Arts versus maths

For anywhere between 25,000 and 1,000,000
you can also be on this Wall of Fame!

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery, or BIRS (pronounce burrs), is located at the Banff Centre, but is actually both a latecomer and an odd one out. The Banff Centre is really focussed on arts: theatre, film, photography, mosic, dance, writing, it's quite broad. They organise courses and workshops and provide a retreat (hence the artist colony). For some unfathomable reason it appears to be more popular in summer than in winter; there is actually not much going on right now. Amazingly, they started all this in 1933, but only after the war did it really take off. Obviously it is government sponsored, but quite a number of companies and individuals consider this prestigious enough to donate substantial amounts of money and maybe get a building named after them; witness the Wall of Fame listing these generous souls.

Thus the short recap of the 1-hour guided tour we received today at midday. It does answer my questions about the nature of this place. It does not explain why a Research Station for Mathematics should be part of it, as it has been since 2000; I think this is a matter of coincidence more than anything else. It also does not explain why a Computer Science workshop should be organised in a Research Station for Mathematics, but you will hear no complaints from me on that account. For a fact many of the participants are quite theoretically oriented, myself not excluded.

BX participants

There are a few workshop locations in Europe I know of that are organised as a kind of retreat, and BIRS appears to have been modelled on those examples. In Germany there is Schloss Dagstuhl in the middle of the woods of Saarland, and in Italy there is a similar venue in Bertinoro, a small village near Bologna. In both cases the idea is that you are somewhat cut off from the distractions of the ordinary, real world and thus inspired to open your mind to new ideas. This is not to say that there are not other disctractions to replace the ordinary ones: the facilities are excellent. Dagstuhl offers bikes that you can take out whenever you want, a sauna, a ping pong table, a music room complete with piano, cello and a lot of sheet music, and a great wine and beer cellar. Here in Banff I have not seen (m)any bikes, but there is a common room with a fireplace, extensive fitness facilities (I plan to try out a spin class tomorrow morning at 6:30), and you can rent cross-country skis. Typically the participants of such workshops are professional enough to allow themselves to be distracted only during evening hours, and in many cases not even then: some of them are extremely single-minded and going strong right now, at 22:00.

Costume atelier: models of models

Today it has been snowing all day, and since it was anyway the first day of the workshop there were definitely no stragglers. Representatives of several disciplines of Computer Science (Programming languages, Software engineering, Graph transformation, Databases) have been brought together to discuss Bidirectional Model Transformations (BX for short). Maybe I'll try to explain a bit about the topic in one of my next posts. 40 scientists in total, from all over the world, 1 female (which is exceptionally few even for a Computer Science event), average age over 40. This is the group of monomaniacs with which I will spend the next four days. Let the good times roll!

Down Sulphur Mountain

View from Sulphur Mountain, with Tunnel Mountain center picture

Originally I had planned this day, the only free day I have available in Banff, to go skiing. I even took some of my ski clothes with me when I came back to York after the visitation ritual. However, when it came to the point of packing for the trip to Canada, I realised that I didn't want to have to rent skis and other stuff, find the best ski piste and organise transport, all for one single day of skiing on my own; and the weather forecast actually predicted snow into the bargain. So I gave up on that idea, and I am very glad of that now.

Banff Avenue

After meeting with Ekkart yesterday I found out that he is also a fan of walking - unlike me he even took his hiking boots with him; and we discussed walking one or the other of the trails around the town. We did not actually arrange to meet for this, but when I went for breakfast (at 7:30, after having been awake for 5 hours) I met him there and we agreed to go down to the Banff Tourist Information and investigate the possibilities, in particular regarding the open trails and the expected weather conditions. Banff Centre, where we are staying, is a bit outside town but there is a footpath down which brought us to Banff Avenue, the heart and soul of touristic Banff. The place looked rather deserted when we got there; but that was surely a function of the still early hour: seeing the number of steak houses and souvenir shows lining the road there is plenty of activity at other times.

The Tourist Information opened the minute we arrived, and from the available options we chose first to take the gondola up to Sulphur Mountain (so named for the hot (sulphuric) springs at the foot) which was supposed to have very good views; and then after returning if the weather still allowed take a hike up Tunnel Mountain (so named after a train tunnel that was never dug - they eventually circumvented the mpuntain - which if you look at the first pucture above does not seem so hard). Tickets for the bus to the gondola were sold on the bus, but having only bills as yet we could not pay the exact amount; I received a voucher for the difference, to be cashed in at any of four locations in Banff. That's an interesting scheme!

View to the gondola end station (center)

The gondola was not, as I had imagined, a ski lift - indeed, I have not yet seen any evidence of skiing so far: it really only takes tourists up to see the views. (This does not explain the fare of 36$.) Here, too, our timing was surprisingly good: they opened two minutes after we arrived. Plenty of time for the attendant to ask us where we are from (not easy to answer concisely, as Ekkart is a German currently working in Denmark and I a Dutchman currently staying in England) and start up a conversation about European Soccer. Canadians seem to be like Americans in this regard, never a quiet moment.

We are far north here and high up (2650m), which combined with the föhn winds explains the exceptionally clear views. The clouds were starting to come op from the south and starting to cover some of the far-off mountain tops, but it felt like we could look until the end of the world, if the view wasn't blocked by all those high peaks. To walk around the area, why should you go laboriously down and then up again when you can almost touch the next range, 10km beyond? Quite amazing and impossible to put into words, let alone pictures. (Probably this explains the fare.)

After first taking the boardwalk to the next peak and back, we discovered a snow-covered but well-trodden trail that seemed to go down to the lower gondola station, and decided to try that. Soon we met another hiker going up, who assured us that yes, this trail would lead us right down. Nothing for it but to try that. It was a lovely walk, always with the same great views through the ubiquitous pine woords. From the lower station it even turned out to be possible to walk further down to the river rather than take the bus, so after a coffee + lunch + restroom break we went on descending a few hundred more meters, down to the Fairmont Spring Hotel, an astonishing Victorian monstrosity that announced itself to be 125 years old, positively ancient in Canadian terms. This was one of the four locations where I could reclaim my change for the bus fare, and with that taken care of we found our way along and across the river and back up to Banff Centre, in very good time. No snow; out of the wind it feels positively warm, we even saw a few squirrels which I thought should be safely hibernating around this time of year. Quite enough walking for today though, the Tunnel Mountain trail will have to wait.

It is now almost 16:00, and the official workshop programme will soon start. I'll keep you posted!

Tripping

And so, the Canadian Rockies. Rocky they are indeed, more so yet than the alps - younger mountains? Fortunately the trip here was smooth rather than rocky, though long. Right now I am manfully trying to fill in the time until I can decently go to bed - I'll be here for a week, I want to adjust to Canadian Mountain Time (CMT =  GMT-7) as quickly as possible.

Breakfast and coffeeservice awaiting

Impressions of the day. Waiting at 5:30 for 5 minutes for the taxi to bring me to York station, then discovering it had been there waiting for me 50 meters downroad. (No bonus points for driver initiative!) Finding a complimentary coffee and breakfast service waiting for me on the train. Hearing the train conductor announce that we were about to arrive in Peanut Butter (more commonly known as Peterborough). Not recognising King's Cross station at all; due to Olympics 2012 overhaul? Recognising the smell of the underground straight away. Waiting for almost 3 hours at Heathrow with a lifeline to an electric power socket to be able to do some work. Having no neigbours on the long, long flight, a power socket and more films to choose from than ever before - luxury!

When I landed it was still daylight (15:00 local time) but dusk and then darkness fell during the minibus ride from Calgary to Banff. I met +Ekkart Kindler at the airport, also come a day early to save money on airfare. He had flown Copenhagen - Amsterdam - Calgary and was naturally assuming he had somehow missed me on the flight. Up at 2:30 (Central European Time, that would correspond to 1:30 for me); who am I to complain? Calgary is just east of the Rockies: wide, sweeping land with a clear view to the mountains on the horizon; ground white with frost but little snow. Positively warm; föhn winds? We were driving westwards, up, up, up. The driver told us that a storm bringing a lot more snow is expected for Sunday evening. That might be exiting.

Banff Centre reception

The Banff Centre is a lot larger than I expected. I yet have to find out what they use this place for: it is more a campus than just a meeting accomodation or Computer Science research centre. Bedrooms are in another building, so are the restaurants. The map shows an "artist colony (no public access)" on the grounds. Worth investigating. (I am not public.)

With Ekkart I looked around for a place to eat, after finding one we looked around some more for an affordable place to eat. Found it (in another building) at the MacLab Bistro - probably a pun of some kind that I am in no state of mind to understand. They promisched Grolsch on tap but when ordered could only produce the bottled variety. Bad lighting, very small letters: I did take reading glasses with me, might actually have to start using them. During dinner +Martin Gogolla showed up and joined us, so then there were three people  in the restaurant. Very busy place, but then we were early, or do I mean late? When I got back to my room, my backpack (with passport!) was stolen, until I found it back behind the curtain where I put it.

I just took an unplanned nap at the keyboard for 10 minutes or so. Think I will allow myself to go to bed now.

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.