mindspill

Columbus Pictures

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:22:20 GMT

I've uploaded some pictures of Columbus (Ohio). Now you can see for yourself how interesting the place is.

Going to see the NY Rangers!!

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:53:24 GMT

After lunch I was wandering aimlessly around the hotel, and I happened to meet a random stranger. He started talking and I started chatting with him. He was complaining that he's going to have the most boring 7 hours, packing candy for tomorrows hockey match. I pricked my ears, "what hockey match?", I asked. He told me that the blue jackets were playing, so I asked if tickets would still be available today, just 1 day before the match. He made a quick phone call to check for me, and confirmed that tickets were still available. While he was walking with me to show me where the ticket office was, I asked who they were playing. They were playing the NY Rangers! How cool is that!

The only other time I came to the States (also for a conference), I had got a ticket to see the NY rangers, even before getting to NY. That time I had a major screw-up with flights and missed the match. This time with the greatest serendipity possible, I got a ticket for tomorrows match between the Blue Jackets and the NY Rangers. Woooooohooo!!!

Guess who I met!!

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:21:34 GMT

Yes, him! He sneaked out of a seedy ally while I was walking to the hotel yesterday night after the banquet. He crept slowly from behind, jabbed me in the ribs and screamed, "LADDDDYYYYYY". Did you guess now? I met Seamus!

I had to come all the way to this godforsaken state in the US to meet him again. I think the last time I saw him was after I hooked up with the chick. There was that little story with him and bob the ghost, the one who used to live in Rathmines. Been quite a while since then. He was still 13.

Well I must say the kid is alive and well. Ok, maybe not so well, living like a parasite in the side streets of Columbus, but hey, he got here and we met. What else do you want. He found out that I was coming over and decided to make an effort to meet.

The other great thing was that Thomas Brown's lately adopted pet wasn't there. Apparently the 3 legged dog was held at customs when the two stooges tried to sneak him in the US. Now you tell me, who tries to sneak a rabbis infested, 3 legged dog in the US. I mean you can try to sneak in a bottle or two of explosive liquid, but the dog. Come on. Btw, Thomas Brown was detained too.

After all the effort Seamus went through to meet up, I couldn't even be pissed off at him. Not even after what he did. It was like the good old times. Maybe even better. He could get a Dr. Pepper here, instead of Pepsi.

We spent the night chatting away, browsing through the channels looking for an episode of family guy. At night he slept in the shower, and by morning he had already vanished again.

Hello from Ohio

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:52:27 GMT

Yesterday I arrived in Ohio for the VisWeek 2008 Conference. Just a brief hello from the conference, hopefully even though doubtfully I'll write a bit about the salient interesting points. (Note: These will only be posted in the tech section).

Updates!

Day 1

Critics in the InfoVis community

Two concerts, a Wedding and a BBQ

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:14:14 GMT

Nowadays updates are coming in batches. Ah well, I'm too busy living life instead of writing about it. This update is a bit of a diary style update, probably more interesting to me when I’m 67 then to the rest of the world. Will mindspill still be up when I’m 67?

The weekend after returning from Japan was a very eventful one. On Friday I flew to London for the best concert line-up I could ever dream of in the last 10 years. Anathema, My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost were all playing together to celebrate Paradise Lost's 20th Anniversary. The fathers of doom death metal playing together in the same gig, at the Forum in London. It was such an event that a couple of hardcore friends from home, Cyprus and Finland also came to London for the gig. We were a group of 6 dottians, 1 Finn and 1 Romanian. The concert was fantastic. I had very low expectations from Anathema and was positively surprised them. I was very surprised by My Dying Bride as they are quite peculiar live. Their stage presence is quite atypical and they played many old songs which was nice to an extent, but a bit surprising. I'm very curious to see them live again. Paradise Lost were good, but not really surprising. In the end the 3 bands came out on stage together and opened some champagne, soaking us wet since we were at the very front.

After the gig we spent the rest of the evening looking for a watering hole, but we only managed to get a single drink from the only two pubs that were open. I spent half of the night with my friends, and the other half travelling to Bratislava for a wedding. I arrived at the wedding place at 1pm and the wedding started at 2pm. Just barely had the time to pee and have a quick shower.

Slovak weddings are long. Very very long! The wedding started at 2pm and finished at 4.30am the following morning, but we only managed till 3am. There were some interesting traditions during the wedding. First, before the mass, there was a small reception and the bride and groom came to greet the guests and formally thank their respective parents. After mass at the local churc, we returned back to the hotel for the wedding dinner. We were seated at the most multilingual table, with 4 languages spoken at a time; Slovak, Hungarian (the wedding was in the Southern part of Slovakia were most people speak Hungarian), English and German.

After the starter (prosciutto crudo with parmesan shavings and melon), the waiters were carrying the soup plates and dropped one plate on purpose. All of a sudden, people rushed from their chairs and started jumping on the broken glass. Few minutes later the bride and the groom came with a broom and started sweeping the glass. (Traditionally only the groom does this). Each time they were almost finished, somebody hit their dustpan and they had to start all over again.

At midnight the bride stepped on the dance floor, and people start paying money to dance with the her. Each guest danced for a few minutes until the next paying guest took over. Traditionally, towards the end of this dance, the groom has to pay for a dance. Other guests then pay to dance with the bride, forcing the groom to up the ante for the final dance.

On Sunday I went to the in-laws to say hi, and have some delicious Slovak food. Say that I’m guided by my stomach, and you’d be saying the sacrosanct truth. I had to take a 3 hour bus at 3.30 in the morning to get back to the airport on Monday, but it was worth it. The duck, red cabbage and dumplings were delicious!

On Tuesday there was another concert. Nile came to play in a small pub in Dublin. There was an overwhelming majority of tall people at the gig, and I felt a bit like a dwarf amongst them. I enjoyed the gig even though there were some morons who threw things at the band. I never saw this happen before, and it was quite disgraceful. The band was understandably pissed off at this too.

Last Saturday we had a big BBQ in the house. A troupe of Italian friends of M, came over for a visit to Ireland, and we prepared a BBQ in their honour. Apart from the Italians we also had a German corner, and an East European corner (formed of 2 people). We supplied pork chops, chicken wings, kebabs, jacket potatoes filled with cheese and bacon, sausages, homemade pizza, bruscetta, rice salad, potato salad, leaf salad, more sausages, pineapple and melon (bbqed). In addition to this the guests got their own food too, so we ended up with loads of extra food. We probably have enough for the rest of the week. Well since summer only came in the last 2 weeks it makes even more sense to live now, before hibernating in winter.

Back from Japan

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:15:58 GMT

Yes the inevitable had to happen. I'm back from Japan. It was a wonderful holiday, everything went according to plan, and we got to see as much of Japan as possible in two weeks. We started out with a couple of days in Tokyo, then went on to climb up Mt. Fuji. Luckily the weather was cooperative on the mountain, after the torrential rain we previously had in Tokyo.

After Fuji we went to the cultural capital, Kyoto, with a side trip to Nara. From there to Hiroshima and the island of Miyajima. Finally in the end we visited Beppu in the South Island (Kyushu) and Yudanaka near Nagano to see the snow monkeys.

Hopefully I'll have some time to write a bit for meaningful comments about Japan, instead of a list of place. At the moment though I'm having a sever attack of post holiday blues.

Award in VAST 2008 Competition

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:43:40 GMT

I won an Award for the best node link animation in the VAST 2008 Competition. The competition consisted of a data set of phone calls between the families of the people running a controversial religious organisation, living on an island. The phone calls retrieved from the island's phone company, provided enough data to extract the social network of the families on the island. In addition to this, each phone record had the time of the call, the duration of the call, and the location of the cell tower from where the call was made.

The tool developed with Processing, was designed to allow easy exploration and interactive animation of a dynamic network. The network can be represented at different levels of detail. At an overview level, the whole network can be visualized using a matrix representation. From this overview, interesting detailed parts of the network can be zoomed upon, and explored, using a node-link representation. Finally, the individual nodes can be studied at an instance level.

The award was given due to the "innovative visualizations, excellent analysis, and outstanding functionality demonstrated in the visual analytic environments" shown.

P.S. Guess this explains why I was so quiet in June.

Weekend

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:17:20 GMT

I can't remember the last time I had 3 great weekends in a row. The temperature has gone over 15 degrees, which sounds a bit more like summer, so this might have something to do with it.

On Friday we went to watch a show from the Carlsberg Comedy Festival in the Iveagh Gardens. This year we saw Reggie Watts, The Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III, and Dave McSavage was the MC. Dave McSavage was probably the best comedian from the lot. I had very low expectations considering the myriad of negative comments (e.g. Dave McSavage is a terrible exuse for a human being. I feel sorry for his brother and cousin.) on his youtube videos, and his gig reviews. He's ok, but then the rest of comedians in the gig were not really up to it. At first Steppenwolf was quite difficult to understand, until a latecomer lady from the audience started harassing him. He absolutely butchered her with insults. It was quite funny for a while but then it got too aggressive and he was relentless. At the end of the gig he didn't even applaud the lady, and it seemed that he actually disliked the women. Reggie Watts is more of a talented musician then a comedian. He creates looped vocals live on stage and does it very well, appreciated though not very funny. It was quite refreshing to see something different though, especially after Steppenwolf.

Saturday morning was spent at work, then went to watch The Dark Knight in the evening. The film is such a treat that it totally made my day. More on the movie later, in the movie review post.

On Sunday we made good use of the good weather and went to Loch Dan in Wicklow. Trying to describe the walk is quite pointless, so I'll try to upload the pictures ~~sometime in the future~~ HERE. Well, it was a nice, pleasant, and relaxing walk. Finished off the day with some chicken madras from the Indian Restaurant across the road.

Birthday Party

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:57:34 GMT

Last Saturday we had a bit of a house party, formally to celebrate J's birthday, but really to have some good craic. I spent most of Saturday preparing food, assisted by my dearest house mates :) This was what we had on the menu (for my future reference):-

Main Dishes

Goulash
Rice salad (green peppers, eggs, sweetcorn, tomatoes, capers, salad cream)
Potato salad (potatoes, parsley, salad cream)
Vegetable Kebabs (Articoke hearts, feta cheese, olives, cheery tomato, peppers and cucumber)
Spicy sausages and garlic bread (backups that weren't needed)

Nibbles

Pistachios, Cashew nuts, Walnuts
Cheese Platter (5 types of cheese Mexican, Brie, Blue Cheese, Cheddar, Mount [something])
Tesco cheese crackers (They suck! Get Carr's next time)
Dips and Breadsticks
Nachos and spicy tomato dip
Crisps
Popcorn

Desserts

Coconut marshmallow balls (very popular)
Fruit Salad (pineapple, grapes, cherries, strawberries, apples, oranges, banana, pears)

The party wasn't much of a wild house party. It was more of a sit down and eat sort of party, very much like the family parties back home. The food was good, which was the most important thing in the end. The idea of preparing goulash (Slovak mother-in-law-to-be recipe) , even in the middle of the Irish summer (= dottian winter), was a good one. It was a pity that M wasn't there to join (and cook some of his masterpiece dishes), since he just left for a holiday in Italy.

More pictures of the party here

P.S. Food ideas for next time - suggestions welcome.

Stuffed Olives
Brusketta
Stuffed Mushrooms
Broad Beans
Couscous salad

Weekend break – Brittas Bay

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:51:39 GMT

After spending the last couple of weeks investigating fictious cults, the time has come to enjoy the ~~sun~~, emmmm sorry clouds. On Saturday we went to Brittas bay to celebrate J's birthday. We walked along the beach for about 2 hours, just in time to avoid the heavy downpour.

On the way back home, we passed through Wicklow village to visit Wicklow Goal (historic prison), but we missed the last tour by 10 minutes. We strolled around the village for a while and discovered the pearl of Wicklow village - Carlos the Clipper! The Miss was also here for the weekend, which might explain my less than cheerful mood. Withdrawal symptoms!

With a bit more than a month to go for the Japan holiday, there’s a lot of planning to be made. Expect to see at least a couple of posts on the subject very soon.

Tiny update - got tickets to Japan

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:28:43 GMT

I'm supposed to be writing a bit more here, but I'm kind of doing things instead. The biggest news I've got is that last Thursday I got our tickets to Japan. Yes, at last I'm going to Japan. That's by far the highlight of the month till now, probably until next weekend in Helsinki. It's Tuska time!

On a less positive note, yesterday Italy got knocked out of Euro 2008. No big surprise but still a bit disappointed considering that they lost on penalties. So now all my investment hopes are on Spain as Netherlands, Croatia and Romania are out too.