The end of the end of summer

It's real: York Festival of Angels, to be held 14-15 December

No doubt about it, the weather has changed! It's quite windy, definitely chilly, and rather wet at times, though with sunny moments to brighten up things. There was a beautiful rainbow this morning, unfortunately gone before I thought of trying to take a picture for my dear readers. Time to find a good rain radar app, and break out the rain gear as well.

Today I had a meeting with Louis to get ahead on the SDF3-to-Uppaal model transformation, but that was a bit premature because I don't yet know enough about the case. Then a lentil soup lunch with Radu Calinescu to learn what he is doing. There is plenty of mutual interest, in this case more with the work of +Marielle Stoelinga and +Joost-Pieter Katoen than my own. One thing that is already becoming clear though is that I will have to focus on just a few topics to make any real progress. Four months is not really that much time.

The afternoon was pretty much lost (again!) to LaTeX and makefile hacking for the Software Systems module back home. All in all, not a very productive day.

Another spinning session in the afternoon. My, the instructors here do manage to whip you along! It's interestingly different: rather than telling you what to do in technical terms (stand, turn up resistance, sprint) they put the exercise in the perspective of an actual bike tour (going uphill, flat stretches, gear changes). On the other hand, the Twente bikes are definitely better, with a more gradual tuning of resistance and a much smoother action.

Afterwards I had my "induction tour" through the Sport Village which you have to take in order to get hold of the magic Black Wristband. (Why "induction" rather than "introduction"? One of those expressions you only encounter when you actually live in a place, I think.) They had me fill in a form on which I had to admit that I have had high blood pressure from time to time, and deny that I am pregnant. Yes, Mr. Health and his sister Safety are held in high regard! The cardio equipment all has screens on which you can watch TV or browse the internet while working out. I'll try and see what happens if I bring a USB stick with a movie on it.

I think I burned enough calories to justify another pizza today. This emptied the freezer, allowing me to turn it off (using the button helpfully marked for this purpose) and save not only power but a lot of noise as well. One consequence is that I will have to explore new food avenues. Thinking back I realise that I have never truly lived the bachelor life: I moved from my parental home into a student apartment where cooking was taken pretty seriously, and from there I rented an apartment with Elise. Come to think of it, that's 25 years ago this November! Wow, we've been together for more than half my life!

Well, Morrisons has one avenue full of frozen foods and another full of instant meals. I will survive, and (as I wrote before) this may have the secondary benefit of slimming me down. Provided of course there will not be too many Indians along the way.

As to the puzzle I posed the day before yesterday: there was only one solution submitted, by Wim: "If you are able to negotiate the lock, you can obtain access through the gate". Close, but no cigar! Also, I think that even the English would not think it necessary to put up a sign for such a tautology ;-) Here is the solution, which however raises a follow-up question: can anyone think of an even remotely likely scenario in which this message could possibly be of any use? Maybe I should call the number and ask for the key, just to see what happens?