I spoke last Friday at Bees In A Tin, a conference in Birmingham about unusual interfaces organised by Mary&Varied. It was a great day! The range of talks and workshops was really varied, from people talking about rocks and geology, to the ideomotor effect (I have a strong subconscious power over paperclips, it turns out), and a talk entirely told with two turntables, a box of 7"s and a bottle of champagne.

I gave a talk on a forthcoming project of mine, the Animated Typewriter, in which an IBM Selectric typewriter can operate itself and also receive and react to input from a user, running a text adventure that subverts the reliability of the machine itself. The talk is about the technical concerns of developing such a device. Audio of my talk is now online (along with all the other talks and a panel I spoke on with Holly Gramazio and Sarah Angliss), as are pictures of the day on Flickr.

Many thanks to Many&Varied for inviting me to speak, and to everyone who spoke or attended! I had a great day learned a lot, and met many interesting people. Also, it was fun to effectively publicly reveal the typewriter for the first time. More news on that story as it develops.