Out of the Vaults

I think my second talk yesterday went smoothly and the paper was well received. Actually all the papers were of very high quality, I'd say. I learned some interesting things from several of them and had pretty good discussions with the authors. It's a good conference whenever you can say that. I wish I were staying for a couple more days, but we're off to Prague tomorrow morning.

After the paper presentations last night we all went to Out of the Vaults, a pub, where we first played two rounds of "quiz", or trivia. Apparently it's serious business here. Questions covered Europe, science, film, and books. Some of them were fairly difficult. After two rounds we were treated to a performance by the Morrismen. Here they are dancing around with funny hats and white handkerchiefs. Good fun.

After the hay dance, or something to that effect, back to the pub for two more rounds of quiz. Then, after announcing the winners (wasn't our group; we scored a respectable 20.5 to the winners' 23 points) two guys performed some good ol' blues on a guitar and harmonica. They were excellent. But they lacked a drummer! And there was one sitting out in the audience. Pity there wasn't a kit sitting back there, I would have gladly provided accompaniment. Another conference attendee did get up and sang along with the two gents. She was very good as well and seemed to be quite comfortable on the little stage. I think I heard someone say she's done this regularly at COGAIN. With her voice, why not?

At COGAIN

Here's the speaker's setup at COGAIN. This fellow went right after me, so my talk was given in similar conditions. I think the lack of a screen was a bit of a problem: the air vents on the projection wall tend to mask out the actual slide content. Otherwise though, I think the conference is quite well organized. We had a nice PA system so I did what I like to do just prior to giving a talk: play some tunes! Today I played the Blue Hawaiians which I thought set the mood nicely. Turns out I think I like these long talks. I had no trouble going on for 50 minutes. The timer on Apple's Keynote is very helpful. I just hope that I don't speak too quickly through my second talk later this afternoon.

Walking tour of Leicester

Started the day with a walking tour of Leicester. First task was to find the conference venue, which we did after a couple of wrong turns. Turns out it's pretty much a straight shot from the hotel through the castle yard, pictured here. Right through through the southern gateway and then down a narrow street and you're on the campus of De Montfort University, the institution hosting the event.

After we found the conference building we headed out to The Shire, a shopping mall within a large pedestrian shopping district in the center of town. Lots of shops and a few cafes. Had to stop by a Starbucks for a coffee, then ventured into a few of the more interesting places.

Finally returned to Marks & Spencer to get a few snacks for the hotel room. Dinner consisted of pub grub at a nearby pub. Now it's time to iron a few shirts, maybe watch the telly and then get ready for the conference tomorrow. Should be a full day of talks. I start it off the first session and then present first in the last session.

Hotel room 2.0

A day and a half later we finally arrived in Leicester. After walking all over Schipol yesterday, from shop to shop and from cafe to cafe, I think we pretty much covered the entire airport. (For those of you who are technologically curious, my laptop is an Apple Mac with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 G RAM — I prefer the 15" display since it's large enough to work with but small enough to travel with; I think the 17" is just too unwieldy.) Unlike Memphis, we had a good dinner (pasta), prepared with simple and fresh ingredients. We flew the last 1.25 hr from Amsterdam to Birmingham in business class. We were split up and I think Core had the better seat with more legroom. I was right up against the bulkhead so a little cramped. The light snack, consisting of ham-wrapped goat cheese and three little fruit mousse balls gave us enough sustenance to stay awake for the car ride to Leicester. Had we arrived earlier we would have taken the bus/train to Leicester, which we thought would have cost us about £30. As it was, the A2B service cost me another £20. Oh well, at least it was door to door. After we unpacked, we went downstairs to relax with a glass of Guinness for Core and a Caffreys for me.

Our first room was ok to sleep in but this morning we found absolutely no cold water pressure in the bathroom. The hot water wasn't flowing terribly quickly either, so I ended up having a bath in a bout 4 inches of water. Pathetic. There was not enough pressure to drive the shower head, and what there was was scaldingly hot anyway, so a normal shower was impossible. Worst hotel plumbing I've seen in years. Corey had to skip a shower altogether and after a full day and a half in transit she was not happy. Breakfast helped, but what really improved my mood was the hotel bumping us up to a better hotel room after a brief, calm inquiry as to why the previous room lacked water pressure. I guess they know that floor requires remodeling. They said that the new(ish) room was on a floor where they had recently remodeled. Hotel room v2.0 is much better. I have a little "executive" desk for the slaptop and Corey just sung out of the bathroom that the shower is "normal" and hence acceptable. Now all we need is an iron and ironing board and we should be all set.

Back at Schipol I finally found a really cool power adapter for European (actually global) electrical outlets. It's that cylindrical black thing in the picture to which I plugged in my traveling extension cord. It's not a voltage converter, so it won't step down the European 240 V but it has all the wall plug prongs all in one neat little package. You just slide out whichever prongs you want to plug in. On the back side it has outlet holes for any plug making it truly universal. Luckily, most of the electronics gizmos that I travel with have their own power converters so that you can plug them in to either US 120 V or European 240 V outlets and they'll step the voltage appropriately. I charged up my laptop and cell phone this way last night so the adapter appears to be working as expected. Finally someone designed this little appliance correctly. The other one that I carry around in is this clunky box to which you have to snap on the various prong extensions. Which means you have to carry all of them in a little vinyl bag. Most annoying since these things stick out all over the place, puncturing everything including the little travel bag itself. I'm so happy with this new "Swiss universal adapter" that I think I'll buy another one on the way home.

Schipol

Schipol airport. It's a nice airport, nice shops, cafes, restaurants. I guess we'll get to know it fairly well since we'll be spending the next 8 hours here. The flight out of Memphis was delayed by about 90 minutes, making us miss our connection to Birmingham. The next flight out of Schipol isn't till 21:05. We then had planned to take a combination of bus and train to Leicester. Originally I was hoping to check in by about 16:00. Because our new late arrival we'll miss the last train out of Birmingham. So our options are to either spend the night in Birmingham or hire a car to drive us to Leicester. I guess we'll opt for the latter. Which likely means a larger expense over the train as well as a really late arrival (midnight or later).

This is the second time NW has done this to us. Maybe this is a common occurrence. They certainly seem to be prepared for it, judging by the number of rebooking counters and automated kiosks. It was fairly easy to get new boarding passes printed so at least that aspect was relatively painless. But that still doesn't help with the remainder of the screw up. The whole day is pretty much ruined as a result. I mean I like Schipol, but not enough to spend 8 hours here. A hop out to Amsterdam downtown? To find a coffee shop there perhaps? We did that last time but I don't think we're game this time around. Six hours to go...