Well, it was a good meeting. I enjoyed listening to the talks, although I frequently found myself a little out of my depth; perhaps both a sign of how much biology I have forgotten and how much maths I never knew. Also, I think that the conference was not ideally weighted. Some multi-track, shorter talks, I think. It felt rather like the early eScience All Hands meetings.

On the way, down almost all the Newcastle people travelled together; for some reason, on the way back, we all scattered and went different routes. I thought I was on my own, going through Sheffield, but bumped into a fellow Newcastle academic on the platform, in the shape of Tom Kirkwood: Professor of Gerontology, former Reith Lecturer, and all rather clever chap. What brilliant and incisive obervation on the state of systems biology did I make? What stunning analysis of the impact of the RAE results did I posit? "Hello," I said, "did you get the train to Sheffield too?"

Still, it isn't all bad; I did manage to proof conclusively that it is possible to survive for three days eating only two of the major food groups: fat and carbohydrates.

So far, the BBSRC Grant Holders Workshop has been fascinating. Dennis Noble's talk last night, including an entertaining slagging of the Gene Ontology; entertaining but as wrong as you can be when you confuse a gene name and a function. Nice to hear a new variation of the Syndney Brenner "but an ontology doesn't allow you to understand all of biology" argument.

I also learnt that a) without convection it would take 10,000 years to make a cup of tea (unless you invent a spoon) and b) there are, on average 8 sausages in a tin of sausage and beans and, further, that the distribution of sausage number is low enough that the machine that puts them in the tin must be counting.

I also learnt that some people have too much time on their hands; that I am blogging about this means I have to include myself in this category.