Letters from Andrew - III More for the benefit of people closer to where I am... I will try and put my correct office number in this time: 01-223-334-644 Recreation ---------- Being in Britain has been a little disappointing with regard to access to sporting facilities. Most of you would know I was a fairly avid swimmer and was regularly involved in triathlon. Well in this respect the UK has been a great disappointment. Facilities are not only rare but also very expensive, although whenever I comment on the price to others, they say "thank goodness you are not in London" so I guess things could be worse. A great advantage of being at Monash was that sports facilities are fairly plentiful and quite cheap, additionally University sports clubs were very active and cheap. The main reason for this was that both were subsidized by the University. (The Union fees helped pay for the pool and so on.) With the collegiate structure of Cambridge, Unless you are a rower (and even then the support is really quite limited) University sports clubs and such don't get this sort of support. The University does not actually own a swimming pool or gym or such. These things are owned by some colleges, but what is available varies greatly. Unless you are a member of the most well appointed college(s), you are resigned to facilities the city has to offer. This is the center of the great disadvantage of the collegiate system at Cambridge. The colleges each replicate facilities over and over. There are numerous sporting fields, tennis courts, small gyms, squash courts and so on. Each college having access ranging from "a bit of everything" to "close to nothing". But with such wild replication, it is rare to find facilities in a College that are high quality or maintained in good repair. The end result is a fairly wasteful system, this particular aspect I will probably touch on again, both in this letter and future ones. I really didn't expect to be wishing for the over crowded and fairly pitiful facilities of Monash. While the weather has been less friendly, that was not my major worry, I just wanted to find a swimming pool, maybe a locally coached group, and I'd be happy. Cambridge city has a couple of swimming pools, none of them particularly nice. Generally they are filled with both the slow moving and the highly unpredictable. If you overtake you are just as likely to be told not to do that. (Which, for swim training, is a bit like being told "No Bumping" at the Dodgem Cars.) At any rate, I was told about a very nice (and quite new) pool outside of Cambridge and am enjoying swimming there instead. The University does not have a Triathlon club. It has a fairly busy cycle club (Varsity champions for the 6 year running or such) and an enthusiastic swim club (well enthusiastic for Water polo and visiting every Pub in any town they go to.) So I got involved in the local Tri club and, while they don't have a patch on Monash's Tri club (no, I wasn't paid to say that) they are pretty enthusiastic. It is good to be back among a bunch of like-minded idiots. Cambridge is as flat as, err, well its very flat. But to make up for a lack of hills, there is an amazing amount of head wind. No matter which direction you head, it always seems like a head wind. The Fen lands being so flat seem to perpetually have a 20MPH gust blowing across them. A bit of trivia (which maybe a piece of cycle folklore): If you are cycling at 20 MPH into a 20 MPH head wind with an air temperature of about -3 degrees, there is a wind chill factor equivalent to about -80 degrees. As the prospect of frostbite does not appeal to me, I plan to keep pretty warm. (and now for a very tenuous link.) France. ------- And speaking of frostbite, I recently learnt to ski (well sort of). Okay I know, the French are nasty people and so on but when a co-worker suggested I join her and eight others to head for the French Alps, I could hardly say no. (Gee I feel guilty now.) The major joy of this holiday was that I didn't have to do any organizing. I just gave them some rough guidelines on prices and was told "here is where we are going". As I really didn't know much about skiing (read: I knew nothing, and now only know a little more), I just left all the organizing to those that knew what they wanted. The group was mainly made up of people working at Xerox Euro-Parc, (which is the Cambridge equiv. of The Xerox Parc in Palo Alto California,) and friends of these people. There were two people who had never skied before (myself and another) and the rest ranged from "I can ski, a bit" through to "I eat black runs for breakfast". (Aside: Black runs are the hardest, the runs are graded green,blue,red and black.) The resort that was decided upon was Courchevel 1850. Courchevel is one of three valleys near Savoie. Courchevel and the other valleys: Meribel and Belleville are collected together into a group of three valleys which the French call (with great imagination) Les Trois Vallees, The Three Valleys. The 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics were staged in this area. Courchevel has several resorts in it, and the number represents the height of the resort in meters. In the Courchevel valley the other resorts were at 1300, 1550 and 1650. For people that know something of skiing (not me) and wish to compare to other resorts, the three valley's boast 200 ski lifts, 600km of ski run, 1250 snow canons and apparently "processes" about 230,000 skiers an hour. Least I turn into a ski resort brochure, I will stop talking about the general and talk about the specific. Well we set dates for beyond the end of the French ski season. This meant the resorts were a little cheaper, but still fresh with snow and so on. I was the only "trouble maker" in the group, requiring a travel visa to visit France. The wonders of the European Union meant all the Brits I was traveling with had no entry issues, however France and Spain are the only countries in the EU that require visas of Australian passport holders. I wish I could tell you some horrible story of woe about how nasty the French embassy was and how difficult they made it for me to obtain a visa, but in truth, the whole process was trivial, the only sticking point being that I had to travel London and happened to pick a day when the majority of trains were canceled due to a combination of snow and, that favorite British Rail excuse, leaves, on the track. At any rate I had my visa and I was set. By the way, I am told the reason we need visas into France and Spain is that Australia requires entry visas of just about every other country, including New Zealand and the UK nowadays, so this is a case of "pay back". All rather childish, although there are still many good reasons to "send the French a message". Following an hour flight from Gatwick to Lyon we were bused from Lyon airport to the resort in about four hours, all rather painless. Seven days later and we would be reversing the process to get home. Well notable points were - the food, yep I have to sadly report that the food in France is as good as they say, particularly when compared with standard English offerings. - Skiing is fun. - The part of the alps I was in was very pretty. I don't know if that was a peculiarity of the region I was, or if that was typical, but it certainly was breathtaking. - I could have stayed there for much longer. A typical day consisted of waking up in barely enough time to get to the morning lessons, take a break after lessons and have a sit down and a talk. Either ski a bit or just wander around. Have lunch. Ski a bit more. As the slopes were closed at 5pm (the lifts close then) this encourages you to head down to the bars or wherever for dinner and if you were particularly eager you might even get some sleep before the next day. I was struggling with French, not for any other reason than I had never really done the language before, but I must say immersion and a little bit of confidence can make a foreign language fun, for the most part. Actually I was very glad that among our party there were several with quite high competence in French, this certainly helped the rest of us. Of course you need to be careful what you say in English too... We were sitting in a cafe deciding on numbers and the waiter turned to us and in the broadest Irish accent said "Is it three of four ???" I think we were all a bit dumb-struck and more than a little amused, every day this "rotten sod" waiter had been listening to us decide (in English) what we wanted and then suffered through the mis-translations into French. Oh well. Another bonus of having a non-EU passport (few that they are): When I arrived in Gatwick, I was the only person in the "non-EU people" queue, so as a result I zipped through passport control, whereas the rest of the group were trapped at the back of the "EU residents only" line. Oh well, small consolation. Skiing was good, skiing was very good. Okay I know some of you have done it all before and are wondering what all the fuss is about, but up until January/February I hadn't seen snow before, so it was all pretty delightful to me. Most of the others in the group were making good use of all the available runs, whereas I didn't see much of the slopes apart from the green bits and a little blue, probably as it should have been. I could quite happily go back again, it was all a lot of fun. I can even attest to the authentic ski experience of breaking something on the slope. I had a heavy fall and managed to break a wrist. Fortunately it was a fairly superficial break (in fact it didn't really show as a break until I got back to Cambridge, perhaps it was just cruddy French X-ray equipment) and the break has since healed nicely. Weather ------- Well the weather has slowly been improving here. The majority of days are about 12-14 degC at the moment with long sunny periods. Rain has been very infrequent and the locals have been voicing concerns about another long run of water rationing and "drought conditions". I must admit the concept of drought doesn't really fit well with my image of England. In general the air is very damp and cold, but it does not rain all that often, this has the farmers all in a bit of a panic. I managed to get sunburnt on more than one occasion and there have been some very pleasant days (20,22,24 and so on). Well hopefully the summer will be good too. We are now on daylight saving time (in-fact we changed forward the same weekend Victoria turned back). The sun is rising at about 5:30 and setting at about 8:30. BBC Radio --------- I greatly miss the morning radio programs of Australia (in particular JJJ's Helen+Mikey for those that know who I am talking about), but the BBC radio has been a consolation. There is a tradition of radio plays and generally silly shows that doesn't seem to have existed in Australian radio culture. Apart from popular programs like "The Archers" which is the BBC equivalent of the ABC's "Blue Hills" (I don't know which pre-dates the other), there are numerous short play plays (maybe one or two hours or four hours over hour episodes). The Archers is a bit like Neighbors, and no, I don't watch/listen-to either. One of the favorites of the moment is "Loose Ends" which is a silly little program collecting together various famous and infamous who get together with a fairly fast talking compare who generally has them "ragging" on their past work places (commonly the BBC itself), their work, (the funniest was magicians on the show the week following Uri Geller giving him great loads of "stick"), or just generally giving silly anecdotes. The show is live and as a result can be a little unpredictable. Cambridgeshire towns -------------------- Over the easter break I spent some time walking to and around the various townships surrounding Cambridge. All very picturesque with numerous thatched roofs, winding roads and so on. I concluded there was a bit of a formula to it all: take one old mill, one manor farm, one manor house, one significant artifact (Joe Blow lived/died/wined/wheezed here), one old church, one old church grave yard, five to seven pubs and >> PRESTO << you have an authentic Cambridgeshire township. Two things I have noticed though, firstly every church has its own graveyard. This is certainly not the case for most places in Australia, towns and cities having nominated cemeteries and it surprised me a great deal. The graveyards are everywhere, even in a place with 25 or so churches like Cambridge, there are 25 of so little tiny graveyards, all looking squashed and uncomfortable between the newer buildings that surround. The other is the absolute plethora of historical things. I must admit I got a bit "historical object"'d out after a few weeks. I am also getting a touch cynical about the number of trees to which Oliver Cromwell tied his horse. Lent Bumps ---------- Towards the end of the Lent term I took in the experience of the Lent Bumps. What are they ??? Well the Bumps are Cambridge rowing races. There are three sets of Cambridge rowing races held in the year: the Lent Bumps, May Bumps and Town Bumps. I watched I didn't compete, not this year. Bumps ?? Well the Cam is not wide enough (or straight enough) for a regular "side-by-side" rowing race, so a peculiar variation was invented. The Bumps involve four days of races, in each heat up to eight boats start off in a row, one after the other. The idea is simple, each boat has to catch the boat in front; the boat at the very front wants to stay there. If one boat catches another, both boats must pull to the side of the river to allow anyone else to pass them. By a complicated process, boats are reordered and four days of these races are run. The objective in everyones mind is to catch the boat in front, four times in a row. The boat at the very front wants to stay there. For those that care; the boats that catch others four times in a row "Win Blades" which means that they have the ?Privilege? of buying a 150 pound rowing oar with various miscellany painted on it (the crew members, the coach, who you were rowing for, and so on). The boat that stays at the front of the pack for four consecutive races wins "Head of the River". Well simplified this means the race objective is to ram one 16,000 pound boat with another 16,000 pound boat. It is a truly bizzare situation with considerable damage being done to boats, most usually, not when they are racing but, as they attempt to pull over to the side of the river, sometimes with disastrous results. There are crews of umpires checking for when boats have bumped, supporters cheering and coaches coaching, it came as considerable surprise that more people didn't find themselves in the water as great drifts of people raced along the riverside with each boat. The Lent bumps (held in Lent term) are for the colleges to compete against each other. May bumps (which, incidently are held in June/July, May referring to the term again) are also for the colleges and the Town bumps are a free-for-all, with many business, pub, and general associated entries in addition to the colleges occur at this time too. A unique, if very bizzare, event to watch. During the course of a race, boats will stream past and while sometimes the drama will unfold in the small section of river you can see, often the drama occurs in a previous or the next section of river. Graduation Ceremony ------------------- On the 23rd of March I watched a Congregation take place. A congregation is where degrees are confirmed on students. A quick flick through the university diary revels that a handful of Congregations take place and there is one special Congregation held each year for honorary degrees. Well as you could imagine this all involves a great deal of pomp and ceremony, with procession and precision and so on. Generally the process lasts from about 10am until as late as 3,4 or even 5pm, but this does not mean visitors and guests are stuck listening to a whole load of people, about whom they really don't care, get degrees. In fact both graduands (soon to be graduates) and guests are cycled through the Senate House at a great rate of knots. Most probably because the Senate House is not all that large. Each college is responsible for the education of students and each student is formally associated with a college, as a result the students are grouped into "College processions". A group of students march from their college down to the Senate House, accompanied by varies college dignitary types and then generally wait outside Senate House to be admitted. Once the degree is conferred (a process I didn't actually see), the graduate makes their way onto the lawn for the obligatory photos and to meet up with their guests. In some ways the whole process is so incredibly archaic, but certainly it is a time that would be hard to forget for those that attend. (For the ceremony I watch take place, about three fifths graduated "in absence".) It is interesting to see the various officials of the University fulfilling their roles. In particular the University Proctors ("policemen") stand guard at the entrance to the Senate House itself. To give you a taste for the Honorary degrees ceremony (to be held in June), here is a list of the official procession participants: The Deputy University Marshall Heads of Colleges The Reguis Processors Processors who are full Doctors Doctors of Divinity Doctors of Law Doctors of Medicine Doctors of Science and Doctors of Letters Doctors of Music The Librarian Professors who are not full Doctors The Treasurer The Director of the Fitzwillian Museum The Secretary General of the Faculties Members of the Council The Pro-Proctors The Esquire Bedells The Chancellor The Chancellor's Train-bearer The University Marshal The Registry, The Vice-Chancellor and The Orator The Proctors The High Steward The Deputy High Steward The Commissary The Pro-Vice-Chancellor The Honorary Graduands The University Constables Well I couldn't tell you what most of these people did either ceremonially or in reality but I can tell you the regular ceremonies are significantly smaller, but the tradition features very prominently around here (no surprise to anyone I guess.) While I have not seen the Honorary degree procession, I got a small taste of the procession with considerable colour and so on. Various trivia: The proctors protect the Chancellor with varies "implements" including a butter measure. The butter measure represents the control (ability to tax) the University once held over the City. The Proctors also ensure that graduates have black shoes; any doubt and they don't graduate in person (now that smacks of public schools)! Prince Philip is the University Chancellor. A special congregation, the first ever not to be held at the University, was approved for the honorary degree confirmed on Nelson Mandella, it has/will take place at Buck. house. It is a bit hard not to be intrigued by all the silliness, err I mean, pomp and ceremony that takes place around here. Three terms that Cambridge graduations gave birth to: "Coming up" is when a student joins a college of the University. "Going down" is when a student graduates. "Being sent down" is when a student is expelled from a college (and hence the University), probably for something "bad" like not wearing their gown on a public street after 8pm, three times in a row. University Trivia ----------------- The Chancellor's wife came and opened various buildings recently as well as dining in Sydney Sussex college. This is the first time a British Monarch has dined in Sydney Sussex college because in 1616 they admitted a student called Oliver Cromwell. which gives me a neat tie to: Oliver Cromwell and Cambridge. Well Cromwell didn't actually finish at Cambridge because his father died, this didn't really seem to matter as a few years later Cromwell had made a name for himself as a pain in the neck to the monarchy of the day ('scuse the pun). In the battle between King and Cromwell, there was much division as to were support should go. In general the University supported the King and the City supported Cromwell. This caused a lot of pain and suffering and help to open the (quite considerable) gap between University (or "Gown" ) and Town. Corpus Christi was caught right in the middle of this as it was a college founded specifically by the Guildhall of the City. As a result when College's were asked to send their plate to support King or Cromwell, the master of Corpus sent the college silver with the college fellows, and gave them all leave. The end result is that Corpus has some of the oldest silver in the country, it was not melted down to serve either Cromwell or the King. At any rate more about the silver later (after I have actually seen it.) This "battle" between Town and Gown is perpetual and as someone who until recently had no official college association, but was an employee of the University found "caught" between these two parts to Cambridge. An example is that most/all town clubs have no members who are associated with the University, for example the Tri club contains few University students or staff, pretty surprising considering about a third of the population of Cambridge have a direct association with the University. The rivalry is brought to a point in several places, there are numerous cricket matches at the more "gentlemanly" end, as well as Town or Gown only pubs (well not a big problem, Cambridge has so many anyway), but sometimes the City and the University intentionally make problems for each other. An example was recently when, breaking an existing agreement, city road works continued late into the night on the road around a college library. In contrast I am sure the University dismisses numerous student pranks involving cars/bikes and the river as "charming" and "letting off steam" but the city constabulary must get a bit sick of it all. Trivia ------ Cambridge has contributed numerous terms to the vocabulary, well a piece of "low-brow" is the pub crawl. Apparently (and this is just as likely to be apocryphal as not,) it comes from a street in Cambridge which up until about 50 years ago had about 16 pubs (and very little else). Well 16 pubs in a row was a challenge that any undergraduate felt worthy of and the crawl or the King Street Run as it was officially known, was born. Well now days there is a pub in the street that bears the name King street run but with only three pubs in the street remaining, this is no longer the street of the pub crawl. Traffic ------- Well the weather is getting better and the biggest impact is that tourists are everywhere. It is interesting to see which countries are having holidays, currently Germans and French dominate. I could easily see why in July/August the place becomes unbearable with so many tourists everywhere. One of the biggest problems is the foot-paths can barely take two people across, so they really suffer when groups of ten or twelve tourists want to cross each other. I was quite mistaken, drivers in Cambridge are not good around cycles, I think it is quite miraculous there are not many many many more accidents. Although someone told me "it gets worse". In the summer there are hoards of "Language Students" (students who come, commonly from overseas, to do intensive language courses.) Most of them don't remember which country they are in, or are just unfamiliar with the road rules in general (I suspect the bike hire places are enthusiastic to take the money but not to help the students in any way about which side of the road they should be using). Another odd thing is that the side of the street cars drive down can be fairly optional. This is partially because the roads are so narrow, as a result people tend to park on either the left or right curb and can be facing any old direction. Food ---- Well no food last letter, so it gets a mention in this one. Apart from saying that French food (in my limited experience) is about a zillion times better than English food, I would have to say cheese in the UK has been a lot of fun. Now I was never really a cheese fan, but certainly there is an ample supply of variety. The British brands are plentiful and tasty (yummy, not tasty as in tasty cheese) but added to that the cheese from "the continent" and there seems like many supermarkets sell nothing but cheese in their 'fridges. Well I have not really tasted all that many, but the variety is great. Work ---- Well as some of you will know, work has been getting to be a bit of a slog, fortunately the weather improving has helped no end. At any rate I am beginning to see some of the advantages I was sure this place had hidden away somewhere. A past PhD graduate came back and was wandering around the lab. He asked if I'd like to spend some time at one of the DEC labs in Palo Alto. I would not be able to take him up on the offer immediately, but wait until I had started a PhD (is there something they know that I don't, I am still undecided about the mythical PhD), and then it would be a summer intern-ship. At any rate, he had a rather neat little piece of technology with him, it was an electronic book, one of a twenty run prototype, far too large, heavy, etc etc but quite impressive. (I hate to admit it but these things always look so much better when the design teams have been through and its all done up in "real life" as was the case here.) It had a 130-150 dpi display of 13.5" which is enough to show an A4 page sans borders but in high enough resolution to make the whole thing readable. I can't remember who, Toshiba? I think, was the dominator in display technology and lead the size/dpi race. Problem is current technology would consume about 55watts for the 600dpi version (600dpi is the current common high end resolution for laser printers) :) But it should be noted a display can dither in a way that paper really isn't able to do... If you are wondering what the heck I am talking about I am talking about the sort of thing used in pulp science fiction (eg Star Trek) as a replacement for paper. It really wasn't ground breaking technology, a machine running a special X kernel (graphics display for you out there in non-computer land), it had a few buttons on the surround as well as a pointer thing (pen) a "current" development was a graffiti recognition unit which apparently was what Newton (Apple's early attempt at this sort of notebook device) always should have been (except as Newton found, this task needs some serious computer juice, a task to which DEC is committing a version of the ARM CPU called strong ARM). It had a PCMCIA card interface so was able to take drive cards (20Meg), roving network interfaces and when in "home base" can be plugged into an umbilical carrying power and network. 'cause it is X, he can send other displays to the "electric book", including Asteroids. All a bit silly. A few other smarts including being able to turn the display over (landscape -> portrait and back) although he pointed out most X applications go screaming into the woods when the display size changes. What really intrigued me was his willingness to discuss its internals, where they expected to go (well a few things were kept to the chest) and an enthusiasm to show people at other work groups including Olivetti Research. I can only think DEC have it tightly tied with legal string or are following the path blazed by Xerox Parc (of letting "really neat things" be turning into products by the opposition, WIMP interfaces, object orientated programming and Ethernet networks jumping quickly to mind, each of these three ideas were largely capitalized by companies other than Xerox.) Noteworthy, both that he didn't drop past Xerox Europarc and that nowadays Xerox's research groups are so tightly tied with legal string and a commitment to "productification" (someone else's word not mine) they are really loosing their effectiveness, sad really. While this one wouldn't be being used to read a novel in bed, not yet, it's certainly interesting to watch what happens in the next five-ten years. At any rate I wouldn't be selling my paper backs yet. Work II ------- For people who still don't really know what I am doing.... I am not studying anything. I am working as a Researcher, my "title" is Research Associate (I think thats between Boot Licker and Lower Peon, only kidding.) I'm currently employed to write computer programs. Although not ordinary computer programs to calculate the interest on a bank loan or a database to track equipment, I write programs that are at a "lower level" that means the programs are written with a great deal of knowledge about what runs the program (the hardware). In particular I am writing computer programs for things called "communications switches" (a switch is like a telephone exchange, in this case it is used to connect computers together). The communications switches can be smart and are used to connect together computers so that they can relay information at optimum (fastest/most predictable/lots of things decide what is optimum) for the thing that needs the information. The sort of switches I am working on are called ATM (a three letter acronym that really doesn't matter) switches and they are becoming the next generation of communications equipment, replacing current computer systems as computers get faster and communications requirements get larger or harder to fulfill with the existing technology. I am writing software to allow a new communication switch system to talk to other pre-existing communication switch systems. The Laboratory has a fairly large investment in both commercial switches and their own home-built special flavor of experimental switches. My main task is to make the Lab's experimental switches talk to the Lab's commercial switches. The work I am doing involves me writing software so that the hardware the laboratory built (and uses for most of its experiments) is able to talk to industry built equipment used to connect the Lab's real computers together. One problem is that often the industry built equipment has never been >>REALLY<< ruggedly tested, it usually works fine against other equipment from the same company, and maybe even equipment from other companies. But, when someone (me) comes along with a slightly different interpretation of the rules, it is an excellent way of discovering how unreliable and pathetic the industry equipment really is. Currently I am at the stage of testing my equipment "against" other equipment in the laboratory and on more than one occasion we have discovered new and exciting "failure modes" (a wonderful engineering euphonism for "ways things stop working") of the commercial industry equipment. Sadly, no my own software is not always right either, bit of a shame really. I must be progressing 'cause they are already planning and plotting what I should start into next. I am not exactly certain what I will be doing next but it all relates to these communications switches and the delivery of this optimum service (what is called in the industry the Quality of Service (or QoS)). The Cambridge research group do a lot of work on QoS control, particularly in ATM networks. QoS is very important for things like video, which has big demands on the amount of information to be delivered, but is less concerned about if a little info gets lost (the eye will combine it together, and "skip" missing details) and things like audio, which doesn't have a very high bandwidth requirement but each audio fragment must be delivered in a certain amount of time or the speech at the other end can sound like a record (those funny vinyl things, your grand parents probably had them, like a CD, but with grooves ) played at the wrong speed, or worse, with bits missing. Humans like speech to be complete but particularly dislike wavering in pitch. So the work I will do next will be related to QoS in some way or other. Another project the Cambridge group that I work in is working on is a research operating system that is designed to be connected to networks that have QoS guarantees (lost you all yet ??) a QoS guarantee is a "contract" between a computer and the networks that the computer wont misbehave and the network will do what it guarantees. An operating system (in loose terms MS-DOS or Windows or UNIX is an Operating System) that knows and understands QoS guarantees can mean these systems are better behaved and better able to make use of the way the network acts. What this all means is that QoS is a fairly central theme in the group I work in in the Lab, with many people working on the operating system project and another group working on the QoS in computer networks. Work Trivia ----------- I work on the site of the old Cavendish Laboratory, the new Cavendish is located well out of town. The Cavendish Laboratories (the place where the structure of the atom, the electron and numerous other discoveries were made) have had more Nobel Prize winners than all of France. Work III -------- Yah, the room I have my "space" in has been carpeted, wonderful. Also, some nice new furniture. I can hardly complain now. Best wishes, keep well, Andrew.