We were up and into breakfast by 8.00.  Continental breakfast, so there were croissants, and cheese and dried meats.  Chatted to a teenage girl during breakfast, who had stayed the night in collage.  She had been on an admissions day, and was touring a few universities to select the ones she was going to apply to.  She was from central Edinburgh and was familiar with Whistle Binkies.  A friend of hers had a band that played there on occasions.

Rosemary and I went out separate ways for the first event.  She heard a talk on Portraits and Professions, while I went and saw a talk on “A Wonderful Thing is a Phillips Machine”.

The Phillips Machine is an analogue computer, which runs on the flow of water.  It was build by an engineer after the 2nd world war to model the economy.  You could see the effect of changing the interest rates, government borrowing, savings, imports.  They were built in the 1950s.  Of fourteen build this and one in New Zealand are the only ones, which work.  Allan McRobie, a specialist in bridge design and dynamics gave the lecture and demonstrated the machine.  He had spent considerable energy in rebuilding the machine.

Next we had a tour of the Computer Laboratory on the West side.  We were shown some of the work, which is in progress at the university to do with new methods of interacting with a computer.

The first event of the afternoon was Question Time, chaired by BBC Edward Stourton.  The question was, “Where is it all going to end”.

Afterwards we saw a presentation by Sir Christopher Frayling about the image of Scientists in Movies.  Most of the examples were from older films, with very little from recent films.  Rosemary spoke to Christopher and was a bit dismayed that he had never seen the TV series CSI, where scientists are shown in a good light.

Tonight we managed an evening meal at the Galleria restaurant. First though a pint of beer, I had a very reasonable pint of Woodfords from Norfolk. We then went to the Galleria; we had eaten there two years ago on the balcony overlooking the river.  This year it was too cold to do that.  Reasonable meal, we started with a Tiger Prawn Salad and a Pastrami Salad.  Main course for Rosemary was Roasted Mushrooms, while I had Poached Monkfish.

Then it was back to college and bed.