Whither Canada?

What is the earliest time in the morning that can still by any stretch of the imagination be called Christian? Whatever your answer is, I'm sure you will agree that it is after 6:00. Which is when my train to Heathrow leaves, via King's Cross and Paddington's. It will be a long day.

Now if I were home, home in Hengelo that is, I would get on my bike at 5:40, luggage and all, and easily make the train after putting the bike away safely at the station. Here, I was dithering: should I try the natural solution? Can I rely on my mode of transportation still waiting for me after one week of abandonment? In the end I ordered a taxi, but it makes me kind of nervous to have to rely on this. Another source of nervous tension is having to wake up in time, meaning 5:00 AM. I'm pretty sure I packed my alarm clock when I went here, but I do not know what I did with it since, so I will have to rely on my phone.

The place I am going (for work, I hasten to repeat!) is called Banff, a curious name, but one I have learned is immediately recognised by cogniscenti as belonging to a high-class ski resort. I realise what this sounds like - and I don't care! It's like going to a world chess tournament in, shall we say, Merano, or Bangkok: It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity to be looking at the board, not looking at the city, but then: I don't see you guys rating the kind of mates I'm contemplating. (I did say I liked musicals.) The pictures I have seen of the place are absolutely stunning, it is indeed a pity I'll be mostly indoors during the hours of daylight. Although, to shave off about 900 Euro from the flight ticket price I'm going one day early, so...

As a contribution to the workshop, I promised to give a tool demo and a short position statement, and to pose a challenge for the other participants. I spent most of my time today preparing for those, until it was time for the regular Friday Body Pump. Afterwards, to bring back some variation in my daily routine I did not go straight home but dropped by the Deramore Arms, in the vague and in the event fruitless hope of seeing some known faces there. I had a Ploughman's Lunch, which must be one of the most traditional types of bar food (though probably not for dinner). No invitations to fly to Dublin tonight. Just for the sake of adventure I might have professed a deep love of Guiness and gone for the challenge of flying up and down to Ireland on Firday evening and then to Canada on Saturday. Ah well, you can't have everything. Or rather, don't I already have everything?

P.S.

I will award one point for identifying any of my last three blog post titles without looking them up; three points if you get two of them, and six points for all three!

I expect several threes. Six, anyone?

Dead as a doornail

I've been working steadily yesterday (Wednesday) and today, on tool refactoring, metamodel engineering, reviewing intermediate versions of an MSc and a PhD thesis; as always making less progress than I hoped, but progress nonetheless. It does feel as though time is creeping up on me, half of my stay is over and I have little concrete to show for it.

One thing that is not working out as well as I had hoped is the initiation of actual research cooperation with the Enterprise Systems group. They are all very busy with their own topics; willing enough to help me out with concrete problems I was experiencing with their tooling, but the gap in interest, for instance regarding pragmatism versus theory, is wider than I had hoped for. I have had more response from the PLASMA group after the double-feature research presentation I gave there last week and the week before than from the group I am actually visiting. Mid-December, Richard Paige, head of the group, is returning from his sabbatical; though I'll have to vacate his office, I think (read: hope) there may be more opportunity for interaction.

One thing that is still working out very nicely, on the other, more positive hand, is my sampling of the Yorkish cultural life. After the highbrow performance of Tuesday, where I exposed myself to Shakespearian drama in theTheatre Royal, tonight I had bought a ticket for A Christmas Carol - The Musical, in yet another venue: The Joshua Rowntree Theatre. This is the fourth theatre/concert hall I have visited, and there are several more to go: per capita this is far beyond what Enschede or Hengelo can show.

Compare: the stage of Joshua Rowntree (Dickens), versus...

Joshua Rowntree Theatre turned out to be a nice, cozy, rather small affair a bit further away to the north of the city. It is too small to have anything like a bar: outside the actual theatre hall there is barely room for toilets. I looked up the location just in time to realise I would have to hurry home and get a quick bite if I wanted to be there in time. Fortunately, after my discovery of The Edge 50 meters from my front door, a quick bite is easy. Arriving there I was reminded, not for the first time, of an anecdote that Elise (I think) once told me: when being shown around the University of Twente campus, a group of Germans asked: "And where do the married students live?" The association lies in the question I asked myself: "And where do bicyclists park their vehicles?" I am sure you see the analogy...

...the stage of the Theatre Royal (Shakespeare)

The performance fit the place well: it was amateur level. A very mixed group of players, many of them between 10 and 15 years of age. Scrooge had a nose and chin that far outdid Clouseau's melting beak in The Pink Panther Strikes Again. It took me about 10 minutes to adjust my expectancy to the right level, after that it was bearable and at times enjoyable. The tale itself is maybe too well known and milked-out, and this was a scene-by-scene and word-for-word rendition of it, with a storyteller making sure we understood what was going on by reading passages from the original story. The only thing they added was an appearance of the ghost of Scrooge's sister, who I do not believe appears in the original, as a sort of moral commentator - as though the tale is not yet sickeningly moral enough without that. As for the musical part, which was one of the reasons for me to go there in the first place: high-school level, with two exceptions from the youngest players (Tiny Tim and the Ghost of Christmas Past).

I had decided that after the performance, if time allowed I could speed to Morrisons to do my final round of shopping before leaving for Canada on Saturday. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when the Ghost of Christmas Future cut it extremely short and showed Scrooge his grave straight away. On the way back I took a different route, via a bicycle path of the kind that I have now learned to recognise as an abandoned railroad track, which brought me so precisely to where I wanted to be that I now wonder if Foss Island, which is essentially a large parking lot surrounded by several megastores, may have been a train station. To wonder is to look it up and Bingo! there was such a station, or more accurately a freight depot, abandoned as recently as 25 years ago. (Once you start reading up on such stuff you never stop, so I now know that trains on this line also served the Rowntree Chocolate Factory, home of the Kit Kat.)

Speaking of trains, I now go look up my connection to Heathrow on Saturday morning. Hope I can leave here at a Christian time.

A horse! A horse!

There are few things so quintessentially English as Shakespeare. It is impossible for me, as an alien, to truly estimate his influence on the culture and language, but beyond doubt it is enourmous. Like Bach on music, Shakespeare left his indelible, unique stamp on theatre.

I have had very little direct exposure. I read one of his plays in highschool (Romeo and Juliet), I think I saw Hamlet performed on stage once, and I wached Prospero's Books which is a cinematic interpretation of The Tempest; that's the sum total. However, you see echoes everywhere: for instance, from my favourite genre SF&F an obvious example is Terry Pratchett, several of whose books are parodies on Shakespeare plays.

Tonight I went to see Richard III, one of the early Shakespeare plays. The city of York has some claim on the historical figure, who belonged to what is called the "Yorkist faction" in the War of the Roses and was apparently popular here in his time. This year there is some kind of commemoration, in the course of which the play is performed at the York Royal Theatre. I do not know if there is any causal link, but in the beginning of 2013 the body (read: bones) of Richard III were rediscovered in an archeological dig in Leicester (or as the press has it: he was dug up from underneath a car park). I remember reading about this back then in the Netherlands, although I would not have been able to tell you which king it was that they found.

I really did not know what to expect from a Shakespearian drama in this day and age. Do they take the original text, or modernise? Do they stick to a traditional staging, or modernise? I was assuming a more traditional uptake, and somewhat afraid of not being able to follow I spent several hours yesterday and today reading most of the play. The plot is complicated enough to be glad of that (there are at least 3 Edwards and 4 Richards around, for one thing) but it made me wonder even more how this could ever be made to sound natural, or even in the vicinity thereof.

The play was indeed based on the original text (although being prepared I was able to spot they cut a few pieces); the staging anachronistic, but in a traditional style you can already see in Jesus Christ Superstar: swords and flashlights, crowns and motor helmets, that kind of thing. Of course, hearing text is quite different from reading it, especially when performed well: though there were some moments where I thought the lines were by rote, mostly it made sense as spoken text and was not even all that outdated or hard to follow.

As for the performance as a whole, I do not quite know what to think, because I cannot see it in isolation from its context, and indeed without that context I would never have gone to see it in the first place. I was certainly captivated from time to time, especially towards the conclusion when some modern lighting and smoke effects were put to effective use, but the plot is so artificial that it keeps you from suspending your disbelief. In that sense, maybe the play is unavoidably outdated. The better stories nowadays are multi-layered, one of the bottom layers having been laid by Shakespeare himself; but like renaissance music, it is not easy to go back and appreciate it for what it was in its time.

Vintage Cheddar

In spite of my own reflections and rationalisations, a part of me is not happy with the idea that now and for the rest of my stay in York I have found my Groove and will stay in it. At least that is one way to explain why I decided to have a cheese-and-popcorn night yesterday. Another explanation is that I went shopping when hungry, which everyone knows is rather to be avoided because you end up buying strange things.

The day certainly starded off as planned, rather early at that, with a golf course-oriented run, partially along a new track that shaved off 3 km of last week's. It again struck me how very muddy and wet all the roads are, even the paved ones but especially the footpaths. It really doesn't rain that much I think, but the land takes forever drying out. Some of the explanation can be found in the fallen autumn leaves fouling up the roads, to be sure; another explanation is the clayish ground. I also cannot avoid making a link with the water level in the rivers: I observed on Friday that the Ouse is now higher than I have seen it before, by a difference of a meter and a half at least I think. I already recalled in a previous post that the Ouse is known for flooding, but I imagined that would be especially in spring, and anyway it is impressive to see these dynamics in action.

Morrisons in Christmas mood

After running and rewarding myself with fried eggs and ham, to enforce the habit in the way that I have learned yesterday, I turned back to Friday's unfinished programming job, with the vague idea of taking a minor cycling tour later on. In the back of my mind I knew that wasn't going to happen if I would seriously get going with the programming, and indeed that is the way it turned out. However, my refrigerator was short on several necessities, in fact the price for playing games on Saturday is to shop on Sunday, so I had to go and stock up. No problem in principle (none of your wishy-washy shall-we-allow-shops-to-open-on-Sundays here: in fact, Morrisons was at least as crowded as on Saturdays, meaning very crowded) but I was indeed quite hungry when I decided it was now really time for lunch, so that was the state in which I arrived at the supermarket. This meant that certain food items looked much more inviting than they would otherwise. It occurred to me that one thing I had not yet done here is to organise my own film night with snack food, to wit: popcorn and cheese with lots of ketchup. The microwave popcorn was easily taken care of, for cheese I could make do with mature Cheddar, and in fact upon inspection they had even tastier-sounding variations so I left with a chunk of Devilishly Divine Vintage Cheddar - yay!

Best excuse for an easy chair

If all this doesn't sound inviting to you and you think me rather weird for considering this a proper meal: I don't blame you, in fact I mostly agree; but once in a while I rather like spending my evenings hanging in an easy chair, watching some movies in the home environment and gradually filling up with junk food. This particular evening, on the other hand, I have to say it didn't work out. Especially lacking in my apartment is anything resembling an easy chair: the piece of furniture that poses as a couch is awkardly positioned and not comfortable at all. For watching movies I only have my laptop screen which is on the small side for this purpose. I had selected August Rush which has been recommended to me by someone after I had told I am a fan of musical movies, and I definitely liked the lead actor, Freddie Highmore, playing alongside Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (a must-see!) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; but it simply wasn't working for me, after 20 minutes I was completely irritated and stopped it. I rather consumed the rest of my cheese re-re-reading some of Brother Cadfael's adventures - not only my main source of knowledge on Benedictine habits, but beautifully written, not to mention impossibly romantic and incredibly slow. The book is quite falling apart.

All in all, one evening down the drain. Have to try something else next time.

Habits

The Benedictine habit

Getting into the habit: its original meaning was to put on a monk's habit; in other words, to retreat into the cloister. If you think of the Benedictine round, six masses a day, every day of the week at the same times, then it is not difficult to see the association between becoming a monk and giving yourself over to a very controlled, regulated pattern - habitual behaviour, as we now call it.

I believe habits to be an important component of our makeup. (Being by nature very absent-minded, this is probably more true for me than for the average person.) A very large part of our daily activities is governed by habit: from getting up in the morning and getting dressed to travelling to work and preparing meals, it is all done on automatic pilot, we do not have to think about it, and so we have energy to spare for other things. You notice this best when the normal routine is disrupted: the first few days camping, for instance, I always have to think much more than I like about making coffee and preparing breakfast: in which order do you carry out the steps, where do you put things? After a few days this has become standard procedure again (a recipe, if you like) and I am back into the habit.

Endless variation

The same happened, on a larger scale, when I moved here to York. I have had to discover everything: where to shop, the best route to work, how to divide my time, what to do in the evenings and weekends. I feel I have succeeded pretty well in this, but the unavoidable effect is that all of it is becoming a habit. (Yesterday I called it repetition, and I wrote that it was no fun to write about that: well, here I am, writing about it!) Now that I have found a satisfying number of ways to get a decent warm meal, why go on trying new ones? Knowing a good cinema, why continue looking around for others?

Well, my Yorkish set of habits dictated that today was game play day, and so it was off to the Bar Convent, after the habitual once-over of my apartment. No FPM on Saturday, thank you! A nice aspect of board games is that there is endless variation even within a single game (at least within the better ones), and obviously this expands when you play six or seven different games one after the other, more than half of them never played before. Diversity within repetition: my kind of activity!

Walking down the gardens in Versailles

No true revelations in the new games I tried out today, but several are worth mentioning. Coup is a variation on Love Letter, with role cards that interact with one another in intricate ways, but as it plays in renaissance Italy, lying about what cards you hold (and hoping not te be caught out) is part of the rules of this game. In  Sanssouci, we had to build Louis XIV's gardens and take a walk in them; if you know Alhambra then the theme should sound very familiar though the game is different enough. Canterbury was a bit more involved, this time we had to develop the town by that name, through providing commodities from water and food up the scale to treasure and culture - again, elements that you encounter in many other games but original enough in its mechanisms. Paul, the guy who introduced and explained this one, was very proud because his name is on the box: he helped fund the development of this game through a Kickstarter project. I find the idea of crowdfunding quite pleasing, and I agree that it is a thing to be proud of when it works out. Willem-Jan has also donated some money (in the order of 25 Euro I believe) to one such game-development project.

On the negative side of today's schedule, I have to confess that I reneged on the promise I made to myself to check out parkrun - if you remember, a weekly 5km run around the Knavesmire horse race track here in York. I have registered online and printed the barcode that you apparently need to participate, but left it at work. That's a very poor excuse though, I might as well have gone out 10 minutes earlier this morning to pick it up from there. When looking up the word "habit" on the all-knowing Internet (yes, I do my homework like everybody else!) the first few hits I got were about "making running a habit" and mentioned cue/routine/reward cycles. In those terms, I am not yet a habitual runner (though I do not object to being called a geek by my dear brother). Fortunately I am also not yet a habitual reneger, and tomorrow I do intend to make the rounds once more.

Full Programming Mode

And again it is Friday: another week is past. I've been in Full Programming Mode the last day and a half, both exhilerating and frustrating. Exhilerating because it's focussed activity, you see concrete progress, things start working: pure creativity. Frustrating because it's slow, I have been doing this for 30 hours interrupted by a few hours of sleep and what do I have to show for it? A slight improvement of the functionality of GROOVE, that's what: I would be hard put to explain to anyone else what the improvement is, really.

I have sometimes wondered if there is not something addictive to the state of mind in FPM. Certainly it's hard to stop once you're going: any need of switching activities (eating, sleeping, taking a break) is in fact a major irritation. I did have classes booked at the Sport Village both yesterday and today (just back from Body Pump) which forced a longer break. Rationally I know this is a good thing, and once away from the keyboard when the fog lifts up you start to reflect on what you have been doing, which also is a good thing. But knowing something to be a good thing does not mean that you do it automatically, or even very willingly.

Looking back on the last two weeks, there is quite some contrast with the month before that, which is reflected in the fact that the frequency of these posts has dropped. It is no longer the case that I have something new to relate every day: in fact I have been going out less, but also repetition is setting in, and where's the fun in telling about repetition? Things will pick up in the coming weeks though: I have several theatre shows planned, tonight I'm going to see part II of the Hunger Games, tomorrow is another Beyond Monopoly! day, and the week after next I will be on a workshop in Canada! Looking forward to that. When I'm back from that, in the typical way of December the month will be very short, with Elise coming to visit the middle weekend and me flying back to the Netherlands on the 20th.

And the answer is...

Cake decoration challenge

One of the events in which the Formal Methods and Tools group in Twente partakes regularly (although the last time is quite a while ago, come to think of it) is the Pubquiz, organised by the study association Inter-Actief. You may think that as a team of PhD students and lecturers we do not really belong there, but not only are some of us still members for old time's sake, but in fact they quite welcome having the chance to beat us at something. The first two times (five years ago or so) we actually won the quiz, partly because for the music section (in which you have to recognise song and performer, and which counts for a lot of points) they chose a lot of songs from the 80s; but later they wised up and changed to more contemporary repertoire, after which point we were struggling hard to win a single round of general knowledge questions here and there.

The UK has a reputation for being very good at quizzes, both general and special knowledge, something I have always attributed to the much less egalitarian society in which it is no shame to pride yourself at being good at something, such as knowing a lot of otherwise useless stuff. Certainly watching shows like Mastermind or University Challenge (of which I saw one episode recently in which one of the Oxford colleges trounced York) I am always made aware again of how much there is to know, and how little of it I actually have a clue about.

A month ago, when I had been here for jsut a short while, there was a mail seeking participants in what they called the Computer Science Quiz. To my surprise and (somewhat) disappointment, initially there was not much interest from the Enterprise Systems group, but after some time we managed to get the Star Team Enterprise together. The event was to take place yesterday (Wednesday 20-11) at 19:00. We were told to bring our own food and drink, not knowing what to expect I brought a bottle of wine which I kept cool by putting it on the window sill outside Richard's office after convincing myself that it couldn't drop off and drench an innocent passer-by after hitting him on the head.

The quiz, which is a yearly event and should be seen in the light of Christmas (as a lot of things start to be around this time of year) was much more varied than a pub quiz, and must have taken a good deal of time to prepare. There were general knowledge and picture questions and categories like sports and music, which were to be expected; but also word and calculator games, quotations, a keyboard racing game, who can rattle off faultlessly the most representatives of a given category in one minute (states in the US, cities in the UK), and not to foget, a cake decoration challenge. All in all, very good fun.

Keyboard racing

Unavoidably, a lot of the questions were England-centered (Olympic Games winners, which cities have more than one team in the National Football Leagues, what are the ingredients in allspice, that sort of thing) but there were enough of a more general nature such that a team like ours, consising of one English, one Cypriot, one Greek, one Romanian and one Dutch, had at least some chance. Of course the outcome was not left to chance, so the Star Team Enterprise will have to come back for the next episode!

Watch and learn

I've been very very busy with some implementation stuff yesterday and today. Working until 0:45, up again at 8:00 to continue: when you feel you are making progress, you do not want to interrupt for lesser things (such as blogs). Eating can as well be done behind the keyboard.

Let me try to give you an idea. Software development is a process that uses a lot of software tools itself, a bit like using a lot of cranes to build a new one. However, these development tools usually were not designed to work together: there is no set of universally agreed-upon interfaces that makes sure the tools can be plugged together, in the sense that the models or code produced by one tool can be understood and processed by the next. So instead we have to transform the output of one tool to the input of the next. Such transformations have to be performed by yet another tool, which not only has to be reliable and fast, but has to be instructed on how the transformation is to be carried out. (Recipes come in here somewhere.) And that finally brings me to my own research, or at least that part of it that occupied my time so intensively the last 30 hours or so. There are many ways to define and carry out transformations, this is a thriving area of research in Computer Science; I have developed one method myself (implemented in a tool called Groove), the group I am visiting here in York is quite successful in applying another (implemented in a tool called Epsilon). I have been learning Epsilon, and have now completed part of a tryout case about which I reported before in some of these posts.

Which Groove would you pick?

My Groove is not to be confused with Microsoft's Groove (team collaboration software); nor with Groovy (an interpreter for the programming language Java). Some years ago I was confronted with a trademark claim from MS, which eventually was resolved peacefully (when it became clear to them that what I was doing was really peanuts) by me signing an agreement that I would not try to commercialise my tool under that name. I pinned the contract on my wall, as proof of the fact that for one brief moment at least I was considered a rival by one of the big boys.

Now that I'm at this topic, I have a question to both my Dutch and my English readers. The icon for my Groove (the right hand side one in the above picture, in case you were in doubt) is inspired by the Dutch "krul" (curl? flourish?), which I know as a sign put (only) by teachers on homework or written exams, to signify that it is OK. I have tried to find it on the all-knowing Internet but found very little hard information about this sign. (Just searching for "krul" only yields football players, anyway.) I remember having been told that it is derived from the capital G (for "Goed"), but (1) I'd like some authorative confirmation, and (2) I'd like to know if this sign exists at all outside the Netherlands.

Today, that is Tuesday, I emerged somewhat from my coding activities. Just now I have been trying out another sporting activity. It's interesting to see the principle of transitivity in action: when inviting group members to join me for Hallowe'en at Castle Howard I got to learn Adolfo, Adolfo introduced me to Sam who introduced me to Lucy who introduced me to the Sweatshop Running Community. This is a real, not so Secret, Society who organise group running events. Unlike the parkrun (another such Society), which I have not yet had the opportunity to try out, SRC is organised by a chain of stores, and no doubt there is an ulterior commercial motive, but they have chosen this very sympathetic way of advertising themselves. Tonight there was a group of about 15 runners in which I fitted very well agewise (well, maybe I was a bit above average). The leaders of the pack had decided that we should try to do some laps at speed, actually over the Heslington East campus with which I am by now very familiar. Other weeks they run other courses, and at a more moderate pace. I was pleased to discover afterwards that I had achieved an average speed of well over 11 km/h over 7,5 km. I have to get in shape for the Batavierenrace coming April!

Pigeonholes, not mailboxes. (There's the watch!)

If you take part 5 times they give you a free T-shirt. Want!

The final item that I want to share with you is that I found my wristwatch in the mail today. It broke dropping on the floor in the Sport Village a month ago, I left it to be repaired during my brief stay in the Netherlands, and Elise sent it to the university, where today I picked it up from the pigeonhole of Richard. (Have to remember this is a pigeonhole, not a mailbox.) I have by now unlearned the reflex of looking at my wrist every so often, but I know I'll learn it back in no time. Anyway, I'm quite fond of this watch, which I've had for 20 years and almost certainly spent more money repaing and getting new straps for than I paid for it originally. Wrist watches have gone out of fashion with the smartphone and are now coming back in fashion with the smartwatch, but I'll stick to this one as long as I can.

Around the golf course, across the solar system

The weather was not half as bad as the forecast had led me to believe, so there was no reason at all to stay indoors. This morning I made good on an outstanding promise to myself, namely to explore the bridleway leading through the Fulford golf course where I inadvertantly landed during a run two weeks ago. I tried this route unsuccessfully once thereafter on bike, in the utter darkness, in an attempt to reach the York Maze on bonfire night.

Fear of snitches may be justified

The light of day brought clarity. The golf course actually extends quite a way across the highway, and when I gave up and turned around on my bike I had actually been standing smack on the middle of a green. Hopefully no golf club member will ever read this blog! The actual bridleway (to me indistinguishable from a footpath but I am sure that there are fine nuances that escape my dull Dutch understanding) goes around, obviously. It's a nicely varied path, with some coppices and a lot of fields, all looking rather unkempt at this time of year, and the immaculate tees on the other side. At first I though there were no other Secret Society members out, but though the dog owners were indeed conspicuously absent I did meet a larger group of runners midway. It is a pity that all along the way you hear the continuous noise of the highway. It makes you wonder: will it ever again be silent? Ever? At some point we will surely run out of fossil fuels, but by then alternative energy sources may have taken over and continue to feed our hunger for transportation. On the other hand, if you think on a scale of millions rather than hundreds of years, it is hard to imagine that humanity can have created something that will last that long.

Rural parts

Apart from the highway this is a very quiet, rural part of the country. The map shows an airstrip a little bit further south, and given that there are still no roads going there even at daytime, not even public footpaths or bridleways, I cannot but think that it is a military airfield - abandoned or not I cannot say. On Friday in one of the pubs there was one piloty type and two stewardessy types who invited us to free Guinnesses and tickets in a lottery that, when won, would earn us a place on a private jet to the Guinness brewery in Dublin and back that same night. It was close to 20:00 when we were told this and the jet was supposed to take off at 20:40. Nobody knew any airports close enough to make this possible, so maybe that's a confirmation... although, would the English military be party to such an arrangement? (As I'm writing this I am checking whether the offer could have been for real, and yes there is such a lottery! The article mentions Luton though. Pity I really despise Guinness...)

Bike trail 65: Straight as an arrow from Sun to Pluto

After my longest run yet I spent time quite pleasantly on a programming task I have set myself, but in the afternoon I grew a bit restless and wondered if I should not rather take this opportunity to tick off one of the other destinations I had been told about: a bike route to Selby, which has been turned into a scale model of the Solar System as part of the millennium celebrations. I know of one such scale model in the Netherlands, at Westerbork (a place that is acutally much better known, infamously, for being one of the stops on the way for the Jew deportations during WW2). The one along the Selby bike trail (no. 65) stretches about 10 km from Sun to Pluto.

Pluto and Cheiron

The special thing about this trail, which makes it very suitable for such a model, is that it, too, is a converted railroad track, like the one from Scarborough to Whitby. Unfortunately the terrain is much less interesting, since south of York the land is really flat (and I do mean Dutch-grade flat); but in consequence the trail is straight as an arrow, and so the distances between the planets have been projected onto a straight line. After 400m you are done with the first four (as everyone knows, Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jam Sandwich Under No Protest, and so the first four are Mercury, Venus, Terra (= Earth) and Mars). The Asteroids were absent; the gas giants, kilometers apart, accounted for the rest of the available space. Pluto is nowadays degraded from an undersized planet to an oversized comet but it was still there in this display, though I missed it at first since they placed it on a small artificial hill - Very Thoughtfully in my opinion, since its orbit indeed brings it outside the plane of the solar system. It is even granted a moon, which I think is grossly unfair since Jupiter, which has 67 of them by the last count, some larger than Pluto itself, is denied even a single one in this model.

The millennium is now visibly more than a decade ago: it's high time they clear the moss off the Sun and the graffitti off the planets. Otherwise this will not be one of those human constructions that last for the next few million years! Which of course makes me very glad that I went to see it while it is still there.

Maintenance

No parkrun today for me! Though far from the state I was in three weeks ago, still I felt the after-effects of yesterday's party enough to prefer a quiet, uneventful day. The evening offers several possibilities: The Hyena Comedy Club at the Cityscreen, or Kathakali dancing at the York Theatre, but I think I will pass, do a bit of work, and turn in early.

If Beyond Monopoly! had not had to make room for a nun's gathering at the Bar Convent, today would have been a game day; but alas, we are second to nuns, as the announcement said. I put the time to good use by doing some washing and cleaning up, and for the first time since I came here getting out the ironing board. It is flimsy and too low, I will keep the ironing to an absolute minimum.

For tomorrow I have no very concrete plans either. I might do a bike tour once more, though the weather forecast makes it a dreary day, with fog and some rain. There is a ballet screening from the Bolshoi once more (Le Corsaire), but I am hesitant: did I like this enough to want to see another one? Decisions, decisions... Alternatively I might stay indoors and work. The weekend is a wonderful time to make some real progress, because anything you do is a bonus.

Viva la viva

Proper lager at the Fulford Arms

The procedures and rituals surrounding the defense of a PhD thesis are different in every country. In the Netherlands it has evolved into a bit of theatre, though still with a serious purpose: the actors are the candidate, possibly accompanied by up to two so-called paranymphs, in dress coats; and the members of the Graduation Committee, which can number up to 8, in togas (if they are professors) or suits. The paranymphs' function was originally to support the candidate in his/her defense or even to take over in case of need, but nowadays they are merely ceremonial and would be very scared if asked for help in answering a question. There is up to an hour of question time, and this can be quite nerve-racking, but the outcome is practically certain: if there were any doubt, it should have been voiced before. All in all there is a clear festive element to this: typically, friends and family turn up in large numbers. Afterwards it's party time!

I have once been an examiner in England: in fact that was here in York, for the thesis of Mike Dodds. The procedure here could hardly be more different. The concept of defense is replaced by a that of a viva (pronounced vaiva) - short for viva voce, "by word of mouth": a posh phrase for an oral examination. The viva takes the form of two examiners locking themselves up with the candidate and taking an unbounded length of time to go through the thesis in gruelling detail. "Unbounded" here really means that there is no a priori limit to the duration: vivas of up to four hours are no exception. Another major difference is that it is the rule rather than the exception that a candidate passes with minor corrections, which means that there is still work to be done afterwards (sometimes up to a year afterwards!) before the thesis is formally approved and the degree awarded. You can also pass with major corrections, or pass without corrections, but I am told the latter is really rare.

You can have long arguments about the relative merits of these systems. Certainly the viva is a much more thorough examination, but it has the very unfortunate consequence that there is no natural moment to celebrate! The viva is not public, no one knows when it will be over so you can hardly schedule any reception or other festivities; and anyway, there may be a substantial amount of work left to do, which is hardly conducive to a festive mood.

Sam and Lucy at the Woolpack

On Friday afternoon, after a day of meagre results and slow progress, I got a mail from Sam (she of the social events) that +Lucy Buykx was celebrating the conclusion of her viva (minor corrections) last Wednesday, and all were invited who felt like coming. Though I didn't know Lucy, I was intrigued by the name which I thought must surely be Belgian, and being used by now to semi-crashing parties of this kind I felt hardly any compunction in taking the invitation at face value. It turned into a jolly evening, spent successively at the Glasshouse (on campus), the Deramore Arms (just off-campus), the Fulford Arms (further up the street in the direction of the city) and the Woolpack Inn (just outside the gates of the old city). The last two were new to me. I met a number of new people: apart from Lucy of course (not Belgian, she seemed a bit taken aback when I suggested that: the name is originally Dutch but mangled up generations ago in Australia) I also had an extended conversation with +Jon Sandles about football - he's a big Man United fan, immediately mentioned the only other Twente-York connection I am aware of, to wit Steve MacLaren, the ex-coach of FC Twente who was born in York (see my very first post). The party was bigger of course, but two names in one night is not bad.

England (with a bit of Scotland and Ireland)

All in all the evening was very instructive: apart from seeing the insides of two new pubs, one of them with live music (which is actually a very common phenomenon here), I learned about faghags, a word of which, after a slightly embarrassing but ultimately hilarious mistake from my side, I will not quickly forget the meaning; and parkrun, an international organisation scheduling 5 km runs throughout Europe - although it appears it has not yet arrived in the Netherlands - with a weekly occurrence on the York horse race track on Saturday morning! One and a half times around the track equates to 5 kilometers, apparently. This I will most definitely give a try! Finally, I also received an geography lesson on the basis of a most amusing abstraction of England - see photo.

The last two pubs were worryingly empty for a Friday night. I have been told that there are several hundred pubs and bars in York (I have not yet quite grasped the difference between a pub and a bar), but if each of them hosts less than 10 visitors then that is not sustainable. Maybe it is also still a matter of traditional closing times: the English used to have to get their drinking done before 23:00 o'clock, so around midnight everyone has had their fill and the night is over. Indeed a tentative plan to proceed to the Willow came to nothing. No problem, no doubt there will be other occasions.

Finding the Edge

Late Arend has been lying low this week; early Arend is in full swing. Yes, the way I am spending my time has normalised: days at the department, nights at my appartment. Gone without a trace are the times when not a day went by without a festival, dinner, show or film.

Today I gave a seminar at the Plasma group (the "plas" part almost certainly stands for Programming Languages and Systems, maybe there is some inventive acronymisation to explain the remaining two letters). This is another group within Computer Science which is, topic-wise, actually closer to my own research over the past ten years than the Enterprise Systems group of Richard Paige that I'm visiting. In case you're now wondering: the reason for my choice was that I want to establish a shift in focus and learn new things. So far that's working out pretty well; but of course a request to tell something about my work up to now is not to be sneezed at.

I took the opportunity to pick a thread of investigation that has been lying around waiting to be finished for almost a year now, on so-called recipes. As we all know, a recipe is a plan telling you to carry out certain steps in a certain order: originally in cooking, but this carries over to many other fields. For me the steps scheduled in a recipe are rules that may be applied to a system, and when applied change the state of that system. After defining a recipe, it, too, should act like a rule, albeit a composite one, and can in turn appear as such in other recipes. In principle this is a very powerful concept in specifying system behaviour (or so I believe) but I have never been able to get the mathematics quite right. The last time I tried is half a year ago.

When starting preparations yesterday, I had to gather my courage to dive back into this mess, but then I finally got into a flow and many things fell into place. I wish I could convey the satisfaction that stems from this experience. It is one of the things that I think is unique to this job and really makes it worthwhile: from nothing you create, or find, a way of describing or viewing a subject, a particular perspective that simply fits and captures precisely the right features. (Is it "create" or "find"? There's a beautiful metaphor called the book of mathematics, which is supposedly there somewhere, like Plato's ideals, but which we know only a part of. Rather than developing new theory, as a researcher your aim is to uncover hitherto unread pages of the book.)

A flow eats time like nothing else, and I certainly didn't want to interrupt myself to write a blog post yesterday evening. Plus, there would have been very little to tell. Instead I went to bed early and got up at 6:00 to continue. The seminar was at 12:30; at that time I had gathered and organised so much material that after a presentation of one hour I was only halfway... No matter, there is another slot next week for part 2 (advanced recipes).

Afterwards I kind of crashed of course, and since the weather was once more sunny and looked inviting from indoors, I decided to make better use of my time than falling asleep at the desk, and go shopping with as a bonus the opportunity to drop by Halfords, as things are starting to drop off my bike. I must be boring you stiff with my bike stories, but on Sunday my saddle has come loose and since yesterday my left hand brake pretty much stopped working. This should not happen to a 5-week old bike, even if I have been using it quite intensively.

Whatever else is true of Halfords, they are certainly quick with repairs: in Hengelo I am used to being told that everything will be ready after four days or so, here they apologetically tell you that it might take all of 40 minutes. After which they had put a new saddle on, repaired the brake, lubricated all moving parts and polished up the frame. If the replacement with new parts goes on at this rate (last time I got new pedals) I only need to discover a few more flaws to have a brand new bike once more.

After some thinking I have also decided to do as the English do after all and put on a luminescent yellow vest, at least at night away from the bright lights. So I have taken one more step in the rituals of this Secret Society: I am now a Vested Cyclist! The chances of me also proceeding to become a Helmed Cyclist are still vanishingly small, though.

One direct benefit from my seminar: I have finally been explained the location of the student restaurant in Wentworth College, which, if you remember, is the college (several blocks of apartments) where I am staying. What do you know: it is next to the laundromat, not 100 meters from here. It's just not recognisable as a restaurant from the outside. For the first time since my arrival here I had proper mensa food today: mushy pasta and overcooked vetegables. The name of the place: The Edge.

Fit for nothing

I started going to spinning classes somewhat over a year ago. I had managed to bring my weight down to a bearable 95 kilos, through a lot of jogging and cycling, motivated at that time by the desire to keep up with the group of guys with whom I was planning to take a four-day hike in the Alps. A good enough reason to go on a bit of a self-induced training programme - with at the back of my mind all those statistics you read about the correlation of physical fitness and long-time overall well-being. Afterwards I looked around for a way not to rejoin the over-100s, and found it in spinning. The University of Twente has really excellent facilities which as an employee you can use completely free of charge, and there are spinning classes every day of the week. Luxury!

Essentially you are on a stationary bike and pedal to loud music, sitting down and standing up, for 45 minutes, to the shouted commands of an instructor. There is a knob on the bike to increase and decrease the resistance of the flywheel. Sounds boring, doesn't it? The first time I thought I would die, though not of boredom. However, I did not want to give up after a single try, so I persevered. It did not take long to improve, and to my surprise, not much longer to start feeling really fit! I would have been skeptical had anyone told me this in advance.

Another very unexpected and nice result was that I started appreciating the music more and more, and started recognizing that these very same songs were played all around me in shops and on the radio. I made little projects out of looking up the song texts afterwards and collecting the playlists, so that for the first time since the beginning of the 80s I can now recognise and name some of the current pop songs. I surprised and shocked both of my sons by my sudden knowledge of will.i.am, Justin Bieber (that was the most shocking), Macklemore, Sum 41 and so on.

All this is why I looked for a way to continue my routine as soon as I was here in York, and found it in the Sport Village which I have already mentioned plenty of times. Again, daily classes are available (though each day at different times). So far, so good. Less ideal are the spinning bikes themselves, which are rather old and crappy, it has to be said. Strange: you are there to exert yourself, but if the bike does not have a smooth action and for that reason increases the exertion, this definitely detracts from the experience. This was a main reason to cast around for another type of fitness class. I know by now that I need someone shouting at me, going to the gym for solitary exercises is just not something I will keep up for very long.

Muscles: heavier than fat

Thus, I now alternate with body pump. A different sensation. After a spinning session I have to cool down for at least 15 minutes before showering, otherwise the effects of the shower are immediately undone. Not so after pumping: instead, the main residual effect is a total depletion of muscle strength, especially in the arms. Also I am still waiting for that sense of improvement, that feeling of increased fitness. But the music is the same, so if not fit, at the very least this is keeping me young.

In the meanwhile, the weight issue that was a large part of my original motivation is still in the balance. I keep telling myself that muscle tissue is heavier than fat. Yeah right.

Wrong way

At the University of Twente we have been very busy for the past year, and will be equally busy during the next few years, with revising the entire organisation of the Bachelor curricula - all of them. As of this year, rather than following a number of courses on mostly unrelated topics during one quarter, students take part in a module which ideally covers various aspects of a single larger topic and also reserves a substantial amount of time for project work. I have spent a major portion of 2013 in helping to create two such modules for the first-year Computer Science curriculum.

Naturally, a major change like this, which involves redesigning the entire curriculum from the ground up, meets with a lot of resistance, some of which is reflex or comes from well-known quarters (mathematicians especially are ultra-conservative) but a lot of which is centered around hard questions. To name just two: how do you grade a module? and what happens if a student fails a module?

Ideally we would like to have good, generally accepted answers before starting such a major experiment, but an ideal world is not what we live in, so instead we solve them as we go along. Grading a module is a fantastically complex algorithm into which we pour the results of eight or nine tests and as many assignments and retakes of those tests. If a student fails a module he must try again next year. And oh yes: if he fails two modules in the first year then we kick him out. Gone are the good old days when our first-years could dive into the student life and not emerge until half a year or more was past! Thou shalt perform!

No doubt as a direct consequence of the above, today I had to notify the Examination Board for the third time in as many days of suspicion of fraud in one of the assignments that I have set up. Fraud meaning here that students have submitted work that is a (slightly modified) copy of that of others. If the Examination Board confirms and establishes fraud, they will automatically fail the assignment and thereby the entire module.

This is unexpected, frustrating, and worrisome. The last case of fraud that we had to deal with is five years ago, and the last one before that as long ago again. I do not believe our students have suddenly lost their sense of morality. The correlation with the change in the curriculum is too clear, and an explanation lies close at hand: we are putting them under a lot of pressure, and some of them can only cope with this by taking shortcuts - probably in the hope that they will not be found out.

How do we proceed? Should we show clemency, or do we set an example? Do we try to decrease the pressure, or is it an allowable method of selection? I hereby open the discussion.

The Dracula experience

The weather forecast promised another brilliant Sunday, though cold. Both predictions came true. Essentially I had no other choice but to go on another bike tour.

I sometimes get the question how I am doing, even from readers of this blog. Can you doubt that I am having a great time? Oh yes, I feel appropriately guilty to the home front about abandoning them for four months, but that was part of the package from the start, so has to be discounted. And yes, I am a bit lonely from time to time; there are days (like today) that I don't talk much to other people except for saying the occasional "thank you" or "sorry" without which you cannot survive in England. Come to think of it, I might feel a lot lonelier if I didn't put my experiences to this blog on a daily basis: ways to describe my impressions and feelings are running through my mind all day long, in preparation for that hour of sublimation. Finally: yes, there is also fear that I am not taking the full professional advantage of my stay here: almost a third of my time is gone: what have I achieved? Is it enough? Will I see this afterwards as a wasted opportunity to shift and revive my research? Fear, uncertainty, doubt: I am no stranger to them. But I refuse to dwell upon that sort of thing, since that in itself is the least productive thing I could possibly do. Not to mention that I do have a strong sense of privacy regarding such things. So, I will happily write about what I am doing, and leave it to you to deduce how I am doing!

Incredibly, it is only seven days ago that I took the train to Scarborough and walked/jogged along the coast and back a ways along the Cinder Track. That whet my appetite for a full traversal of that track, all 20 miles of it between Scarborough and Whitby, and today was the perfect day. The only problem was scheduling: should I aim to cycle from W (2,5 hours by train, connections three times a day) to S (1 hour, connections six times a day) or the other way around? What would you choose?

In the end the decision was easy since there are no trains to or from W on Sunday. I checked three times, even via the German bahn.de which is a lot more user-friendly than the British Rail Inquiries and has the same information, but all web sites declared in unison: no trains from York to Whitby on Sunday! I was stumped for a while until I realised I might as well take a return ticket to S and do the track twice - 2 for the price of 1! How could I resist?

The first 8 kilometers or so were familiar. After that the track began to rise, slowly of course since those 19th-century trains would have to be able to take it (modern Dutch trains sometimes even have trouble with the 100m high Veluwe as I had occasion to notice two weeks ago!) but if you crick your neck and look at the left side of the map, you might just make out that the highest point is almost 200 meters above sea level. Not inconsiderable in combination with the wind and the sometimes wet and muddy track: finally those spinning sessions are good for something! The northward view from the highest point is stunning.

Forgotten coach at Cloughton Station

The fact that you are riding on an abandoned railway track really gives the trip an extra dimension. From time to time I could still smell the coal burning (yes, there are coal-heated houses in that part of the world). The track is sometimes dug into the hills, then again raised high above the surroundings. You can just imagine how incredibly picturesque a train would be on that stretch. I do wonder how long a train would take for a one-way trip, given also that there were 8 (!) stations between S an W. Several are atill recognisable as such, by way of leftover platforms, station buildings converted to houses, or a street name ("Station Street" is a bit of a giveaway).

Don't eat this man's chips!

After two hourse I arrived at Whitby, several kilos lighter than I had started. Which I promptly regained by having a portion of the nastiest chips in memory. Turns out W, originally a fishing village at the mouth of the river Esk amidst imposing promontories, is now a tourist trap, with a really horrible river front consisting entirely of gambling parlours and fast food sheds (one of which served me said chips). Still, it was busy enough for a sunny but cold Sunday in November: lots of tourists trapped.

Why then do these people come? I can think of one reason: the town boasts the ruins of the world-famous Whitby Abbey. And why then is this abbey so famous, given that it is indeed a ruin - just the shell of the abbey church is standing, the Germans actually ruined it even further as recently as the first World War? Maybe you do not need to be told, but I did: this is the location that supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to write his world-famous Dracula. Which immediately explains why one of the first Google hits for Whitby is for the gothic festival - it is the quintessential place to host that kind of thing!

Whitby Abbey in its full glory

After the depths of the waterfront I therefore rose to the heights of the abbey, took a look around - there is not that much to see when all is said and done - had a coffee at the tea room of the YHA which is practically located inside the old abbot's house (how did that happen?) and started on my way back to S.

The way back felt a lot faster, maybe just because I knew what to expect. Dusk fell featherlight. It was almost five and almost dark when I arrived in S with an hour to spare, which I spent replenishing my bodily fluids. I was a bit worried about getting my bike onto the return train: last week the train (well, the one leaving two hours earlier) had been chock full and the only place you can put a bike in this train immediately takes four seats out of commission. There was no problem however: someone had preceded me and already blocked the seats, a second bike was no additional obstacle.

Another day well spent! I'm doing fine, thank you!

Films, films, films

After some necessary maintenance of appartment, foodstuffs and fitness, Saturday afternoon it was time to fulfill another promise to myself and see some of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, which has been running from Thursday and will continue until Sunday. The A stands for an art magazine that is the main sponsor of the event, which is now in its third year.

The festival is taking place throughout York in 15 different locations, so among other things this was a chance to explore the town some more. I already briefly took a look at one of the venues, Thirteen Thirty-One, yesterday evening, so after acquiring a pass that is where I decided to start my tour de film. They advertise themselves as a bar-restaurant-cinema, but from the outside in the rain it does not look like any of these things, more like a cul-de-sac where nothing is going on. Only the large "ASFF Venue 07" sign outside was an indication that I was in the right place. After doubtfully having made my way to the cinema part, however, it appeared that enough other people had been able to find it to fill it to capacity. Many apologies, and was I maybe a filmmaker? Which I regretfully had to deny, but it's interesting to specualate why they thought I might be. Coming in alone probably had something to do with it.

The short films are being shown in blocks of 90 minutes, with 15- or 30-minute breaks in between. There was nothing for it but to try this location again later, for some other block; so in the meanwhile I wandered off, through the intermittent rain and tourist-packed streets, to King's Manor where they were supposed to have 2 screens and so hopefully a better chance of finding a seat, and that worked.

Film is to be seen and not so much to be written about, so I will not attempt to describe the ones I got to see. Contributions came from all over Europe as well as Australia and the USA. "Short" meant anything between 5 and 25 minutes, and that makes for an interesting challenge as you have to set up and tell a story within that timeframe. Some managed this (much) better than others (there were a fair number of open endings), but on the whole I thoroughly enjoyed myself and only once or twice started looking at my watch.

Compose your own taco

The blocks were grouped according to genre: I consumed Drama 8 and Thriller 3 (the difference being that a lot more people died in the Thriller session) at the King's Manor, then went back to try and find the restaurant section of Thirteen Thirty-One for a quick meal and a seat at Comedy 2 and Drama 3. It turns out the venue is more like a number of linked houses, and the restaurant is divided over several living rooms, connected by twisty passages (all alike) and narrow stairways, which you wouldn't be able to find your way around in without help. Altogether lovely. The meal was nice too: the soft tacos I ordered came with the ingredients still to be mixed together to taste. The personnel were extraordinarily friendly and actually reserved a seat for me when it turned out that the time might be too short. The cinema was another very nice surprise: for seats it has large black leather sofas and pouches - about 30 of them, no wonder it was full. They call it a "brown cinema". I've never had such comfortable seating.

After all this creative, intelligent story-telling I thought the perfect way to end the day would be to go to Thor: The Dark World to flush the system, as it were. The reviews were not half bad, but I found it a bit more stupid than I had expected. Still, the flushing was thoroughly accomplished.