Present but not voting

Doing a PhD vs a PhD doing you

2015-10-26T13:23:00.000+00:00

So I'm done, more or less, with my PhD and London (for now). I have lofty ambitions of doing a few blog posts over the next few months about the 2nd and 3rd act of my PhD which was largely undocumented for the derision of my readers. Ha, let's see how far that goes.

Before that though, I was asked to give a talk to the discussion group, Application Acceleration, about my experience of Getting Done. AA is a group that I co-founded in the Circuits and Systems group, although to be fair, it was a resurrection of another group I used to belong to, EDA Club. However, I've been frantically sending out CVs, so co-founding (as opposed to resurrection) has less of an occult/psuedo-religious implication. I have a theory that technology companies are threatened by the supernatural as we make very similar claims, just with better PR.

So anyways, here's my list (with sublists, of course) of what's needed to survive a PhD. I have organised the points around the three themes of Practical, Strategic and Personal Stuff. Of course, this purely reflects my own experience, and as I'm a special butterfly that does Computer Engineering, this almost certainly won't apply to most other researchers (if anything applies to anyone at all, that is). This being said, a few of these points come from discussions with friends, and so if you find something useful and applicable in the list, it's probably from someone else.

Practical Stuff (if you're not a computer engineer/scientist, or are better at it than me, then you can probably skip most of these points):

Your cache isn't big enough - take notes. And impose some sort of structure on those notes. I used physical, paper notebooks (hard cover for ruggedness) which I would reread every now and again, and that was enough for me. A friend indexed all of her's. I know that some people rewrite or summarise them. Unless you're confident you can remember everything important that you ever might think, just write it down somewhere. You can even procrastinate using various digital solutions such as Evernote or Google Keep, but to be honest, I found a hardcover notebook to be flexible, portable, robust and to have excellent battery life.
Automation and You - my rough heuristic is if I spend on average an hour a day or more doing something repetitive, then I will seriously consider automating it. Anything less than that, that automation is probably procrastination (an important insight was realising that engineers procrastinate by building things). Randall Munroe over at XKCD has an excellent comic on how much time you should spend automating vs the frequency-time saved product. I usually start with a humble script (usually Python) and move onto something more heavyweight if necessary. Generally, there are two groups of tasks that I've automated:

Building/Compiling stuff - GNU Make is the defacto compilation standard in Open Source for a reason (other than everyone is afraid of being lectured by rms). I've also heard good things about CMake, although I have always perceived it to be too complex for my needs. A different type of solution is a build management system (Jenkins seems to be a popular option).
Experiments - I found ipython notebooks to an absolute winner for managing experiments (but this probably reflects my worrying propensity for all things Python-related). Both in terms of quickly iterating over bits of experimental, and analysing data (it's a major reason that I've been able to swap over to matplotlib for publication plots).

It's never too early/late for reference management - I probably read several hundred papers/books over the course of my PhD. Not only do you need to remember what was in those articles, but it's critical to have them in a form that can be easily inserted into academic writing. I'm tempted to make a joke about inserting things, but I provisionally have a PhD now, so I'm going to be mature. I used BibTex, as it plays nicely with LaTex/LyX (the opportunities for innuendo are going to overwhelm me soon). However, towards the end I found my way back to Mendeley (I had used it in my Masters) - the web importer is great, and I've found the BibTex exporting capabilities had dramatically improved.

Strategic Stuff (these are the most broadly applicable points, although probably general to the point of platitude):

Don't Delay Feedback - it's tempting to put off having to show things to colleagues/supervisors/pets. There is always another experiment that you could run. Or more analysis. Maybe you're actually honest with yourself and you're anxious about making yourself vulnerable. I found that when I really examined any reluctance to show my work to someone, it was almost always because I was afraid of their reaction (specifically that they would run from the room while screaming). However, critical feedback is the engine of academia, so you're going to have to embrace it (for now). I'm not suggesting that you waste people's time - put some thought and work in on how you're going to convey whatever it is.
The Academic (Engineering) Algorithm - Somewhere around the beginning of my third year I had an epiphany (note, an epiphany in the context of a PhD is when you finally understand something that your supervisor has been telling you for ages). I realised that I had been going about research in the wrong way - I had spent a lot of time in my first and second year building stuff with the hope that it would impress the great and the good of engineering academia, but didn't have a lot to show for it.
I have distilled my sudden flash of insight below into an algorithm:

Have a good idea. You might be stuck at this step for a while. Sometimes it takes a while to realise the relatively simple thought you had is actually a really good idea. The key to working this out is often talking to colleagues, and paying attention to what surprises them.
Work out what will you need to do to convince a sceptical colleague of the value of this idea? Again, asking all the clever people around you is really helpful.
Do what you need to do to get the results you need to satisfy what you discovered in step 2. I found this to be the hardest part: I found it hard to resist the urge to do things "properly" or using the latest fancy tool that I had just discovered. Once you have the results/convincing argument that you need to convince this potentially hypothetical sceptical colleague, STOP. Proceed on to step 4, do not continue with any of 1-3, no matter how much "better" you could be making it.
Disseminate as appropriate. In academia, publications in a peer-reviewed venue such as a conference or journal are often how we share our good ideas, but there are other options. I won't go into the full gamut here, but one I would like to flag is packaging and realising your work as Open Source or Creative Commons. Beyond the intrinsic value of doing so, it's an implicit argument for how substantive your work is. This being said, remember that the work you're doing to Open Source your research is distinct from the work in step 3 (yes, I just used Open Source as a proper verb). Also, if you're doing it via some sort of source control system such as Git (maybe using Github, a popular hosting service), it serves as a good cloud backup solution.

Personal Stuff (while the points above are my fairly humble opinion, this applies doubly to the stuff below):

Cultivate Yourself - the product of your PhD isn't actually the work you do on your project, or even the dissertation, but rather you (despite what your supervisor might tell you!). I'm a great believer in a broad education, and there is no reason why that shouldn't continue or even start to happen during your PhD. It's unlikely you'll ever have a schedule this flexible again, so make the most of it: Go to public lectures and crazy meetups. Take up an odd hobby. Till the rich, wonderful garden in that weird, little head.
If you feel like you can't stop, that's a sign that you should - this bit of advice is actually from someone far wiser than me. I've lost count of the number of times I've near killed myself to get something in by a deadline (that was usually self-imposed), and in retrospect, I've regretted that work. The hardest lesson I learnt during my PhD is knowing when to step away, and come back later. Working very hard (and A LOT of luck) got me to the point where I could do a PhD. Working hard and smart got me through the PhD. That's why this rule is a useful flag - it was my understanding of the difference between the two.
Ask for help - a big problem with everything that I've written above is that I keep using first and second person pronouns. That was very misleading of me - PhDs are never done alone. Even if you have a fairly uninvolved supervisor, and you're working alone, without a lab or research group, you have people supporting you. Materially or emotionally, I don't think it's possible to do a PhD in isolation. This being said, you will need to ask for help, which is hard for overachieving, most likely A-type personalities, but there you go.

Disclaimer: I might return to this list again, or just delete it, after I've thought about it all a bit more carefully.

Yay, empirical software engineering! Exploding Software-Engineering Myths http://t.co/iMWKNQls2k #blog

2015-03-30T07:49:00.001+01:00

Yay, empirical software engineering! Exploding Software-Engineering Myths http://t.co/iMWKNQls2k #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) March 30, 2015

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March 30, 2015 at 07:39AM

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The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming - http://t.co/pIbFpHD717 #blog

2015-03-15T09:48:00.001+00:00

The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming - http://t.co/pIbFpHD717 #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) March 15, 2015

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March 15, 2015 at 09:21AM

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a bit of insomnia is all I needed to finish Silver's interesting book #blog http://t.co/mHGjWFFLB0

2015-02-28T05:16:00.001+00:00

a bit of insomnia is all I needed to finish Silver's interesting book #blog http://t.co/mHGjWFFLB0

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) February 28, 2015

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February 28, 2015 at 05:12AM

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Schneier about the cost of security abstractions: https://t.co/bOwKakTIpk #blog

2015-02-27T07:59:00.001+00:00

Schneier about the cost of security abstractions: https://t.co/bOwKakTIpk #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) February 27, 2015

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February 27, 2015 at 07:42AM

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Shame, power and pariahs - internet shaming http://t.co/UcxcPZ3OrG #blog

2015-02-22T08:43:00.001+00:00

Shame, power and pariahs - internet shaming http://t.co/UcxcPZ3OrG #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) February 22, 2015

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February 22, 2015 at 08:21AM

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Ha, the title of my blog is wrong - I'm eligible to vote in the UK general elections! http://t.co/AaAA6KwApx #blog

2015-02-05T10:03:00.001+00:00

Ha, the title of my blog is wrong - I'm eligible to vote in the UK general elections! http://t.co/AaAA6KwApx #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) February 5, 2015

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February 05, 2015 at 08:15AM

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Education study finds in favour of traditional teaching styles http://t.co/f4hYgzoh8Y #blog

2014-10-31T07:34:00.001+00:00

Education study finds in favour of traditional teaching styles http://t.co/f4hYgzoh8Y #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) October 31, 2014

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October 31, 2014 at 07:30AM

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Another great read, this time on William Morris http://t.co/ulfnvSFni6 #blog

2014-10-11T12:49:00.001+01:00

Another great read, this time on William Morris http://t.co/ulfnvSFni6 #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) October 11, 2014

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October 11, 2014 at 12:31PM

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Review of what sounds like an interesting documentary: The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher Education http://t.co/msxSqtN10b #blog

2014-08-03T10:05:00.001+01:00

Review of what sounds like an interesting documentary: The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher Education http://t.co/msxSqtN10b #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) August 3, 2014

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August 03, 2014 at 08:59AM

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Fantastic series from @alaindebotton on great philosophers - http://t.co/w4tbV0D1i7 http://t.co/hcUW5QNJgN http://t.co/NL5pQZp8RT #blog

2014-07-10T13:08:00.001+01:00

Fantastic series from @alaindebotton on great philosophers - http://t.co/w4tbV0D1i7 http://t.co/hcUW5QNJgN http://t.co/NL5pQZp8RT #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) July 10, 2014

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July 10, 2014 at 10:41AM

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@LRB reviews Flash Boys, the big (in terms of impact) book on #HFT http://t.co/Gwg9HMnqy1 #blog

2014-05-30T16:09:00.001+01:00

@LRB reviews Flash Boys, the big (in terms of impact) book on #HFT http://t.co/Gwg9HMnqy1 #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 30, 2014

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May 30, 2014 at 03:56PM

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Operations Research Porn: http://t.co/yqVJCbwqWC #blog

2014-05-30T14:23:00.001+01:00

Operations Research Porn: http://t.co/yqVJCbwqWC #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 30, 2014

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May 30, 2014 at 02:22PM

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Was discussing economist code sharing just the other day - Why You Shouldn't Use Spreadsheets For Serious Work http://t.co/CqgdELed4b #blog

2014-05-28T10:34:00.001+01:00

Was discussing economist code sharing just the other day - Why You Shouldn't Use Spreadsheets For Serious Work http://t.co/CqgdELed4b #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 28, 2014

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May 28, 2014 at 10:29AM

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Making sense of the radical right in British Politics (aka UKIP) http://t.co/3WCO3hFaK9 #blog

2014-05-22T06:36:00.001+01:00

Making sense of the radical right in British Politics (aka UKIP) http://t.co/3WCO3hFaK9 #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 22, 2014

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May 22, 2014 at 06:35AM

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Interesting piece on the origins of persistent false beliefs - I Don’t Want to Be Right http://t.co/jVIHjsH6W6 #blog

2014-05-20T12:07:00.001+01:00

Interesting piece on the origins of persistent false beliefs - I Don’t Want to Be Right http://t.co/jVIHjsH6W6 #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 20, 2014

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May 20, 2014 at 12:00PM

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Looks promosing - haven't had a chance to wade through it yet. This Thing For Which We Have No Name http://t.co/MKHVptjHMt #blog

2014-05-13T17:37:00.001+01:00

Looks promosing - haven't had a chance to wade through it yet. This Thing For Which We Have No Name http://t.co/MKHVptjHMt #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 13, 2014

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May 13, 2014 at 05:21PM

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Philosophical (Stoic?) vs Eastern Meditation http://t.co/VdmPmmoSwp #blog

2014-05-12T08:20:00.001+01:00

Philosophical (Stoic?) vs Eastern Meditation http://t.co/VdmPmmoSwp #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 12, 2014

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May 12, 2014 at 08:15AM

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Testing something out - ignore! #blog

2014-05-11T16:07:00.001+01:00

Testing something out - ignore! #blog

— Gordon Inggs (@Gord1ei) May 11, 2014

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May 11, 2014 at 04:04PM

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Manifesto for Education (involving computing)

2014-02-05T09:02:00.001+00:00

So I entered the Essay competition for Skills2014, an interesting summit held recently at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce (sensibly abbreviated to the RSA). I didn't win, but since I wrote 500 odd words, I'm going to inflict them upon the world.

Here's the topic:

"It's an age-old complaint from employers that a disconnect exists between what's taught in early education and what's required of young people in the workplace. So how do we fix that? We'd like you to tell us. In 500 words, give us a manifesto for how to solve today's so-called "skills gap" and prevent a similar skills predicament in the future."

And here's my essay:
Information technology concerns machinery that helps us think. So why has so little thought gone into how these machines fit into our education?

Let us begin at the end. By the time the last grad party drink has been drunk, the world seems to have divided itself into two groups: those that 'get' technology and those that don't. Despite binaries having served us well in digital electronics, I believe this binary of the digital experts and the digital inept is detrimental. It is my belief that the divide between these two groups lies at the heart of the skills crises.

At this point, I must digress and admit to a niggling doubt. I'm fairly confident that I've "gotten" computing technology. So much so that I've taken myself halfway around the world to do an advanced degree in the subject (never mind writing this essay!). However, I worry that I am part of a problem. If we're honest, we must admit that the composition of the techno-centric cohort is not dissimilar to those that hold most of the power in our society. So before we forge ahead, please bare in mind that this manifesto exists in the context of other challenges.

Digression over, what is to be done in a world where popular media correlates computing ability with typing speed and politicians think they can stop a riot by blocking a single social media platform?

This is my plan, and it has three facets:

Practical: Don't misunderstand me, I'm not calling for the dull drudgery of the advanced features of spreadsheets that children of the 90s endured. Rather in almost every learning area we should leapfrog the boring parts and skip to the good bits through technology. I believe a key part of achieving this would be learning scripting languages - we need the means to issue more complex instructions to computing systems. Also key will be practising the use of APIs and Open Standards - if we don't like the interfaces we're given, we should be able to make our own.
Fundamental: It is critical that part of our education deals with the fundamentals of how computing technology works and what supports it. The purpose of this isn't to stuff an already groaning curriculum, it is to demystify what too many people think of as fantastical. Despite what Arthur C. Clarke said, advanced technology is distinguishable from magic and it is a distinction worth making. We need to understand that we're working with machines made of simple components, not whimsical spirits that we've somehow trapped in magic boxes.
Complimentary: More than enough alarm has been raised of the hazards, moral or otherwise, of computers. What is now needed is practical advice and coping strategies for lives that probably involve a few too many computing devices that are probably a bit too interconnected. As much as we need to know the what and the how of information technology, we also need to know the when.

Misleading the Youth

2013-07-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

Instead of my epic recap, I thought I would take a little digression and write about the teaching work that I do. I quite like teaching - learning seems to be one of the unqualified nice things that people do, and so being part of that process is quite rewarding (both existentially and monetarily). And affirming of course, as the instructor you know what you're teaching (hopefully), and the process of teaching that material is a pretty convincing verification of that. So, if you spend significant periods of time engaged in critical thinking (to choose a random example, academic research) which invariably bleeds over into your self-perception, I really recommend a bit of teaching.

I've been doing two types of teaching in the UK - electrical engineering and computing university undergraduates at Imperial, and pre-teen and teen "campers" at Fire Tech Camp. Both are obviously quite technology-centric, but the students bodies are quite different in character!

My Graduate Teaching Assistant badge. Feel free to start a competition in the comments section with alternative interpretations of the acronym.

Imperial is quite strict about who may teach, and what sort of teaching they may do. The only type of student that may teach are PhD students, and they are limited to laboratory demonstration/tutorial type of teaching. This is hugely different from UCT, where I had 2nd years teaching me in 1st year, and whole courses taught by PhD students. I think these restrictions exist for three reasons:

Academic Staff-to-Student Ratio - The UK is awash with graduates (by comparison to South Africa), and so they have the gownpower (that's what I'm calling academic human resources from now on) to support policies that require a high level of qualification to teach.
Anxiety around fee increases - in the last few years an undergraduate education has become increasingly expensive (up to £9000 p.a. for UK students or R130k!) in this country. The politics behind it are quite involved, but a careful look at the age voting demographics of the UK is quite revealing. The knock-on effect is that universities have recognised that with higher fees comes higher scrutiny from the students.
On balance, I think having most of your primary teaching being done by people who not only have higher qualifications, but also have chosen to be academics leads to better quality instruction. Before you pelt me with virtual peanuts, note that I said on balance - I'm sure everyone has special examples of brilliant student who taught them everything they know and incoherent, grey-haired academics who got Ohm's Law wrong.

I've demonstrated (well, walked around and asked probing questions) to 1st and 2nd year Electrical Engineering undergrads, as well as those Information and Electronic Engineering programme (a lot like the one I did) doing laboratories in analogue and digital electronics, including a bit of microcontrollers. The laboratories are intense - the complexity of the 2nd year tasks approaches what I consider to be the level of basic 4th year projects at UCT (although the Imperial students are obviously given fairly detailed instructions), and the students normally have 20 hours in the laboratory over 2 weeks to get a task done and written up. To give you a flavour - a first year electrical engineering lab was to build an Operational Amplifier from various individual transistors - I didn't understand them when I learnt about them in 2nd year, never mind build one! But of course, now I do.

Another type of teaching has been technical presentation skills for 1st year students. The best way to learn public speaking is practice, so the 1st year EEEs do two presentations on a technical topic of their choice to five of their colleagues. And my job as the tutor is to facilitate feedback from themselves, their colleagues, and of course, throw in my own two cents where appropriate. I think this format works really well, and I wonder if it wouldn't work in other contexts too - I'm thinking projects where you do internal evaluations, as well as between groups.

The final type of teaching I do at Imperial is marking, which I must admit I enjoy the least. I think its because you're removed from the student (but not their handwriting), and so the feedback loop feels incomplete. I rely a lot on body language as a gauge when instructing someone (there are three basic states: I am a learning from you, o wise one; um, sort of getting it; oh God, please go away). Luckily the GTA training impressed upon me how much students rely on marked feedback (who doesn't like seemingly objective validation in quantitative form?), so I do at least try.

The second type of teaching I do is quite a departure from the above - I'm a camp leader or councillor (the more correct, American term, I think) at the Fire Tech Camp. Fire Tech Camp was started by +Jill H, when she was looking for an (information) technology-centric holiday programme for her kids and she couldn't find one. So she reacted by starting her own one. And it turns out that this was something that people were looking for, because the response has been pretty overwhelming (and mentions in the Guardian and a popular online parenting site).

There was a one week Spring camp in April, during which I taught cellphone (mobile phones here in the UK) app development. Before you get worried that we were exposing our campers to the horrors of Xcode and Android toolchains, we used the Appshed platform which is mostly drag and drop (and created by a fellow South African). The nifty thing about this platform is that you're actually making HTML5 websites targeted at mobile devices that look apps - this means that the portability between devices is pretty good, and the infrastructure overhead is low (you just need a browser on the phone).

And another nice feature about the platform is that its all online, so I can show off some of my "campers" creations: Manga-photo booth app, Historical Map App and an Adventure Game (this is just a few notable points along the spectrum). The group I was working with were preteens (12-13 years old), which suited me, as the youngest I've taught before this was 14/15 years olds. I quite enjoyed this age group - they often still have the curiosity and interest of younger children, but a bit of the "challenge everything" mindset of the teenage years is starting to creep in. I remember a particularly interesting conversation I had with the young man who made the Historical Maps app after he found the Flat Earth Society's site.

This made me both happy and sad - sad because it forced me to do a miles-to-kilometre conversion, which no one enjoys (I times by 1.5 and then add 10%), happy because it reminded me of the time I slept in the Two Oceans when I was small. It was organised, I swear.

We took good advantage of our location (Imperial College) and went on an outing to the Science Museum which I realised that I haven't spent nearly enough time in (my Dad told me that he used to go almost every lunch time). On this topic, the Alan Turing exhibit is particularly good and ending soon - I really liked the interactive display about the three fundamentals of programming (variables, conditions and jumps/loops which I'm sure no one is wondering). The Google Web Lab is also pretty cool, and worth a visit both online and in person.

One of my charges, covered in Shaving Cream. We were about to throw potato chips at him. Don't let it be said that I'm a disengaged tutor.

Another one after being "chipped". Or "crisped" as they would say in this country. You can see +Genevieve Smith-Nunes, the head teacher, in the background.

The kids playing on the Queen's Lawn at Imperial (you can see the base of the Queen's Tower on the left and the library on the right). It was surprising how many faculty and students joined in the ball games. Security eventually chased us (and the faculty and students) back inside. As much as things have changed from pre-primary school, things have staid the same.

You're probably wondering about the Summer Camp part of all of this - I'm about to start teaching a whole month (this blog post has been part of my preparations): two weeks of Apps, a week of Games Development (using Gamesalad, which has academic papers written about it and everything) and a week teaching a teen hardware course, which I developed.

I'm particularly excited about the teen hardware course, which I think I'm fairly justified in calling my course. My main inspiration comes from the Arduino Starter kit which is at the centre of the course, as well as the Cyber-Physical Systems work of Edward Lee at Berkley (I really recommend his and Seshia's textbook on the topic which is free online). The main thrust of my approach is use both the simplicity of the Arduino platform as well as its tight coupling to the "real" world to teach the fundamentals of imperative programming. The fancy engineering buzzword term for second part of my approach is called cyber-physical systems, although when I learnt about it was called embedded systems.

My theory is that the simplicity, as well as the real world feedback (LEDs turning on, motors spinning, buttons providing inputs) will pear down the process down to its bare essentials, and so convey the fundamentals of algorithmic problem solving using computing devices in an easily discernible context. I believe that too often we learn to use computers in a very particular context (fancy-typewriter-on-desk-with-TV-attached), and our overly-active association forming abilities come up with some strange ideas about how they work ("it doesn't like me today" or "I turned it on without my shoes on"), and more worryingly, we misunderstand their capabilities. Oh, and as a useful side-effect, the campers learn basic electronics, and the fundamental relationship between electricity as an information conveying phenomenon and computing as a useful mathematical abstraction. Or, at least I hope they do!

I'm going to end by extending my previous point to the whole camp - I think this sort of teaching activity is important because its about creating more engaged attitudes towards information technology. The motivation for parents to send their kids to these camps is varied, I'm sure. However, I know that my motivation is pointing out to the kids that we have these amazing machines that help us think, and if we all could use them even a little more ably we would all be a lot better off. Scientia Potentia Est and all that.

The past 6 months - Part II (Dec,2012 - March,2013)

2013-07-16T17:20:00.001+01:00

So, its only taken 3 months to get round to Part II. I should be retiring around the time I've covered my 20s (don't panic, I don't plan on keeping a blog for my whole life).

So the first hurdle in getting home turned out to be leaving London with the required documentation. In the lead up to departure, everything went very smoothly. Too smoothly. Bags were packed and weighed, and even with quite a few "do-you-minds", I was well within the 30kgs that Emirates allow. I dually set off for Gatwick, far to the South (i.e. beyond the tube network). And arriving with a good half hour to spare, I nonchalantly walked up to the check-in desk and handed in my passport. I think I've done this enough times now that I don't really pay attention to what's going on. So it took quite a bit of waving from the lady behind the desk to catch my eye, so that she could ask if I was a female South African with the initials R and S.

Normally people would be confused by this sort of question, but in that instant I knew straight away what had happened. Both of our green, slightly waxy South African passports were in our safe, which itself is safe in our flat (its recursive). One was inside a folder of important documents, another was on top of said folder. I, of course, took the one on top. And didn't check it. And here I was, with 45 minutes to go from the check-in cutoff and an hour and half train journey away from home with the wrong passport. I contemplated trying to bluff my way through - I have the hips for it. The fact that I hadn't shaved made me decide against it, and of course, my partner in crime would have to try the same when she left the country. And let's face it - she just doesn't look 25.

So I was going to have to get another flight. A slight wrinkle was that according to Emirates rules, I had to leave the UK on that day and there was only one flight left that was getting rather full. One of the people at the ticket desk seemed to be edging towards consigning me to Christmas eleven thousand kilometres from home and summer (summer was closer, but you know what I mean). I expressed my dissatisfaction with this potential outcome several times, with an increasingly wild look in my eyes. Luckily, an older airline employee spotted the point in the not so distant future where a strongly worded letter would arrive at the Emirates head office, and decided to take things down a different path. So I was booked to leave slightly later, from Heathrow. Heathrow and Gatwick are both airports that service London, in the same way that UCT and Stellenbosch are both universities in Cape Town. Oh, and I got to pay a rather hefty administration fee. But at least I still got to go home.

Besides the administration fee, and the panicked bus trip from Gatwick to Heathrow (I was panicking due to a rather tight timetable, the bus driver seemed pretty relaxed, which in turn made me more anxious), there was both an up and downside to this little escapade. The downside is that I got to spend 19 hours in Dubai airport - I have plenty to say about Dubai airport, and the UAE more generally, but I'm probably going to have travel through there in the future, so I'll confine myself to commenting on the upside of my little escapade: I got to return the passport I had taken in error to its rightful owner. As I hadn't been expecting to see her for 2 weeks, that was quite nice.

Home

And so, in early December 2012 I found myself home again. It was great. I got to spend time with my family and friends, buy 24 beers for £10 and generally relax in a way that I hadn't for over year. A notable highlight was my parents' and the person-who's-passport-I-stole combined birthday - I think Simon's Town is still recovering. There were also some good chats over whiskey of varying quality. The underlined bit will be apparent to those to which it applies.

Something I really liked was that coming back after a year meant that people had really time to get stuff done. Buildings had been built, more road resurfaced (I'm thinking of the Muizenberg-Kalk Bay-Fish Hoek stretch). Another cool experience was that due to my rather limited perception of the world. My mental universe extends about 50m around me on a good day (with a few notable exceptions), so as far as I was concerned a lot of the people I was seeing and talking to had been stuck in time. So I often had this amazing sense of depth as my imagination had to catch up.

Besides having mind altering experiences I had to keep myself busy - I applied my many years of Electrical Engineering education in changing my mom's shop's Christmas lights from bulbs to LEDs. Almost certainly the most useful thing I've done with the training so far. And I organised my research group's Christmas party remotely. Since I did this mostly from the stoep, looking at the view above, I didn't mind missing the actual dinner too much.

My mom proudly presented me with my junior school badge when I came home. I think I lost it when I was about 12.

Josie, our mountain-rescue cat hadn't really moved where I had left her a year before. To be clear she was rescued from the mountain. Reports of her rescuing people from the mountain are unconfirmed.

Blue-o-tron, my alarm clock/terminator kept things in order while I was in Singapore.

But alas, a few short weeks later I was setting off for Dubai again. However, rather than heading North West from there, I went East. I was visiting +Nachiket in Singapore to work on our Graph Machine research. What is the Graph Machine, I hear the crickets ask? Well, you'll just have to wait for a hypothetical future post where I'll wax lyrically about it. Or the Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Singapore is really good for a visit, especially when you have a good host that takes you to great restaurants. As someone who takes an unhealthy interest in delicious foods of various sorts, trust my endorsement of the Smorgasbord of food on offer. Of course, food from the far East and South Asia was at the forefront. The Korean BBQ particularly sticks in the memory. Oh, and this amazing Indian-Chinese fusion food. And the noodles. Oh, the noodles. I'll have to do another post just about the Singapore food. I also have some cool photos that will need more explanation.

Too soon it was back to London. If I remember correctly, it was 30 degrees centigrade with considerable humidity in Singapore, and of course it was 30 degrees Fahrenheit (-1) back in London. This was not a freak occurrence - early January turned out to be bloody cold (as was February, March, April, May and June). Of note was the considerable amount of snow that fell. I was even moved to enter the Hyde Park Relays with my research group, which is an annual relay competition in Hyde Park (it has one of those useful labelled events). I did drag the team average down somewhat, but luckily my supervisor (!?!) recovered things somewhat. Look, the statistics in that last sentence were dubious, but just go with it.

Hyde Park Relays - our team, the NAND Flashes didn't actually do that badly. In the race that is, nominatively, I think we were on shaky ground.

I found the Movember headquarters in Camden. This tells you everything you need to know about the both the concept and the place, really.

The Queen's Tower at Imperial withstanding a barrage of snow. I don't have a lot of experience with snow, so I think it was a barrage.

The Square in the Middle of London House being layered in snow. The College Great Hall fills in as background. Yes, we have a Great Hall.

Jelly beans for those with a systemic bent.

Another reason for my winter madness was that I was all alone - my favourite Historian was doing research in the exotic locale of Pietermaritzburg (which has a surprisingly detailed Wikipedia article). Live as a bachelor in London has its perks (you can purchase and eat so many different types of cheese in the middle of night), but it can be a lonely existence. It did give me a chance to work on my stews - The secret seems to be beer and whatever I can find in the spice draw. Luckily Imperial kept me pretty busy during January and February - I have been working on a lot of GPU coding for my research using OpenCL and doing plenty of teaching (poor undergrads).

A narrow cobbled street with a mini parked on it. This is as about as English as you get.

Seriously cool castle in Wales

A train moonwalking in Wales. Other people would say reversing, but I know what it was trying to do.

However eventually I managed to prove myself more interesting (and less crazy) than Pietermaritzburg, and finally I felt like I was getting into the swing of 2013 (two actual months into it). We had a brief sojourn to North Wales, to Pwllheli (pronounced Pick-Welly with a "g") with a couple of friends. Between the rugged coastline and enough sheep to shake a stick at it, it was a complete break from London. But then it was back to the big smoke.

Next up: corrupting the youth - my new job at FireTech Camp, and the summer benefits challenge!

This past 6 months - Part I (Aug. 2012 - Nov. 2012)

2013-04-21T23:40:00.003+01:00

As I rewrite this post, while sighing like a bellows, I reflect on our capricious relationship with information technology. In promising us much in terms of capability, it does put us in a position to confront our own limitations. In my particular, and most recent case, that limitation manifest as an inability to understand how the Blogger platform works, especially the save function. As I head towards the midway point in PhD in Computer Engineering, this does give me some cause for concern. So assume that the earlier version was far wittier, and it is now sadly sitting on a Google server somewhere waiting to get overwritten.

Anyways, enough philso-whining - this post is part of a set that should catch up what I've been doing for the past 6 months. If I'm feeling inspired, or more likely, need to procrastinate, I might do individual posts on topics of special interest, but for now this flying tour will have to do...

The statue of David Hume in Edinburgh - what an oke, wearing a toga in 18th century Scotland.

So way back in the distant days of late August, last year, we headed off to Edinburgh on a really early train for the last weekend of the famous festival. As it was coming to end of several weeks of fairly intensive partying (the city grows by a quarter of a million during the festival), there was a hysterical feel to the atmosphere. It had the feel of a toddler's birthday party at about 4pm, when parent and child blood-sugar levels are synchronising at inverse extremes. This being said, Edinburgh is a lovely city, and no amount of soggy and increasingly desperate show adverts could quite hide its charm.

Our primary reason was to see my Dad perform in the Military Tattoo, but we also caught a few shows on the fantastic festival fringe (ha, alliteration with fs). The best was probably a comedienne who was once a Jehovah's Witness, but then got out of the unwanted magazine distribution business. Another highlight of the trip was lunch on the Sunday, as the cafe we wandered in to turned out to be a conceptual art installation. I quite enjoyed myself, but Rebecca, being someone who doesn't appreciate any funny business when it comes to food (except for ice-cream that's been arranged as a face), did not.

Panorama of Oslo harbour, including the newish Opera House. Bet you were expecting a picture of a fjord.

No sooner did I get back from Edinburgh, but I set off for Oslo, in Norway for an academic conference - the perk that everyone uses to justify postgrad/a career in academia. I was quite excited too, because Scandinavia, and Norway in particular is well know for Getting Things Right. My visit tends to make me agree - people seemed pretty content with their lot, they felt skaam about that madman who attacked those children (indicating to my mind a sense of communal responsibility) and they had trains, trams, buses and an underground system for a city of little over a million. The sights that I really remember are the amazing murals in the City Hall (where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded) and the boat cruise we took for the conference dinner. I suspect Oslo might get its own post.

The conference itself, the International Symposium on Field Programmable Logic (FPL) was pretty interesting. It is one of the better conferences for reconfigurable computing, which if you've spoken to me over the past few years, is a topic that I've almost certainly bored you with. My short paper, that was presented as a poster, seemed to be well received, which if anything, suggests that I shouldn't initiate my plan to run away and join the circus quite yet.

Shameless selling-out in cake form at the Edvard Munch Museum. I had to buy it to spare others from it.

The majestic beachfront at Brighton. You have to admire the people who sell holiday packages to visit here.

After returning from Oslo, I tried (in futility) to get some PhD work done. Teaching work started picking up again, and there, as always, were some pretty cool distractions in and around London. Of note was a trip that we took to Brighton, being the +2s for a parental conference. Its an "interesting" town - far more stuff happens here and there are far more good restaurants than you would expect for somewhere of its size. But given its proximity to London (and the number of people I've met who commute to and from it daily) suggest that it plays happy host to many people that just needed to get the hell out of London. Or who like seaside Ferris wheels and antique, yet functioning electric railways (Brighton's seaside one is the oldest in the world).

One of the cows that give us hundreds-and-thousands flavoured ice cream near Kings Cross. Presumably it was touring London for publicity purposes.

My cousin's +Sean's rather cool birthday cake

Some fish appeared in the lab. And then they disappeared. Not quite sure, but we might be having a Philadelphia Experiment situation, except with goldfish.

The College name and badge. The name is perfect for a collection of potentially angsty postgrads.

But soon mid-September was upon us, and it was time for us to move into Goodenough College. Goodenough will definitely get its own post, but its basically a place where international postgrads who are studying in London can stay. If you're considering doing a postgraduate degree at a London institution (or you'll be based in London), consider staying here. Strongly consider staying. This being said, its a fairly "unique place" - the founder (Sir Frederick Goodenough) was very much inspired by the Oxbridge College system, so I imagine the nature of the community life is similar to that sort of place. Which is not everyones' cup of tea, to use an extremely appropriate colloquial phrase.

Comings and Goings at William Goodenough House (our new home!)

But this was all in the back of our minds while we faced the immediate challenge of moving our Londonly possessions from Ealing (in the West), through central London, to Bloomsbury where the College is located. We took a smaller load using the tube, which provoked: a) stares from the tourists and b) outright disgust from the Londoners. We then travelled back to Ealing to meet our man-in-a-van, which we found on Gumtree. Sometimes you can find great stuff on classified sites at a really reasonable price. We got a nutter with a large vehicle who spent a significant part of the trip trying to renegotiate our previously agreed upon rate. Although actually from a bargaining point of view, when he had all of our stuff in his van, he did somewhat have the upper hand, so maybe he wasn't as crazy as his conspiracy theories would suggest. But we made it in the end without having to part with too much extra, and got down to the business of settling into our new studio flat.

These people thought it was a terrible idea to move using the tube.

Our stuff - the view from the curb.

The quad outside our flat. And my thumb. There is also a really nice fountain just out of the frame, which really reflects on my poor photography skills.

Our noticeboard, in need of postcards. For all you youngsters out there, its sort of like a real-world Facebook wall. And posting to it involves the actual postal service.

As mentioned before, there is quite an active community life at the College, meaning that there are tonnes of activities, either arranged by the staff or the members of the College themselves. To start it all off, we had an orientation week where we found out the rules: "( 1) Don't think that you've come up with a new joke about the name. You haven't. 2) Refrain from putting strange things in your toaster, you'll set off the fire alarm, etc.)", took a party cruise on the Thames (no one fell in, which was pretty surprising) and learnt about a million peoples' names.

And most importantly, we got to know who we were living with for the next year. The great thing about living in a community of people doing postgraduate degrees is that you are all going through the same general process. The terrible thing is that you are all going the same process with every possible variations, usually far more impressive than your own. So you think your PhD is hard? Imagine having to perform bits of it on a regular basis. To an audience. With a view to entertaining them. Or having to worry that the records you need don't exist. Or that your work will put you in physical danger, because you need to talk to people that more sensible people make a point of avoiding. It certainly makes me think twice before complaining about a vendor tool installation. I mean I will still complain, but at least I've thought twice about it.

The Goodenough Faith Demographic Flag (one of the above-mentioned welcome activities). The little white flags had atoms on them. I took this to indicate support for a nuclear-renewable mix, and put one proudly in Cape Town.

The London Eye during the boat trip. If I remember correctly, at this point it was being lit according to Twitter mood sentiment. I'm glad that the artificial intelligentsia are finding good uses for their natural language processing techniques.

A view of the clock-tower of the Palace of Westminster, during our opportunity to peak behind the curtain (of the British Government).

Getting ready for cycling. The blue and white colour scheme was deliberate, in case the British cycling team needs me to step in.

After a month or so of settling into Bloomsbury, my now close proximity to South Kensington (5kms or so) made cycling an attractive option as a way to get to Imperial - never mind the danger to other London road users. However two things really made my new form of commuting possible:

An urban cycling lesson organised by my friend and London cycling-evangelist, +Christopher Redl and the Borough of Camden. It was given by an instructor who was a bike messenger (a surprisingly large and varied subculture), which means I learnt all sorts of useful tricks such as keeping your hands on the brake and don't stand when pedalling hard (it raises your centre of Gravity, making the physics of over-the-handlebars very attainable).
The Barclays Bicycle Hire Scheme. The name pretty much says it all - you pay money, you get to ride the bike for a limited amount of time. You lose the bike, and you pay an inordinate amount. More interestingly, here is a pretty cool article about a visualisation someone created of the first 5 million hires done using the scheme. I'm basically travelling from Kings Cross in the North West to the just South of Hyde Park, in the Middle.

The counter-intuitive thing is that its cheaper and quicker than the tube and quicker than the bus. Although it is weather dependent - cycling through snow is not fun! Well, actually cycling in the clothes you wear in snow is not fun.

My chariots await. Well, my chariots for hire await.

And as winter bit in, the anniversary of my arrival in the UK fast approached. Beyond sentimentality, this had practical implications - I had a return ticket that expired after exactly a year. So on 2 December, 2012 (365 days after I arrived), I was homeward bound! But Cape Town, redux will have to wait for Part II.

Homeward bound. After nearly missing my flight (more details in the next post), I had to consider alternatives.

So many photos! (part 3)

2012-08-25T08:33:00.001+01:00

I've summoned up the energy to finish off my multi-post, photographic tour of the last few months (posts 1 and 2 in case you missed them). The setting for my post writing is special - rather than having our normal Saturday morning lie-in (as opposed to the normal weekday lie-in), Rebecca and I are heading North. To Edinburgh in particular, just for the weekend to see a bit of the famed festival(s) (for South African readers, think the Grahamstown festival, just on a citywide scale and less parochial). So I'm writing on a train speeding through the English countryside.

Early in August, I went to the 5th day of the 1st test match of the South African cricket tour to the England with a few labmates. We (I use the 1st person plural because I'm an important part of the South African cricket team) were playing at the rather intimate ground of the Oval, in Vauxhall (just South of the Thames). It was a fantastic day, not in the least because I had had several beers by lunchtime and we won by tea, but also because it was the first cloudless day I've experienced in London in the 9+ months I've been living here.

The Oval, site of the great recent test cricket victory for SA!

A little later in the month, we (Rebecca, her mom and I, not the South African cricket team) visited the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Gardening is a compulsive activity for the British, and so the gardens were pretty spectacular. There were plants from all over the world, as in the Empire days, in addition to claiming territories willy-nilly, the British tended to painstakingly collect samples of the local flora and fauna and send it home to feed the aforementioned gardening addiction. So in a way, I suppose it was the Middle Class crack of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century.

One of the more interesting things at Kew was an exhibit of David Nash's sculptures in situ, including several works in progress. I'm not wild about land art (if you'll excuse the pun), as I can't shake the feeling its people prancing about imposing their will upon the landscape around them (sort of like property developers, but presumably less cologne), but I quite liked his work, which used trees which had come to the end of their natural life. So I suppose that makes it Vegan Art of some sort?

Japanese Pergoda in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Made of brick, naturally.

The Lion of England, guarding one of the Kew greenhouses.

Another notable outing was to the Great British Beer Festival, again with my lab mates. In addition to lots of good (and cheap!) fine ales and ciders, there were all sorts of "pub" like (read heartburn inducing) foods. Needless to say, many glasses were drunk as we addressed important issues such as minimalist child care (one of the okes had visiting nephews and nieces), the sustainability of many Open Source projects (they tend to have one person serving as the consistency and coordination mechanism) and various strategies for the colonisation of Mars. Many of us would seriously consider the one-way trip option, but agreed that a brewery would have to be established on the Red Planet.

My "tasting" glass at the Great British Beer Festival.

Panoramic shot of the Beer festival at Olympia. So much beer! And Cidar!

Finally a weekend or two ago, with a fine evening in the offing, we set up for a walk down the South Bank of London. There was plenty of 2012 /& Event beginning with an "O"-related activities. Outside the National Theatre we enjoyed a great, open air comedy performance. It was based around a bar and its staff, so at first we just thought it were some rather eccentric barmen, but after a while we realised that its not normal to juggle bottles of spirits while making cocktails.

Never thought I would find a beach in London. On the South Bank of the Thames.

Sign near the Albert Bridge, one of the worlds first suspension bridges. Its also bright pink!

So that brings me roughly up to date, and hopefully I wont fall so far behind again. At some point in the future I suppose I should write something about what I've been working on in the past while - it has after all kept me from this blog. I've also recently installed Google Analytics on the blog (and my academic website), as I was rather suspicious of the thousands of visits I was receiving from North America, but I think the data will be of interest. This all being said, I'm quite pleased to note that visits from IE6 browsers are down.

So many photos! (part 2)

2012-08-18T22:04:00.000+01:00

So as things swung round to June, and the brief flaring of the English summer turned out to be cruel joke on the part of the British meteorological deities. However we got ready for what was promised by Tesco to be the Greatest Summer ever, provided the appropriate pre-cooked "party" meats were bought. I didn't need to be persuaded of this claim. Rebecca, however, remains to be convinced as to the necessity of 50 mini-cocktail sausages in one go. So I've written to the Tesco headoffice with regards to her lack of conviction, and look forward to their response.

But it wasn't only Tesco that was getting in on the fact that the event beginning with an "O" and the Diamond Jubilee were happening within several months of each other. As my resident historian tells me, there is a strong link between Nationalism and Capitalism in Britain, and everyone was determined to make several shiny pounds off both affairs. Unfortunately this resulted in a race to the bottom scenario with regards to kitsch uses of the colours Red, White and Blue, half century old stereotypes and corgis.

Sadly, these are not as much of a novelty item as you would hope.

In the build up to the Jubilympics, the okes in my lab started getting patriotic.

And my cousins got into the spirit of things too. Actually it was an excuse to have a braai, but close enough.

We largely kept our heads down and didn't talk to anyone on the Tube, thus not giving away our foreign extraction. This wasn't because our accents would give us away (they expect South Effricans to sound lyk dis here), but rather talking to anyone on the tube would immediately identify you as someone who hasn't been inducted into the shroud of silence that is in effect on all public transport in London. In the case of the Underground, I like to think this is because the air supply is limited and everyone is doing their bit to conserve air. But to be honest I think its a holdover from the war, when loose lips might have sunk ships.

On the actual Jubilee weekend we went to Putney Bridge to watch some of the boats assemble for the great Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant. It was pretty rainy and miserable so we prudently retired to the safety of my sister's flat to observe proceedings from afar.

In early July, we managed to get away from London and spend a weekend at a friend's grandparents' place in West Sussex. It made a really big difference to be away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and it helped me to understand why the landed gentry kept their country homes. The gentry, being incredibly thoughtful, provided "holiday"programmes for poor city workers to come to the country, and work some more. And to think the Conservative Party resists being labelled as such...

Leopard-print is really in. Spotted in rural Sussex. A rather weak pun, especially after the first joke.

An idealyic English countryside scene (also Sussex) with a picturesque herd of llamas in the background. Llamas.

Some chalky cliffs in Sussex, closer to the seaside.

Back in London, it was back to work, although it was holidays now, and so the scrutiny of supervisors was a bit more intense. Plenty of time was still found to visit the park though, on the odd day of nice weather. I also produced some more deckchair graphs, which I'll add these when I'm back in my Mac OS partition. These were in aid of putting in a paper for a conference called ASPLOS, which is probably way beyond my competency, but maybe my frantic (metaphorical) hand waving will sneak past the reviewers.

Showing off the panoramic setting on my phone. This is my local park, Gunnersbury, as featured in an earlier post.

The highlight of the month was definitely attending the Royal Regatta at Henley-On-Thames for a day. We were lucky enough to be sitting right at the finish line, in Phyllis Court, a country club conveniently located on the banks of the river. This did necessitate wearing smart pants (trousers!), a tie and blazer at all times. As it was a Friday, I, of course, wore my old boys tie.

Spiffy!

Unfortunately sitting at the end of the 2.112km long course meant that most races were decided by the time they got to us, but still it was good to be there and soak in the atmosphere. The cream tea served was also much appreciated - sitting in a deck chair watching rowing is quite hunger-inducing.

Panoramic shot of the river during the regatta.

Phyllis Court, our viewing "spot" for the rowing

The gentry observing the races.

Another occurrence over the summer has been the renovation of our offices/labs. This has caused some grumbling, as its been quite disruptive at times. That being said, its probably been a good idea to get us to move everything around - as anyone in academia knows, some pretty weird stuff accumulates in offices over time...

This is a weird story. When clearing out our lab for renovations, we found a signed picture of Jennifer Aniston. We imagine the accompanying restraining order probably had more sentimental value.

Towards the end of July, Rebecca and I decided to visit Brick Lane, famous for its curries and hipster infestation. Its quite a weird collection of restaurants and exhibition "spaces" (old shops that they're too lazy to furnish), but there are some bargains to be had. I also learnt that there are a surprising number of curry cuisine trade magazines, as indicated by the number of "curry restaurant of the year 2012" awards that almost every place seems to have won. Its clearly a very competitive industry to have such a diversity of distribution of awards too.

A restaurant on the famous brick lane. The South African cuisine revolution has begun! I blame Masterchef SA (I heard it was awful).

I seem to have misplaced my chin. But mostly true.

I'm getting tired, so there's going to have to be a part 3, I'm afraid. No guarantees about how long until it will be up, but maybe I'll feel inspired. Well, just past the midway point between apathetic stupor and inspired.