Harvesting

From the "NOUSE: University of York's Student Newspaper"

"The University of York will be hit by a one-day strike on Thursday as bosses clash with all thee unions on campus over wages."

I was triggered to this by the cancellation of a seminar talk I was scheduled to give today: the reason for cancelling was not to appear a strike-breaker. On my way to the university this morning I actually saw a small group of real picketers, I think for the first time in my life, standing a bit dispiritedly (I thought) at one of the entrances to Heslington West (the old campus). However, being hit by a strike is obviously not in the same category as being hit by lightning, since that was also the last I noticed of it the entire day. I can only hope that this has been a constructive move in clash resolution, otherwise we might be hit even harder.

Waiting for lunch to be served

Since I had no seminar talk to give, I could spend my time making slow but steady progress at a complete formalisation of the graphs and rules as implemented in my pet tool GROOVE. Yes, we would like to pretend that we work out everything in mathematics first, and then implement it based on that formal model; but in practice it often works the other way around, you implement feature after cool feature and then (if you have a sabbatical, and if you are not on strike) try to work out formally what it is that you implemented. Don't tell anyone!

I had a solitary early lunch at the glass house, the student-run hangout cum restaurant in Heslington East (the new campus). For the second time I tried the "curry of the day", which was quite palatable.

This evening (at the time I am writing this) is actually the second day of the "illuminating York" festival, which looks to be worth a visit. However, I realised after publishing my previous post that, if Hallowe'en is the eve of All Saint's Day, then that is actually tonight and not yesterday night. Since I am not in the mood for wild scenes, which no doubt will far surpass any ordinary Saturday night, I will skip this opportunity and look at the lights tomorrow. Actually I've set myself the much more mundane task of washing my clothes, so that I don't have to waste hours of precious game time on Saturday. The dryer should be finished in a quarter of an hour. Who knows, I might even get the spirit (though that is rather something for Pentecost - also a harvest festival originally) and do some ironing.