Political Irony

The conservative party in Australian politics is called the Liberals. I'm sure I'm not the first to observe this fact.

Democracy

Democracy differs in each country. The contrast between the election process in a little country like Australia and a big country like the USA is stark. I have no long idea how long ago Hillary and Barack et al started their campaign, and I have no idea when the actual election is, but the duration of the whole process and its cost seem grotesque to me. I know that Americas love their democracy like they love their hamburgers: BIG! And who doesn't love a big hamburger? We love them big Down Under too. And we put all sorts of crazy shit on our hamburgers: beetroot, cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato, pineapple, bacon, eggs (at the same time). On the other hand, our democracy is small. In October the election was announced. In November there's a new government.

(We also use preferential voting Down Under, which is more democratic for my tastes, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.)
 

Erdös number drops to 4

I just recalculated my Erdös number. David Clarke(4)-Frank de Boer(3)-Nissam Francez(2)-Shlomo Moran  or Shmuel Zaks(1)-Paul Erdös(0). I will continue searching.

Slow 100km

After a party on Friday night, 65km yesterday, a party last night, with 3 bottles of wine between 3, I attempted to do another 100km. I wasn't aiming high, but I was surprised with my poor performance. I could blame the wine, or cycling yesterday, or the high winds. Who knows.

Distance: 100km. Time: 4h etc.

The Wrigstad

My former student Tobias Wrigstad of Stockholm and External Uniqueness fame has left the nest and flown out into the wider world. He has taken a post-doc position in Jan Vitek et al's S3 group at Purdue University. The position looks really exciting, doing some programming language design and development. The work will be sufficiently different from Tobias' thesis topic to broaden his knowledge, without throwing him in the deep end. I think it will be a great opportunity for him to embiggen himself as a researcher.

100km (again again)

The 9-hill route.

Distance: 103km.

Duration: 3h 52m 45s.

Average speed: 26.5km/h.

Maximum speed 60.5km/h

100km

New 7-hills route. Distance of 102.12km, lasting 3h 52m 34s, at 26.3km/h, with a maximum speed of 59.8km/h. The last 15km were extremely hard. All that walking in Norway didn't help my cycle fitness. Or perhaps it was the 7 hills. I usually do at most 2 for this distance.

Vacation in Norway

Lake Gjende
Originally uploaded by supercooldave

We just got back from our vacation in Norway. After a few days in Oslo, where we visiting the beautiful Vigeland park and the Munch museum, and had differ with Einar, we took the bus to Gjendesheim in the Jotunheimen national part. Gjendesheim lies at one end of the Gjende lake (pictured). The area was surrounded by mountains which rose between 400 metres and 1300 metres above the level of the lake. We spend 7 days of walking and did our best to climb them all.

Jotunheimen is a fantastic place to go walking, if one has pistons for legs and no fear of heights, not to mention decent equipment (including proper non-cotton shirts and Gortex raincoat and rainpants). I thoroughly recommend it, though must admit that due to the varying weather conditions contrasting with the spectacular scenery, we experienced both "I hate Norway" and "I love Norway" feelings.

We finished off our holiday in Bergen, which was a very attractive town that I'd recommend to any visitor to Norway. The fjords are magnificent.

ECOOP, Berlin

Potsdamer Platz
Originally uploaded by supercooldave

Last week I went to the European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP) in Berlin. I enjoyed the conference quite a lot, mainly because I got to meet up with old friends and colleagues and supervisors, but also because I met many new people and was quite inspired.

The week started with the IWACO workshop organized by Tobias Wrigstad, James Noble, Sophia Drossopoulou and myself. We had quite a turn out: 15 papers, plus an invited talk by Vijay Saraswat, and audience numbering about 30 people. This was the second time we'd organized this workshop. The last one was 4 years ago, though there was a related workshop 8 years ago. I wonder whether we should have them more frequently.

The talks were quite interesting, mostly exploring variations of existing type systems. Perhaps the most interesting talks described new tools for extracting ownership information from existing programs (either statically or dynamically) and using this information to annotate the programs. Ownership inference is certainly an open question, though this workshop presented solid progress in that direction. Issues such as immutability, uniqueness, and permission control were discussed as crucial elements of ownership types systems.

The field is quite young---it only 9 years since our original ownership types paper---and it seems that there is still quite a bit of competition between parties. Due to this, I feel, there was little discussion about unified research goals for the field. Perhaps it is too early for this. Maybe we still need to explore the design and problem spaces. (That said, in his keynote talk, Jonathan Aldrich did give an outline of his thoughts on ownership types and other issues. Ownership is a key ingredient in architectural assurance, that is, expressing a software system's architecture to the programmer and ensuring that the programmer preserves the architectural invariants.)

The rest of ECOOP was much more general, but mostly quite interesting. I started a few little projects with Johan Ostlund, Tobias Wrigstad and Einar Broch Johnsen, as well as with Klaus Ostermann, and had some discussions with Sophia Drossopoulou which might lead somewhere. I'll keep the topics of these discussions under my hat for the moment.

The other cool part of ECOOP was that I got to meet and hang out with some of the Scala people, specifically, Adriaan Moors, Philipp Haller, and Philippe Altherr. Scala is an extremely interesting language, and it was great to talk about it with some of the guys working in the trenches. Foolishly, though, I didn't find time to talk to the Big O. Maybe next time.

And, finally, Berlin is a great city. Very photogenic. A pity that my camera died during the trip.

Last short ride before holidays

My 4-hills Maarn-Doorn route. Distance: 53.4km. Duration: 1hour 56minutes. Average Speed: 27.4. Maximum Speed: 53.0km/h.

Tomorrow little e and I are heading to Norway to do 10 days of walking in the Jotunheimen area. I plan to write something about my visit to ECOOP in Berlin last week, but I don't know whether that will happen.

Another 100km

I rode pretty much the same route as last time, though I felt much stronger this time. The only major differences were that little e came with me for the whole trip and that it was about 30 degrees, perhaps even hotter at road level. So the stats are: distance 101.14km, average speed 24km/h, maximum speed 61.5km/h, and total time 4hours and 12minutes.

We plan to ride 150km after we get back from our vacation in Norway.

A faster 100km

Little e and I set out again to see how many kilometers we could get under the belt. We started out following a standard route, leaving Utrecht towards Bunnik, passing Houten, going through 't Goy, and then crossing the bridge onto the Lekdijk. The Lekdijk is an unpredictable beast. Sometimes there is a killer headwind, but today we had a handy tailwind. At Wijk bij Duursteden, little e and I parted company, she headed back towards home to compete 47km, whereas I continued along the Lekdijk to Amerongen. My average speed was creeping up to 30km/h.

My initial plan was then to take the hill to Overberg and then heading home (77km) with the option of extending my ride to 90km or even 100km. I felt strong by the time I'd finished the hill, so I decided to go for 100km. The problem was that I needed to invent a sufficiently long route, more than 50km, without going to far, and without the help of a map. I also had to be wary of the handy tailwind, which was going to be a brutal headwind on the way home.

I decided to head towards Barneveld and then to Amsersfoort, reversing part of last week's ride. This decision turned out to be quite a good one. Somehow I managed to reduce the fight against the headwind to 15km, at a speed of around 25km/h, so my average wasn't drastically damaged. I struggled against the Laan 1914 hill leading into Amsersfoort, but didn't lose too much time. The run home felt like it was downhill and I managed to keep my speed somewhere between 28 and 30km/h. The problem was that I was getting quite tired and it didn't look like I had enough road in front of me to make it to 100km. With 90km gone, I didn't feel like doing little loops around Utrecht.

At de Bilt I turned towards de Uithof, and cycled through the university, my old stomping ground. As the remaining minutes passed by, my average was starting to drop. I turned towards Bunnik briefly, and then started heading home. There was no headwind anymore. The cycle path was new. I had a new burst of energy. I was certainly going to make the 100km, and with a good time. Totally trashed.

The final statistics: distance 101km, time 3 hours and 44 minutes, average speed 27km/h, and, due to the descent of the hill in Overberg, maximum speed 57.8km/h.

Next week, I want to do it again. But first, I'm off to Berlin for ECOOP.

100km+

For the first time this season, we cycled over 100km. To be precise, we did 108km in 4 hours and 36 minutes--well off world record pace, but not too bad. It was little e's first century, and only my fourth. Future travel commitments may prevent me from doing this again, for a while, unless we can do it next week.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Originally uploaded by kathalijne

Last Monday I had the opportunity of seeing BRMC again. It was about 18 months since last time I saw them play, in Melkweg, Amsterdam, and I rated it as the best concert I'd seen in 2005. Their voices were true, the energy was high, and they played superbly. How three guys make so much noise amazes me? How do they produce that wall of sound?

This time they played at the larger venue, the famous Paradiso, also in Amsterdam. Paul, my drummer, little e and I found seats on the second floor balcony. We were away from the action, by the view was superb. The gig started out fantastically. The first two or three songs sounded almost exactly like they came of the album, as the guitar sounds were spot on. The gig lasted for more than 2 hours, and BRMC played all of my favourite songs. They ventured through the wall of sound numbers, past the folk/country tunes, and got the crowd slamming into each other with some high energy classics. Let's not forget the morbid and depressing songs either. These guys played them all. There may have been a little dip in the amount of energy in the middle, but they ended in true style, taking requests from the audience. Quite a contrast to last time, when they hardly spoke to the audience.

Thanks to kathalijne for this picture (used without permission). Pity you didn't make it.

The Grand Scheme of Things

The Grand Scheme of Things
Originally uploaded by supercooldave

Where do I fit in the grand scheme of things? Presently I'm a researcher in computer science. Most of the time I find this satisfying, though sometimes I find that research is a little too far detached from reality. Sometimes I am completely happy with that idea, whereas at other times `meaning of life' type questions arise.

Now I'm at the point where I need to find another job. I'd like to continue researching, but it is very difficult to find a pure research position which is at a higher level than my present position. I'd like to do something more real, so going and working for a research company is certainly an option, but where? I could get a position at a university and maintain, to some degree, my research tragectory, while also gaining the opportunity to work with students. I've always enjoyed teaching when I've done it, but I have not yet developed a passion for it and worry whether I will, particularly given the level of apathy and unreasonable expectations of present day students.

This photo reflects what's going on in my head as I plan the next step along my career path.

Cycling

In the last four days, I cycled approximately 200km. I'm finally getting my fitness up towards its previous level, though this is nothing compared to how it was 10 years ago, but I've come to accept that it probably never will.

A cool thing I recently discovered is that I can use google maps to plan rides. Basically, I just draw the route on the map and it will calculate how far it is. Here is a link to the route we plan to do on Sunday. It's 100km and ventures into new territory. Specifically, we'll pass through the Veluwe national park. Nice.

Cycling

Yesterday I did my longest ride of the season so far. Though it doesn't sound like much to those who cycle a lot, it tends to sound quite large to those who don't cycle at all. I completed a route, from Utrecht to Narden-vesting via the forest near Laren and back along the Vecht river. In total I (we) cycled about 90km. I feel a little tired now, but I was surprised how good I felt at the end of the ride. Next week we are planning a 100+km ride, perhaps to the Veluwe.

Although yesterday was a good day in the saddle for me, it wasn't so good for the Australians in the tour. O'Grady crashed and was taken away in an ambulance. McEwan, who crashed earlier in the tour and was struggling, failed to cross the finish line within the time limit. And Rogers, who was looking like he could obtain the yellow jersey, crashed on a corner while descending from one of the category 1 climbs. He got back on his bike and pressed on, regaining his strong position. But during the next climb, it became apparent that he was not in good shape. He stuggled, but dropped off the pace. Every following group passed him, and he eventually was overtaken by the first peleton. He was so far off the pace, his race was over. Undoubtably he shed tears of anguish and disappointment as he stepped off his bike and quit the tour.

Marriage

I called my parents today, because it's my birthday, and they gave me some wonderful news. My sister is getting married. She's been together with her now fiance for five years already, but my sister is so sweet and naive, I'm sure, that she was totally suprised when he proposed. In fact, she hyperventilated. Of course her fiance did the right thing and asked my father for my sister's hand. How traditional! Now I'm hoping that they choose a date that will enable me to head home for the wedding. Most likely that will work out fine.

In any case, I wish them a very happy life together.

Test Two

I'm testing again. I don't know why. It's a habit, I guess.

Test Post

This is a test post. It contains no interesting information. No WMD. No terrorists. No cocaine. It is not at all interesting. There are no literary references. No animals were harmed during the making of this page.