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.