In short, Lille is much, much bigger than I expected. It is easy to believe that the population is more than a million, as everyone claims. Of course, it is hard to judge, because I have only seen selected parts, but it seems about the size of Helsinki in terms of population, although the central town is perhaps a little more compact.  The strangest thing (and good indicator of size) is probably the large number of beggars, young and old. Maybe that is only because I stay in the centre of town, but they seem to be numerous. It is perhaps also a little dirty, but the buildings are old and beautiful. All in all, it seems like a nice place to live, very vibrant.

The conference itself is almost over. In fact, the last session is about to begin. It is a actually the keynote of the “other” conference, DSD, that is being held at the same time. Digital System Design is not really my field, but I can at least understand what these guys are talking about.  My side of the conference, SEAA, is of course much closer to home, but I’ll be honest and say that I have not found many talks that greatly interests me. That is somewhat to be expected; Software Engineering is a vast field. In the session where I presented my work, the other talks were more engaging to me, naturally.

I met a lot of interesting people, and have “networked” a little in my own way, but I think that I am becoming immune to the excitement that conferences usually elicit.

OK, now the keynote is starting and this guy seems like a good speaker.

As I was entering the marks, I realized that during the run of the course I will have read about 200 essays and more than 1400 pages. Why do I do this to myself? Well, for one thing, the essays give a true insight into how much the students understand. With a little experience it becomes easy to “fake” an essay so that it appears to be better than it perhaps really is. But I believe that it is still possible to detect the underlying comprehension of the students. At least I don’t have to do 30+ reviews for one conference, a prospect it seems poor Willem is now facing.

As I said, it was a long day. It included a 2.5 hour teaching stint. But the upside is that after tomorrow’s 8:00 class, I have a break of about 18 days before I teach again. Part of that will be spent in France at the conference, and I’ll have to do some reading (more essays and other material). But I’ll also try to sneak in at least a weekend or two of mental vegetation.

One last item on the agenda is that today also featured a little excitement: I have finally had time to unplug my 15 inch CRT monitor and set up the new 24 inch LCD. It arrived last week, but I had not had time to unpack it. I promised myself that I shall now spend more time at the office, and I intend to do that to some extent. But them, I make many promises to myself that never come to pass. Like going to bed at 21:00 sharp. At least I have not been wasting my time this evening: instead, I made a couple of illustrations for an upcoming paper that will hopefully be submitted this week.  And Henri is doing well and very excited about future research, which is good news for him, but also for me. Energetic collaborators are harder to come by than one might think.

What worried me much more was that my application would be incomplete. As it turned out, the visa people were particularly uninterested in the documentation I had carefully gathered. In fact, I think the lady who helped me was slightly offended by all the documentation. Compared to the Finnish consulate, the security was lax, but the staff made up for it by being quite unfriendly.

I do not want to complain unnecessarily about travel and the associated trouble. But it seems to me necessary to do a little of that now, because it seems to me to be part of a larger contraction of individual freedom. This is happening much more widely than just travel. I see more and more bureaucracy at the university, at the bank, and at the municipality. Every company has a call centre where dehumanized zombies provide zero information. One saving grace is that the South Africa government is so inept/corrupt that we do not have a health and safety police force, as in many other countries.

Ugh, this is an ugly line of thought, and I’d rather not carry on with it. The silver lining is that I’ll get my visa on Wednesday and then there is only the two 11 hour flights to look forward to.

But there is also another, societal use. Like other photographs, the pictures record and conveys culture. This does not necessarily advance science, but it reminded me that there is more to life than science. Culture is important, also to science. In some sense, the large pictures are societal pieces of art. Instead of capturing one individual message, the panoramas are — almost by definition — group art, because of their size.

It also made me think if my piece of science can be applied on this level. And if not, why not? Where is that dividing line between this kind of “social” science and non-social science? Mathematics and computer science has been used for art. Often. But formal methods?

In at least one sense, software engineering is a kind of social science for at least a select group of people, namely software developers. It affects their lives, and have an indirect impact on all of us nowadays. To find ways to produce better software more efficiently can have enormous benefits. And in a general sense a lot of computer science is social, since a lot of software eventually ends up in the hands of users, people, and affects their lives. Still, it would be nice to think of a way to make our work more accessible. Interesting little intellectual challenge.

Another peak to conquer this weekend is an ancient quarterly ritual known as “the cleaning of the house”. Despite valiant efforts during the weeks, there comes a kind of saturation point where the unclean nooks and crannies can no longer be tolerated. To be completely honest, my cleaning is a bit of a start-and-stop affair: the dishes in the cupboard are gradually exhausted and although I try to keep up, it seems that demand outstrips supply. So I hope to get a good night’s rest tonight and tackle the rooms one-by-one on the morrow. I can sense that it is also time to switch bedrooms. I do this about every six months, just for the heck of it.

Of course, there are also other tasks that need to be accomplished this weekend, but I’m not exactly in the mood to list all of them. Quite sleepy, in fact.  Good night.

The recent excitement about P=NP has made me think about proof and mathematics, but Ingrid’s inaugral on Tuesday is perhaps an even more direct inspiration. While in Finland, I bought a four volume set called “The World of Mathematics”. I haven’t looked at it much lately, and I had thought (and implied here) that it is edited by Eric Temple Bell. He was a popularizer of Mathematics, but some have critisized his writing as a little too fictional. (I know that the right word is “fictitious”, but that makes it sound as if he was lying.) He merely romantized a little too much. Well, I discovered last night that he wasn’t the editor, although he did contribute two or three essays.  (The real editor is Newman.)

I started on the first essay by Philip Jourdain, a British logician and mathematician. His wikipedia entry is short, but he was a very interesting man. He suffered from a form of ataxia that left him a cripple at the age of about 20. Still, he went to Cambridge (didn’t do too well) and eventually became a very productive mathematician and logician and also a historian of mathematics. By the early 1900′s he was said to produce enough work to keep two typists busy full time. He died at age 40, which is impressive given his condition. (He also had a strange sister, Eleanor, who was involved in a strange episode called the “Ghosts at Petit Trianon”.  Wikipedia has all the details.)

The reason all this interests me is because a similar story can be told about so many other people. Famous (or at least well-known) in their time but nowadays forgotten. Not all of them made important contributions, but some did. Everyone knows Euclid; noone knows Ahmes. Sometimes, it is really only through an accident of history that we remember some and forget others.

Logic is invincible because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic.
Pierre Boutroux

Not that this is very important, but it shows that it is futile for us to “fight” history. We cannot really work to ensure our place in history. It either happens or it don’t. Perhaps we shall always remember the name of Vinay Deolalikar (whether or not P=NP), or perhaps we shall forget it quite soon. I do not think that this is a consequence of bad record keeping: human memory only has space for so many names.

This is not at all a depressing thought, though. It means that our goal should be to do the best work we can and not to worry about posterity.  Too much.

Her work (about duality in category theory) is, in some sense, irrelevant, because it is simply impossible to convey the true extent of work to a general audience. It is arguably closer to Theoretical Computer Science than Mathematics. It is even quite challenge to convey it to other mathematicians. On the other hand, there is a lot more scope for philosophizing about the relationship between Mathematics and real life, and about the nature of Mathematics itself. One nice feature was a loose strand running through the work that touched on the history of mathematics, which is probably what I would have emphasized much more. Sorry to get technical, but the notion of mathematical structure begins with Euclid and then flows through to Cantor, Poincaré, Hilbert, Hausdorff, Kuratowski, etc. This would probably not be too interesting for those not keen on the history of mathematics, but for those of us who enjoy the writing of Eric Temple Bell…  I think I’ll promote my copy of “History of Mathematics” to bedside reading. Despite his weaknesses, the books are still inspiring.

Anyhow, I’m off to bed now because I teach tomorrow at 8:00.

Emotionally I’m also not too bad, but I spent the weekend re-watching the first five seasons of “House” in between working on this and that. Not the best idea in the world; I find that I’m strongly influenced by what I read, watch, and listen to. I like the ideas presented in House, and how the writers use ordinary stories to explore themes. I wish I could do the same in my writing, but it takes a little more dedication than I can muster.

I suppose one way to fix my mood is to queue up the right kind of movies & music & books. But the best way to address my problems is probably just to get a decent night’s sleep. I hate harping on this issue, but I really haven’t had a good night’s sleep since before term started. I wonder if it is possible to finish all my work during the week and just to relax during the weekend? My current strategy is to work late, sleep little, nap in the afternoon, and stretch out my work right through the week and the weekend. Perhaps it is time to change tactics a little.

One highlight of last week was GeekDinner.  This is a gathering held every two months where a group of self-confessed geeks come together to have dinner. Pretty simple. Part of the story is that there are two or three talks in between the courses.

The first talk was about open hardware hacking (similar to open source software; I like the way that the OHH acronym is similar to OSS). I happened to have recently reviewed a paper in this field, so I was somewhat interested. And it was fascinating. I don’t think I’ll get into this in any way. In fact, I was planning a little hardware repair this weekend, but that is how far I’m prepared to go. Still, it is good to know that someone is working on this. The paradigm is not exactly the same, and I get the sense that the “spirit” of these projects is closer to old-time hobbyists than open source contributors.

The other important event of last week was our university’s open day. I’m not sure why, but I got involved in making the banner and pamphlet and stickers. (We distributed 90×90 mm stickers, some of which were widely popular.) Shortly all these material on our department’s website.

The point of these open days is to make school students aware of the choices at university. We cannot really say that we are actively recruiting students, or, if we are, we are doing quite a poor job. I think the stalls are a little boring; the popular stalls have one thing in common: they present some form of interaction. We have a lot of potential for interaction with Computer Science, but it takes a lot of effort to produce something impressive.  A lot of effort.  Oh well, perhaps next year.  At least we can pack up the posters for now.

The disappointment was not that bitter.  It turns out that the remaining three students who were planning take my model checking course decided not to do so.  It is a bit of a pity, but I don’t blame them.  From the outside, the course probably seemed like a lot of work.  ”Three” sounds like a very small number, but we have a relatively small class this year.  I hope that this will be the low point of our enrolment.  Already more students are coming down the pipeline.  There are only five students in my graphics class, and how I wish the situation was reversed!

One the other hand, this frees up 3 hours of lectures a week and at least another 6-9 hours of preparation.  In fact, probably much more, as I intended to complete all of the exercises myself.  It also means that my opus on model checking won’t be kick-started by lecture notes this year, either.  That window is closing fast.  It still leaves me with 8 hours of weekly lectures which is much more manageable.

Tomorrow will be another long day.  Another early rise (my weak point) and then business until 15:00, going to the other side of Cape Town to pick up a surprise, and back to my brother’s to return the video camera I borrowed this evening and download the videos.