Dublin

By zach | Published June 22, 2009

Last week I was at PLDI, which was held this year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Initially I was exhausted due to the long trip and jet lag, and nervous about giving my talk, but after getting some sleep, and getting a good response to the talk, I had a really good time. I also had the chance to get lots of good feedback on my work from some of the big names in the field, and good suggestions about where to take my research next. (One of the tricky things about Computer Science is that negative results don’t get published, so usually the only(and easiest!) way to find out about things that don’t work is talking to people at conferences.)

The major tourist attraction in Dublin is Trinity College itself. It sits right in the center of the city surrounded by a high stone wall. On the western end of the campus, the buildings are very old, and then as you go east, they become increasingly modern until you reach the far eastern end where there is a brand-new-looking computer science building. Every bit of space on the campus is used, except for a few patches of grass that you’re not allowed to walk on. We ate lunch every day in an ancient looking dining hall lined with huge portraits of past provosts (think Hogwarts.)

I also had a chance to visit other tourist-y things in Dublin including Dublin Castle, which was a strange mishmash, and not very castle-like; Christ Church Cathedral, which had some very neat stained glass windows, and a crypt filled with strange artifacts; and the old Guinness Brewery, which is now a museum about the brewing process. Part of the museum is shaped like a Guinness pint glass several stories tall at the top of which is a bar with a very nice view of Dublin. If you pay for the tour of the museum, they give you a complementary pint of Guinness there, which was the best Guinness I’d ever tasted =) Dublin also has some nice shopping areas, and has lots and lots of Irish pubs, as you might expect, that serve tasty lamb stew, bangers and mash, fish and chips, and other similar dishes.

Getting home was a bit of an adventure. I missed my connection in Philidelphia, and had to spend the night there. The lady at the customer service desk told me that my checked bag would probably beat me to San Francisco the following morning, but when I arrived my bag wasn’t there yet, and there was no record of its location in the computer. The man at baggage claim said they would find it eventually and deliver it, but I had the slight problem that my apartmet key was in the missing bag! Luckily, the building manager was home and let me in, and later in the evening my bag was delivered with all of its contents present.

This coming week, I will likely slack off a bit. It has been several months since I’ve had no imminent deadlines, though if I am feeling especially motivated I will probably work on doing a new release of my compiler, or beginning an outline for my dissertation =)

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Automatic heating and ovening

By christina | Published June 18, 2009

In other news, I purchased a microwave/oven over the weekend. It was delivered on Tuesday, and the guy was waiting for me at the apartment when I got home from work. I had told them I wouldn’t be available until 6, and it looks like the guy was ready for on-time delivery! It got unboxed and plugged in, and I tried to understand the instructions.

You see, unlike the standard American microwave, this microwave is special. First, it has a convection oven feature. Since Japan hasn’t adopted the Western oven/stove combo, if you want an oven, it comes as part of your microwave. They have various qualities of these, and I got a middle-range one, that goes up to 250° C and has options for steaming!

The other major thing is that, in normal microwaving, you don’t set the time. It has an automatic heating feature–you just press the “heat” button on the front, and it goes until it’s done! I don’t know how much I trust it yet–it might not work as well with small quantities, which is what I’ve mostly been heating so far, and sometimes things are perfectly hot before it says it should be done. At first I was completely lost, though. How did I enter the time? How does it know when to stop? I’m still not sure about that last one, obviously.

Looking at the manual, it apparently even has special settings so that you can microwave things up to a particular temperature, so if I wanted something to be exactly 70° C, I could. Theoretically.

Amazing, this Japanese technology!

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Bicycle!

By christina | Published June 18, 2009

Continuing on my trend of updating about things a week after they happen, I finally have myself a bicycle. It’s a folding bike (so it can fit in my tiny genkan), bright red, and pretty light for a bicycle. I had to order it, so it got to the store last Thursday, just in time for the toasty weather. I rode it home from the store (getting somewhat lost along the way), and then on Friday I decided to adventure to the okonomiyaki restaurant over by the local university. The way there was pretty easy (get onto the main street going that way, go until you get there), but it was slightly off the main street and I started off going the wrong way. Luckily I found it! It was pretty tasty, but it was definitely more the kind of place you go with friends.

I learned to ride a bike only recently, so I’m still a little apprehensive about bike riding, and no-handed riding and standing riding are still things that I am mostly incapable of. However, around here riding on the sidewalks is standard, and the sidewalks are generally pretty wide, so I only have to worry about piles of pedestrians blocking the path. If the sidewalks get narrow, I’ll ride on the streets, but since I don’t have a helmet, I prefer not to. I also made sure to get front and rear blinkies, even though only the front one is required here.

I also am never in any hurry, so it takes me a while to get places. It’s still definitely faster than walking!

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Fireflies

By christina | Published June 10, 2009

Over the weekend, I tried to go see the fireflies. Apparently the end of May/beginning of June is firefly season. I remember seeing them in Pittsburgh sometimes, but I never really associated it with any particular time of year, but who knows, maybe they did only show up at the beginning of June.

The Kitakyushu city website had a map with good firefly-watching spots, so I picked the nearest one and took the bus there in hope of seeing the fireflies. They’re supposed to show up at around 8pm, which is when it gets to be mostly dark. However, it looks like this year has not been a good year for fireflies, because barely any were blinking on Saturday night. I think it may have been too cool for them; I definitely remember it being warmer when I’ve seen them other places. A bunch of people had gathered to see them (the place I went to was even called Firefly Park!), but we left disappointed after only seeing about 10 fireflies all night. The weather was nice, just not right for bugs! There did seem to be some bats out, though! At least, I think they were bats, because they were flying in a definitely not-bird-like way. Maybe they were hoping for a firefly dinner!

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ParLab-ing

By zach | Published June 5, 2009

Kite and Sailboat I had a good time at the ParLab retreat. It was at the same hotel in Santa Cruz as the OSQ retreat a couple of weeks ago. The weather was beautiful, and there was down time in the schedule, so I got to enjoy the beach and the hotel pool and hot tub. This is the third ParLab retreat I’ve been on, and the talks and conversation have gotten better with each one. This is doubtlessly because people are starting to make progress, and write code, rather than talking about proposals and visions, which are sometimes difficult for me to take seriously.

Last night I went to the CSGSA bar night, which was held at a new sports bar called Miranda near University and Milvia. We watched the Penguins win game 4 of the Stanley Cup final, which was exciting. The series is now tied at two games apiece. It would be really cool for both the Steelers and the Penguins to win national championships in the same year! After the bar night wound down, the OS group dragged me to Triple Rock for monkey beer, which is tasty, but strong, and we had interesting discussions about all sorts of things. I am happy to be getting to know them better since I think it will make working with them for the next few months more fun.

However, it was a late night, and I am conspicuously the only person in our cube in the ParLab even though it is past noon. Luckily, last night was probably the only bar night we’ll have this summer, and now we’ll be able to get some work done =)

I’ll post some pictures from the trip to Santa Cruz this weekend sometime!

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Overtime

By christina | Published June 3, 2009

Before I got to Japan, I remember reading all manner of horror stories about overtime with Japanese companies. Working from 8 in the morning until 10 at night, people sleeping at the office, that there was a stigma about leaving before your supervisor. During my interview, I asked one of the people how much overtime was done a month by most workers, and the answer was “20-30 hours per month”, which seemed doable to me, although not my favorite.

However, since I’ve started work, I haven’t even done 5 hours of overtime yet, over the course of two months. My office specifically states that MWF are “no overtime days,” in fact. Other people do a reasonable amount of overtime, and my manager and his boss seem to stay later than most of us. Yesterday I stayed until 6:30, and by then at least half of the people had left, probably closer to three quarters. Nobody seems to be making me feel like I should be staying later, although sometimes I feel like I should be doing more, as my direct superior seems to be staying late relatively often. I try to make sure to ask if there is anything that needs to get done that I can help with, but it seems like a lot of what my superior is doing is communicating with other people, which may not be much of something that I can help with.

Overall, I’m happy that most days I can get home by 6. However, I have been getting more work to do lately, and it may eventually reach the point where I’ll need to stay later more often. I’ll still try to limit it to Tuesdays and Thursdays, and be happy that I get actual overtime pay!

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