Unisex Public Bathroom

At the CRM (Centre de Recerca Matematica) where I am visiting this month at the UAB (Universitat Autonoma de Bercelona) they have a unisex public bathroom. Of course, it is all stalls, all better screened than average. It should not be such a big deal, but I have to say that I always look for urinals in a public bathroom to make sure I am in the right one. When they are not there, I feel uncomfortable. I should say this is not a usual thing in Catalonia: one of my colleagues in the group I am visiting is local and she also says she has never seen this before.

Teen years come later if you are Spanish

I am working through a Spanish language book with accompanying audio track. It is slow going and I should have started months before I came on this trip to Barcelona. Of course, Catalan is the local language and I know a (very) few words in that language. I was told and it seems to be true that if you are clearly a foreigner to Spain, Catalans are fine to speak Spanish with you. This is good since Spanish is so much more widely spoken, and is quite useful back in North America.

I learned the numbers up to 20 in Spanish this week, and was surprised to find that the "teen" numbers begin at 16. There is quinze (15) and then deiciseis (16). My Catalan colleague says that in Catalan, they start at 17. The expression they have for teens by our counting is adolescent. Makes sense.

I thought this was an interesting difference and it also made me a bit critical of my own language. We could only get 12 different whole numbers before we had to recycle them. You could be generous and say that we have a baker's dozen, since "thirteen" is not "threeteen".

Rioja is a pretty good type of red wine

I am a great fan of Malbec, a type of red wine. I think of it as coming from Chile since that is where the kind I like best (that I can afford) comes from, but Argentina and France are the largest growers. I like to say that "I haven't met a Malbec that I didn't like".

I have asked for Malbec here in Barcelona but they don't seem to know what that it is. The wine that was recommended to me was Rioja, from a particular region in Spain. I am not a wine expert nor have I sampled widely, but consider Rioja my #2 choice now. I got the bottle below from the grocery store on campus (BC, get over your liquor store fascism!) for about $10. Certainly better than any $10 wine you can get in Canada.

It is nice to have (some) money

I am in Barcelona for the month. The Spanish taxpayer is paying for my modest accommodation in the UAB (Universitat Autonoma Barcelona) campus residences through a research grant that my host was awarded. The Canadian taxpayer is paying for the flight over and some living expenses through a grant I was awarded. They are paying for bringing my expertise to help the research projects of my host and his students, and the expertise and contacts I have access to here, respectively. I consider this to be a legitimate use of (international) taxpayers' money, but you can be the judge of that.

While here, I took a weekend off and flew to London to visit an old high school friend of mine. He has remained a close friend, although we only see each other every couple of years on average. No taxpayer paid for this trip, of course, and it was a bit of an extravagance. The trip began at about $360 excluding some spending I did there. Because I can spare that much money, I didn't think of it as an especially expensive trip compared to the cost of a visit from Vancouver. Keeping up with old and important friends is one of the things that makes life worth living.

I was due to come back late Sunday night, but not so late that I couldn't take the bus downtown to Placa Catalunya and then the train "home" to my UAB residence room (total cost about $10). However, the plane was delayed by about an hour and there was no way I would have made the last train back to UAB. I took a taxi instead, which cost $100. It was nice to have enough money to be able to do that without real hardship. There are always cheaper alternatives. I could have taken the bus downtown and looked for an inexpensive place to stay (hostel) or just stayed awake for four hours until the Monday morning trains began. I was happy to just pay the money, get back to my room, and go to bed.

Sunday Miscellany from Spain

I am currently in the Vila2 residence of the Univeristat Autonoma Barcelona. I am visiting Tim Myers at the Centre de Recerca Matematica, again (I was here four years ago for two months on sabbatical). I have a nice little room on campus, with a view:

I have rediscovered some of my favourites from the last visit: persimmons (a different kind than we get in Canada and fresh) and gazpacho soup. No need for a recipe: you can get gazpacho from any store in milk cartons. My favourite style of wine is Malbec, but there is a close second here in Spain: Rioja. Without knowing wine very well, they seem quite similar (and both to my taste). The bottle here is quite good - and only $6.

Recommendation: Jean-Michel Jarre's new album, Electronica 1: The Time Machine

I have been a bin fan of Jarre ever since his first album, Oxygene (1976). That is a brilliant piece of electronic music, done on primitive machines that still holds up today. I followed him for a few albums in those old days, but they went in a direction that did not interest me so much. A few years ago, I acquired his entire (large) discography and found some real gems in his later works. When I heard he had a new album out, I had to check it out. I don't have to buy it, or "acquire" it, since I have access to it through Google Music that I am subscribing to. There are some great tracks, including the title track, "Trevelator Pt 2", and "Rely on Me", which is a collaboration with the performance artist, Laurie Anderson. I recognized her voice from some great tracks on his old album, Je Me Souviens.

As an album, it is not as great as some of his previous ones, since it does not have the uniform vision. It is a collection of collaborations, each with a different artist, and was several years in the making. Still, it is worth a listen!  

Music Streaming Services

I have been interested in trying out music streaming services. I was especially interested in the curated playlists by genre, to be able to get expert input on new music or genres new to me. I have had a number of good tips from the alt rock selections on Air Canada's entertainment system, but I have pretty limited access to that.

As well as the curated play lists, I wanted to be able to make (and share) my own playlists and download selections for offline listening. I didn't want to be forced to listen to something (some of the services have fixed playlists that you can skip songs in only a limited number of times). With these requirements it seemed like a paid service was needed. Google Music and Apple Music, both for $10/month, do everything I want. It is also possible to upload your own music to the cloud and access it on any device, although you can't share these songs on playlists.

I am on the free trial for both of these services, but like Google Music a bit better so far. I think the interface (through chrome on computers) is just a little nicer. I will check out Apple Music more closely, though, since I am wedded to Apple devices and iTunes.

Here are a couple of playlists I made of music that was new to me that I learned about through Google's curated playlists (which they call radio stations). Let me know what you think.

Google Dozen #1
Google Dozen #2

Someone I know should buy a pickup truck

(so I can borrow it to get lumber and take trash to the dump). My first thought was that it should be one of my English friends. It would be helpful for them to fit in better in BC. They could take it to the abandoned mill site, turn on their row of cab lights, and drink beer with their friends. But, not all plans work as they should. My first pick doesn't have a license. The next said he grew up in rural England and already had the equivalent experience (drinking cider in the park). My massage therapist, who I thought of as a world travelling city slicker, told me he grew up in Langley and he already had a pickup truck he could borrow from his father. Of course, it is not hard now to rent one or get one from the right car co-op. That is my new plan unless someone else steps up.

More carpentry "skills"

I have had the idea for a long time to build bookshelves downstairs on a short wall by the furnace which can't be used for anything else. Because of the furnace room door, it is only wide enough for paperbacks. Below is the result of my (somewhat) careful planning and (not very) careful craftsmanship. Most of the planning was how to build it so that my less than quality craftsmanship would not show too badly. Anyway, it's sturdy and anchored to the wall in case of earthquake. As usual, I enjoy my own handiwork more than the quality merits. It is made of low quality lumber, materials cost about $60. Then there were the tools I "needed"...

Banff International Research Station

A couple of weeks ago I had a great experience at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS). A small group of us organized a "research in teams" event at the institute on the subject of "Analysis and Computation of Vector Functionalized Cahn Hilliard Equations and Application to Amphiphilic Materials." Sounds fun, right? Actually, I am really into this stuff. The Research in Teams events are limited to four participants. Here was our group:

The BIRS facility is part of the Banff Centre. The room we had to meet in had great blackboard space (for mathematicians, this is actually important) but also a great view:

We had three buffet meals a day. Quite good food and also a great view:

Near the Banff Centre there were plenty of short hikes. Below left are the Bow River falls:

We took Wednesday afternoon off for a hike at Lake Louise:

So far, I have made it seem that all we did was hike and eat, but we actually worked pretty hard. In a week it is hard to sort out specific technical questions, but we did do some. More importantly, we outlined a series of papers that we believe will be quite influential in both the Mathematics and Polymer Chemistry fields (and work that we can almost claim is all doable). The mathematical models we looked at describe the micro- and nano-scale structures that form in activated polymer materials that are key to new energy technologies (fuel cells, batteries, solar cells) and also have biochemical applications. In addition, their analysis is mathematically challenging. BIRS activities are funded by governments (Canada, Alberta, USA). Thank you taxpayers: I think what we did was useful and it was a lot of fun. 

My issues with cycling etiquette

I have been planning (for many years, don't hold your breath) to write a longer blog post on advice on commuter cycling. I would have an etiquette section, here is a sample of the discussion. This has been made fresh in my mind by my recent experiences cycling on the 10th Ave route. I usually take the route North of Broadway when cycling to work at UBC. However, there is a deep gully with steeply sloping sides just West of Clarke on that route that is hard to face, especially coming home at the end of my ride. The 10th Ave route has gentler slopes in general and not that discouraging, steep down and then up of the other route. However, the 10th Ave route is much more crowded and many of the cyclists behave badly (by my standards). Here is the story, depicted below.

Cyclist 1 has come to an intersection and is waiting for the light to change. He or she has helpfully pressed the cross-bike button. A second cyclist comes up behind and has three options:

• Queue up behind cyclist 1 (circle 3). I have some British heritage, so this is my option.
• Gauge the relative strength of cyclist 1 to yours. If they look stronger, follow circle 3, otherwise circle 2. You may have misjudged and if you do, you correct your choice at the next intersection. I find this strategy acceptable, but few follow it. Rather, they: 
• Always follow circle 2. In general, these cyclists always push their way forward, even if it means delays for other cyclists.

On a very busy route, the circle 2 strategy can have variants. Sometimes three or four lanes of bikes open up as cyclists move up past circle 2, then past those that have moved past circle 2, etc. I couldn't stand the prevalence of this strategy, so have gone back to my old (more difficult but less popular) route. 

My carpentry "skills" in action

I have a hobby of building things out of scrap (or low cost) wood. Interestingly enough, "repurposed furniture" is quite a hip thing these days, but I was a visionary: see my old post here. Of course, I was never going to sell the idea with my name, "scrap wood carpentry". I haven't done much of this in the intervening years, but recently I built a shelf in my room, pictured below. We're always short of book storage, and this high shelf for paperbacks adds a lot of capacity with no loss of floor space. I was happy with it, although I know it would not be well finished enough for anyone that cares about those things. I wouldn't swing on it - I have a stud finder but apparently studs are not always so easy to find.

Button Maker

I have started volunteering at Britannia Community Centre. I like the idea of Britannia, which has the community centre, high school, elementary school and library all at the same location, sharing resources. We used to live quite close and our family has done a lot of the programs there. On Canada Day I did a volunteer shift at the events they had in Victoria Park. There was the usual work of unloading tables, chairs and tents and setting them up, then decorating. In many of the things I have done as a volunteer my main utility is as heavy lifter, so quite a different value than my paid work. Normally there would have been a long period of inactivity during the event and then I would help taking down all the equipment and loading it back into the truck. However, there was someone I knew who was running the button making machine that needed help. She had pencils and sets of oil pastels for people to hand make their own designs. I never knew there was such a device, you could have a lot of fun with it. I could have spent the whole afternoon covering myself with buttons, but the activity became quite popular. This is a great thing to have and if you added some premium features (fridge magnet or hand mirror backs and a colour printer for e-mailed designs) could be a good fund raiser as well.

Waterloo King Street North

Last month I was at the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS) annual meeting, held at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. It was on my way home from my stay at Michigan State University. I like the CAIMS meetings. The scientific quality is quite good. There are a number of parallel sessions so you can go to things of interest, but even in a session on a given topic, it is not so specialized that you don't see something new. I have been to these meetings often enough now that there are many familiar faces. I should say that these are faces I enjoy seeing. Always some new people on the scene, notable this year was David Shirokoff at NJIT who showed me how to prove a conjecture that I had from previous work.

I was pleasantly surprised by several great restaurants and pubs nearby. Two that I really enjoyed were Ethel's Lounge (retro - or preserved from the 50s - interior but modern food and drink) and Jane Bond (vegetarian hip). There were others that looked interesting that I didn't get to try, including DVLB (Death Valley's Little Brother) which advertised specialty espresso, whiskey and bread.

  

Warlords 2

I really enjoyed the computer game, warlords 2, published by SSG in 1993. It is a turn based strategy game in which you control fantasy armies and try and take over the game map from 7 computer opponents. I found out that it is available again as a free download from Best Old Games. It is a dos game but there is an emulator, dosbox, with versions that run under Windows, Linux and macOS. What a time waster, but I am happy to relive the experience. 

Manbroidery

I started embroidering when my daughter (then aged 10) expressed an interest. I am the hobby guy in our family. My daughter got bored with it quite quickly but I ended up interested. It is a fun way to personalize your clothing at little expense. If you look at all traditional embroidery patterns, they tend to have a chick feel: hearts, flowers, feel-good sayings, etc. OK, I can do hearts and flowers, but I also like geometric patterns, dragons, skulls, and sarcasm. The latter I have dubbed as "manbroidery". Here is an example below, that I made for my host in Michigan. He is the chair of the department here, and "loves" to hear about everyone's problems. This was a warm-up project for a wedding present I am working on.

Michigan Cider

I like (hard) cider, although my real love is gin. I tried a new kind, Uncle John's, a local Michigan brand. It is a typical dry cider very much like Strongbow. I also bought another bottle of JK's Orchard Gate Gold Scrumpy, which has to be the best I have ever had. At $8US a bottle (ouch!), I won't be having too many of them. Another favourite of mine is Stella Artois cidre, although I have never seen it sold in North America.

First Apple device failure

I switched to Apple devices about seven years ago. I have apple computers at home and at work, an MacBook Air laptop for travelling and presenting material in lectures, an iPhone, an old iPod that connects my digital media to our old stereo system at home, the old TV downstairs and my alarm clock, and now an iPad (mostly for reading comics on the bus). I may be stuck since I have invested in iTunes media. I do enjoy the transparent synching of my contacts and calendars through the Apple cloud, although I gather that the same thing is possible with google apps on android devices. Dropbox is fantastic to be able to seamlessly work on things in different locations and on different devices.

I have never had an Apple device fail on me until last week. My iPhone 5 (one of my more recent devices) died here in Michigan and needed a new battery. Replacing that seems to have fixed it up. Like all people of my generation, I grew up without cell phones. However, I have recently become quite dependent on them for social contact and directions. I rely especially on it when I am travelling. Most of my contact to home is by e-mail and Skype, but there are also quick things I run by my family and friends by text and I phone my old father once a week to see how he and his wife are doing.

Revisiting the Tekkit Classic modpack for Minecraft

I went back to the first Minecraft modpack I ever tried, now called Tekkit Classic. It is no longer being updated but it is maintained and has a dedicated wiki:

http://tekkitclassic.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tekkit_Wiki

It is based on an older version of Minecraft in which pigs and chickens eat wheat, cocoa beans don't grow, and there is no Wither. It is interesting to see how many things have changed in vanilla Minecraft and its mods in just a couple of years. Tekkit Classic is dominated by two mods: Equivalent Exchange 2 and Industrial Craft 2. It always bothered me that EE2 allows mass creation of matter, much different than the idea of that name from the manga, Fullmetal Alchemist. However, I got over the urge to "fix" that mod or this pack in general. You can make increasing amounts of matter with energy collectors which can be changed into any other kind of matter with an energy condenser. My small collector "flower" is shown below:

I got early matter for condensing from pumpkins, just as I did when I first played this pack. Later on (long after I needed it) I built a system that converted oil from an oil well. This is a strategy that would have been very helpful mid-game. If you want to make even faster progress, you can use the well documented strategy of blaze rod maceration, using some of the matter generated to make redstone to directly power the macerator. My setup is shown below, in my gold and ruby block room: 

Here is one of the places I used item automation with the Redpower 2 mod. That mod is not maintained in current versions of Minecraft, unfortunately. There is not a lot of decorative variety in this pack compared to recent ones, but I built a tower home as usual with some microblock accents and later a mountaintop tower for decoration. I used black and red matter blocks as an ostentatious show of wealth.

I did a few new things this time in addition to the macerator blaze rod system. I built a cobblestone generator for matter - again, long after I needed it. I made a teleporter system from my base to the mountain fortress powered by redstone from an energy collector/condenser system. I really tried to finally get into the IC2 crop system but it still seemed way to finicky for me. I tried, and failed, to use combustion engines without them exploding but found water strainers to be quite useful for smaller power systems. If I were going to "fix" anything in this modpack, it would be to allow combustion engines to run without water without exploding. Also, I have always been annoyed by the wrench mechanics in IC2, so I would make Buildcraft wrenches compatible with IC2 machines and lossless. 

Those few criticisms aside, this is still a very fun pack. If you have never tried it, I recommend that you do. The reward for building up all that matter creation machinery is some really fantastically powered end game items in EE2. You can fly, are basically invincible, can kill all the hostiles with one hit, and can mine huge areas with a single click. Of course at this stage, you don't need to mine anything and, in the nature of these things, once you have attained these items, you are basically done with that world. 

Best movie theatre

When I stay in East Lansing I try and go as often as I can to the movies. The theatre, Studio C! In nearby Okemos is easy to get to by bus or bike. It has very nice seats and there is a higher tier of even nicer seats where they come and take your food and drink orders. You can get alcoholic drinks, although after the cocktails my friends make, they seem weak and tasteless. Beer would be the way to go, but it often doesn't agree with me now. This year, I have seen Ex Machina (better than I thought it would be) and the new Avengers movie.  Rounding out my four weeks will be Mad Max and (unless something better appears) Tomorrowland. In suburban/rural Michigan, they do no get any alternative or foreign films...

East Lansing Art Festival

The East Lansing Art Festival was last weekend. I am quite happy when my annual research trip to Michigan State University coincides with the fair, as it did this year. Stalls are set up on the side streets of East Lansing centre. On the North side of the main street (East Grand River Ave) are the high class artists and on the South the more mundane. Of course, there are some in the grey area that get sent to one side or the other. I got a few things from the artists that really stood out for me:

The bowl is from Aslakson Pottery. Even though I make pottery myself, it is not crazy to buy wheel thrown pieces which I don't do myself (I only hand-build). Anyway, it was a shape and decoration that I really liked. The leather wallet with the ginko leaf is from Mike Barnes. I am fond of ginko trees: there was an old one on UC Berkeley campus that I remember as a kid (my mother was a graduate student there and so I went with her). The tie-dye shirt was from one of the nameless South side vendors. I really like tie-dye (maybe from my Berkeley days) but am bizarrely picky about the colours and pattern. This one worked for me. 

There were a number of other great things there. The one other stand-out was the guy selling extra large (up to 2-3 inches), incredibly ornate marbles: Larry Zengel of Hot House Glass. I really, really tried to think of a good reason to spend $50 on a giant, fantastic marble but just couldn't find one. This may be one of life's great regrets. 

Good Deed

I am learning to play the guitar. Six weeks in I can play a few guitar riffs (from "seven nation army" and "smoke on the water") and play a few chords. I can play one chord per bar for "let it be" and "the house of the rising sun" at a dirge pace and sing along. I started playing with a friend of mine who asked for joint lessons for his birthday and am really enjoying it even if it is clear I am not a natural.

For the last several years I have been spending a month every year at Michigan State University working with Keith Promislow, with whom I have had successful research collaborations for the last 15 years. He is also a personal friend at this point. I come out to visit to find new things to work on together. I usually stay in a glorified dorm room (with a kitchen) on campus but this year there was nothing like that available so I am in a long term suite at a local motel.

I didn't want to bring my guitar with me on the trip, but I also didn't want to lose momentum on playing so I looked into renting a guitar here. I found the store, "guitar centre" which seemed promising but when I e-mailed about a possible rental, I heard back from the manager that they did not rent guitars. However, he said that he had an old guitar that he could fix up for me to use. So I have a guitar to use at no cost. It was waiting in the store for me to pick up when I arrived. It always makes me feel good about the world when strangers help you out expecting nothing in return.

Recommendation: Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (anime)

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is translated as "Monthly Girls' Nozaki kun" and is an anime available on Crunchyroll (a streaming service for Asian content), based on a Manga. It is a charming show that my daughter pointed out to me. Shoujo manga is a type aimed at teenage girls. The show is entertaining because it hits at three levels: it has standard shoujo tropes; it lovingly parodies standard shoujo tropes; it gives a behind the scenes glimpse into the manga business. The title character is a high school boy that writes shoujo manga commercially, though few of his classmates realize it. The main female character is Chiyo, who has a crush on the clueless Nozaki and ends up being part of a team that produces the manga.

Recommendation: Wonder Falls

I recently rewatched the single, short season of Wonder Falls which we have on DvD. This was a charming show from 2004 that was cancelled early in its run (like many of the series we liked best - but listing them all would not make this a short post). The series follows the young woman, Jaye, who develops psychic powers tied to conversations she has with inanimate objects shaped like animals (stuffed bears, lawn flamingos, monkey figurines, a cow shaped creamer). For such a short run they develop a number of very entertaining story arcs with Jaye, her family, friend Mahandra, and love interest, Eric. Caroline Dhavernas hits the right notes in her role as the quirky main character, and she is very easy on the eyes, as my father would say. Although the show was cancelled early, they knew it was coming and the main story threads are wrapped up in a satisfactory way.  I am curious about what  ideas the writers would have had for season two.  I do recommend that you watch this series when you are in the mood to be entertained.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderfalls

Caltech Drivers

Most professors do some travel for their research. You might visit a department at another University, where you give a seminar talk and meet faculty there with related interests or with skills you don't have to solve part of a problem you are interested in. It is possible to answer really difficult research questions if you have the right collaborative team with overlapping skills. Such trips (as well as conferences) are a way to build up contacts to put such a team together. There is a certain component of these seminar visits of "showing off" your own work. If the people there like the work you present in your seminar, they will be more likely to work with you and your graduate students (and possibly hire them later), referee your research articles favourably and support your career by recommending you for research grants and promotion. This is an accepted form of self-promotion and we are, in general, happy to hear about new work in our field from visitors.

There is a spectrum of prestige for such travel, although even very good researchers do some travel at the low end. That is, you let someone know you want to visit their department and ask them to invite you to give a talk. You organize and pay for your own travel and accommodation (from a grant or your own pocket) and e-mail people there to set up meetings while you are there. Volunteering to be a speaker is often very welcome to seminar organizers as they try to fill their schedules with interesting talks. At the more "distinguished" end you are invited to come and they make the arrangements and pay. Even higher up (rarely, maybe never, in Mathematics) they fly you first class and give you a fat honorarium for coming to speak.

The highest end experience for me has been the Caltech Driver service. Caltech is a small, private school with a large endowment and a very high research profile. They have made a conscious decision to maintain a fleet of university vehicles and staff of professional drivers. I had this service on my recent trip, when a driver picked me up from UCLA and after my visit to Caltech I was taken to the airport. On a previous visit, I had the unique (for me) experience of arriving at LAX and being met by a Caltech Driver with a "Wetton" sign. It is a real luxury to have this service in the LA area where getting around by rental car or transit is quite stressful, especially if you don't know the city.

I will never be UBC's ambassador to UCLA

I am just back from a trip to Los Angeles during the UBC Reading Week (Spring Break). I spent two days at UCLA and two days at Caltech. I talked with colleagues I have known for a number of years and I gave seminar talks at both places. It was a good trip: my work was well received (or they were just polite) and I heard about a number of interesting ideas that were new to me.

When I am in Southern California I try to eat Mexican food when I can. I know of one good Mexican restaurant in Vancouver (Tio Pepe's on Commercial Drive) but in general that is something in the LA food scene we don't have much of up here. After my UCLA talk on Tuesday when I was on my own and had time to spend before my Caltech driver came to get me (that is another story) I wandered around Westwood Village until I found a likely restaurant. I had a nice meal of that Mexican slow cooked pork (carnitas) and a couple of margaritas.

Still with time to spend, I started walking around again. I began to feel ill to my stomach, in that way you recognize may need to find release. It could have been a stomach bug or simply that I ate too much rich food I was unused to. I had checked out of my hotel that morning, so had no room to return to. Campus was too far away. I mentally consulted my dead mother, who has advice on (almost) any situation. Actually, her advice to me has improved steadily since her death and in general she is more compassionate. In this case, I remembered she had useful perspective even when she was alive: that involuntary bodily functions were never something to be embarrassed about, that trying to suppress them was unnecessary and unhealthy. I found a quiet, dark street with some side shrubbery and after some pacing back and forth found release there.

If you read a news report about a UBC professor embarrassing himself in public near the UCLA campus, please don't forward them my picture.

Interviewing for Academic (Professor) Positions in Mathematics

Our department has advertised several faculty positions this year, two in Applied Mathematics. I am on the committee of about eight for these two positions. One is in my area, Scientific Computing, and one is in Fluid Mechanics. We had about a hundred applicants for the scientific computing position, of whom four we could invite to interview. I made a first pass through the applicants, dropping any without significant research papers or in the wrong area. In the first pass, "significant" only meant that they were in journals I recognized as good in the field or was unsure of. Examples of good journals in my field are the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Journal on Scientific Computing, SIAM Journal of Numerical Analysis (more theoretical), and the Journal of Computational Physics. The applicant field was deep this year, so these criteria were met by about half the applicants. Looking more closely at the publications and letters of recommendation got me to about ten that I took to the committee. We discussed the relative merits and came to our list of four to interview. Some demonstrated or potential for teaching ability is also considered, but as a secondary criteria. This is the reality at most research universities like UBC.

Of course I cannot go into the specifics of candidates for this search or any other. They came to UBC for two days. They met with the head of our department and a representative of the Dean of Science. They met with faculty members in Mathematics and other departments. In these meetings, we got a chance to hear some details of the research and got a sense of whether they would be good colleagues. Of course, these are top people, who are likely to get other offers elsewhere, so part of all this is to make them have a good impression of UBC. They gave a research seminar and were taken out to lunch and dinner by different groups. It was a while ago that I interviewed myself, but I remember it was high intensity - both exciting and exhausting.

This week, the committee will meet and make a recommendation to the department on acceptability of candidates and for those that pass that bar, the order in which job offers would be made (continuing until one accepts). The department votes on the committee recommendation and makes a recommendation to the Dean of Science. If the Dean approves, offers go out.

I gather this is all more effort in interviewing that for a job with equivalent salary in Industry. At least in part, this is due to the potentially long term commitment we expect to make to faculty members at UBC. We expect any junior faculty member to get tenure after five years or so. The expectations for tenure are actually quite high but with this careful hiring practice, most new UBC hires make that level. At that point, they are guaranteed employment for the rest of their careers. Of course, nothing is really guaranteed. Tenure can be revoked in cases of gross incompetence or misconduct and some kinds of criminal activity. Again, after all the care at hiring, these cases are very rare.

Best Gin

I always liked gin. Gin and tonic with a slice of lime is a good cure for malaria and scurvy and it tastes great. A few years ago a friend of mine brought over a bottle of Hendrick's gin. It is about twice as expensive as regular gin, and I thought, "what is the worst thing that can happen? I think this gin is really much better than average and I am paying twice as much for gin for the rest of my life". Well, that came to pass and I acquired a taste for high quality gin. I tried various new gins - there is a wide variety of botanical flavours to them. I went to a gin tasting event at Liberty Liquor (I recommend it) in the Olympic Village area. At the event, the 10 gins on trial were in glasses with only numbers. After #2, I kept thinking, I hope #2 is cheap - but it was the most expensive one. No. 209 gin from San Francisco, still the best gin I have ever had. I have recently found a close second, Uncle Val's. Hendrick's is still on my list, but now a middle ranked gin but not that expensive and readily available. If you are going to get an ordinary gin for G&Ts, my advice is to get the cheapest one you can find. 

Minecraft quest mods

I am quite a fan of the computer game, Minecraft. It is not exactly the first in the sandbox genre but has certainly defined it. It is a first person survival game, but what makes it "sandbox" is that there is no specific goals in the game and you can build your own structures in the world. I am always a little surprised when parents complain about the amount of time their kids spend playing this game. It is actually pretty creative and there are all kinds of design aspects to it. It makes me wish I had followed my first career thought as a kid, which was architecture.

There is a whole community that writes additional material (mods) for the game. The mods introduce a whole range of new things to the game: new tools, new materials for different looking structures, additional magic systems, and high tech machinery. There are also a few that have have introduced a questing system and a "story". In some ways this makes these mods more like traditional games, but the quest progression is still pretty loose. The two I have spent some time on are based on the 1.6.4 version of Minecraft: Agrarian Skies and Material Energy^3. They seem quite different: in Agrarian Skies you start on a small platform in a void world and have to develop materials from trees using the Ex Nihilo mod in addition to more standard ones. In Material Energy^3, you start on a pre-built base that you have to explore. This one has the MineChem mod which is new to me. Despite the different starts, the gameplay is somewhat similar. I would recommend both of them. They are available at the Feed the Beast modpack servers.

Beethoven's Symphonies

There have been a few things leading me to think about Beethoven's symphonies over the last few weeks. There was a CBC radio show on a weekend morning a few weeks ago in which there was a Beethoven expert being interviewed. He discussed the symphonies and it is interesting to remember that, although they are standard fare these days, they were very innovative when they were written - especially the 9th with the choral component in the last movement. I also forget how much they were rearranged in the years after they were first written - they seem liked fixed works to me now. However, the commentator did mention how different productions can really change the piece. I am not so into classical music that I would buy different productions of the same piece and appreciate the difference. So I loaded up my phone with the nine symphonies and began listening to them again. I have to say that I have purchased in total about nine Beethoven symphonies in different archaic formats in my life, but have never legitimately owned all nine at the same time. The ones I know the best are 1, 5, 6 (the pastoral, I had to look up the number) and 9 since I had those in my limited vinyl collection as a teenager. I am listening to the first as I write this, and they are playing on my morning alarm. For various reasons, getting up is hard these days, so I get a long dose as I try to wake up. Coincidentally, as I was getting interested in Beethoven again, I started watching the anime, Psycho Pass, which I can recommend. It is a sci-fi crime drama with social commentary and is quite thoughtfully done. The villains quote philosophers... and listen to Beethoven in the background. I thought it was the pastoral, but the forum posts say it the the 9th. I guess I don't know my Beethoven as well as I thought. Anyway, as good as Beethoven is... he is no Bach. My father agrees.

Card Wars

I am playing a new iOS game on my phone on the bus back and forth to work (I mostly cycle one way and bus the other on a given day - I have a large office in an old building with room to leave my bike). The game is Card Wars, based on a hilarious episode of the cartoon, Adventure Time. One of my Magic playing friends played it for us (it is episode #92) and is a mockery of more advanced Magic play. Well worth watching. So the iOS game is an electronic take on that game and is quite fun but with some flaws. If you know the game, I am coming up to quest #60 and am mostly playing with Princess Bubblegum as a hero and I went with Sandy Lands because of the Beach Mum card, readily available near the beginning of the game and I believe the strongest rank 2 creature (strong defence, decent attack, good activated ability):

It is a fun game, but the flaws are becoming apparent. To advance you either have to try for cards in a random chest that costs actual money or collect weaker cards by repeating early quests that you can combine to more powerful cards. But... to collect enough cards to do this you have to buy more card space. The blatant cash grab aspect of this is distasteful. In addition, there is no way to just get the cards you want, they all come out at random and no way to trade online. So, I will play for a while longer but the end is in sight. There is a physical card game you can get as well, with quite different rules. I have a set of decks, still looking for a buddy to play with. If only my friend Richard in England would come back to Vancouver...

Mr. Gigante

I was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and my first memories are of North Vancouver in the Capilano area. I did my first years of Elementary School in Berkeley, California. I was there because my mother had gone to UC Berkeley to get a PhD in Resource Economics after my parents had separated. This was 1969-1972 so an interesting time to be in Berkeley. My mother was tear-gassed going between classes on one occasion. BART was just holes under construction. We lived in the UC Berkeley university village housing in Albany. I went to Cornell school. I had heard that it had been closed down because it was on the San Andreas fault but a younger colleague of mine said he went there (small world). Perhaps after seismic upgrading it was re-opened or maybe I have my stories wrong.

When I was in grade 2 (70-71), a small group of us were taken out of the classroom once a week for math enrichment. The group was me, Utz McKnight (who is now a political science professor at the University of Alabama and I keep meaning to try and get in contact with), and Alan whose last name I don't remember so can't look up. It should be said I only remember Utz' last name because our mothers were friends and they kept in touch for a while. Alan was a very cool kid I remember. Anyway, Mr. Gigante (and I am guessing at the spelling) came in and did cool math games with us once a week. I don't remember any specific details but this may be why I ended up as a mathematician in the end. I would look him up except that I don't know if this is the actual spelling of his name or what his first name is (unless it is Mister).

In the Spring of 2005 I gave a series of workshops to a small group of grade 5 students at Queen Victoria Annex School in Vancouver, where my children were students. They were targeted at motivated, bright but not necessarily "gifted" students. I guess this was motivated by Mr. Gigante and my own love of mathematics that he helped to inspire. I attach a link to the problems I got the students to look at:

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~wetton/workshops.html

Gai-Lan is the most perfect vegetable

There are standard European vegetables that I grew up with (carrots, spinach, celery, beans, lettuce, cucumber...) and the North American natives of potatoes and tomatoes. When I say European, I guess I mean Northern Europe (I am of mostly UK heritage with one Finnish grandmother). Beauties like Rapini which is well known in Southern Europe I didn't try until adulthood. We found it first in Toronto living near College and Dufferin (originally a Portuguese-Canadian neighbourhood). Rapini is a cross between broccoli and spinach, slightly bitter. Something quite similar, not quite so bitter, is an Asian vegetable, gai-lan. This is a fantastic vegetable to cook with. Great taste and very versatile. I made two of three stir fry dishes tonight for the family for dinner with it: it is widely available in Vancouver. Try it out! I am honestly not receiving any endorsements from local gai-lan growers. Let me end with a picture of my old steel wok. My wife bought this for me when we were students in New York City. I enjoy stir-frying, but have not had any real training in it and it is not my family heritage. I can say that it just doesn't work that well on an electric stove. I miss cooking with gas.

Wakfu

My tastes run to the geek side. While many of my mathematical colleagues are chess masters or world ranked scrabble players, my hobbies tend to fantasy and super-hero role playing (like Dungeons and Dragons but the Heroes system is better); comic books (I could say graphic novels); magic the gathering (for conservative friends, I say I am going to play cards with my friends - they might imagine it is poker); computer games. In the relatively short history of computer games, the (massively) multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) are relatively recent. I believe the first was Ultima Online. As it was described to me, it had massive playability flaws so I am glad I did not start with that one. My first MMORPG was Asheron's Call made by Turbine which debuted in 2004 and is still live. It has a great community and honestly I would be playing it still if I had a PC and the stones to sort out the details of the ancient connection protocols and how they would get through my router at home. The graphics are dated but the gameplay is thoughtful and fun and there are still monthly content updates. I went on to the industry standard, World of Warcraft (WoW). There is nothing bad to say about this game. It was well conceived with great gameplay for a diverse player base and looks fantastic. OK, I can say one bad thing about it: the stories and player community just don't match up to Asheron's Call, although many of the best ideas were taken from AC (the insect infestation in Silithus must have been inspired by the Olthoi of AC). I'll forget about WoW someday but I still have a map of Dereth on my wall at home. Oh, oh, I remember one of the great things for AC was the fan web site of Maggie the JackCat for the game. I briefly played Dungeons and Dragons Online (another Turbine offering) which was fun in a nostalgic way; also Guild Wars which had some innovative ideas: but I never found a community in either of these games. 

These are supposed to be short posts (one paragraph) but I guess it is OK to make an exception for the first one. Another game I devoted a couple of months to was Wakfu. Overall this was a low quality game and I can't recommend it to anyone. The game system was broken (you could defeat larger groups of higher level mobs but get less experience) and all servers allowed player versus player (PvP) without consent. However, there were just a couple of things about this game I thought were interesting. Combat was turn based! After initiating combat your character was moved to a grid and combat occurred by turns with lots of time for strategic decisions. This really worked for me. There was a great "housing" system: you had a TARDIS-like (if I have to explain TARDIS to you why are you reading this?) bag that you could flop down and enter your extra-dimensional housing hole. I really liked this. My main character was an Iop, a melee focussed character (picture below). I can say I never understood from the game whether Iop was a class or a race. As you advanced in the game you could pick skills from a skill tree (I honesty forget all the details except what follows). I took a set of skills where as you engaged in combat you built up power which you could then release in a burst, doing higher damage. What I remember best of the game is that as this power built up, my character would cackle with increasingly frenetic glee. I picked the picture below of the many images online because you can imagine the cackle looking at it. Again, I can't recommend the game but that gleeful cackle was pretty endearing. I understand that a French cartoon series was inspired (or inspired or was co-marketed) by the game and it is now available on Netflix. I don't imagine that it will be a quality show, but I will check it out. 

Companion Blog

I have started a new, companion blog, "Brian Wetton's Short, Daily RL", where (not surprisingly) I hope to make daily, short posts. For various reasons I am in my own head a little too much these days and I am hoping it will be useful to help me get some things out of it. I also imagine that one day I will be a novel writer, following in my father's footsteps. My daughter, who has actually some talent and training in creative writing, says that the best way to improve your writing is just to work at it every day. So, expect the same quality (or lack thereof) in my new blog, just shorter... and daily.