Andrew’s Blog

I finally got down to making some progress on the new VT web app today.  This was mainly thanks to staying late at the department (still there now actually) due to it being Mesude’s birthday! I’m currently expecting Henry to turn up any minute so we can go down to Zizzi’s to celebrate.

Anyway, this morning I converted some of our old undergraduate projects to Mercurial and put them on the VT server.  You can now find the demonstrators system and the Recursive Meta Scraper there.  DCS Central is the name of the new project; a rather pompous name at the moment for what essentially is a small Java class I wrote ages ago to query the departmental printers and an XSL stylesheet which generates our current people listing on the VT website.

This currently only happens via a static XML file.  The next thing to do is to get a Java servlet firstly to do the processing (as opposed to the web browser) and then to make the XML generation dynamic, taking the people list from a database.  Finally, we add some stuff to the web app to allow us to modify this database.  And as a result the VT web site hopefully becomes a shade more maintainable.

There are still a few things missing from the stylesheet.  We don’t yet handle RAs and research students, but this shouldn’t be too different from the academics. The main addition is that students need a supervisor list and a thesis title.  The latter will eventually link to a longer blurb pulled from rmission.  I’m in two minds about including academic rmissions.  Most of their work should be maintained in projects which will also eventually be listed via vt.

There are also a few other modifications.  We need to allow the default makeperson URL to be overridden, mainly so alumni can be listed.  Alumni will only really differ in being listed on a separate page, so they should be able to use the same stylesheet and just be generated from a different link which does a different database query.

At least there are real results from this at last and not just ideas in my head!

Well yesterday turned out not to be a hacking day at all, but rather a day dismantling VT and installing a new disk (80gb from support).  It’s not yet active (we need some more downtime to setup the new disk, and move data back and forth) but it should mean we have a lot more room to breathe!  Thanks to Simon for his help with the beast; getting a new hard disc into a desktop case proved to be a very non-trivial process!

So it’s January again and the department is only just now starting to get back up to full steam. I’ve been back in since the 2nd in order to give myself plenty of time to get going again while it’s quiet. I actually quite like it like that. For most of the first week, there were very few academics in. Notably, Phil was around (the mark of a good head of department) and Marian was also in towards the end of the week. Other than that, it was pretty much just me, Monika, Kirsty and a few other VT students (Henry and Maslita then Mohammed and Ali on the Friday) around our part of the building.

Henry spent most of the time trying to finish sorting out his new accommodation and, most importantly, his Internet connection. It seemed like a good idea to go with the discount O2 gave him via his existing mobile contract in theory. In practice, their website was obviously designed by idiots and caused no end of problems. Why should we have to tell the web site that we’re logged in? Surely it should know!

Ibby also made an appearance on the Thursday (although much later than I expected from his phonecall the day before!) and Henry suggested some post-birthday drinks which was very nice of him. We spent a couple of hours in the Swim, having a good chat before going home.

This nice little spell of quite winterdom was over by the next week when people started to reappear en mass. There still weren’t enough people to warrant a postgraduate seminar session though, on the Monday, so it was cancelled much to Ramsay’s dismay at the loss of pizza. Most of my time over the last two weeks has been spent on getting the Sun stuff going, of which you can ready more on my other blog; other than that, it’s been lots of nice chats over cuppas as usual.

The biggest event of the last couple of weeks has to be our impromptu night out. Last Thursday, me and Henry bumped into Emily in the kitchen (she having returned on Monday, when we sadly took all the Christmas decorations back down) and were given a rather strange invitation to a night out. You see, she didn’t ask us if we wanted to join her but rather if we’d meet up with her if we were already going out. Kind of bizarre. We weren’t sure what to do, given the short notice. I know Em would never go out at such short notice, so it seemed a bit cheeky her expecting us to.

In the end, we decided to go and I texted Em to let her know. We were forewarned it was apparently a ‘girly night’, whatever that means, but even without any mascara, we still decided to go. Unfortunately, we were a little late in getting across to the Varsity and when we got there at 9, Em had left. We stayed for a drink anyway, then went across to the quieter Cavendish for another. As usual, the Varsity was playing loud music for the very few customers it has, while it was noticeably quieter but packed with people in the Cavendish. After some interesting chat, the two of us headed down to the Leadmill, again via the Globe, having agreed to meet Emily there.

The streets were desolate, with the Cavendish seemingly having the majority of tonight’s party people. To say we got to the Leadmill later than we have before (about half eleven), and yet it was still nearly empty, it shows how much the night-going population of Sheffield is dominated by the students, who were all still mostly away on Christmas vacation. We spotted Em and friend not long after getting there, but there seemed to be little hint of the girly night we were told about. Rather than interrupting her, we waited until she spotted us as well and decided to come over.

The night was a bit different to what I remember the last Thursday at the Leadmill being like. The music in the main room was way more cheesy than before, being a smattering of all sorts of pop music, while room 2, rather than being the usual indie stuff, was playing house music. Sadly, as always popularity surrounds the worst music, and the poor DJ in that room had very few people on the dancefloor. These kids today just don’t have any taste — I mean, Peter Andre? The guy kept repeating tracks too which always annoys me. 3 Britney Spears songs (1 twice)?

It worked out well though, because I think the DJ in room 2 realised he didn’t have to play to the crowd but could just play what he fancied. We went back and forth a few times; I got Henry to join me in there the first time, then the second time he initiated us going in there after hearing that the guy had moved on to playing some trance. The main dance floor was a joke. Not only was the music not too good, but the majority of people there weren’t even dancing and seemed to take it badly that some of us wanted to actually enjoy ourselves. They’d rather just stand there like idiots and get drunk.

Towards the end of the night, there were people falling all over the place, so I escaped once again to the other room, especially when I heard the DJ was now playing some drum ‘n’ bass! That made me very happy, even I was one of only about three people in there, while the rest were staggering around in the other room to Whitney Houston. Admittedly, it was commercial drum ‘n’ bass (Pendulum’s ‘Slam’ followed by Puretone’s ‘Addicted to Bass’) but this was still a league above what the annoying wedding DJ was doing in the other room. It’s always a sign of a bad DJ when they feel the need to talk to their audience and tell you what tracks they’re going to play. Honestly, it was like listening to Hallam FM or something.

The DJ finished the night with some old skool stuff, and then I met up with Henry again and we walked back up towards his house. I was in no rush to get back and I didn’t want to leave him until I knew he was cognoscent enough to get home okay. All in all, it was a good night and I enjoyed the chance to have a good chat with Henry. He’s a really good friend.

No, this is nothing to do with James Bond. We’re now two and a half hours into 2008, and so it’s time to look back ponderously at 2007 — just like we looked back at 2006 last year…

January

Last year I struggled to remember anything from the first couple of months of the year. I put this partly down to it being fairly uneventful (I couldn’t remember much) and also not having a blog for that period (I didn’t start properly until September 2006).

This year, I’m struggling to remember much about the first couple of months of the year too. And guess what? — I have a blog. Guess what I wrote in it? Hardly anything. Looks like we’ve got a great couple of months to look forward to then if the last couple of years are anything to go by. Although with all the stuff that’s ‘about’ to happen, I have a feeling it won’t be true this year.

My main memory of last January is of Mike Stannett discovering the Internet. Most people would have discovered it before 2007, but not Mike. He got a new computer and developed a sudden fascination with all things net, insisting that we all get webcams and microphones so we could talk to him at home. I still don’t understand why, and fortunately by the time the next semester had started this obsession had somewhat subsided. I think it had a lot to do with wanting to stay at home to be honest.

In my 06 year blog, I mentioned Shaukat joining earlier in the year. At the end of January last year, he left. We made our first VT expedition to Jumbo’s as a goodbye meal. Going back to the beginning of the month, for some reason the first few days stick in my head because I didn’t go back on the 2nd, having an optician’s appointment, but Ramsay did with him and Mahmood ending up in a fire alarm practice outside in the cold. Weird how I remember that.

February

The first week of February saw Mike Stannett’s birthday, and we trooped down to see him the week before to give him a present. The other big event of the month, for me at least, was my trip to Brussels and FOSDEM. I remember planning to leave rather late because I thought me and Henry had to actually attend Siobh´a;n’s lectures for her module as well as do the marking. But it turns out we didn’t, so that, coupled with a late plane arrival and trying to find everything, made me get there a lot later than I would have ideally hoped to. I’ll be going again this year so hopefully the travel and stuff will be better. The event itself was great and I expect this year’s to be even better too.

March

There still doesn’t appear to have been much happening even in March, given that I resorted to using my blog to write dramas. But at least I wasn’t alone in blogging then because Mike was actually doing so at the time (although checking that link just now shows he has posted again for the first time in six months). Looking back at mine brings back a few interesting memories. And to blatantly re-use that format, that was the month that:

• Simon bought a RISC PC which has since mainly festered in the corner of the lab.
• Simon bought a GP2X which has seen more use.
• Ramsay acquired a SGI box from Kirill which has since mainly festered in the corner of the lab (spot a theme here…?)
• Zubair was mad enough to install Vista — oh how we laughed.
• Scarily, that was the first time I talked about DynamiTE — has it really been that long?
• Ibby passed his transfer report at long last on the 13th; unlucky for some but not for him.

But mainly one of just being in the lab I guess. I know there was a lot of demonstrating going on. Me and Henry taking packed COM162 classes with Sanaz, Ben and Swampi. Lots of the aforementioned marking. COM2030 tutorials for Georg. And the Turnitin stuff started to kick off as well, not to mention Crossover as always so that probably explains why not much else went on.

April

April always seems to be where things start to kick off, with May becoming a veritable tornado of activity. In 2006, it was the month we spent gallivanting around the country (BCTCS, MGS, Types, TFP and all that jazz) and April 07 was similarly pretty busy. Although my blog again shows my whimsical musings, it also clearly demonstrates a busy month. I suppose the most memorable bit is that bloody CONCUR paper. I spent two entire evenings in the lab with Mike while we cranked it out and while I spoke lyrically of it back then, the response to it clearly showed it didn’t smell of roses.

Speaking of MGS, Simon went off there again and this time Henry, Ibby and Peter went too. Memorably, Ibby travelled there and back every day, was less than diligent in claiming back the expenses for this, got lost, most enjoyed looking in the pond rather than at the lectures, made a racist slur, set the department in a bad light and phoned me every day. Not bad for a week’s work.

This was also the time of my eponymous blog about the Information commons. From what I’ve seen, it still all holds. In fact, in all accounts everything I’ve heard since has merely darkened my opinion, notably including its effect on the opening hours of St George’s and the name of the Main Library as well as its ridiculous mandated 24-hour policy. There’s no money to helpfully open St George’s for a few extra hours of an evening which students actually want, but keeping the Information Commons opening at 2am and during the Christmas break is a must.

It’s all been departures this year, and sadly April saw the unhappy story of Ravie leaving, as he lost funding to continue in Sheffield. He was given the option of continuing back home in Malaysia instead and took it. These changes have had quite an effect on the lab, and its makeup today is quite different than it was this time last year.

May

What a heady month May was! It even kicked off quite dramatically, when we did the final rearrangement of the VT lab to what it is today. I’m quite pleased with how it is at the moment, to be honest, although judging by what Mike Holcombe told Mesude it’s not that clear that we now have some space in there, and, thinking about it, the current space is pretty akin to the space that was there before the last shuffle. Interesting.

May was also the start of the Emily odysseys. I remember running in to her in the kitchen (not literally) at some point, Henry had past history of seeing her in the disgrace that is Embrace/Mingdom, and it all kicked off there, with us arranging a night out. That ended up being the same day that Alice left. Quite strange really, because I’d only recently got to know her through the whole Turnitin debacle. Both her and Em joined us on what was the first of several VT07 nights out that culminated in a trip to the Leadmill. It was a Thursday and I still think the best night we’ve had. Everyone made it to the end for one thing. It was also the only one Ibby attended (partially) — certainly the only time he came out clubbing and as a result lost his phone. I’m surprised, as I thought it was surgically attached. Strangely enough, only myself and Henry have been on all our many adventures last year.

It was also the month of the GRADSchool trip, which I moaned and whined about beforehand, but which turned out to be quite brilliant. I chronicled it all pretty fully at the time, in probably my most epic blog to date. But suffice to say, I made some good friends on the trip, maybe even learnt a little and had a good break from the usual hussle and bussle of the DCS. It even seemed to have a positive effect on Simon — well, for a few days anyway until he reverted. We’ve still got to have a reunion, which I hope will happen sometime this year.

Oddly, once of its most notably effects in the short term was the consequent rise (and later, demise) of Facebook. I’d actually become a member back in November of the year before, when invited to it by Fran. Me, him and Zubair conversed on there a bit but there wasn’t really much point. We were all seeing each other day in, day out anyway. It took off when I then used it to keep in contact with the members of Team S, my new-found friends from GRADSchool, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was Emily finding out. I don’t know how many times we messaged each other over the first few days but it became quite bonkers to be honest. Thankfully, things slowly calmed down until it was basically dead by late summer.

June

The 1st of June was marked quite notably by the inaugural VT lab party, which celebrated the start of summer, the leaving of the undergraduates and the successful completion of transfer reports for everyone from the 05-06 bunch. Yes, we actually had a party that wasn’t a VT Christmas party, nor just a few drinks and a chat in the retreat. This was a full blown thing with music, food, drink and even non-VTers (Emily, Sanaz, Ben, Swampi, Daniella, Julia and James all put in an appearance as far as I remember). And it didn’t stop there; we went out afterwards too, ending up in the Leadmill with a severly inebreated Mike Stannett (who me and Em had to roll in to a taxi) and Henry (T to his friends) who proceeded to fall over people and had to be delicately manouevered home by Julia.

On the way to the Leadmill, Henry instead decided to try Gatecrasher One. They didn’t let us in. It burnt down a week later. I swear there is no relationship between those two events, though no-one has yet been able to prove either way. Yes, June was certainly packed with events. We were invited to Alice’s party, but that somehow went awry. I organised two seminars, one being the return of Gerald and the other my final Theory SIG with Nick Bezhanishvili. That’s probably significant because of Emmanuel’s track record in inviting speakers in the first half of 2006, although we didn’t do that much better even with me in charge.

Also in that month, Peter Höfner left us to return to Germany, following some sausages and potato salad in the DCS quadrangle. Henry celebrated his birthday with a night out at Nando’s and Havana, proceeded by a rather pointless postgraduate research day hosted by the University. Finally, Sheffield was submerged by floods in the final week of June (usually one of the hottest times of the year) and we really needed our umbrella-ella-ellas (ay ay ay). What a rollercoaster that was!

July

Things started to dry out a bit in July. I remember taking a trip around the ghost town that Meadowhall had become, post-flood before returning to the university for the postgraduate barbeque. The most memorable event was of course the departmental picnic which was preceded by my move to VT Lab 3 and an afternoon spent with Mike and some old cassette tapes preparing the music quiz. That was the first time we didn’t make it to the end with Emily (the last three times we got a taxi back home together) and we haven’t managed it any time since either.

August

In August, we had a yearly visit from Barry, this time without his sidekick Monika. Memorably this marked the beginning of the collapse of party planning which didn’t really recover until November. Having had four successes fairly close together (the kick off in May, the June lab party, Henry’s birthday and the departmental picnic), we were trying to get something together for the day of Barry’s visit but this was scuppered by Simon’s Theory SIG arrangements and a general lack of interest.

The following week we did go out for the August birthday celebrations, but things went quite differently to our past events. To start with, Emily missed this one (she was on holiday as I recall). It was much more a VT affair. The usual triage of Henry, Emmanuel and Abraham were there, along with Stannett who was also becoming something of a regular. However, initially we also had Simon and Ramsay, and Mahmood also came along, being keen to finally try a nightclub.

My most vivid memories of that night are of us eating lunch outside at the University arms and then heading to the Harley for seemingly endless games of pool, with Mahmood being something of a dark horse. We’d lost both Simon and Ramsay by the time we moved over to RSVP, where Stannett was showing severe signs of intoxication and Mahmood finally gave up and went home, after being exposed to the volume of the music there.

Now a quintet, we ended up in hell, also known as Embrace, where I first took the position that popular venues are like popular music i.e. generally rubbish. The events I’ve been to since have been an order of magnitude better, and going off on my own to organise things has been one of the best things I’ve done since. Not that I don’t still enjoy our nights out — just as long as we end up at somewhere vaguely decent like the Leadmill and not a preposturously overhyped place such as Embrace. It really is no different from what Kingdom was and I knew that well enough by reputation before. The departmental holiday afterwards was so much better.

September

The first week in September was notable for my trip to Lisbon. The main thing I can remember is the heat which was all too much for me. I think I’d prefer future conferences to be in Antartica or something. Well maybe not, but at least somewhere where the temperature isn’t overbearing. On my return, I acquired access to the University CMS after jumping through the appropriate hoops, and Liang left us after completing his MPhil panel successfully. His desk was quickly taken by Csaba, who’s visiting John for six months. It was also the last month that Ibby was with us, as far as I recall. At the beginning of the month, he was organising gym sessions with me, but by mid-September he’d decided to take a year out. We’ve yet to see if he will actually return.

I’m reminded of him also because he was originally going to go to Gatecrasher’s 14th birthday party at Magna with me. In the end, he gave it up due to Ramadan, and I ended up going with Henry instead. It was a fantastic night, and something I’ve since experienced again with the Boxing Day event. I’m now looking forward to the Resurrection on the 22nd of March and the eventual return of Gatecrasher One around September (if I’m still around by then).

October

October was a month of quite a few nights out, but none of them involved the VT crew. On the 2nd, I visited the Tuesday Club for the first time and was treated to a brilliant show by DJ Yoda. The week after, it was the Octagon for Oakenfold (along with Ben Gold and Riley & Durrant who been at all three Crasher events so far). The month culminated with a return to the Tuesday Club on the 30th to see Skream and High Contrast. That was also my first experience of a D&B crowd though (or rather a student D&B crowd), which wasn’t pleasant. Let’s not dance, let’s just push each other about… what fun.

Back in the DCS, we gained two new PhD students, Andrea (who I’d already met in April when she came for an interview) and Mesude (who Mike told there was no room in the lab…). Both have proved really enthusiastic so far, and it makes a nice change to actually have some people who are willing to get involved, do things and be sociable. On the subject of social events, the last weeks of October also saw us kick off our postgraduate meetings (which Mike had mentioned to me back in July at the picnic) with free pizza and a second postgraduate meal (this time for new students) at K Pasa, having moved from Wokmania and its rather dodgy food (health inspectors anyone). Saying that, K Pasa has gone somewhat downhill since, and after numerous trips over the past six months or so, me and Mahmood pretty much say goodbye to it in December.

The postgraduate meetings were something of a trial to get going. The first one was attended by just me, Maslita and Mahmood and resulted in an e-mail and associated discussions which meant that the next meeting had only three people missing. Since then, things have settled down to just over half of the VT postgraduates attending. It will be interesting to see if this continues in the new year. Also in October, I acquired the role of Sun campus ambassador. It’s still yet to really kick off but things are looking promising (unlike with the Google debacle).

November

November saw our clubbing trips re-established after a few false starts and me going it alone for a bit. The first of two took place on the 2nd, where Emily rejoined me, Henry and Abraham. Csaba also joined us and we briefly had the company of Mesude, before she had to rush off for her Design Patterns meeting. Csaba made it as far as Reflex before he also decided to head for home, and we finished the night in the Leadmill again. Memorably, Emily went off home early, because her feet were aching and both Henry and Abraham headed off not long after. I finished the last hour or so off on my own before heading home when the club closed. It was quite empty given it was still middle of semester, and even more so by closing time, with the taxi driver also commenting on this on the way home.

The week after I returned to the Tuesday club for the big birthday bash and Pendulum. I was already a bit doubtful of it, after last time’s experience with the D&B folks, and was also feeling a bit tired. However, it ended up turning into a fiasco when the fire alarm went off not once but twice and we all ended up outside in the cold. We ended up seeing probably about an hour of Pendulum and went in the other room for about half an hour after they’d gone off to make up for it and also avoid the cloakroom queue.

On the 21st (a date chosen especially for this reason), we celebrated Emily’s 21st (actually on the 19th) with another trip out. The socials list proved its worth when Dave came along and it was one of our best nights out in my opinion. We kicked off in the Cavendish as usual, before going to the Varsity. However, we didn’t stay there when we discovered that they’d decided to show some football match that night. Instead, we headed for the Forum which was blissfully free of such torrid entertainment and we had a nice chat there going briefly to the Frog and Parrot (where we parted company with Csaba) and then the Leadmill. We were a little early, so we ended up having to wait to get in. Emily’s birthday tickets paid off when we all got a free drink, discounted entry and they enjoyed a bottle of champagne.

It had to be one of the weirdest nights though, given they had some bucking cow thing that people were riding on and they were playing all sorts of classic pop tunes such as the Spice Girls, PJ and Duncan and S Club 7. What I’ve said about popularity obviously rings true because it was packed to the rafters for this. I was soon pretty fed up of it and I think this was also felt by the others. Emily left early again and, in hindsight, I probably should have gone with her, as we left not fifteen minutes later.

December

December was indisputably the party month, though I feel only me and Emmanuel were really feeling the vibe. We had two VT lab parties, the first being a postgraduate one but this was nowhere near as successful as the one in the summer. Only the usual VT suspects turned up, and we reined it in by about 7pm and went home. It was however a good chance to try out the new speakers and amplifier before the Christmas bash the week after.

The VT party was really quiet to begin with and I don’t think it ever really took off for the academics. At 12pm, you’d not have thought there was a party imminent, and it must have took until at least 2pm before there was a sizeable amount of people there. They seemed to come in dribs and drabs and it was quite late on before the VT choir (myself, Henry, Mesude, Abraham, Emmanuel and Tony Simons) gave our rendition of ‘VT The World’. Fortunately, we were spared another slideshow from Tony, and the party took on a life of its own when it was left to just the postgraduates for the last few hours.

There was quite a final ring to all this, as this is likely to be the last Christmas we’ll all spend together. As a result, it’s a good job all three parties (these and the departmental one) were good fun, if not anything spectacular. It will be interesting to see what 2008 now brings and how VT continues to change…

It’s Christmas party time again. Quite unbelievable that it’s been a year already. This time last year, the VT folks were only just starting to go out together at night, whereas this year has been packed with dalliances and debacles with the creatures of the night. Yesterday was the departmental Christmas party, where the members of the DCS all got in their spaceships (ours looking strangely like a Supertram) and headed for the Moon. That was after a fairly busy morning of handing out Christmas cards and preparing the lyrics for the VT choir to sing their little hearts out.

We set off about quarter to one, having waited for Em to close the gates of reception and keep the students at bay for the day. We’d decided to take the tram there in order to carry the instruments for the VT choir (Tony’s guitar and Henry’s keyboard) but somehow we all got split up. George lead a contingent of people (including Monika, Daniella, Chris and Tony) there on foot, while myself, Henry, Em and Csaba held on for Mesude who was running late (we were worried we were going to be short a keyboardist) and then when to catch the tram. Em was trying to get hold of Anna, who we thought was still in the department, but it turned out she was already at the tram stop and we saw the tram arriving as we were on the other side of the road. We dashed across but I ended up getting on the tram while Henry, Mes and Csaba got left behind and had to get the next tram.

In the end, we all got there, although a rather depressing turnout from the VT lab with only the five of us (Abraham arrived shortly after). Emmanuel would have come, had it not been for him deciding to stay in the VT lab all night (!!!) and then only go home after me and Henry arrived in the morning. He was still sleeping when Henry called him. I saw him later on when we returned to the department to drop off the keyboard and camera, and he wasn’t that bothered about missing the food after he found out how cold it was and that there was no hot chicks (of the edible variety) like last year. The design of the venue this year was better (we were all sat at tables in the back room of the pub, rather than sitting separately and circling a huge hole like last year at the Walkabout), but the catering was very lack lustre. As already mentioned, the food was all cold and we didn’t even get a free drink! Csaba had to cough up money for an orange juice which is disguisting when they were offering drugged up drinks for free. We ended up getting Henry two free drinks while he bought me an orange juice.

Once again, we performed miserably in the quizzes. Last year I think we did fairly okay with Stannett’s quiz, but this year we were up against Phil’s rather lengthy quiz and a barrage of bizarre questions about the earnings of the department. We succeeded in guessing a few people’s middle names correctly, and did okay on the Christmas section but given most of the questions were from around 1984 and the oldest in our group were only about five or six at that time was kind of a disadvantage. I still think we should have divided the score by the combined ages of those of the group instead of the number of people in it (although we lost 3 along the way; it was nice to see Swampi again though, brief as it was). However, it was still a better performance than the 05 quiz where I think we managed just 2. Dave once again had a guess the person picture quiz, and I think we did better than we had before, using our phone-a-friend to get some help from Mahmood and (belatedly) one of Mesude’s friends.

By far the funniest of the quizzes was George’s face quiz, but unfortunately only the die-hard contingent of Monika, Pete, George, Tony (Chilton), Dave, Em, Csaba and myself stayed around for this, after we scared the rest off with our renditions of the VT song and Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’. The quiz had two parts, one where you had to guess whose eyes were starting at you from the page and another where you had to determine the parents of a series of mutant bastard children, resulting from dalliances in the broom cupboard by various members of the department. I was surprised to find George had put me in there twice, but I couldn’t spot either. Em found the eyes one. She also appeared twice but was pretty easy to spot. Certain of the partnerships were pretty scary and will probably continue to haunt us for weeks to come.

We made our way back to West Street around 6. Csaba kindly helped me bring the keyboard back to the department, but then called it a night, so I headed off alone to join Dave, George, Pete, Monika and Em in the Bath Hotel where we stayed for one drink before heading to the Swim with the prospect of some food. Memorably, Em showed considerable control by having only a Diet Coke to go with her lasagne, but she did seem quite worried about being okay the next morning for the secretaries and support party at RSVP and the other plans she has for this week with two days off. We had a nice chat over food, with George’s usual lude remarks, before Henry finally rejoined us, having gone house hunting. Monika and George decided to call it a night at that point, and she guided him off towards the tram stop.

The five of us moved on to first the Forum (with salsa dancers), then the Green Room (with a guy singing Buddy Holly’s ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ among others) and finally the Frog and Parrot, moving at Emily’s ‘drink up’ pace. It was there that she decided to call it a night at about half nine, and literally jumped in a taxi right outside the door. Henry was keen for more though, but it was down to just me and him after Emily jumped ship. Pete had a train to catch, and Dave, seemingly half asleep, decided to stay there enjoying the music. We walked down to the station with Pete, and then the two of us headed in to the Globe for a drink before the Leadmill opened.

Arriving at the Leadmill, we still had to wait even though it was quarter to eleven by this time. It seems the band of the night, Gogol Bordelli, had overrun a little and people were still filtering out. When we did get inside, it was only the second room that was open but it soon warmed up and we enjoyed a good selection of indie tracks from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and naughties before we headed home about 1am. Quite early, but still a pretty good session, totalling 12 hours in all, and certainly one of our more memorable departmental Christmas parties. It was easily better than the first year, where we headed home after only two hours, and last year’s as well I’d say. Interestingly, the only person I saw on both this year’s and last year’s outing was Em, who appeared last year in the Devonshire Cat with Fran. This year, Ramsay has generally been pretty boring, becoming settled down and not coming out with us at all much unlike last year. He chose to go to listen to lecturers droning on in Birmingham instead this year with Simon and Georg. Stannett seems to have also become something of a party pooper of late, not appearing at either this or the VT party, but hiding away with some MSc students somewhere.

Oh well, that will probably be our last one, so a good job it went well. I wonder where we’ll all be next year…

I’ve just got back from Gatecrasher’s 14th birthday party and am enjoying an afterparty with a cuppa in the DCS before returning home.  It was a really good night, even if my feet are now aching a little after dancing for nine hours.  Henry went with me in the end, after Ibby bottled it.  I was worried for a bit that I’d be stuck with no-one to go with, but fortunately he saved the day.  I think he wondered what he’d let himself in for at first; the guys and gals we shared the bus with to Magna were already a little inebriated to say the least, it took us ages to work out how to get in there (about a ten minute walk right round almost in a circle) and he didn’t look too impressed with the two rooms at first - I left him for a bit because he was just hanging round at the back texting.  However, this was probably because we’d not let him drink anything so far.  A couple of drinks later, he seemed happy enough though and had a big smile on his face.  He made it until quarter to five which was more than I expected given he had to work the next day.  I stayed the remaining hour and a quarter, and am now off home to get some sleep at last.

I arrived back from a very tiring and exhausting trip to Lisbon yesterday evening. It seems the whole thing was fraught with chaos pretty much, but there were lots of interesting talks and it was great to meet people working with JikesRVM for their research. In retrospect, I should have planned things earlier and better, but you learn from experience. I’m still a little shocked at how fast I suddenly had a paper accepted there (if only in the workshop) and was heading off to Portugal.

I left last Monday morning, after only about three hours sleep. I ended up finishing the presentation the Sunday before, after various things took me off track earlier that weekend. Taking three attempts to get my camera being just one of them… I did have a nice trip to the gym with Ibby on the Saturday but getting up early then too really didn’t help. I think there’s only the Sundays in the last two weeks that I haven’t been up at 6am.

The only direct flight I could find was via Air Portugal down at London Heathrow so I got a coach down there on Monday. That itself took nearly five hours. It makes me glad I have an iPod, so at least I can while away the time listening to good tunes (should take it to Embrace if I ever have to go again). There was a lot less waiting time for flights this time round, unlike when I went to Belgium (four hours in the airport IIRC). It did however mean that I was worried about making it in time all the way down to Heathrow, and then things all got messed up on the way back. Next time I need to go to the continent, I’m taking a train.

I took advantage of a chance to avoid Gordon Brown while in the airport, and got a tax-free copy of the new Gatecrasher Immortal CD which will help prepare for the big night out in a couple of weeks. After a bit of food and drink, I boarded the plane. I’d booked the outward flight business class (as that was all that was left, and it was about the same price) and got treated to a nice three course meal before landing in Lisbon where it was noticeably hotter!

Once there, I took the advice given in the conference travel notes and bought a taxi ticket at the airport for about 15 euros. It was a bit more expensive, but better than risking the taxi driver charging what they wanted. Another conference delegate got charged about 45 euros to get from the hotel to the conference site! The hotel was okay, if not that grandiose. I don’t reckon it was as good as the one I went to for either Gradschool, MGS or my various IBM visits, but it was better than the campus accommodation I stayed in for Types and BCTCS obviously (and much better than that for RelMiCS this time last year, where you had to walk out of the room to the shower). It completely confused me (and had to go and ask at the desk) that you had to put your room key in a slot to get any electricity! I tried to get in the Zurique instead, but it was booked up by the time I registered. Again, should have got my act together quicker.

I then went out for a look round and managed to go all over the place but where I wanted to go. I didn’t exactly get lost (I always knew where I was) but I never found where I wanted to go. The most annoying thing is I started heading in the right direction, and then decided it wasn’t somehow, and went back the other way — duh! I did get a few good pictures though, but no restaurant I went back and had something in the hotel bar instead.

Even more fun ensued on the Tuesday when I tried to find the university for the Java PT event. I asked at the reception and the guy there kindly told me what train to get. The train was quite cheap (only 3.2 euros both ways) and very efficient (arriving exactly on time on every occasion), but when I got there it turned out not to be as close as I thought. Again, I started going in the right direction, and then changed again! Grrrr! I got there eventually but an hour into the event (when I started out an hour before). They had my name badge all ready for me though.

The talks were very interesting (those that I could understand anyway — one was entirely in Portuguese, but looked boring anyway — all about UML and stuff). Dinner was a bit odd — it just seemed to be a buffet of rabbit food and chocolate sauce. Lots of drinks though, which was what I needed more. It was 24 degrees at 8:30 the night before, and over 30 degrees in the daytime! Next time I want a conference somewhere cold, preferably Iceland or something. We had talks on JavaFX, GlassFish and NetBeans. I managed to miss the one on open sourcing Java, but given the number of faux paus made later, I’m glad I did. As Tom Marble said before I left, they wouldn’t be able to tell me much new about that anyway. The most interesting was the Sun SPOT demo (I believe Gordon is going to use some of these) and I have a nice bit of video of this, with robots and Project Looking Glass.

For some reason, we got an umbrella for finishing the conference. It wasn’t raining, and I think they just want to have the joke of giving us a Sun umbrella (get it?). Heading back was quite a trek, but at least I knew where I was going this time. I got an Iced Tea (ha ha) at the railway station. They seem to be keen on this there instead of real tea. I had some peach Ice Tea in the bar the night before too. Not much negro cha though…

Back at the ranch, I had a shower (after all that heat) and then went out again, hoping to be more successful this time. Indeed, I did make it to Barrio Alto on this occasion, which Fran had recommended, and had some of the local cod fish at a restaurant there. Very nice but also very boney. Again, it was a bit of a distance to go though, so I decided to stay closer to home in future, and was quite happy that I wouldn’t have to think of my own plans until the Friday evening…

The next morning I again got the train and did the walk to the conference, but later realised that I could have got a coach! The e-mail didn’t mention the 5th! Anyway, I made it, registered and finally got my talk out of the way! I felt much better after that. Not sure how much of it just went straight over their heads, but at least I tried.

There was also an interesting talk by IBM on their VM (which GCs they use and such like) and on using Java together with Petri Nets. The conference (PPPJ 07) started proper in the afternoon, with the first session on how people had used Java. There were some very interesting talks, one on a FOSS web teaching system (both FOSS and GNU/Linux seemed very much in vogue, although they were using Windows Vista to present which caused the usual problems) and one on a scripting language for programming on a phone. One of the four talks was postponed, as the speaker was stuck in a Parisian airport, so we ended up having it the day after. Some very nice practical talks which makes a change…

Things really started properly after that with the conference cocktail party. It was at this point that I met up with Jeremy Singer who I saw in Manchester the year before. Both he and Matthias Hauswirth had seen my post to the JikesRVM list before I left but not had chance to reply! Matthias told me about some problems they’d had running tests with Eclipse 3.2+JikesRVM, which I’ve just started to try and chase up. I had a good chat with Jeremy about all sorts of stuff related to JikesRVM and Classpath during the cocktail party. It was in these lovely botanical gardens with a beautiful view of the skyline — see my photos on Facebook. The waiters seemed very keen on shovelling food down us, even going so far as to replace the cocktail stick in my hand with another at one point!

The next day was dominated by more talks and a nice trip round the area. We went to a convent (actually inhabited by monks, as the word merely describes the size of the place there), a castle and a winery. Again, see the photos. We ended up at Hotel da Mar, with a nice view of the beach and sea (obviously) where we had a four course meal again including codfish! The final day was purely talks and some very interesting ones. I especially enjoyed Jeremy’s, where he demonstrated generational garbage collecting using socks — reminded me of Piero. I felt sorry for some of the speakers as they were obviously having trouble with giving a talk in English (especially the French).

Arriving back at the hotel after the conference had ended, I packed up as much as possible while deciding whether to venture out again. Eventually I did, deciding I’d be too hungry otherwise. I went to a restaurant I’d remembered fairly near by (after getting there much too late on Monday) and ordered some grilled pork (which initially was nearly a coke — the Portuguese seem to struggle with English and can be very abrupt). My stomach full, I went back to the hotel to bed.

Saturday was spent almost entirely in travel. I left the hotel after breakfast at about quarter to eight, getting a taxi to the airport. I had to check the umbrella specially into oversized luggage to get it home. The plane was then late taking off by an hour (we were sat there all strapped in for ages) and I missed my connecting coach. Luckily, I could amend the ticket for 3 pounds so didn’t have to pay again although it wasn’t fun waiting an hour and a half just to get the coach. I finally got back to Sheffield at about 8:30 and fortunately the 123 turned up and I was home by about ten past nine. It was quite an experience, but I’m glad to be back in the UK where I can at least survive outside in the daytime and get people to understand what I’m saying …. most of the time…

Tonight we went out for quadruple birthday celebrations (Emmanuel, Mahmood, Simon and Ramsay). Clearly, as Ramsay says, people liked having sex at Christmas parties in the 70s and 80s. We let Henry plan things. In retrospect, that was a bad idea…

The night started out quite nicely, although it took a while to get things moving. Simon had to leave relatively early to get back to Chesterfield in good time, so he left for the pub with Ramsay and Stannett earlier than the rest of us. Myself, Henry, Emmanuel, Mahmood and Abraham headed off just after 6pm, after being informed that we’d had to change our pub from the Star and Garter to the University Arms as the former was shut. Took a while to get them all out of the building, due to some prevarication, but we eventually headed off there dropping by the cash machine on the way. We were notably Ibbyless; he’d already whined about not staying the whole thing earlier, but decided to do a sly little wander off again and not come at all in the end.

We had a nice drink there (formally Club 192 or whatever) and some interesting conversation including Stannett telling us about his ‘picnic’ (which turned out to be rather unlike the departmental one and more like the Gay Pride parade) and Emmanuel letting on about his fear of bees. It’s not as bad as Ibby who is apparently scared of everything including kittens and ants. I hope Mike Holcombe doesn’t decide to do any live experiments near him.

After that, and Simon leaving, we headed to the Harley where most people indulged in several rounds of pool. Emmanuel, like the time we went out the first time, chose to sit out. I did as well, knowing I’m no good at it, but Stannett eventually made me have a few shots. Another guy in there (Keith) also decided to join in, giving the guys tips and eventually playing them in a game. It was interesting to see Mahmood’s first encounter with someone relatively intoxicated…

After a fair number of games had been lost and won, Mahmood turning out to be something of a pool shark, and Ramsay having bid his goodbyes for Walkley and a warm bed, we headed to RSVP via Aslan’s. Emmanuel seemed to perk up a bit after getting some food, and he was dancing about both in Aslan’s and RSVP. The music in the latter was really good, the DJ playing an eclectic range of stuff from the Chemical Brothers through ‘Yellow Submarine’ to Barry White’s ‘The First, The Last, My Everything’. Stannett passed on details to him offering him the chance to broadcast on his station and I hope he does.

Mahmood got a headache and so went home rather than going on to Embrace. What a good choice! The fact that they were handing out free entry/drinks flyers should have been enough of a hint as to what a dive it was but we still went anyway. Last time, we had to queue up and then got turned away, so we’d all made sure we had shoes not trainers on this time and such, and then there was no queue, no interrogation and we just waltzed in. I wish we’d not bothered on both counts. I’m glad we didn’t pay (it certainly wasn’t worth it) and I would have been more comfortable in trainers.

Inside, the Ibby tunes pounding were a good hint to how things were going to be. They only seemed to have the one room open. I’d looked at them on dontstayin.com the day before, and none were mega-appealing, but some were bearable. The only one they decided to have open was this Decuba room which plays ‘Pop, Chart & Party featuring stunning stage shows and Tropicana style cabaret’ apparently. That description is enough to put you off to start with.

The music was awful. I like most of the tunes, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t want to go out and dance to them. Most of them were far too slow and this DJ guy had no idea how to order things. He puts two trance songs on (terming them old skool wrongly — since when is mid-90s old skool?) and a bit of electro house (but awful commercialised versions, like what they’ve done to The Creeps), then we’re back to slow-ass r’n'b, and not even good ones. I mean Mariah Carey and Justin Timberlake??? And repeating songs — how many times do you want to hear Out Of Office? It’s boring the first time.  I could have done a better set from my iPod. Heck, Ibby would have done a better set. At least he would have probably stuck some Darude, some Brainbug and Hans Zimmer in there. I don’t know if they were doing requests, but it would have been very tempting to request some Prodigy or Pendulum. Most of their stuff I’d play in the day as background music. Heck, the Frog and Parrot was playing better music as we went past, banging out some Dizzie Rascal.
The floor was full of chavs. Seems this rethink has already fallen on its face. Stannett put it aptly when he said it was more gay than the Gay Pride parade. This was something more akin to a seaside disco in Skeggie than a nightclub. Seriously, drop the booze and it’d be a good spot for school discos. They having some Galaxy 105 shite this weekend, which says it all. Ripped up the flyer they gave me straight away, as there’s no way I’m going back there. It might be fine if you’re so fucked out of your head you’re willing to dance to Bob the Builder, but this place truly is awful. Sleazy Kingdom by another name…

Barry visited on Friday it what was originally supposed to be a party, quickly became a fiasco and ended up in some relaxed visits to the pub. He arrived late, so his panel meeting was pushed back to 2pm. With Simon having scheduled Joachim at 3pm, there seemed little point in trying to have a party in the half hour after Barry’s talk, so we instead just went for lunch. It was nice to see Barry again (now 88 months into a PhD) and things were a bit more laid back and chatty this time, which was good. Interestingly, it’s exactly a year since he last visited (well as close as can be — it was the 18th last year and things move forward by a day each year)…

Stannett has been getting increasingly crazy and bizarre recently, but in a very good way. It’s probably got something to do with what is now two trips to Hove, where they are apparently ‘all really hard working’ despite the stories he keeps telling. Sounds like he enjoyed the ‘picnic’ he went to, despite it being very different from the ones we’ve held in the department. He also had a sudden desire to remove all trace of himself from t’Internet — well from certain sites (last.fm, facebook). To my mind, he went the wrong way about it and only seems to have made it more difficult for him to edit the data they hold about himself rather than eradicate it (especially in the case of Facebook, where there’s now an odd authorless comment of his). Changing his details would have been a better option… the Internet allows you to create countless identities for yourself, and there’s not much enforcing them being in any way real.

Last week, me, myself and Ibby went to try out Patillos, the new restaurant in Leopold Square:

It proved very expensive and it’s doubtful we’ll go back (for lunch anyway), unless Stannett’s paying again. The library folks seem to be trying to further promote the Information Commons by subduing the power of the Main Library; it’ll be renamed the Western Bank Library from September. So any hopes that that gigantic expensive green spaceship will return from whence it came seem unlikely so far. Might be a good idea to add some books then. You know, I mean proper books… ones with things like, gosh, pages and such. Ones that you can pick up and eat if you so desire.

Other than that, things have been fairly relaxed and normal. Ibby’s not done any work, so nothing new there. It’s been raining again, so seems like summer is over (it lasted about two weeks, sorry if you blinked and missed it). Time to get ready for Christmas again then. Jingle bells and all that…

What a fucking awesome 14-hour session! Today was the long-awaited date for the departmental summer picnic that’s been in planning for about two months and I do believe it duly kicked ass. There were a few lows but these were overshadowed by some terrific highs.

We kicked off laying out food in the Lewin Lab at about half twelve, after me, Simon, Monika and Emily converged on Tesco’s to get some food. Things were a bit quiet initially, and me and Mike spent the time sorting out the music and his quiz, that we spent a good five hours going through the night before (interspersed with numerous YouTube videos).

Things eventually warmed up a bit. I did a quick bit of going round, cajoling people. The VT folks were big slackers; most of them preferred to stay in their ice cold lab rather than venture downstairs for fear of…oh no…an academic actually talking to them! I’m glad I’ve moved out of there and I think the fresh air is much better for me.

After an initially depressing looking start, Mike asked George to give out the quizsheets and get people organised, which worked wonders. The actual quiz seemed to go down really well, and Mike certainly knows how to set a good ‘un. As he says, there was something on there for everyone.

Mike was already getting quite out of it by that stage, although he was still able to indulge in some political debate with Ibby. We left the department about 5ish, and originally planned to go to the Red Deer with some of the NLP crew, but neither them nor the Devonshire Cat would let us in with Sam’s baby. We ended up in the Forum instead, and it was debatable whether Mike was already too sozzled to go much further.

Fabio also appeared after about the first hour, and preceded to gather his WIG hommies around him in a scene reminiscent of a cross between Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Wayne’s World. Mike even gave him some respek. Emily seemed to insist on going to the Common Room for some reason, so eventually we all trooped out over there (although only after managing to lose Mike who got fed up of all the pissing about).

The place was packed and we ended up getting jostled about all over the place and separated several times. We eventually found a seat near the back, although Emily seemed to decide to huddle in a corner with Ajay instead. I texted Mike to let him know we had eventually ended up there and eventually went out to find him. He’d acquired food from Subway in the mean time and who knows what else, but he’d certainly perked up a bit.

We were slowly losing people by this stage, and we said goodbye to nearly all of the NLP crew after about an hour in that dive. Mike then played pool against both Henry and Sam, and managed to win. Emily left early with Ajay sometime during this, but we never saw her at the Leadmill.*[See below]

After Mike had been challenged and thrashed by another guy at pool, we headed down there ourselves, stopping at Simon’s fabled Devonshire chippy on the way for some chips. They have remarkably big fish. We went past the pile of ashes that is Gatecrasher One on the way and Mike again told how they wouldn’t even let him in when he was supposed to be managing a live broadcast of PvD from Zurich for them. It’s a strange twist of fate that it burnt down about the week after they didn’t let us in…

Inside, it was a bit weird because we couldn’t seem to get into Room 2 at first which has a cheaper bar. However, it was definitely open later as I went in there for about an hour instead, after being completely fed up of all the utter shit (Take That???) they were playing in the main room. Mike and Henry seemed happy enough to dance to it, but then I guess they were out of it enough to dance to the sound of our coffee machine… They had stuff like the Arctics and the Killers on in the other room, which was much better.

I went back at what seemed to be just about the right time, as they went into the more anthemic dance stuff like ‘Jump Around’. Both me and Mike stuck it out to the end, but Henry strangely decided to leave after they announced 15 minutes to go. He missed all the best classic stuff like ‘Set You Free’, ‘Children of the Night’, ‘No Good (Start the Dance)’, ‘Sandstorm’, ‘No Limit’, ‘Boom Boom Boom’ and finally ‘Superstylin'’ which ironically Mike had put in his quiz earlier. It was great fun, although I thought we were going to knock someone over when we were bouncing around together to ‘Sandstorm’.

Mike was seemed much more aware of what was going on this time, even remembering to collect his coat. We got a quick drink from a van outside (which strangely claimed to do tea and coffee, but didn’t) before getting taxis down at the railway station (which was shut but seemed to have a train due within the next hour). All in all, a very good night for those of us who stood the pace…

Update — We Found Emily

After not hearing anything from Em and getting very worried on Saturday, she fortunately popped up on Facebook on Sunday and all was well with the world again. It turns out she did make it to the Leadmill but somehow managed to miss each other — she got there earlier and left earlier so it’s not too surprising. I’d have been in the other room at that point. It does seem she had a little too much to drink, because the poor thing was throwing up most of the next day.

She’s been my saviour today though, as she managed to recover the missing camera. I nearly had a heart attack this morning when I realised it wasn’t down in the lab still. I’d be thinking about it since later on Friday, but thought it would be okay there. But I come down to the Lab and someone has cleared away everything! So I pestered just about everyone I could think of — Emily, Monika, George, the porter, Henry, Simon, Neil — and eventually an e-mail from Em got it returned.

So in all it’s been a pretty mad cap day. Em did still have fun on Friday by the sound of it, but none of the orgasmic throes of passion Mike referred to. We know her better than that