Tweet, tweet, tweet ... Having a terrific time at the #CSIROTweetup

Ok ... Yesterday I left work early and Went out to the CDSCC (Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex - http://www.cdscc.nasa.gov/ ) and spent an absolutely wonderful evening at the #CSIROTweetup (news article about it here - http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/21/3354487.htm ;_) ... we then stayed the night out at a school camp near there, and we are now in at CSIRO Discovery and the talks are about to begin ... And tonight we go back out to CDSCC to do it all again ...
Actually I can probably keep blogging during the talk, in between eating bites of my lunch ... Multi tasking?! LOL

Actually it is kind of funny ... A whole bunch of "tweeps" having a Tweetup in a radio quiet area (the telescopes need to be able to "hear" the signals from the spacecraft they are tacking, and there isn't any phone signal out here, in fact we have to turn all wireless devices off or to airplane mode ... so we have all been cut off from our usual connections to the www/etc. ... Apart from several computers they set up for us to use :-)
... So here we all are ... back in town with mobile phone coverage and guest access to a wireless network ... So everyone is sitting in the lecture theatre, phones/iPads/Netbooks in hand busily tweeting, emailing, checking phone messages and what have you ...
(I am trying to do this on the iPad but I am adding the links and a few other bits later when not using the iPad - LOL )

[later the same day ... er ... actually it is the next day, just - have not gone to bed yet - late night coming up]
oops - the lectures got too interesting (actually the first one was too - but I had already heard almost the same one a couple of months ago so I could kind of listen and blog and still understand it all ;-)

After the lectures/etc we had some spare time - which a few of us spent the first part of at the pub - lol - then we headed out to a nice picnic area by the river on the way out to CDSCC and had a BBQ ... and then we all arrived here at CDSCC for an entertaining evening of sharing computers to tweet/etc/eating party pies, watching stuff on the big screen at the front of the room, listening to someone talk about NASA and stuff, and generally have a good time ... now we are watching the NASA live coverage of the launch (of http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ for those who have not looked at the other link at the top - lol)

ooh "T minus 1 hour and 9 minutes" ... woo hoo - getting excited ...

ok ... time for some photos ... yes - I was the first one here to look at the computers and think to myself "oooh - usb slot - might try connecting my phone/camera"... worked fine with both of them ... but first ... here is a photo that I DIDN'T take - this is a group photo that one of the other "Tweeps" took and tweeted a little while ago - and is now saved on my phone - LOL

And here is a photo I got someone to take of me, last night ;-)

And guess who?! ... well - I had the wig with antennae so I had to put it on ... and the person organising things just took this photo and tweeted it ... so I "borrowed" it.

and now that I have monopolised the computer for way too long - someone else's turn ... should be just under an hour till launch now ... time to see if there are any party pies left ... LOL

I wonder if I can call this an early Wednesday ABC post, seeing we are up to the letter T in a couple days?

[edit: I decided "yes, I will ;-)" just added the letter T link here and am about to go add this link to the linky thingy there]