Losing the Edge

I've packed, I'm ready to go. Just have to finish this bottle of wine and not forget to set the alarm clock. Not as hideously early as for the Canada trip to be sure: the train leaves at 7:25, quite a decent time really.

I have a little logistical puzzle to solve, having to do with transporting suitcases back and forth. It's almost one of those standard combinatorial problems in computational complexity: bin packing or some suchlike. Right now I have three suitcases here, and I am travelling back to the Netherlands twice: tomorrow, and then again at the end of January. Fine, I hear you say: take one suitcase now and two then. Yep, but consider: this means that when coming back to York I can only bring hand luggage, and that in turn means that I should not take too much stuff with me now that I might still need in January. Laptop, yes, that goes without saying; pyjamas unless I want to buy a new pair. Toiletries: be careful, before you know it it's confiscated at the airport. But what about my running shoes, what about my winter coat (which is way too warm to put on right now)?

I'm sure I have your sympathy.

At work there is still plenty to do. The paper selection for FASE is as good as done, we feel we did a great job under the circumstances. (Sometimes you just have to congratulate yourself, as hardly anyone else will do it.) Had a nice discussion with +Richard Paige, +Mike Dodds and +Chris Poskitt on correctness proofs for (bidirectional) model transformations. Might be a good place to show off the wonderful features of GROOVE. Also made some headway with two other papers. I especially regret missing the pub crawl planned for tomorrow night under the expert guidance of Richard. Well, instead I get to go to Willem-Jan's concert, which of course as a proud parent I prefer.

The Edge at dinner time

The next two weeks this place will be completely deserted. As I wrote before, it is pretty deserted even now: after asking around I got confirmed that lecturing stopped the week before last, we are now between terms. There are many Asian students here for whom Christmas means nothing and New Year occurs at another date altogether, and who do not get the chance to go home. They must have a pretty lonely time of it. There are some things organised on campus for the poor left-behind souls, a leaflet was shoved under my door the other week; still, not so interesting times.

I think I will write one more post when I'm home, probably this weekend, where I will present an overview of the analogies and differences between Twente and York. After that this blog will also shut down for the holiday; after all, it was never meant to be merely a diary (though it may have worked out that way from time to time), rather a log book of discovery and wonder. At home I am not a great discoverer, in fact I plan to sink back into wonderful, dull routine for the next two weeks.