Tuesday I had a 5 minute live demo making a music video at the AI Tinkerers event at the MongoDB.local conference. See the post on LinkedIn for more detail. The presentation went really well and I got the one minute music video created within the 5 minutes. It turned out decently well.

Steph and I went to a private viewing of the Cartier exhibit at the V&A on Thursday evening. It was amazing to see, but we kept coming back to the idea that we would never even want to have any of the things on display. It was nice and posh at the event, and I really enjoyed having drinks in the museum.

Friday I went to a hackathon event for making a short film in less than 18 hours, I used about 3 to make my video. It is a very sad video, so just be warned. I made it about a man learning to deal with grief, and how to live after the ones you love die.

I didn’t end up placing in the competition, but I still had a great time and am really happy with the video output.

That weekend we went to the Battle of Hastings reenactment. It was a decent drive out to the location on Saturday evening. Steph did a great job driving us through the narrow streets at night. The location of the hotel, The Brickwall Inn, wasn’t well marked on the maps, so we made a few wrong turns, but made it there in the end. The hotel was adorable and I really enjoyed staying there. I could stay more often in those little country inns.

The actual battle was pretty good, and we got there just as it was opening for the day. got some mead and traditional cakes. Then we settled by the main battlefield and watched two rounds of hawking and falconry. They were great with the demonstrations and I really like watching how the birds behave and how the people keep them. We also got to see about 80 people participate in a melee tournament with different weapons. They had to fight and when they lost they’d pretend to die. They did daggers, axes, spears, swords, and then a few stranger weapon combinations. There was a demonstration of the horse charges, which was really impressive. I then walked around the Battle Abbey for a bit, but it wasn’t too much to see at the location itself. They were pretty ruins and well kept.

The full battle was quite a scene. It was a lot more rigid than the melee, as they had to have certain things happen, and the horses were involved so they needed the people to move more predictably for safety. It was impressive to see.

All in all it was a great time.

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