An Exercise in Irrelevance

Just got my first piece of skype spam…pretty novel.

[17:09:39] marianne - fille sexy a baiser sexe says: ca va ?
[17:10:38] Phil Lord says: ca va bien, et tu?
[17:10:39] marianne - fille sexy a baiser sexe says: sur http://www.*******.com y'a des joiles femmes !

Originally published on my old blog site.

What a pleasure it is to be back in America. ISMB and Toronto were good, but now I’ve moved onto higher things and am in Minniapolis for a flight change. I entered the US in Toronto (er…) having cleared immigration there; end up in the secondary examination room (where’s the vaseline?) having after first miserable enemy of humanity for an customs officer who didn’t want to point out that "index finger" meant the first finger. Well, it was early.

I should mention that the two customs people in the backroom, though, were polite, patient and efficient.

On the plane, I had a moment of panic when the announced the destination as "Twinchitty", somewhere I did not want to be. Turns out Minneapolis is known as "the twin cities".

Stopped in the airport for some noodles and tofu. They were alright but the caramel in the soy fused with the addititives to leave a nasty aftertaste. So I went in search of some fruit; the cloest I could get is some banana cake and a small (read vast) expresso.

America, America, Land of the Free, tra, le da.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Flying into Portland, it looks a really beautiful place. It’s got a hilly, dynamic, green and water-rich landscape. The city itself, after this, is a bit of a let down to be honest. We’re in the Benson Hotel — a local landmark the programme booklet tells me. It’s at the edge of the downtown district which is small, yet tall. Small is actually good, as it’s not far to get to one of the quieter backstreets where there is plenty of simple, cheap food. Heading North, the areas get slightly seedier (bar, then camping shop, then grocer, the full nude review theatre). After the vibrancy, relaxation and excitement of Toronto, it seems bucolic to say the least.

The Benson Hotel is nice, but somewhat tatty. They got all the frills — doormen outside, chandeliers, idiot guest at the front desk shouting out how badly he’s been treated. The guest room, however, shows that while the attention to detail is there, they have forgotten the basics. The glass in the window has integrated The window frames are dirty and are single glassed sash windows, making the room cold; the heating (which you need as a result) has only a "hotter, colder" thermostat so it takes ages to get it right. The furnishings are all grand but have clearly seen their better days.

I think that I have finally understood the difference between US and European cities. In Europe, evolution and economics has given us strangely organised functional parts of town, with roads randomly and chaotically scattered throughout. The US cities have incredible organised roads with the functions scattered randomly; facely buildings, next a brightly lit shop, next to a bar and then a parking lot ($7 all day — land is not expensive here). I guess Americans get as confused by our winding roads as we do by their building chaos.

Maybe I am being a bit negative here; perhaps it’s because I am being all sad and pathetic and not knowing anyone.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Got up yesterday morning (duh, duh, der, duh) to go the conference. On the way down in the lift, realised I’d forgotten my geek badge. So, went back up to my room. Realised, I’d locked myself out. So went back down to reception. Then back up to get my geek badge, then back out. 55 floors of movement. Hmmm.

I’m enjoying ISMB this year. Been flitting between SIGs and don’t have to worry about bio-ontologies till tomorrow. Text has been quite fun. BOSC as often has some interesting subjects but with a big variation in the quality of the talks about these subjects. Biopathways had some nice stuff also, but the talks are a bit long and the program keeps going off time. Lucky that Mark Wilkinson’s biomoby talk was early at BOSC, as I could pop out of pathways without missing two talks; glad I didn’t miss that; exciting, energentic and with very funky slides, as always.

Originally published on my old blog site.

Regular readers of this blog, of which there are none, will no doubt have noticed the long gap since I last posted. I’ve generally been a fairly frequent poster, but it’s been nearly two months since my last. Well, I’ve been busy. So, what has happened?

Northern Rock Cyclone: So, after a reasonable amount of training, I managed to do the middle distance race which was 62 miles long. If you add in the distance from my house to the start and back, this was 68 miles in one go. Okay, at 12 mph, it’s a bit of a trundle, but I felt good about doing it. If I can speed things up a bit, then I might try for the 100 next year.

Brewery Demolition: I saw explosive demolition of the old Brewery. Had a great view from from over the road at St James’ Park. On film, buildings always fall down majestically; the brewery wasn’t like that. We heard to countdown from the security guy’s radio, then there was a flash of deep red light from the bowels of the building. Then it fell down. No majestic collapse, the building just fell to the ground. The dust rose up and swirled around in the brisk wind. Finally, it cleared and there was a pile of rubble. Deeply scary.

InstantSOAP: This was my first independent research project. It was only a year long, but because of a big gap in the middle, it finally finished in a short while ago. I ended up doing a reasonble amount of the documentation for it, and I’ve started to repurpose it for my neuroinformatics project, Carmen. It’s basically an easy way of doing web services; I have it doing R now. It’s being trialed out in a user tutorial in a few weeks.

Houses: I’ve moved houses, and am now living in St Peters Wharf. It’s really nice. It nestles in between the river, an industrial estate, a waste recovery centre (that’s a tip to you and me), and Walker.

Bio-Ontologies: I’m on my way to Toronto for ISMB and my SIG, bio-ontologies. We’ve gone against the main conference this year and, yet, registrations are up. I feel good about this.

Anyway, with that lot combined I’ve been far to busy to write blog posts. Hopefully, they’ll get a bit more regularly again.

Originally published on my old blog site.