A technological odyssey

I've had THE BEST DAY, you guys!

My friend Darren (who is like an I.T. god) took me on a guided tour of the university's server room. I saw the supercomputer that serves the school of Physics (nerd-tastic stats for it are here). The bottom right and top middle images in the composite are of the outer case of the supercomputer - they remind me of beehives and the Transformers!

The server room has a really scary fire safety system - if fire is detected, inert gas is pumped into the room to extinguish it. I guess they give you time to leave the room first. I GUESS.

More from the server room: the yellow box where Google lives (Darren told me the true purpose of this, I think it's for the university network-wide Google search function, but I prefer to think of it as Google's house); the 'big purple router' (sounds rude, I know); and some disconnected vintage equipment that looks cool but doesn't do anything any more (top left).

After visiting the server room, we took a trip to the brand new Forum on campus. In here, Darren took me to the auditorium control room, where I took the bottom left image (I had no tripod and had to leave the camera on a chair on a delay with the lights off). After this, we went to try out the awesome Minority Report-like desks (middle image). Still have no idea what a real-life application for these would be - and nor does anyone else, as the entire room was empty of people!

I have had such a great day. I hope you enjoy the images!