it is phenomenal for me, constant lightning, much of which is cloud lightning so no thunder. Then the crashing flashes to the ground and the thunderous bangs. Just had one hit maybe half a mile away, first time I’ve ever been frightened by thunder. Painfully loud. No rain, no wind. What is a storm?

Check out the radar here on the WFTV site, I’m under the Apopka writing.

In the last few days Myspace has become data portable.

I think that’s the verb for it, if not, then it is now. The concept of data portability has been bouncing around the web for a wee while now, the importance only really understood by the hardcore social media geezers. The basic concept is being able to take your data/information away from a website or social network. In practice, this is taking your contact list from Facebook and looking it on your PC in another format. The data portability row is all around who owns that information.

Back to the topic, Myspace has become a little but more open. Check out this Tech Crunch app which shows an early adoption of the concept. Admittedly its pretty useless at the moment as an app, but the possibilities are huge! I guess, instead of joining a new social network and using your email address to search for people you know on there already, you would be able to use your Facebook contact list, or your Youtube contact list or Flickr etc etc. Stay tuned for more untimely, late announcements.

So, after all the happenings of the last day 2 post I thought I best carry on with the rest of the day. After leaving the Saturn V room we went into a small cinema room where they were going to show the events of the Apollo 11 moon landed. It had a real life fake landing craft and everything. Now, I like to be very sceptical about the whole concept of the moon landing, did they actually go to the moon, or did they just go to Philadelphia? This show did little or nothing to prove either theory right or wrong.

Next stop on the bus tour was the future. Read the rest of this entry »

25062008592, originally uploaded by Colin Mercer.

GO team guess work…

Day 2, early start, well more just generally up early as I’m on the sofa bed in the living room and my uncle gets up for work at 5… Wakey Wakey.

Decided that today was the day to head over to the Kennedy Space Centre (Aka, NASA HQ), so those retards who guessed Disneyland yesterday were wrong.

Took a couple hours to drive over there, partly due to me programming the sat nav wrong and partly not having a map. KSC is located next door to Cape Canaveral, so you would rightly assume that Cape Canaveral Tours and Info would be a sensible place to head if KSC didn’t show on sat nav. Well no, we ended up at the University of Florida. Only a slight detour.
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24062008568, originally uploaded by Colin Mercer.

So, guess where I went today….

Wake up stupidly early; check, finish packing; check, drive to Heathrow; fail, work; fail. Awesome! So instead flying from Gatwick to Orlando for a holiday and my cous’s wedding.

Security at Gatwick seems a little tighter than Heathrow, an extra set of ticket authorisation was required, simple a card check, maybe this was because the ticket was booked on a personal card instead of the travel agents one I’m used to.

Flight was fine, different type of plane, 777 instead of 747. Rubbish in comparison, entertainment system wasn’t good, basically everything started at the same time on every channel, which of course we got no warning of. Food was ok though, chocolate profiteroles for pudding, yum yum yum. Landed, picked up rental car and met my uncle, drove over to his new place. Lovely house, less than a year old, I will take some pics of it when I get chance.

Most importantly I got one of these:

The rest of the night was spent drinking these, cousin and hubby to be showed up around 10 and we drank for a few further hours catching up. Fun for all. Lets see what tomorrow brings.

This is just a test thing to show Siobhan how it works.

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I know it really isn’t a big deal, but I’m excited…

Total views: 1,999.

Who will be my 2000th?

Now day 4, no one likes the return home day, yet everyone loves getting home. Again won’t bore with the details, breakfast, however I did have a very nice view of Alcatraz, and work in the morning, check out at 12, some more work in the upstairs bar. By upstairs I mean 36th floor.

Me and Cookie decided that as we had a couple of hours to kill before we had to head to the airport we would head beachwards. after struggling to persuade the taxi man there must be a beach within an hours drive we finished up at the harbour by the Golden Gate bridge. Was so nice to walk along the sand, paddling a bit (a lot) and wondered all the way to the bottom of the Golden Gate bridge. Loads of kodak moments (shot on a Nokia, go figure). We saw the protected albatrosses fly past us in a group. They basically patrol Alcatraz now, and anyone caught touching them can be jailed. So yes if they attach you, all you can do is run the hell away. So the rumour says anyway.

After walking around for around 30 mins we finally found a taxi, back to hotel for bags then straight back into taxi for the airport. Bought some gin then got on the plane, which is where I am now sitting writing this with Cookie asleep next to me. I’m gunna pop off for a nap any second now too, G&T and a bottle of wine will help with that.

Big love and will probably have seen most of you before I get around to posting this.