At lunch time today The Professor and I toddled off to CeBIT, courtesy of a couple of free passes The Professor had scored.

I was way excited, because as we all know, I’m a massive nerd. And the entry process was totally exciting – they sms’d you a ticket and you held it up to this scanner thingy and voila! it printed out a cool pass – with all your details!

Sadly though, CeBIT was about 1.45 hours of my life I am never getting back.

I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t get it. It was pretty much chock full of sad software suppliers that nobody has ever heard (or will ever hear) of – terribly exciting developments in the world of Content Management Systems, web payment systems etc etc (yawn). Hardware everyone has seen before (I mean, I get as excited about rackmount systems as the next person, but it isn’t exactly cutting edge stuff).

I was walking along commenting on the staggering similarity of the logos companies choose (and that they all use words ending in -ing to describe themselves, generally the words come in 3’s like “[random comany name]: transforming, growing, developing”). I pointed out two signs to The Professor, “see, that one is really quite similar to that one”, and then we both let out an “Oh my goodness!” – because we saw the Marie Celeste logo, except it was for an international RFID company – right down to the exact colours (I’d be willing to wager big money that the hex code for the blue is identical). Mild hilarity ensued.

The most noteworthy event of the visit occured when we turned a corner and came face to face with a stand with a functional spa – filled with two girls in bikinis (and water). I think I reacted with a rather loud, “oh my god! look! whores!”. Yes, it was that staple of programmes such as Big Brother, the promotions model(s)! I had never encountered any In Real Life before (not being an attender of Motor Shows and the like). It was terribly horrifying. They were “promoting” some sort of waterproof mobile phone case (When I get back to the Celeste on Monday, I’ll check the exhibitor list for what particular waterproof mobile phone case, so that we may all avoid purchasing one).

Is this what the sisterhood fought so hard for? So that strange women can lay about in ponds distributing swords waterproof mobile phone cases?

This is why I carry my old phone in my handbag – because it takes photos! Unfortunately the spotlights above the spa were so bright the camera failed to take a decent shot of the “models” jockeying for position to simper in front of the camera of a professional photographer.

The upside was that I did get a rather cute photoframe from these dudes. And a copy of Ubuntu on CD (which, of course, I totally could have downloaded).