Dublin and Norwich

The past two weekends have been spent away, with Lotte assisting Bill to teach workshops in Dublin and Norwich. The photo is actually from Dublin, although you wouldn't necessarily know it. The group was really fantastic and learnt an awful lot in two days. The workshop in Norwich was very different -- part of a swing, tango and salsa "fusion" weekend. It had mixed success in the sense that their was a lot of learning but not much actual fusion between the different dance styles. I took part in a tango class and marvelled at the technical skills of the teachers. The fundamental concepts were very similar to Lindy Hop, but more emphasis was put on keeping everything on one level in tango instead of "sinking into the floor". When I took a step I was warned about "collapsing" my legs. I didn't take part in many classes however. For the most part, I did my own thing at these weekends. In Dublin this consisted of finishing my thesis and watching The Da Vinci Code on my laptop, as well as getting a good look around town. The city is beautiful, and the wide suburban expanse by the bay reminded me of home.

In Norwich the experience was quite unusual. We were staying at Bylaugh Hall (pronounced Beela Hall), an amazing restoration in progress of a rural mansion that was requisitioned during WWII by the RAF. There are still all kinds of temporary wartime structures such as bomb shelters standing near the house, all overgrown with vines and rusting. The building itself had become decrepit before restoration work started 6 years ago, and when you walk through some of the partly restored areas you can still see dead vines clinking to the pillars. It's now used as an arts and culture venue, and is hired out regularly for weddings and parties. We were treated to gourmet dining and luxury accommodation, all of which was very much appreciated after a hard slog for both of us. Lotte's been invited to teach with Bill on a more permanent basis in Europe, with the next set of workshops in a couple of months.

Another podcast

I forgot to mention that I recorded another presentation and posted it as a podcast on The Zotcast recently. Check it out.

It's finished.

Phew. A long journey has finally come to an end. The work for my MA I began in 1997 (yes, 9 years ago) has been completed with the finalisation of my thesis. If you're curious, you can read it here: The roles actors perform. Of course, I could still crash and burn if the examiners don't like it, but I live in hope. I'm just happy it's over!

Ice creams in front of Kings

Ko and Pascal visited us earlier this month, but this photo of them eating ice creams with Lotte in front of Kings College didn't make it off my phone until yesterday.

Meet the Parents

Last weekend Lisa, Mum and Dad headed over to Paris for a few nights before heading to Prague, and then on to Switzerland and Holland. Lotte and I picked up Mum and Dad at the airport in Amsterdam while Lisa visited her old friends Jean-Pierre and Christine in Switzerland. One of the aims was for Mum and Dad to meet Lotte's Mum in Zeeland, so we hired a car and headed down for the day.

Mum, Dad and Lisa in England

Captain Simon in Cambridge

Another Zotcast?!

Today I discovered there's actually another Zotcast, at a site called MacZot, which is giving away one of my favourite Mac Applications, SubEthaEdit by CodingMonkeys. I also learnt that SubEthaEdit gets its name from HHG2TG, also a favourite of mine:
"It's from Douglas Adams' a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The reporters of the guide submit their entries using the SubEthaNet (interestingly enough the Ethernet wasn't yet available in time of writing of the HHGG) - therefore we named our editor SubEthaEdit in honor of Douglas Adams' great work." How weird is that?

My first Podcast

I created a podcast of a presentation I did at CARET last week. You can view it on The Zotcast.

"Brainport" turns tongues into eyes

This is amazing. ABC News is reporting that scientists are looking at the use of a specialised device that allows you to see using sensors connected to your tongue. "By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish." While the research seems to be focused on military uses, they've also found that it can allow a blind person to catch a ball, and might be useful in treating vestibular disorders. "In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics." Read more.

Rollercoaster Month

A lot has happened since my last post -- some good, some not so good. People have been asking me to update, so I'll try to summarise the biggest news here. Sorry if this post is short, and I hope to post more regularly soon. First of all, we received the extremely sad news that my sister Kirsty lost her baby, Matilda. We felt the distance between Australia and the UK more keenly over that period than we have before, and it was upsetting not to be able to be at the service.

Some good news after that however, when I asked Lotte to marry me and she said yes! The entire story about the proposal will have to wait for now, but it was a wonderful day, and we're planning for a big engagement party in October in Utrecht, and a wedding about a year later in Melbourne. Mum and Dad then decided they'd push their UK visit forward to May, so we were starting to feel a bit more positive about things. Then more sadness: we got the news that Lotte's mum is ill and will need an operation in early May, so we're currently making plans to be in Holland for her recovery. However the initial signs are good, which is a big relief. For Lotte and I, life goes on and we're both fine and looking forward to Mum and Dad's visit.

Devil of a Holiday

The weekend in Hamburg was terrific. We had possibly the best Lindy hosts in the entire world, Arne and Fabian, who made sure to check with us on our breakfast preferences before we left, and then greeted us with a smile on arrival in Hamburg. They have a really interesting, large apartment at the top of a very steep spiralling staircase in a building in a handy part of the city. Hopefully they will get to Cambridge (or maybe even Melbourne?) one day so that we can return the favour. Lotte had a baptism of fire into the international lindy hop teaching world, with 12 hours of teaching over 2 days assisting Bill. The advanced classes were quite a decent level, so she had her work cut out for her, and she did an amazing job. At the end of the weekend they had them in the palm of their hands, and the students were all starting to really get it. I enjoyed the opportunity of a weekend with no responsibilities apart from doing a bit of DJing and having fun. I also met a DJ with perhaps the most astounding collection of beautiful swing music I've ever met -- Swingin' Swanee. This woman is a professional, and it shows. Bill, Ellen and I took her on in the DJ Battle and never stood a chance. I heard she owns around 4,000 albums, most of which were in her personal vinyl collection. She has only fairly recently started using CDs to DJ. I highly recommend getting hold of her CD collections Wild Party, Devil's Holiday, and That's Rhythm from Ceraton.

Frozen Hamburgers

This weekend we're off to Hop In The Spring in Hamburg, Germany. It looks like a fun weekend, but I'm wondering a bit about the name. It's below freezing in Hamburg right now, and the forecast is for snow, snow/rain, and snow. That doesn't sound like spring to me. This is sure to be a test of my not-very-snow-friendly shoes, especially because they will be doubling as my dance shoes. Hmmm...

First day on the job

Had a bad day at work? A friend sent me this telling example of a tough first day on the job.

Parkside

After a very sad start to the week, we were really glad to have some good news yesterday. Lotte has got a job! She'll be working as a Cover Supervisor (teaching assistant) at a fantastic school called Parkside Community College, right in the middle of Cambridge. She's overjoyed because the school is particularly good and the staff were really nice. They have a fantastic media arts programme and have dance and drama as part of the curriculum, which is what was important to Lotte. We've been looking at the website and hoping they would advertise something Lotte could apply for since before we left Australia. As if that wasn't enough, on the same day I found out I'll be getting a new Macbook Pro. Tonight our friends Simon and George are coming up to visit us from London, and we're going to celebrate Lotte's new job by going out to dinner.

Mr Squiggle

Last night we received news that our beloved cat, Mr Squiggle lost his short battle with liver cancer and passed away peacefully on Sunday. We're going to put together a collage of photos of him over the years, but for now, we've just got this page. It's very sad, but it's great to know that Squiggs was in such good care with Mum and Dad, and enjoyed his time over the past couple of months. We were fortunate that we knew he was not well before we left Australia, so we got to say our goodbyes properly. Lotte says that if he's in heaven, he's probably walking on God's pillow and waking him up at 3am. Here's to that thought.

Our first visitor

This week we played host to our first visitor -- Lotte's mum, who visited us from Holland. Happily our tiny flat seems up to the task, thanks to a newly acquired inflatable mattress. On the weekend we again had very nice weather, and we made the most of it with a long walk into town and then to Grantchester. We had lunch at The Orchard Tea Gardens. Don't be fooled by the sunny weather in the photos, it was pretty cold by the time we left and the sun was a little lower in the sky. But it was really nice sitting outside and taking in the scenery.

Goodnight and goodluck, sweetheart

We spent last weekend exhausting ourselves on the dance floor at Goodnight Sweetheart in Hertfordshire. It was a fun weekend for us because we hadn't had much dancing in a long while. The weekend included workshops from Steven & Virginie and Peter & Giselle, among others. I think my favourite thing for the whole weekend was the classes from Peter & Giselle. Really great. The huge, gigantic, spectacular World Championship Battle of the DJs turned out to be rather disappointing. Sound systems that didn't work, a strange setup, stressed organisers, and guess how many songs we played? 3! Even the final two only got to play a total of 6 songs. The winner in a very good field was Alf from Norway who did an excellent job in these difficult circumstances, I must say. He gets to buy himself a ticket to Canada (if he can afford it) as a prize. Hmmm. Still, it was great to get away for a while, and even more terrific to make some new friends and catch up with our great mate Dozka. She did us proud by making it through to the semi finals of the DJ Battle too. That's better than I did, that's for sure.

An awful lot is still going on here as we settle in. The big news for us is that Lotte's found an ad for a job that really sounds like her, so she's putting some time into preparing to apply. Keep your electronic fingers crossed, folks. She won't know for a few weeks yet how she does, though. Work here for me is going well. I've had time to get to look at some things that I know will help me in the next year, including updating my knowledge on tools for qualitative research. In the running are Nvivo 7, Atlas.ti, and a Mac-only thing called TAMS Analyzer. I'm going to try the last of these over the next short while becuase I can run it on my machine and it has a limited feature set (an advantage for my needs, perhaps).

Today jeff pointed out this demo of Multitouch (14Mb, Quicktime), a gestural interface project that looks absolutely amazing. Also see this article and this page about the project. That's exactly the sort of thing I heard Alan Kay talking about in 1994. It definitely takes a long time for these ideas to come to fruition.

Steven Hawking and Sir Humphrey

Namedropping has got to be one of the most common pastimes at Cambridge, if my first week of work here is anything to go by. On Sunday we were walking between the city centre and Granchester Meadow and I looked up to see Steven Hawking directly in front of us on the path. I only realised it was actually him right as we were walking past him, but it was incredibly cool to see him just tooling around campus. Then today we went down to the Judge Business School for my first look at an actual Cambridge class in progress. It was a role-play simulation about the privatisation of British electricity in the 1980s. But this was a role-play with a difference. They'd invited a couple of VIPs to take part, including Lord Wilson of Dinton, who played the role of Permanent Secretary to the Department of Environment. If you're a fan of Yes Minister, Permanent Secretary was the role that Sir Humphrey played in that series. The thing is, Lord Wilson was the real one. It added a certain sense of realism to the whole thing, I have to say.

The walk to work