1st Bletchley Amicus

This evening given the appalling and sudden downpours of the last couple of days we decided no to revisit Leon Rec for sports and instead engaged in a game of Trivial Pursuit. It wasn’t to everyone’s liking or strengths, but we all seemed to enjoy the evening nonetheless. There were claims of cheating, and one or two disinterested players, but overall it was a good natured game and ended closer than we imagined.

There were some frankly bizarre questions which came up during the game, and some dubious answers too (some which we decided to research online for ourselves. These questions didn’t come up tonight but:

Possibly the best Trivial Pursuit question:
What did the first Spanish dog to be fitted with contact lenses not see the day after the fitting? * answer below

Possibly the worst Trivial Pursuit question:
What African animal’s name is made up of the letters n,g and u? ** answer below

We were joined tonight by Matt Chapman who has just finished his first year at Uni – good to see him back – and re-joined by Sarah and Tim who visited a couple of weeks ago. At the end of our game of Trivial Pursuit this evening Tim said he had an announcement to make, and once the room hushed he revealed that he and Katie are now engaged.  Massive congratulations from all at Amicus!

As you’ll know if you follow Amicus on Twitter, I finally got round to doing the rest of the Promise Auction admin and the final total raised is confirmed as £1015.19.

As you know I’ve now finished my degree (woohoo!) but I just want to say a huge ‘thank you‘ to everyone at Amicus for their support and understanding over the last three years. I’ve done my best to keep ahead of the game at Amicus but haven’t always been successful. So thanks for:

• being patient when I was tired and grumpy
• being reasonable when I was disorganised
• being lovely that’s exactly what I needed
• being supportive and interested particularly when my essay deadlines were close
• being will for me to learn as I went along, not just these last three years, but from since before the start of Amicus

Your support and the challenges you provided (ahem) have made all the difference to my learning experience at University. I should know my final module grades by next Wednesday (so hopefully we’ll be celebrating) but for now, take a quick look at my degree in numbers – quite staggering.

Having failed at updating the website over the last few months, I feel I owe you some treats.

Take a look at this video of a ‘sand animation artist’. Using a back-lit work surface she draws and animates and amazing story simply using sand and her hands. You really need to see it to appreciate just what a talent this is – not your average Susan Boyle talent, but real talent:

I don’t know how to describe ToneMatrix except to say that it is completely addictive and makes me feel like an accomplished musician. It is described by the author as a “simple sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map, which makes it more cute.” Take a look and judge for yourself.

Finally, take a look at the great pics on awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Next Week: for our final evening of the session we’ll be having our usual end-of-term knees up.  Please bring along snacks, nibbles, cakes, desserts and drinks – we’ll step out in faith and not organise anything formally and trust that we’ll get the usual great spread of goodies.  We’ll bring along a Wii and various games for the usual entertainment (ie, mocking one another’s poor attempts at playing).  If you’re not too full I might even let you play footie as an end of session treat ;o)

Answers:
* The car that killed him
** Gnu