An Exercise in Irrelevance

All a bit mad, having been on the road for a while, so just a quick review here. When he started, I thought he was well past his best; probably because he was singing in a strangulated falsetto when we got in.

Anyway, this turned out to be wrong; he was just warming up. The singing got better and the guitar was wonderfully rhythmic. Afterwards we squeezed into the little hall for Monica Vasconcelos, who played mellow jazz, and samba tinged music. Good voice, excellent band.

And all for 7 quid, in the cheap seats which I quite like. No complaints there.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Back in Copenhagen. Turns out I was wrong about the couched area — it’s still there, just hidden behind the smoking room.

Trondheim was a lot of fun. I was there for a thesis defense. It’s a lot more formal than in the UK; the candidate has to do two lectures (one on the thesis, one on a related topic that they find out two weeks before) and then they get a public examination. We were in a very impressive room, with two lecturns, like a court. The whole experience was a bit strange—there’s a large degree of theatricality to it. On the whole, I think it’s better than the UK one which consists of three people sitting in a room for 3 hours; it’s rather anti-climatic, while the Norweigian version has a sense of occasion about it.

I have a theory, though, about feedback in science. It’s well known that once you start to do well in science, then success breeds success; you get better known, more opportunities come your way and so on. I’ve been starting to wonder whether this is, in part, due to airports. The more successful scientists travel a lot (much more than I). The truth is, in this day and age, airports are great places to work. There is nothing else to do, laptop batteries last long enough. Travelling gives you intermittent access to the internet, so you can get what you need, but can’t spend hours reading BBC News as a work-avoidance strategy. In the last few weeks, I’ve got lots of stuff done, as well as writing blog posts of course.

I am going to test this theory next week, by spending the entire time in the airport. Newcastle is only a 15 minutes from my house, so I plan to go up at 9 and sit on the concourse till 5. But will the magic still work if I don’t have a valid ticket? I will report back.

Right, boarding…

Originally published on my old blog site.

I’m sitting in Copenhagen airport, next to the inevitable statue of the Little Mermaid, which resides between a lift shaft and a coffee shop. I’m travelling to Norway to do a thesis examination; I’m quite looking forward to it, to be honest, although I wish it wasn’t in public to be honest.

I haven’t been to Copenhagen since 2001, I think, when I was here for ISMB. The flight in was pretty bad: small plane, big bumps. My memories of the place are confirmed; it’s a nice airport, airy and light. I have a veggie noodles which was actually pretty good. The nice balcony that I remember, on the first floor—low seats, lie down couches, free from children—now mostly houses the smoking and kiddies area (separate of course) and, so, has transformed from the most to least desirable part of the entire airport.

I would have loved to pop into Copenhagen itself—I seem to remember it’s not far—but I have to re-read a thesis. What with the trip to Japan, I haven’t had time to do it before, hence it’s become an airport job.

I’m not doing my carbon quota any good here, about another 200kgs up in, well, whatever the combustion products of a plane are.

11:30

Now in Trondheim. I’ve never been so far North (well, not while on the ground). It disappointingly warm at -3C and there’s not that much snow around either. Trondheim, from a drive through and brief wander, is cool (sorry). There’s an amazing number of pubs (half of them are "British" — I’ve walked past "The three lions", "Little London" and "Macbeth" already; I’ll leave you to work out which is the Scottish one. The street I am on, also has a curry house, a vietnamese and a chinese resturant. I could almost be at home, except for the unfeasibly steep angle on the roofs.

I’m also a new person from before. I’ve seen the Northern Lights. Not seen them well, I admit, through the window of the plane, with the reflection of a reading light in my eyes. But, I have always wanted to see them, I always knew that some day I would, and now I have.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Went to the biscuit factory yesterday for the first time. On the whole, it was pretty good, and I enjoyed it. Most of the stuff in there was wildly too expensive; they had a lovely mirror, for instance, with a carved wooden frame, but 700 quid is just too much for something that has a reasonable chance of getting broken.

One of the things that amused me, though, was the artists’ statements. They seem to be required these days; people appear to judge art by what the artist is thinking rather than what they can see. I guess that they are teaching the writing of these personal statements in the art colleges nowadays; one thing that it is clear they are not teaching is grammar—in some cases it was terrible (okay, I hear you saying, maybe the pot is calling the kettle here, but blogs are quick written not studied).

These statements varied from the pretentious to the prosaic—with more of the former. A selection of my favourites (or paraphrases from memory) with my translations were:

• the individual instintively views the piece from many different angles and viewpoints (translation: it’s a shiny mirror and looks pretty in the lights).
• the latest series explorers the artists emotional response to the weather on the bleak moorlands of Northumberia (translation: hell, it’s windy up here).
• "I dislike personal statements as they force the artist to move from the abstract and ambiguous realm of the medium, to the concrete realm of writing" (translation: I’m a painter! I like painting; I hate writing).

My favourite statement, though, was short and simple. It went

"Emma (I think this was her name) generally paints from the local environment. She paints from what she sees. She likes to work on location wherever possible as she enjoys the interaction with passers-by".

Wonderful; if she had replaced "enjoys the interaction" with "likes to natter" it would have been perfect; frank and to the point. The paintings were good as well.

Originally published on my old blog site.

We’ve had a series of good meetings, I got lots of chance to talk about metadata. It’s clear to me that there is plenty of work to be done, but that it’s starting to happen. It’s not clear to me who will play what role, nor whether we will just repeat the history of bioinformatics. I guess neuroinformatics has the opportunity to do something new, ignore the legacy, that it could even avoid the pitfalls; having said that, one of the biggest pitfalls of bioinformatics was doing everything afresh without looking into the rest of the world.

Yesterday, I got a proper chance to do the tourism thing; we ended up in the electric district, partly by chance — Paul had a guide book, but the hotel wouldn’t let us back into our rooms to retrieve it, so we have no above ground map. The electric district is, like the rest of Tokyo, an information overload but more so. At any time, you can here four or five recorded voices, there are flashing lights and music, and signs in Japanese and English everywhere. After that we went down to the palace gardens but they were shut by the time we got there. Evening was food with our ever gracious hosts; lovely again.

Back on the plane now, we are suspended above a Siberian wasteland. Perhaps 2km below, highlighted against the curve of the world there’s another plane running parallel to our course. Another ton of carbon released into the air.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Lions and Lambs — three interlocking stories, over the theme of war and the media. Well done, entertaining, and a light touch. Rather too earnest too eager for me. Lacking a bit in humour

We own the night — a cops and robbers flick, with added family drama. Not a bad film, although felt rather like Cagney and Lacey on steroids. Good performances all around, lots of brooding silences and a fortune spent on blood bags.

Beowulf — finished it off. Looked great, some wonderful hacking and slaying. Story was a variation of the original with (as noted previously) added masturbation gags. Turns out that the story was adapted by Neil Gaiman; explains a lot.

L’auberge rouge — a black, murder farce. Big ensemble cast, lots of fast dialogue, and pretty well done. Not nearly as good as Juno, but the best of the lot.

Juno — missed the first five minutes of this, so watched them as well, and then let it run on a bit. Strangely, it’s been Japanese filtered on the way back; that is no swearing, no sexual references or, indeed, to any bodily functions; head-lopping and guns are okay, but sadly Juno is short on the latter.

Four and a bit films in one flight — well, I am tired and all the of the padding in my cushion has gone, and everything from my knees to sacrum is aching. And my shoulders and neck come to that.

Originally published on my old blog site.