So I spent last Saturday at Interesting 2011 in London.  Hosted again by the lovely Russell Davies, it varied in format from previous years, this time focusing more on doing interesting things than listening to people talk about interesting stuff.

So we made notebooks, a crowdsourced comic, plasticine monsters, cardboard models and tomato caviar.  I also discovered that I’m a Supertaster, i.e. ‘someone who experiences the sense of taste with far greater intensity than average’.  Supertasters are more likely to dislike a lot of foods due to their lower tolerance for extremes of taste, which explains a lot in terms of the enormous list of things I won’t eat.

making tomato caviar with guidance from Chris Heathcote (eat your heart out Heston)

We also made rather a lot of noise, especially when singing along to Mark Hibbett (of Hey Hey 16K fame), who managed to get 200 people to do indie dancing at 11am on a Saturday.

Physics teacher Mr Reid (aka alby) demonstrated Nuclear Fisson with the aid of 1,000 mousetraps and 2,000 ping pong balls.  He also had powerpoint charts with the relevant chemical equations on them, so now 200 people know how to build an atomic bomb…

All in all, rather a nice way to spend a Saturday.

PS Roo Reynolds has posted a much more detailed review here on his blog