Hamster? Damn!

Another long absence, another post. Well if there is pattern emerging, it is that there is no pattern. Still better random than never I suppose. So here goes. Subject of todays post is Amsterdam - if you hadn't guessed.

'Well! What are you looking at?'

Once in a while my company allows me out of the office to pastures further afield than the other London office. Sometimes, and this was one of them, I extend my stay. And anyway, I like Amsterdam.

Advanced eco-friendly transport - just watch the wear on the heels!!

So, arrive, get hotel space, unpack a bit, go find food. Missed the Kantjil, my fault - should have been a bit more observant - but found a decent Thai. One thing Amsterdam is very good for is Indonesian and Thai cuisine ... so just as well I like it then! The other thing(s) Amsterdam is good for I elected to avoid - so no interesting visits to 'coffee shops' and the window shopping was restricted :-) I had enough to amuse me in other directions than turning left out from the Central Station.

I finally got to see the house of Ann Frank. If you don't know the story then Anne_Frank_House is a good start. Now this is probably not the time to be cynical - but suffice to say that never has the absence of anything tangible made so much of an impact on me. Hats off to the Dutch - they absolutely got maximum impact from almost bare walls and floors.

Surprising what you you can get in good cafe these days!

Then on to the Van Gogh museum. I 'ear its supposed to be good - but that's as far as I got. Tad late in the day, by about 4 or 5 minutes, having found the wrong way round the Rijk's Museum, the security guard wouldn't let me in. Well thanks - I suppose the walk was useful, but really would have liked to get a quick look as well. I bent his ear a little to no avail.

So, Monday's a work day. Data centres ..... yummy. I eat them for breakfast, lunch and tea. Nothing quite like a few thousand kilometeres of Cat 6 network cable, multimode fibre, inter-rack patching, kilogrammes per square metre floor loading and watts per square metre of cooling. Each one of these major datacentres consumes as much electricity as a small town! So, next time you browse the internet, surfing from site to site, streaming high def video and audio just spare a moment and think of all those megawatts of power underpinning your on-line experience.