How to spend five years

So I just handed in this tiny thing, called a dissertation.

I must admit - it's a nice sensation. It goes a long way towards bringing closure to the ... hmmm ... last ... five years of my life. Five years and bit, in fact. Dammit, that's a long time. I'm getting old.

What did I do(?!), you eagerly shout... without having read the bloody thing? Well, ok - right now my passing-on-the-stairway-version is the following:

I worked with a framework (bigraphs) for domain-specific programming languages (DSLs). I developed some fundamental theory and algorithms that enabled us to implement a prototype tool to play around with such languages. Oh yeah, and then I developed a DSL, the snappily named C calculus (C for cell), that biochemists can use to describe and experiment with cells and proteins in silico. Check out this poster, for some nice pictures:

Quirky?

Sometimes, I worry that my stint in academia has left me quirky and absent-minded. As usual, my beloved brother comes to my aid, by reminding me that these tendencies have nothing to do with my time in academia.

I recently received an email from him, saying (translated):

Subject: 3 things.

(1) I know what to get dad for Christmas.
(2) What do you know about OCR-scanning?
(3) I forgot the third thing.

Stephan

A crazy, crazy life

Where have I been, you ask?

I'm in my cellar. Writing my dissertation. It's not too bad. No really. I'm ok.

When I look out, I can sometimes see people walking past the window. I notice when the sun sets, because then I have to turn on another light. And sometimes I get up and walk a bit about, and play hockey with myself - bouncing a ball against the wall.

Today, something incredible happened. After lunch, I ate a clementine - and it had 26 seeds in it! How about that!

Stop, hey what's that sound?

I'm hiding in the bathroom. It's outside. The dizziness is still there.

I'm fully dressed - more than, actually. In particular, I'm wearing a sweater, my winter-coat and a hat. I've opened every window and door in the house. I'm writing this with my laptop on my lap. I'm waiting for it to go away.

[Approx. nine minutes before.]

*Pfhhhht. Pfhhhhhht... Pfhhhhhhht.*

Working in my cellar (in my new house - more on that another time). There's a sound somewhere in the cellar.

*Pfhhhhhhhhht. Pfhhhhhhhhht... Pfhhhhhhhhhhht.* *SLAM*

*[The sound of running]*

Lena and her friend, Stine, run past my cellar-room. Seconds later the smell hits me, choking me. They've been spray-painting something in the other room. They slammed the door shut to keep the smell inside. To no avail. The smell sieves through every crack and crevice in the old cellar, and permeates the room. In half a minute, I have to go upstairs. When I open the door to the main cellar, I can't breathe. It's not a smell. It's the sweet churning sensation of choking ... burning through the throat towards the stomach.

Lena and Stine smile somewhat perplexedly when I make it up the stairs. I slam the door shut to the cellar. "Eh... It's surprising how the smell drifts everywhere, right? Whoops..." "Yeah, well - you couldn't really know. It's ok. I'll just sit up here for a bit", I say. I storm down the stairs; disconnect my laptop and storm upstairs again.

Lena and Stine planned to go for a walk, so they do that. Just after they've left, I can feel the sensation. The cellar-door is by no means a tight-locking seal, and how is it with gas that is lighter than air? It tends to drift upwards... In a few minutes, it's a done deal. I have to open every window and door upstairs. I do it. Then I take a few deep breaths outside, leap downstairs, and open everything that can be opened downstairs, as well as setting the ventilation-system to ludicrous speed. I sprint upstairs again. It's freezing outside, so I have to put on extra clothes, my winter-coat and a hat. For a moment, I consider to also turn on the vacuum-cleaner, and put it in the door-way. After a moment, I decide not to. Having just moved to the place, this would prematurely condemn me to be viewed as a mad hatter amongst the neighbours.

Resignating, I take my laptop under the arm, and search for the room least permeated by the smell - the bathroom, it turns out - and try to seat myself comfortably on the loo. Before putting my fingers to the keyboard again, on a whim, I decide to set the little occupied-sign.

Talk on staying abroad

I gave a talk today on planning your stay abroad as a PhD student for an audience of mostly new PhD students at the ITU.

I basically tried to collect a set of questions and issues that I considered, or didn't consider before visiting Jean Krivine and Robin Milner at the École Polytechnique near Paris for seven months. Here are my slides, if you're interested.

Let me underline that I had a very nice stay abroad - not least thanks to Jean and Robin; but there were still a lot of practical things, that I wish I had thought of earlier on.

Some of you, my readers, have had experiences in living abroad as well. Do you have any good advice to PhD students that are going to plan their stay abroad?

Aah, nothing like jazz

Just tripped over this little soothing tune. Herbie Hancock is an old favorite of mine, and Corinne Bailey Rae has popped up on my Last.fm suggestions more than once.

Denmark is a city in Russia

"Denmark is a city in Russia"; so far the latest comment in a fascinating multi-threaded debate on YouTube, spawned by the crazy, danceable, and highly addictive Alphabeat smash hit "Fascination". The debate weaves a nimble narrative around such difficult subjects as anti-americanism, racism, love, and hatred, as well as commercialization, and homophobia. In short, it tackles head-on the weltschmerz of a young disenchanted generation.

But enough with the academics. Go on. Listen to it. You know you want to. It's pop and, yes, I love it.

Here's something for you to read

Ah, so you've noticed? These months, my blog is fast approaching a state of torpor, in a trajectory that suspiciously follows the decline of the western civilization. (I am, of course, thinking about the state of the financial markets, not the choice of running mate of the republican presidentially hopeful.) As you may or may not know, right now, I'm in the final race to finish my PhD; as well as handling a few hundred other things at the same time.

To amuse, you while I'm labouring, here's a few blogs, which I can heartily recommend (does it show, that I'm an old gamer, who only has time to read about games, now-a-days?):

• Teahouse on the Tracks, personal blog of sci-fi novellist, Alastair Reynolds.
  


• supertroels.dk, personal blog of Troels Abrahamsen, singer in Veto (who I have ranted about before elsewhere), and independent musician and producer.
  


• Opinionated techie, personal blog of Brad Wardell, nerd, famed (in computer game-circles) owner of Stardock, creator of several critically acclaimed games, such as the Galactic Civilizations series, and glowing republican, it seems.
  


• Flash of Steel, personal blog of Troy S. Goodfellow (fantastic name!), a most eloquent games journalist, with a particular interest in historical strategy games.
  


• Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the combined blog (clog?) of four splendid British games journalists, Jim Rossignol, Kieron Gillen, John Walker, and Alec Meer. This blog alone, has induced more laugh-aloud moments, than any other website. I recommend it, if you have even a passing interest in computer games.
  


• Bodil Bierings blog at Version2 (in Danish), friend and self-proclaimed IT-provocateuse.
  

That should be enough for a few days. Now run along.

The art of selling real estate

Pheeew. Time is flying, and I have eighty balls in the air.

As some of you might know, in between writing a dissertation, I'm also on the hunt for a new place to live. Lena and I have decided that we want to try to find a house in Vanløse - like all the other boring academics in our segment.

The housemarket in the Copenhagen area is plummeting at the moment, which means that it is not a bad time to be on hunt - if you plan not to sell within the next few years. It also means that there are a huge amount of houses for sale, which in turn means that Lena and I spend nearly every Sunday on seeing houses.

After having seen the first 30 houses, I'm quite amazed that there are so few sellers who makes the extra effort in trying to present their house in the best way possible - spending perhaps just a few thousand kr on this. For example, always paint walls and ceilings white! You can never go wrong with white - everything else can look silly to some people. And it makes rooms look larger, and more clean. And always clean up and consider stoving away a few tons of your stuff in some cellar. I've been to more than one home, where it smelled just plain bad. Given other choices in the same category - this is not something I'm likely to buy.

I, like most people, I guess, am also susceptible to be impressed if the seller has really good or expensive style. I'm getting better at seeing past this - but it's still something I have to consciously think past. And, I believe it still colours my impression of the place. My best example of this are shown in the pictures on the right. They are from a place we recently saw - I'm a sucker for the rapier in the first picture; and note the title of one of the books in the second picture. (You can click on it, to enlarge it.) "Happiness" - coincidence? I think not.

It's the name, stupid!

Surfing. I have a cold, so I'm not worth much today.

I just tripped over this:New Alliance considers name-change (in Danish only sadly). Apparently the youngest political party in Denmark, New Alliance, who are roughly the political party-equivalent of a Marx Brothers-movie, are contemplating a name change. Though an applaudable effort in trying to right what is arguable an impressively disastrous first year, it somehow feels like trying to sell cans of spam, by saying "Hey! It might be spam; but now we call it 'SUPER-EXTRA PRIME-CUT ANGUS BEEF', so please buy it!"

This follow-up news Numerologist: New Alliance should change their name, sets a perfect context, I think (also Danish). The numerologist Mauren Pihl (note the splendid name), finally gives us an explanation of the hardships of the toddler party: Both words (in Danish) "Ny" and "Alliance" yield weak energies - apparently the double ll and the single c is an amateurish mistake. Taken together the two words yield a "fateful" and "unlucky" name, indicating that the party needs to "restart again and again". I'm in awe by the supreme explanatory power of the superior numerologic science.

Not content to critizise, she contributes with more expert advice: Apparently, the current favourite candidate new name is "Liberal Alliance". Though, the word "liberal" apparently contains ridiculous amounts of energy (I could have told you that, just read Newsbusters.org - Exposing liberal media bias for a while; check out their take on CBS: U.S. should be more like Denmark), but it does not "work together well" with the weak word "Alliance".

May I suggest, that instead of a precarious name-change, they should invite the guru, Mauren Pihl, to join the party? In my mind, somehow the madness of numerology and New Alliance fit each other perfectly.

Down the drain?

Having just my heard my blog referred to as "already going down the toilet", I haste to note that this is not the case - yet.

I have simply spent a little time reinforcing my touch with the so-called real world. Yes. I have a life when not surfing. I have, among other things, been cruising the Danish countryside in a Toyota Yaris, and spent a few days playing gardener at my in-laws. Very zen, very enjoyable, and very off-the-grid.

Oh, but such moments of innocent joy are fickle, of course. When I returned, Russia had invaded Georgia; Denmarks football squad had their trousers pulled down by Spain; and the world may be destroyed in September, when a few (mad?) scientists pull the switch and fire up an experiment in the Large Hadron Collider producing the universe's first man-made black hole - right before sucking Earth plus a goodly 6 billion humans into it. They say, the black holes which may be created are microscopic; they say there's only a one in 50 million chance of something going wrong; but when could we ever trust white-coated shifty-eyed men like these:



Technically speaking, this particular mad scientist is, of course, wearing a green coat. The tricks they invent to confuse us.

Singularity divides?

A few years ago, I read a tech-report from Microsoft research about the Singularity project (a name with sooo much nerd-appeal). It was fairly interesting reading - a micro-kernel system building on managed code, from kernel drivers and up; strong typing; specification of invariants allowing static analysis, etc. (Notably, they also had a fair amount of high-profile people attached to the project, Aiken, Fähndrich, Abadi,... )

Now it seems the grapevine is flowing over with talk about a higher-profile succesor to the Singularity project: Midori; which apparently means "green" in Japanese (everything - I mean everything is on Wikipedia).

The SDTimes article: "Microsoft's plans for post-Windows OS revealed" gives a good overview. (And here is a brief summary in danish on Version 2.)

Confessions of a habitual pop-addict

What is this? Pop on my Last.fm channel - Maroon 5?! What in the !#¤!"¤!" is going on? I thought, I had spent ages telling Last.fm about nigh-all aspects of my life; thus they should bloody well know that my tastes are far more sophisticated than stale radiopop such as some tune "Not Coming Home" by Maroon 5. Their claim to be called innovative, alternative, and daring is about as brittle as Britney's (or, to take a wild swing in another direction, Apple's for that sake; I've about had it up to here hearing the mindless fanboiz cheering ...)

I share with you this clonework (for some reason the video only starts at 0:17):



Wait a minute...

...

What's this? That break was not half bad...

Hmmm, and the rhytm section is actually swinging. I wonder, if they're funk-musicians turned rock/pop? And, though a bit over-the-top, that howling guitar is really not too bad. His voice is kind of funny, though; but in a ... kind-of-nice way, I must admit...

Am I turning soft?

Heatwave

It's midnight, and it's scorching - according to my internal thermometer, at least. I'm sitting in the window sill - in my shorts - trying to catch the frail gusts of wind, that manage to find it's way from the harbour. As usual, I should just go to bed - and read something to still my thoughts. Quell my mind.

The black-greenish bug that has been circling the lamp on my table just found the lightbulb. It's now limping sideways on the table. I'm somewhat puzzled by the lifeforce of the creature.

It's quiet. It's quieter here at Østerbro than at Christianshavn; or Nørrebro, where I lived years ago. I look down at the guy that just arrived on his bike. He finishes typing something on his cellphone. He parks his bike, and proceeds to unlock the front door to no. 14 across the street. I follow his figure up the stairs to the second floor.

I decide to try to end the suffering of the bug. I manage to hit it with the base of my hand. A drop of blood is smeared on my hand where I hit it. Apparently a mosquito - I wonder if it was me, that it got to. I wipe the blood off, and try forcibly to think of something else.

I can hear the S-train leaving Nordhavn in the distance. The guy upstairs starts his late-night exercises. I take that as my cue to go to bed.

Three seconds in the life of the modern family

The radio is on, playing some random pop; the TV is on (loudspeakers down, though); two laptops are running - mine playing a live tune by VETO, while I'm surfing in four tabs at the same time and writing this; the Chumby on my left is flipping between Google News and the weather forecast (brought to you by the "Weather Channel"^TM); and Lena is trying to tell me something from the kitchen.

I wonder, whether my head is going to split into pieces?

...

Oh. The VETO song, you ask? It's the one below. Feel the live power - feel the raw strength of the voice of Troels Abrahamsen aka SuperTroels - around the age of 21 in this recording. A fan? Yes, I am.

Back in black

Back again.

I'm sitting at our table at our new place at Østerbro. It's late. I should really go to bed. Just finished reviewing a short paper about wireless protocols. That was nice to get out of the way, but it sort of eliminated the idea that I sit down and tune out a bit before going to bed.

I hear someone shuffling drunkenly past outside. This is a rather nice neighboorhood, so it's not an everyday occurence. (Even the brothel downstreet has a pretty little entrance with green leaves framing the doorway.)

I'm reminded of our neighboorhood tramp in Paris. A dishevelled spot-bearded middle-aged man, who we used to see sitting on his cardboard - eating the snippets of food that he got from somewhere, I don't know where. I used to wake in the night sometimes from his cramped vomiting - his stomach not being able to hold the food and cheap liquor that he'd quaffed during the day. Lena wanted me to leave our insulated sleeping mat for him. I forgot it in the confusion when leaving the apartment. I forgot.

I feel ashamed.

Move around

Pack it up, pack it in. Let me begin.

That is what my life is mostly about these days. We'll be moving soon - from sunny Christianshavn to posh Østerbro. There's a few things I won't miss - the beer-smelling square and the herds of tourists for instance. I'll miss the bread from the best bakery in town - Lagkagehuset, though. And the coffee and cozy relaxed mood at Café Keizer.

Oh well, Østerbro is wallowing in cafés. I might find a new hangout for when I need to think or read; or just pretend I'm working.

What kind of Dane am I?

I'm ashamed.

Having already posted twice on music, I have just realized that none of these posts concern Danish music. I should get my passport revoked.

To underline my danish citizenship and ensure my sensitive readers that I truly am a nationalistic flag-worshipping, queen-loving, pig-eating dane - I rush to you with a Danish treat from the chart-topper Danish electronica-band, the stylish Spleen United. Having released their second album Neanderthal this spring, they recently played two sold-out concerts at trendy Vega, the latest of which I attended some weeks ago. A very good concert, I must say, though a miniscule critique might be that they seem nearly too perfect on stage. For my live-concerts, I like a bit of impulsiveness and unpredictability - the moments of genius that occur when going where you might fail.

Suburbia is the upbeat party-starter track on Neanderthal, and the first track to get released on video. And thanks to Youtube - some things are for free.

Downtime

In between trying to write an article I am, like everybody else of course, trying to download Firefox 3 - the last version of the famous browser widely rumoured to be faster than a speeding bullet, easier to use than a teaspoon, and slimmer than a stickman. According to schedule it was to be released just about 57 minutes ago. Not surprisingly - right now, though, the webservers at Mozilla are taking a bit of a beating...

This in turn means that I find myself staring at a screen like the one on the right.

I forget why, but while idly browsing around - in an attempt to escape writing - I stumble upon a splendidly named webservice: downforeveryoneorjustme.com

And no, it's not just me.

There's more?

You're still here?

Ah, you're lurking about for the youtube clip. I understand. Well, I can throw you a bite of catchy french disco - electrohouse, I think this exact subgenre is sometimes referred to. (Note-to-self: someday I should blog and make fun of the whole ridiculous "genre"-concept.)

As I mentioned last time, electronic music is spinning in circles on my stereo and in my headphones these days. After living in Paris for a while, I've tuned my ears to the marvelously stylish and yet danceable french disco-scene. Having ripped through the entire backcatalogue of the splendid Daft Punk (using Play, of course - piracy is so terribly 90's), I'm now in the process of hunting down sound-a-likes.

The tune DVNO by the french duo Justice is smack center in that territory. I've dug out a few other productions from their hand, and I must say that I'm not exactly a full-blown fan; but in DVNO they are impressively unafraid of applying the central ideas of a gut-thumping beat and synth-violins to reach the levels of true catchiness.

Enough with the introductions. Press play!

First post

Well, I'm back.

After disappearing from the nets for a few months - after careful consideration I've decided to polute the blogosphere with another ill-fated blog. I give this project a 15% chance of being active at the end of the year. As you will note, this time around I will be ranting in English in a feeble attempt to cater for my international acquaintances.

In keeping with the tradition of most personal blogs I've read, I'll treat this space as my personal spillover of random thoughts written during hangovers or after working long hours, populated with far too long sentences, and mostly impenetrable to others. As you will have noted from the carefully selected title, it will probably revolve mostly around music and science. In practice, I will probably end up posting youtube clips, stolen comics, and pictures of the Little Mermaid (again to cater for my international acquaintances, you see).

Well, here goes.

...

Ah. I nearly forgot the youtube-clip. These days, I'm listening to electronic music quite a lot. Just moments ago, the exquisite (yes, Søren, I'm stealing your phrases) Nine Inch Nails song, Somewhat Damaged came on. Highly recommended.