I am … unhindered by talent

Click on them to jump over to Flickr, where I have some (limited) notes.

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After many days of preparing to start to begin to get ready to go on vacation (e.g., packing and cleaning the apartment in Colchester, traveling to Preston, etc., etc.), we are finally here in Spain and can start Having Fun (TM). We first arrived in Madrid, where we had a few hours to kill, so we wandered out and found a restaurant where Sub-Evil got an excellent swordfish steak, and I had some cool aged local cheese of unknown name and description.

We then took a brilliant train to Toledo, checked into our hotel, and wandered the tiny cobbled streets of the old town some. We had a fine dinner outside, with my meal being a stew of sorts made from free range local rabbit. I was having real trouble getting any meat off of one piece until (after much poking about) I realized it was half of the head (split right down the middle, top to bottom when looking at it face one)! (I took photos, but I’ll let you sift through the full set on my “events account” to find those.)

The old town is a gorgeous medieval city with stone buildings crowding in on narrow cobbled streets that are quite something to drive on. Many are so narrow that pedestrians have to step into doorways to make room for the car to pass.

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Today we travel south from Preston to Birmingham, and tomorrow morning (early) we fly south to Spain for nearly 3 weeks of well deserved R&R!

We’re not likely to have much internet while we’re away, so there will likely be more of the same non-activity that you’ve come to know and love here in the last few months.

We still love you - we’re just not speaking to you :-).

Best wishes all!

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We just got back from a really fine week at Methwold Old Vicarage, a wonderful Landmark Trust property. The house dates to 1490-1510, and is quite beautiful inside and out. For an American like me, the idea of sleeping in a house constructed in the time of Columbus’s voyage is just too amazing.

The brick front is a veritable sampler of ornate brickwork from the period and remains a real show piece. There are gorgeous carved beams inside, and cool remnants of late 16th century wall paintings in the main bedroom upstairs that are museum quality. And we slept in that bedroom.

Wow.

We’re totally hooked, and definitely planning another Landmark Trust stay before we return to the States this summer!

I have an utter ton of photos. I’ll be posting some to my “main” Flickr account as I have time process them, and I’m also dumping a bunch of unedited shots to my events account. The shot above is a panorama constructed from six different photos of the house. The brick front faces almost due north, so it’s difficult to get any good light on it. This is in the late evening when the sun had almost swung far enough around.

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A mentioned earlier, our friend Jane stayed in Peake’s House, a wonderful old Landmark Trust property here in Colchester. This photo is Jane, Sub-Evil Boy and WeatherGirl as they walk towards Peake’s House (the half-timbered building on the left) in the evening.

We were so inspired by that great house, and the wonderful collection of properties being preserved (and made available) by the Landmark Trust that we promptly booked a stay in one during Sub-Evil Boy’s term break. So soon we’re off to Methwold Old Vicarage, which should be really fun. Between that and some looming deadlines, though, not much on-line time for a week or so. Just thought I’d warn you.

Back soon, though!

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We all arrive at Dagstuhl on Sunday night for the week’s workshop. After a long day of traveling we enjoy some of Dagstuhl’s exceptional food, meet with folks, and catch up.

Above is the conversation during dinner tonight. It’s not the sharpest photo I’ve ever taken, but I think it captures the spirit of the room quite nicely.

And then we (at least quite a few of us) get to work. The photo below was taken at 9:30pm (probably 2.5 hours after the previous one), and there were quite a few people in this lab at the time. And there’s another lab elsewhere in the facility, and the library, and people’s rooms. I’m sure that lots of folks were also hanging out in the coffee room or playing pool, but there were a lot of people working on a Sunday night as well.

It helps if you enjoy your work, and most of these folks are extraordinarily interested in what they’re studying.

While I’m at Dagstuhl this year I’m going to try (amidst all the “real” work) to capture something of what the workshop is like and, more generally, what it is to do (computer) science. This is hard because it’s not flashy high-action bull-riding kind of work, but it’s important, significant work and deserves to be documented. I’m just going to have work harder at it.

I’m also probably going to take more people pictures than I would be naturally inclined to. If anyone finds them self in a photo here and objects, let me know and I’d be happy to remove it.

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It’s late and I’m way tired, but I think the packing is under control (more or less) (sorta kinda) (as well as can be expected) for tomorrow’s grand journey to Dagstuhl. Not sure how much posting will happen from there; depends a lot on how good the wireless is in my room this year.

In the meantime I leave you with this travel (and research) related shot from my excellent visit to Dublin last month: a group of vehicles driving onto O’Connell Bridge. It looks like it’s the middle of the night, but it was actually only a bit after 6pm as everyone was hurrying home from work. Short days in Dublin in December.

Ciao!

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I can’t really imagine that anyone’s going to want one of these, but just in case…

As a Xmas present for our various family members we used Blurb.com to create a photo book of some of our images from 2007. But hey, you can join the family by purchasing one as well :-). It’s 127 photos on 38 pages, and they have a PDF preview so you can see what you’re getting into before you put your money down.

This was our first use of Blurb, and their software was pretty decent. Amazing, really, how easy it is these days to publish books that no one really cares about. It used to be hard to publish books no one cared about; they regularly gave people degrees for it.

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Coming from a country where we thump our chests and wave our flags at nearly any provocation, one is struck here by the near absence of flags and their waving.

They can be found, however. You just need to sneak up on them very, very quietly…

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I’m back after a wonderful three days in Dublin (thanks to Mike and the gang at UCD!). JOCP but there’s a lot of e-mail that piled up while I’m away, and my head is full to bursting with research ideas. It’s going to be tough to prioritize and focus here in the next few weeks.

I’ll try to sift through my photos over the weekend and get some of them posted.

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