After mass today, a woman tried forcing something into my hand. I inquired. She loudly blasted me with gibberish. The retired bishop who says mass each week was looking at me like I was offending the woman. There were other women doing the same thing to other people. Finally, I just yelped, “Uh, I don’t live here; I live in the USA!” She took the thing back with some commentary. I got about a block away when it hit me: she was trying to get me to take home a rice bowl; Lent starts this week. Problem was, they don’t call it a rice bowl but a SCAIFE Bowl, and she was so excited about it that her Scottish accent made it impossible for me to think while she was speaking. Now, I hope the pastor returns soon so I don’t have to see that Bishop again next Sunday.
Internet problems: Pics from Switzerland coming tomorrow.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Dictionary Learning and Slopes
The meeting I am attending is actually pretty productive. It might be more productive if the lunch break was a bit shorter, but it is productive in any case. Yesterday, during the “lunch break” I went skiing. After changing clothes, renting ski equipment and traveling up to the slopes via train, I was on the slopes for more than three hours. I then took a train back down, returned my ski equipment, changed clothes, and made it back to the meeting just before the end of the lunch break.
It was a lot of fun. I fell only three times, although one was a doozy (see comments on previous post). I was skiing rather well by the end of the day. I stuck to the blue slopes (which are the easiest, equivalent to greens in the USA) and spent most of the day skiing on my own. There were two options amongst the mathematicians: ski school for beginners or skiing with two very good skiers. The two good skiers agreed to take me down a blue run at first and then go their own way. I thought this was very nice of them and opted for that approach. It was helpful. Ivan had to bring me a ski on two occasions.
There is actually some math going on here as well. Several good projects have been identified and we are now broken into groups of three or four and formulating a work plan to complete these projects. I am working on a theoretical project regarding localized dictionaries and the implications for signal reconstruction from the analysis coefficients versus the synthesis coefficients. If all goes well, there should be a paper in a few months for you to read.
It was a lot of fun. I fell only three times, although one was a doozy (see comments on previous post). I was skiing rather well by the end of the day. I stuck to the blue slopes (which are the easiest, equivalent to greens in the USA) and spent most of the day skiing on my own. There were two options amongst the mathematicians: ski school for beginners or skiing with two very good skiers. The two good skiers agreed to take me down a blue run at first and then go their own way. I thought this was very nice of them and opted for that approach. It was helpful. Ivan had to bring me a ski on two occasions.
There is actually some math going on here as well. Several good projects have been identified and we are now broken into groups of three or four and formulating a work plan to complete these projects. I am working on a theoretical project regarding localized dictionaries and the implications for signal reconstruction from the analysis coefficients versus the synthesis coefficients. If all goes well, there should be a paper in a few months for you to read.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
“Well, I guess we’ll have to meet in Switzerland”
I haven’t posted in a few days, but I should be excused. It has been quite a busy few days. First of all, I worked all day Saturday and Sunday so that we could a different paper back to the editor, this time to SIAM Review. (SIAM is the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.) Most importantly, I had to plan for the Super Bowl, which was on TV here from 11:00pm – 3:30 am. The Grey Horse wouldn’t be open at those hours. More about the Super Bowl in a subsequent post.
Then, on Monday, you see I had to sleep for most of the day after the Super Bowl. When we lived in Germany, the US Army always gave us Super Bowl Monday off. I was pretty sure no one would care (or even notice) if I took most of Super Bowl Monday off. Nonetheless, I was in the office by half noon (12:30) working some more on the SIAM Review article and preparing for a very important meeting this week.
You see, this week I am at a brainstorming meeting. We are meeting to discuss research ideas and directions for analysis dictionary learning. I know nothing about this subject, but was invited along. The hard part is, during the last meeting, when discussing the venue for the next meeting, they were hoping for something more interesting than London. One of the main guys on the grant suggested he host the meeting near Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Someone asked precisely where, and he said a ski lodge. At that point, the head of the grant announced, “Well, I guess we’ll have to meet in Switzerland,” and they settled on the mountain resort town of Villars, Switzerland. If it wasn’t already dark here, I’d take a picture of the view out my window. So, I’m in Switzerland after two planes and two trains and many hours of travel. The venue for this meeting is, well, how should I describe this… ridiculous; it’s Switzerland.
Best part of French speaking areas: saying my own name. Every time I say my name, someone looks at a list, and then looks at me like I am stupid. They ask me again, I say my name “Jeff Blanchard (blan-churd)”, and they look over the list a second time. Now they’re convinced I am not on the list, so I either point to my name or say it the way they read it.
“Oh,” they say, “zshe freigh blaughn –shawd.”
I reply, “Yes, indeed, Jeff Blanchard.”
One time, at a hotel in San Malo, France, this exchange took place. Then, the woman behind the counter laughs a bit, takes out her wallet, shows me an ID card on which her last name was Blanchard. Of course, she pronounced it blaughn shawd. Every morning, she made a big deal announcing my French name the first time I saw her. (That was funny. Here, they seem to just think I am so stupid I don’t know my own name.)
Then, on Monday, you see I had to sleep for most of the day after the Super Bowl. When we lived in Germany, the US Army always gave us Super Bowl Monday off. I was pretty sure no one would care (or even notice) if I took most of Super Bowl Monday off. Nonetheless, I was in the office by half noon (12:30) working some more on the SIAM Review article and preparing for a very important meeting this week.
You see, this week I am at a brainstorming meeting. We are meeting to discuss research ideas and directions for analysis dictionary learning. I know nothing about this subject, but was invited along. The hard part is, during the last meeting, when discussing the venue for the next meeting, they were hoping for something more interesting than London. One of the main guys on the grant suggested he host the meeting near Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Someone asked precisely where, and he said a ski lodge. At that point, the head of the grant announced, “Well, I guess we’ll have to meet in Switzerland,” and they settled on the mountain resort town of Villars, Switzerland. If it wasn’t already dark here, I’d take a picture of the view out my window. So, I’m in Switzerland after two planes and two trains and many hours of travel. The venue for this meeting is, well, how should I describe this… ridiculous; it’s Switzerland.
Best part of French speaking areas: saying my own name. Every time I say my name, someone looks at a list, and then looks at me like I am stupid. They ask me again, I say my name “Jeff Blanchard (blan-churd)”, and they look over the list a second time. Now they’re convinced I am not on the list, so I either point to my name or say it the way they read it.
“Oh,” they say, “zshe freigh blaughn –shawd.”
I reply, “Yes, indeed, Jeff Blanchard.”
One time, at a hotel in San Malo, France, this exchange took place. Then, the woman behind the counter laughs a bit, takes out her wallet, shows me an ID card on which her last name was Blanchard. Of course, she pronounced it blaughn shawd. Every morning, she made a big deal announcing my French name the first time I saw her. (That was funny. Here, they seem to just think I am so stupid I don’t know my own name.)
Monday, 8 February 2010
Saturday, 6 February 2010
"He's British."
A colleague, Andrew, and I have a written a letter to the editor of Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis (ACHA is the leading journal in our area of mathematics, which is called the same thing) detailing a very common misconception in our field that seems to be popping up in, unfortunately, ever single paper on a particular topic. Journals such as this have an editorial staff that consists almost completely of volunteers who are primarily mathematicians from academics who serve on the editorial staff as a “service” to the mathematics community. When you write a paper and submit it to a journal, it is first read by one of these editors, and then sent out to other volunteer referees. They read it, check the math, and decide if it is worthy of publishing in the journal. This takes a while, roughly a year from start to finish. Anyway, we got our letter back with a friendly review asking us to address a few points.
Andrew is a PhD student and therefore shares an office. I am a visitor and therefore share an office. We decided one day to meet about revising the paper with the referee comments in mind. In the center of The King’s Buildings (the awesome name of the campus on which The School of Mathematics resides) is essentially a student union known as KB House. The best part of this place is that they have 9 beers on tap. The bar is also a coffee shop and serves some food. The worst part of this place is the food.
So we had a table and I went and ordered a Panini. The chap taking my order seemed very put off by the fact that I was ordering food. It was not really lunch time so I figured this was the problem. When my Panini was ready, he didn’t say anything at all, just set it down on the counter and took my “your order is ready” beeper. Hmmmm. Andrew and I talked for about an hour, working out the details of when a certain condition could be useful. When leaving, Andrew and I put our dirty plates and such on the counter and Andrew gave the usual, “Cheers!” to the guy behind the bar. The reaction was a head nod, possibly with a mumbled return cheers, but certainly nothing like thanks for brining your dishes up and spending your money in our place.
As we walked out, I said to Andrew, “Gosh, that guy sure was angry. He was angry that I ordered a Panini, angry that he had to make it and serve it to me, and he seemed angry even that we put our plates on the counter.” Andrew just started laughing. Then Andrew says, “He’s not angry, Jeff; he’s British.”
Andrew is a PhD student and therefore shares an office. I am a visitor and therefore share an office. We decided one day to meet about revising the paper with the referee comments in mind. In the center of The King’s Buildings (the awesome name of the campus on which The School of Mathematics resides) is essentially a student union known as KB House. The best part of this place is that they have 9 beers on tap. The bar is also a coffee shop and serves some food. The worst part of this place is the food.
So we had a table and I went and ordered a Panini. The chap taking my order seemed very put off by the fact that I was ordering food. It was not really lunch time so I figured this was the problem. When my Panini was ready, he didn’t say anything at all, just set it down on the counter and took my “your order is ready” beeper. Hmmmm. Andrew and I talked for about an hour, working out the details of when a certain condition could be useful. When leaving, Andrew and I put our dirty plates and such on the counter and Andrew gave the usual, “Cheers!” to the guy behind the bar. The reaction was a head nod, possibly with a mumbled return cheers, but certainly nothing like thanks for brining your dishes up and spending your money in our place.
As we walked out, I said to Andrew, “Gosh, that guy sure was angry. He was angry that I ordered a Panini, angry that he had to make it and serve it to me, and he seemed angry even that we put our plates on the counter.” Andrew just started laughing. Then Andrew says, “He’s not angry, Jeff; he’s British.”
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Highland Park, 12yr, Island
Highland Park 12yr
Island
40% abv
Color: Amber, almost orange, so clear you can see right through it from the top (of course this also means my glass was not thick bottomed, but anyway)
Nose: It’s very sweet and subtle; it smells more like white wine than whisky; it is very pleasant, but not very formidable. (After a few sips, it smells smoky, still sweet, but now it’s smoky until the end.)
Palate: super smooth, light and sweet; easy to drink; illusive, it’s hard to say when the taste ends and the aftertaste begins
Finish: lightly in the nostrils letting you know it is there, then it’s suddenly smoky and strong, and just as quickly it’s gone, with a lingering taste of sweet whisky. (I have to say that I was quite surprised by the finish after smelling it for about five minutes and then it tasting so light. The finish is complex.)
Overall: A highly enjoyable whisky to drink, rather involved. The smell and taste are rather different than the aftertaste. Enjoyable complexity. Even though the smell gets smoky while drinking it, I wish it smelled a bit bolder. In that case, I’d love it. With the smell it has, I like it a lot. (You’ll have to place yourself in 8th grade to decipher the meaning there.)
-bonus, this was free... I sort of borrowed it from the owner of the Heatherlea.
Quick note:
-technically, when I say you can see the North Sea in any of the pictures, I am incorrect. It is the Firth of Forth, but whatever, it's the North Sea. Here's a map; the water near Edinburgh is technically not the North Sea. I just felt I had to share this.
Island
40% abv
Color: Amber, almost orange, so clear you can see right through it from the top (of course this also means my glass was not thick bottomed, but anyway)
Nose: It’s very sweet and subtle; it smells more like white wine than whisky; it is very pleasant, but not very formidable. (After a few sips, it smells smoky, still sweet, but now it’s smoky until the end.)
Palate: super smooth, light and sweet; easy to drink; illusive, it’s hard to say when the taste ends and the aftertaste begins
Finish: lightly in the nostrils letting you know it is there, then it’s suddenly smoky and strong, and just as quickly it’s gone, with a lingering taste of sweet whisky. (I have to say that I was quite surprised by the finish after smelling it for about five minutes and then it tasting so light. The finish is complex.)
Overall: A highly enjoyable whisky to drink, rather involved. The smell and taste are rather different than the aftertaste. Enjoyable complexity. Even though the smell gets smoky while drinking it, I wish it smelled a bit bolder. In that case, I’d love it. With the smell it has, I like it a lot. (You’ll have to place yourself in 8th grade to decipher the meaning there.)
-bonus, this was free... I sort of borrowed it from the owner of the Heatherlea.
Quick note:
-technically, when I say you can see the North Sea in any of the pictures, I am incorrect. It is the Firth of Forth, but whatever, it's the North Sea. Here's a map; the water near Edinburgh is technically not the North Sea. I just felt I had to share this.
Monday, 1 February 2010
A Walk Through New Town
So I went on a walking tour out of a guide book. It was 36°F out and windy which wasn’t super pleasant, but it wasn’t so bad either. I walked roughly 8 miles over 3:51. This isn’t exactly the route because google maps is stupid and won’t let you simply tell it where you went, but it is smart in that it allows you to click link and reproduce what you done. Anyway, between B and C on the route listed here, I saw three houses in which Robert Lewis Stevenson, James Clerk Maxwell, and Alexander Graham Bell lived. Three important men, each with three necessary names. I'm assuming no one needs a link to have a clue who Bell is. Anyway, Stevenson (Treasure Island; Jekyll and Hyde) simply lived in one of the houses for about 23 years, but Maxwell and Bell were born in the houses I saw. It’s impressive, even refreshing, to me how much they value science. I later passed two graveyards, one where John Napier is buried with a very large plaque stating that the "Inventor of Logarithms" is buried there. The other lists Colin Maclaurin, of Maclaurin series fame, as one of a few very important long term residents of the yard. When teaching calculus, you mention these two mathematicians.
Maclaurin shares the graveyard with Greyfriars Bobby, the most famous dog in Edinburgh. His owner was a bobby and died. This dog went to the grave of his owner every day for 14 years, staying there the entire day and protecting his owner. When this dog finally died, he did so on his owner's grave. The people of Edinburgh erected a monument to him as an example of true loyalty and he was buried in the Greyfriars Kirk yard with his master. ("Kirk" means "church" I think.)
So the dog is cool, but seriously, Maclaurin proved that every infinitely differentiable function has an exact infinite power series expansion about zero. Maclaurin get’s my vote for productivity; Greyfriars Bobby gets my vote for loyalty and heartwarming story.
Anyway, it was a bit cold to take too many pictures. Here is a picture of me in front of the house in which John Clerk Maxwell was born.
This was not on this walk, but in May, 2008, when I spent a week in this house at an international meeting. Maxwell is of course responsible for Maxwell’s Equations, a fundamental leap forward in the understanding and study of electricity and a much more significant contributor to classical physics than just that. Maxwell is listed on this building as a Natural Philosopher, meaning he was a theoretical physicist. In his day, there was little distinction between a physicist, astronomer, or mathematician. Anyway, this house is now the International Center for Mathematical Sciences. I presented a riveting talk entitled, “Minimally Supported Frequency Composite Dilation Wavelets” in this house. It was cool to be speaking in his house even if the twenty audience members were mostly sleeping or writing emails.
These pictures are from today. First we have a picture of the water of Leith which runs through New Town. I went down and walked along this path.
At the beginning, you can look at this interesting set up in Dean Village, a former center for mills. This water was held back to power a mill or two and feeds into the Water of Leith.
I took this picture of myself from Dean Path with the church in the background, because, well, it's awesome.
Final note, I can't believe that they still have phonebooths, especially decorative ones. I've actually seen maybe four people in two and one half weeks using phone booths. Crazy.
- If you want to see any picture I post more closely, just click on it.
Maclaurin shares the graveyard with Greyfriars Bobby, the most famous dog in Edinburgh. His owner was a bobby and died. This dog went to the grave of his owner every day for 14 years, staying there the entire day and protecting his owner. When this dog finally died, he did so on his owner's grave. The people of Edinburgh erected a monument to him as an example of true loyalty and he was buried in the Greyfriars Kirk yard with his master. ("Kirk" means "church" I think.)
So the dog is cool, but seriously, Maclaurin proved that every infinitely differentiable function has an exact infinite power series expansion about zero. Maclaurin get’s my vote for productivity; Greyfriars Bobby gets my vote for loyalty and heartwarming story.
Anyway, it was a bit cold to take too many pictures. Here is a picture of me in front of the house in which John Clerk Maxwell was born.
This was not on this walk, but in May, 2008, when I spent a week in this house at an international meeting. Maxwell is of course responsible for Maxwell’s Equations, a fundamental leap forward in the understanding and study of electricity and a much more significant contributor to classical physics than just that. Maxwell is listed on this building as a Natural Philosopher, meaning he was a theoretical physicist. In his day, there was little distinction between a physicist, astronomer, or mathematician. Anyway, this house is now the International Center for Mathematical Sciences. I presented a riveting talk entitled, “Minimally Supported Frequency Composite Dilation Wavelets” in this house. It was cool to be speaking in his house even if the twenty audience members were mostly sleeping or writing emails.
These pictures are from today. First we have a picture of the water of Leith which runs through New Town. I went down and walked along this path.
At the beginning, you can look at this interesting set up in Dean Village, a former center for mills. This water was held back to power a mill or two and feeds into the Water of Leith.
I took this picture of myself from Dean Path with the church in the background, because, well, it's awesome.
Final note, I can't believe that they still have phonebooths, especially decorative ones. I've actually seen maybe four people in two and one half weeks using phone booths. Crazy.
- If you want to see any picture I post more closely, just click on it.
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