George's Ramblings...

2011

2011-12-29T11:11:00.001-08:00

Well, this seems to be becoming a Tradition! No blogging for the year then an end-of-year/Christmas newsletter (or should that be "newsblog"?!).

It's been another busy, full and generally good year. It got off to a hectic start with a long stretch of lecturing the second-year class. Unusually, I wasn't able to get away for the Easter short vacation - the first time in many years that I have missed spending this in Pretoria.

I was very blessed to be able to get away in June/July for a mid-winter break to Ramsgate with Theo and Brenda and Theo's family (the photo is of me and Jemma making footprints in the sand!). As was the case last year, we had some excellent weather and were able to enjoy the beaches, sea, cycling, geocaching, etc. We took our time over the trip down and overnighted in the Natal Midlands.

In August/September, I travelled overseas for a conference in Denmark (just North of Copenhagen). The photo here is of a military fort/barracks in Copenhagen (not too far from the famous mermaid sculpture). That was a great experience, and I was able to fit in some sightseeing, before taking a train and an overnight ferry up to Oslo in Norway on the recommendation of some good friends. Oslo was stunning, and my only regret is that my time there was so short. Coincidentally, Jacob Zuma (President of South Africa) was on a state visit at the same time, so they had bedecked central Oslo in South African flags in honour of my visit! I really felt at home. If you squint carefully at the flag poles in the image below you can just make out the SA flag bunting in front of the Royal Palace in Oslo.

From Oslo I flew to the UK and spent a week or so with Liz, and then a rather frenetic few days in the UK catching up with various friends (as many as I could pack into the few days available). The highlight of that was the (completely coincidental) opportunity to be there for my godson Alistair's baptism. While with Liz, I managed to do some geocaching on the Isle of Man (the photo below is of me at Liz' local train station after finding a cache there), and we went out for a first-class meal at one of the island's top restaurants. The local museum also had a display of sporting highlights including a lot of cycling-related displays (a lot of them focused on the career of Mark Cavendish). While in the UK I was able to visit Oxford (for the first time), and also Bletchley Park (home of the WW2 German Enigma code-breaking effort).

I got back home from that trip just in time to dive into another busy stretch of lecturing.

The rest of the year seems to have flown by in something of a blur, and it's very hard to believe that the year is almost over. A recent highlight was a dinner to celebrate 25 years of service to the University by myself and two colleagues (Dave Sewry and Richard Foss). In some ways it seems like just the other day that I was a very young graduate starting out as a Junior Lecturer!

2012 promises a number of changes, challenges and excitements. After nine years (i.e. three successive three-year terms) as Head of the Department of Computer Science, I will be handing over that role to a colleague. I am really looking forward to having more time to spend on my research programme. One of the perks of being Head of Department is some extra sabbatical leave, so I will also be taking a few months off in 2012. In March, I plan to ride the Cape Argus cycle race in Cape Town, a world-famous event which attracts 35000 participants each year. That has been on my "bucket list" for some time, but I am almost always lecturing in March and have never been able to get to it previously. My good friend Theo will be joining me for that adventure, which will be a great bonus. Then in September I am organising a conference in Grahamstown (the next edition of the conference that has taken me to Austria and Denmark in the past two years).

And that's about all the news for 2011 and forth-coming attractions for 2012. I hope 2012 is a good year, filled with health and happiness for you.

2010

2011-01-15T06:06:00.000-08:00

Better late than never! Embarrassed by all my friends who managed to get out 2010 newsletters before Christmas, I thought I should try to write up a brief overview of the past year (and make up for the woeful lack of blogging in 2010!).

It's been a fairly busy year. One of the main highlights was a lovely holiday in Ramsgate in July with Theo and Brenda and several other mutual friends (some from Grahamstown, and some from Pretoria). We rented out two large houses next to each other, on the sea: only 50m of grass between the houses and the rocks — the photo is the view from the verandah of one of the houses. That was stunning and the Natal winter was very kind to us — even I managed to swim almost every day! Besides enjoying the beaches and the sea, Theo and I managed to fit in some riding, and we also did some geocaching.

Then in September, I went to the conference in Vienna, with a week or so in the U.K. before that to catch up with various friends: Kevin and Caryl, Steve, Jody and Gina, Nig, Ang, Alistair and Kieran, and Ant, Giskin, Zara and Neal. I also fitted in a couple of days at the "castle" in England (near Hereford on the Welsh border), which Liz was managing at the time. It is a very impressive building used for weddings and conferences, etc. rather than as a "proper" hotel. Her involvement there ended towards the end of the year, and she is now back on the Isle of Man full-time. We had a great time in Vienna it's a beautiful city, and managed to pack quite a bit into a few days, including various castles and churches, a boat trip on the Danube, a couple of concerts, and some very good food! The photo here is of the Schönbrunn palace — we had walked up the hill from where this was taken after looking around the interior of the palace.

The end of the year in the Department marked Pat Terry's official retirement. It was weird dealing with that — if you had told me in my first-year that one day I would be a professor in the Department and responsible for saying farewell to "Professor Terry", I would have told you you were crazy! Pat's not retiring completely — we're keeping him on to do his third year compiler course, and the University is also keeping him around to help with some of the timetabling and administrative work that he is so good at.

The end of the year also brought the good news that I had received an NRF (National Research Foundation) "rating" — essentially a national recognition of my research track record. That's a very pleasing career development, so I was rather chuffed when the good news came through.

Liz managed to come out to Grahamstown for Christmas again this year — we've been blessed to have her here for two years in a row. Our parents had visited her in July/August, and then I saw her in September, so we've had a relatively good year of family contact. She was pleased to escape the cold and snow in the U.K. over Christmas, but a little miffed that her three weeks here were very wet — she counted only three days of sunshine. As the Eastern Cape is in the midst of severe drought we weren't complaining about the wet Christmas.

She left on 5 January, and I joined her on the flight up to Jo'burg to spend some time with Theo, Brenda and Caleb. That's almost over as I have to be back in G'town on Monday for a meeting, so fly back tomorrow afternoon.

The year ahead is starting off busy. We're starting the year with a vacant post, due to a colleague emigrating to Australia. I am due to step down from my role as Head of Department when my current term comes to an end in the middle of this year. My attempts at at succession planning keep being frustrated, there may be some light at the end of that tunnel — I certainly hope so: after eight years, I am more than ready to hand over the reins to someone else!

The Inaugural Lecture

2009-09-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

Part of becoming a full professor is a rite of passage known as the Inaugural Lecture. This is essentially a public lecture at which the new professor gets to speak about some topic of general interest, usually related to their research. My turn came on 23 September!

The lecture was entitled It's the End of the World as We Know It: A View of the Future of Computing, and focused on the changes that have happened in the world of processor hardware in recent years (particularly, the move to "multicore" chips), why this has happened, what the implications are, and what future developments in software will be needed to take full advantage of the changing hardware platforms. It was a lot of fun preparing the talk, as it brought together a lot of threads from my teaching and research. Finding the right level at which to pitch the talk was difficult, as the audience ranged from people who might occasionally play Solitaire through to colleagues who have many years of experience in distributed and parallel programming. The feedback from members of the audience suggest that I found the right level reasonably well.

One of the highlights of the whole process was being able to share the evening with family and friends. I was particularly blessed that my good friend Theo was able to come down from Pretoria for the occasion (unfortunately, Brenda and Caleb were not able to come with him).

Traditionally, an inaugural lecture is used to acknowledge the support, encouragement and help of the people who have been involved in the new professor's life and the process of becoming a professor. It was wonderful to have a public platform on which to acknowledge the many friends, family members, colleagues, teachers, mentors and role models who have contributed so much to my life.

The lecture was held in the early evening, and involved a certain amount of ceremony, with a procession of academic staff in full academic dress and an introductory speech by the Vice Chancellor before I was allowed to take the floor. Afterwards there was a chance to mingle with the members of the audience over some drinks and snacks, before going on to a formal dinner hosted by the Vice Chancellor and his wife, to which I had been able to invite a few particularly close friends and colleagues, and my parents.

Getting up at 3:15am the next day to take Theo down to the airport was a bit less fun, but at least it was a public holiday, and I was able to relax and come back down to earth slowly!

My last weekend...

2009-07-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

I got back from Las Vegas on Thursday night, and on Friday we went to Lake Camanche for one last camping/boating trip. That was absolutely awesome with hot sunny days and warm water to swim and tube (and even to ski and wake-board for the more energetic!). We went with some friends of Colin and Janet's who I have also got to know quite well and had a great time relaxing, eating good food and enjoying the lake.

One of Colin's favourite pursuits is to try to dislodge riders from the tube. Here you can see an action shot as Bryn went flying, and I am about to follow! Lexi is hanging on for her life (the middle is usually the safest place to be, but even there I managed to fall off by doing a somersault over the front of the tube as it slowed rapidly when someone else had just fallen off and Colin had throttled back the boat suddenly!).

Somehow it seems fitting that my last photo of the U.S. should be of a stunning sunset during a weekend of excellent memories with wonderful friends.

Viva Las Vegas!

2009-07-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

The trip to Vegas was very interesting. I have been there for conferences several times (in fact, most of them for the conference that me there this time too). What was noticeable this time though was just how much more confident I felt about getting around, etc. — I guess living in the U.S.A. for a year has had an effect on me!

The conference was good (actually, it is a little too big to be really good: 2000+ delegates is a massive crowd). My paper went well on Wednesday afternoon, and there was some nice discussion and questions about it afterwards.

One of the main highlights of the trip was the chance to do some geocaching and to add Nevada to my list of states that I have cached in. Many of the caches along "The Strip" are virtual caches (i.e. there is no physical cache container, you simply visit the spot and answer some question(s) to validate that you were there), due to the crowds of people that are ever-present. However, I did also get to visit my first Webcam cache. This requires some assistance from a friend. Essentially, the geocache coordinates take you to a spot where there is a pubic webcam. When you reach the spot, you phone someone (in my case Jared was very helpful) who can then go to the webcam's site and take a "photo" of you to prove that you were there. I'm not sure that the quality of the photo here proves much, but that really is me standing on the steps!

The other HUGE highlight was attending a performance of The Lion King on Wednesday night. That was absolutely breath-taking — it is amazing how well they create the animals with puppets and actors. However, it did make me a little home-sick (I never thought I would get misty-eyed when hearing "Moloweni" as a greeting!). Maybe it's a good thing I'm going back within a week!

Leaving Davis

2009-07-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

I was back in Davis on Monday for my final small group/Bible study meeting. That was actually a potluck/bring-and-share supper (some delicious barbecued/braaied chicken with various salads, etc.), and was my "farewell" to the group. The small group had got me a book about the Davis area and had all signed a card, which was very nice of them. It's great how one has a Christian family all over the world.

Colin and Janet had lent me their Dodge Durango SUV for the trip to Davis on Monday. Packing my stuff into the SUV and cleaning up in Davis was relatively unstressful and I was back in Rocklin by 3:00pm on Tuesday. It was nice to have the big vehicle as it swallowed a chest of drawers and a small desk easily with stacks of space to spare for the two suitcases, as well as numerous bags of junk, bedding, etc. which need to be returned to their owners or donated. I'm ignoring the challenge of fitting everything I want to bring back to SA into two suitcases for the moment!

I need to get back to Davis sometime to collect the bed and the bicycle, which will need a trailer — the plan is to do that on Saturday.

Next week I will be in Las Vegas for the 2009 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'09), part of the 2009 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP'09). That's a huge conference that I have attended several times before. I'll be presenting a paper on some of the work that I did here late last year.

Then there is one last camping/boating trip planned before I fly back to SA.

It's hard to believe I leave here in only two weeks now. The time seems to be flying by rather fast!

A Geocaching Milestone

2009-07-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

While most geocachers are adamant that "it's not about the numbers", keeping track of the number of caches found and celebrating significant milestones is a very common habit!

A while back I had realised that I was fairly close to reaching 200 caches found, and that I could reach this in the USA by finding about three caches a week. I took advantage of the end of my formal commitments at UC Davis to go out on a country ride last week and managed to tick off quite a few, bringing me up to a total of 193. I then considered trying to reach the 200 mark while in Yosemite over the weekend, but that would have meant pushing the geocaching rather hard (and would not have been all that considerate to the others on that trip). Still, the caching on our hike in Yosemite did bring the total tantalisingly close: to 197!

With today as my last day in Davis I had to do something about this and went out for a quick ride to get three fairly close-by caches, deliberately aiming for a specific one for the milestone. My quest was successful and I hit the target, just hours before leaving Davis!

The ride was actually very pleasant, mostly on a bike path that follows the original Lincoln Highway route into Davis, parallel to the current highway. The highway is particularly spectacular at the moment with masses of blooming oleanders in all sorts of colours down the median.

The geocache that I found for the milestone is an interesting one. Called "Losing Yamar's Marbles" it was placed by a cacher called Yamar, and the cache container is full of marbles. The idea is to take a marble and then drop it off anywhere you care to, noting the location on a website he has set up (he describes it as a study in Brownian motion!). I had noticed this cache some time ago as it is quite close to where I was living in Davis (just a little difficult to get to, as it is on the other side of the railway tracks). More importantly, no marbles have been dropped in Africa yet — an omission that had to be rectified!

So, I reached my goal of 200 caches, on my last day in Davis, and will be able to drop the two marbles I took when I get back to South Africa.

All in all, a very satisfying day of geocaching!

Yosemite: Day 2

2009-07-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

After a relatively strenuous day, the plan for day 2 was a lot calmer. We started off with the obligatory cooked camping breakfast (including a neighbouring squirrel!) and then headed off into Yosemite again.

We took the Northern road, which runs right through the park this time and headed up towards the North-East part of the park. This involved a fair amount of climbing (fortunately, with the SUV doing the work this time, rather than human legs!). As we climbed, the terrain and vegetation changed noticeably from the pine forests to relatively bare rock, with patches of some very pretty wildflowers.

Our destination for the day was a short (a few miles), and flat (maximum climb 100ft, or about 30m) hike along the Tuolumne River. One of the main goals was for Colin to do some fly-fishing.

It was the perfect way to recover from the previous day's exertions and we thoroughly enjoyed the gentle stroll along the river, with pine forests and wide-open meadows. We stopped a couple of times for fishing breaks before reaching a lovely, quiet meadow spot where we had lunch with very few other people in sight or passing by.

Shortly after lunch we were somewhat surprised when two women walked up to the river (about 200m from where we were sitting in plain view, and much closer to some other people sitting on the river bank) and proceeded to strip off their clothes and plunge into the icy water before sunning themselves on the rocks! As most Americans are relatively prudish and wouldn't dream of being seen naked in public, we decided they must be European! (And, no, I didn't take any photos!).

After a post-lunch rest (for the non-fishers), Janet and I walked a little further along the river, enjoying the ever-changing interactions of the water and the rocks.

A rather long, but pleasant and scenic drive with musical accompaniment by Casting Crowns had us back at the camp site reasonably early for our dinner of braaied chicken and baked potatoes.

It had been a very different day to the first, but served to highlight the amazing variety of terrain, vegetation and activities available in Yosemite.

On Sunday morning, Janet and Erin had to get up early (5:00am) to get back home as Erin was leaving on a church camping trip for the week. Colin did some last minute fishing before breakfast, after which we packed up (again, relatively easily in the RV) and headed back to Rocklin. The first part of the trip involved 5 miles of rather steep and winding descent, which we did very slowly in the "bus" and there was a lot of end-of-holiday-weekend traffic, so we took a lot longer to get back than Janet and Erin had.

Yosemite: Day 1

2009-07-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

The past weekend was a long weekend in the US (with the Fourth of July falling on a Saturday, Friday was a public holiday). We headed for Yosemite national park (South-East of Sacramento) on Thursday afternoon. Colin and Janet had borrowed their neighbour's RV (Recreational Vehicle — a monster motor home!) for the trip, as the thought of tent-camping in bear country did not appeal too much! Getting camping sites in Yosemite on the Fourth of July weekend was a non-starter, so we stayed in a camp site just outside the park gates. We left Rocklin on Thursday afternoon, and arrived at the campsite early that evening, in good time to set up camp (relatively easy with the RV) and enjoy a dinner of braaied sausages and salad.

On Friday morning, we tried to get up and going reasonably early, but with with relatively little success! The line of cars waiting to get into the park was a little daunting, but was moving reasonably quickly and we were soon through the gate and enjoying the beautiful scenery of pine forests, dramatic rocky mountains and cliffs, and rushing rivers. The mission for the day was to tackle the hike to Nevada Falls. The round-trip distance was about seven miles (about 12km), but the difficulty lay in the 2000ft (600m) climb (and descent)! There were several geocaches located along the trail, which added to the fun of the hike.

Our route up the trail took us along the Merced River most of the time. The first climb of the day was up the "Mist Trail" alongside the Vernal Falls. The spray from the falls provides a very welcome, cooling mist as you climb up a set of stairs built into the cliff face. At the top we stopped for lunch at the pool above the falls, and got our breath back before the next stage.

From Vernal Falls, there was a short section through some woods, before starting the climb up to the top of Nevada Falls. That was a little more hair-raising than the climb up to Vernal Falls, as the steps were relatively rough rock, with no hand rail. It was also in hot sun most of the time and far enough from the river and falls that there was no cooling mist effect on this climb. The effort was more than worthwhile though, as the view from the top of the falls was amazing and there was a lovely cold, refreshing pool in which to soak our feet before contemplating the descent.

We took an alternative route for the descent, which didn't follow the river as closely, but also took the descent more gradually (the alternative trail is used by horse riders, which pretty well rules out staircases!). It was also well shaded and reasonably cool.

By the time we got back to our parking spot, it was starting to get quite late, so we abandoned our plans to try to get to a scenic sunset spot (a fair distance drive away), and settled for getting some pizza for supper at the "village" near the parking. After dinner, Colin tried fishing for a while in the river, before we headed for the campsite and showers.

While we didn't see any bears, we did see a lot of squirrels and a few deer in the park, but the highlight was without a doubt the spectacular scenery.

Up and away!

2009-06-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

Another good weekend, with less than four weeks to go to my departure now :-(

Most of the weekend was spent enjoying the facilities of the Hobson "resort" (as they refer to their back yard!). That was a very pleasant refuge from the 40+ degree heat.

On Sunday afternoon we went to see Up at the movies. The movie is outstanding — probably one of Pixar's best ever (and they've been making superb movies ever since the original Toy Story), and one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. Without giving too much away for the benefit of those who haven't seen it yet, the story is incredibly moving without being cloying, and has a very strongly principle-based message (actually several messages) without being "preachy". Really good stuff — highly recommended.

With Bryn in Uganda (and having a great time — Colin and Janet spoke to him briefly on Sunday), I have the use of his car and so made my own way to Davis this morning to continue the packing. That is going reasonably well. Tomorrow I need to go into campus to return my keys and wrap up things there. More "lasts"!

With the Fourth of July coming up, Friday is a public holiday and we have a trip to Yosemite planned. I'm really looking forward to that: hiking among the mountains, forests and waterfalls.

Time's running out...

2009-06-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Today marks one month to go until I leave the USA — it's scary how quickly a year can go by!

I had a good weekend with the Hobsons. It was somewhat hectic with a whirlwind of kids coming and going: Erin was out for the whole day on Friday at a theme park with some friends; Jared left on Friday morning for a church camping trip to Yosemite; Bryn left for Washington, D.C. on his way to Uganda early on Sunday morning; and Jared returned from his camping trip on Sunday afternoon. I'm going to miss them all terribly when I return to SA.

My time at UC Davis officially ends at the end of June, so I am busy starting to pack up (bought a new suitcase on the weekend!) and wrap up in Davis.

Camping at Camanche

2009-06-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we went on a great camping and boating trip to Lake Camanche (just South-East of Sacramento, about 1.5 hours from Colin and Janet's home in Rocklin). We left on Friday just after lunchtime, and took the back routes to avoid the worst of the traffic. Bryn and Jared had invited a couple of friends, so we were a fairly big crowd. We quickly set up camp and then took the boat off to the launch ramp and got it in the water and then moored near the camp site for the night.

Our campsite was in the "overflow" area, so had no showers and chemical toilets (porta-potties), but was relatively uncrowded and had a super view over the lake. Camanche itself is a lovely lake with relatively warm water (about 74 Fahrenheit, according to Colin's fish-finder gadget, or roughly 23 degrees Celcius). The weather was a little strange for the time of year, with cold evening winds both nights, and a few showers of rain in the middle of Friday night. The woodfire was very welcome in the evenings! Fortunately, the days were lovely and warm, with a little cloud around on Saturday to keep it a little cooler.

On Saturday, after a hearty breakfast, we headed across the lake and found an island where we could camp out for the day (the island property being useful in that Freckles could be let off his leash and allowed to wander — he's even got his own little life-jacket!). Different groups went off tubing behind the boat through the day, while others stayed on the island playing with a frisbee or a ball (or reading and dozing!). During the afternoon, Colin, Janet and I left the youngsters on the island and headed up the lake in search of some boat-in geocaches. Unfortunately, the water level was quite high and finding safe mooring for the boat was tricky as much of the current waterline was very rocky. We did manage to find one that had a reasonably decent "beach", and after some hunting around (with much careful banging and prodding to scare off any rattle snakes) managed to find the cache.

On Sunday, Janet and Erin had to leave early as Erin had a girl scouts "ropes course" in Sacramento. The rest of us went out boating and enjoyed the tubing again (Colin also did some water-skiing), before packing up the campsite. We jumped on the boat and found a nice spot for a picnic lunch, before heading out into the middle of the lake for a final swim and a last tube-ride back to the launch ramp to get the boat onto the trailer and head back home to Rocklin.

High School Grad

2009-06-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Today was Bryn and Jared's high school graduation. That's a big deal here (much more so than in Africa, where my own memories are very of a very anticlimatic fizzle-out to six years of high school education!). The ceremony was held in the school's football stadium, with music provided by the school's "symphonic band", and the procession of graduates (in caps and gowns) led in by cadets carrying the US and Californian flags.

The national anthem was sung, and there were speeches (mercifully short) by a wide range of people: the principal, the president of the students' association, one of the valedictorians, a couple of the other students (an "inspirational" message and a class "history"), one of the teachers (chosen by a vote of the students), and the class president.

The graduation itself went fairly quickly with two streams of students coming up on both sides of the stage with names being called alternately from either side. However, with over three hundred graduates, it still took a while!

It was a highly significant graduation for the school which had only opened four years, with this as the first, new "freshman" class (there had been a small graduation last year, as they had also admitted a few transfer students initially). The school has done very well, earning the status of a "California Distinguished High School" despite its youth.

It was wonderful to be here for the boys' graduation. It just seems like the other day that they were babies in Grahamstown — they've come a long way since then!

Memorial Day Weekend

2009-05-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was mainly spent painting! As part of her birthday present, Erin was redecorating her bedroom and the great paint-job happened this past weekend. Janet did the lion's share, painstakingly stencilling multiple, brightly coloured polka dots on the upper parts of the walls. This area and the ceiling were painted white, above the pink picture rail which acted as a border for the BRIGHT green walls! Erin is very happy with her new paint scheme, and just rolled her eyes when I asked if she would provide a rack of dark glasses for people entering the room!

Due to the painting activity we went to church on Saturday evening, which was good — relatively uncrowded and a very relaxed atmosphere.

I also enjoyed relaxing in the pool — just the way to relax after a tough day's painting!

The weekend was a long-weekend, as Monday was Memorial Day, in memory of those lost in defense of their country. I came back by train on Monday afternoon, to be here for my small group meeting on Monday night. When I got home, the nearby cemetery was completely decked out with American flags (large ones along all the roadways, and smaller ones on some of the graves — I presume those of ex-servicemen and women). Unfortunately, the flags had all been a removed a couple of hours later when I went to get a few photos!

My last weekend in Davis...

2009-05-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not leaving yet, but I spend very few weekends here and this was probably my last!

I stayed to attend a concert (Baroque classical recital) on Friday night. That was put on by the University's Music Department and was very good.

I had been thinking about going to the new Star Trek movie on Saturday and it turned out Shane and Anni (my housemates) had the same thought so we ended up going together on Saturday evening. That was a very good "prequel" movie.

On Sunday I went to church followed by my usual brunch at the little Austrian restaurant.

It felt a little odd/sad doing all these things for the last time! The time for my departure seems to be rushing close very rapidly now.

Oklahoma!

2009-05-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

On Friday night I went to see the UC Davis production of Oklahoma!, the well-known, much-loved Rogers and Hammmerstein musical. That was excellent. The story is a little corny, but the music is superb and the production was top-notch. They had brought in a few professional performers for some of the lead roles, but the majority of the cast were students (and a few community people). The orchestra was made up completely of students and staff.

While the music and the acting/singing were good, the highlight was the staging. As people were coming into the theatre, there was a picture of a farm scene (farmhouse, fence, windmill, etc.) projected onto the stage curtain/screen. As the play started, the lights on stage brightened and the screen raised slowly revealing that it was actually a gauze screen and that the scene that had been projected was actually the same as the stage setting, giving this amazing effect of "fading" from two-dimensions into three. They used the same trick in a few other places — very impressive and very effective (I guess they did spend $185,000 on the production — i.e. somewhere around R1.5million!).

Jim Larus

2009-05-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Computer Science Department here at UC Davis hosted Jim Larus from Microsoft Research yesterday for a "distinguished lecture". He spoke on "Spending Moore's Dividend", which was based largely on his recent article in Comm ACM (see p. 62). The talk was a fascinating look back at how computer processors have developed over the last 40 years or so and how software has developed to take advantage of the huge increases in processing power and then a look forward to the very different future that we face as increases in processor speed have stopped in favour of increasing numbers of processors (cores) per chip. That trend is going to require some very different approaches to how we do things in future, and it was fascinating to hear some thoughts about what form that might take. The article is well-worth a look if you have access to the Comm ACM.

Thrive

2009-05-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind with the blogging (again!). Last weekend was the Thrive conference at Bayside, Colin and Janet's (and my!) church. The conference is a little like the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, but with a wider focus (not just on leadership). The conference was really excellent, and I enjoyed and learned a lot at the sessions that I attended.

They had a combination of "general" sessions, with major speakers like Franklin Graham (Billy Graham's son), Francis Chan (a well-known pastor, speaker and author) and Nick Vujicic (an amazing Australian man who has no arms or legs!). The general sessions also included worship, led by several different groups (including the Katinas).

In addition to the general sessions, there were smaller, parallel "break-out" sessions focused on specific topics. I went to talks on "God-Size your church", "10 systems of a healthy church" (both concerned with how to build and run healthy churches), church finances and church leadership.

There was also a fair amount of "entertainment" with two Christian comedians, and the pre-screening of a new movie called To Save a Life, which is due to be released later this year (it deals mainly with issues that teenagers face).

On Sunday, they had one of the conference speakers, Chris Brown, stay on as a guest preacher, and he gave one of the most entertaining, "seeker-friendly" messages I think I have ever heard, while at the same time being one of the most challenging messages for believers that I have ever heard. Colin and Janet had heard him and his senior pastor talk about this approach in one of the break-out sessions at the conference, so it was interesting to see it in action.

Return from Seattle: Amtrak

2009-04-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

My "vacation" wasn't actually over when I left Seattle, as I had opted to return to Davis by train. The train left Seattle at 9:45am and the journey took just over 21 hours, passing through some spectacular scenery along the way. In the interests of a comfortable night's sleep I had reserved a "roomette" — a compartment with two seats which formed a single bed and an overhead bunk for a second bed. That entitled me to free meals and also to the use of the "parlour car" — a renovated carriage with bar, lounge area, eating area, "theatre" (a huge flat screen TV) and massive picture windows.

From Seattle the train headed past the Museum of Flight on its way to Tacoma and then along the Puget Sound (past the famous Tacoma Narrows, scene of the bridge disaster that we watched over and over again in Physics as an illustration of the power of resonance!). The scenery along here was beautiful.

We crossed into Oregon and arrived at Portland just after lunch time — a very pretty town where the train stopped for a shot while (much to the relief of the smokers on board who were able to get off and puff away!).

Later in the afternoon (after 5:00pm) we started to climb up through the Cascade Mountains, which provided more spectacular scenery. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera to the dining car — the setting sun as we travelled through the snowy, forested top of the mountain range was awesome!

After a remarkably good night's sleep (I found that I woke up when the train stopped — fortunately, there were only two scheduled stops through the night), I woke up as we were approaching Sacramento. As the train was a little behind schedule there was time to enjoy the (free!) breakfast before the last leg of the journey to Davis, arriving at 7:30am, a little after the scheduled 6:50 arrival time.

All in all, a very fun way to end a great week away!

Day Three in Seattle: The Museum of Flight and Underground

2009-04-25T11:56:00.001-07:00

My last day in Seattle started with a half-hour bus journey South of the city to visit the Museum of Flight. That is built on the site of the original Boeing factory (a converted barn!) and has some stunning planes on display and other exhibits. Some of the highlights are the last British Airways Concorde flown, a previous presidential jet (a 737, the first jet used as Air Force One), the first 747, the first 737, a Blackbird spy plane (the fastest aeroplane ever built), a moon rover, Mars explorer, space capsule, a recreation of the original Wright flyer and much, much more (clicking on any of the photos below will enlarge them).

Recreation of the Wright Flyer (note the Russian satellite hanging in the background too).

An elderly Air Force One!

The first 747 (note the large "1"!).

An Apollo Capsule.

The Blackbird spy plane (note the unmanned drone mounted on top too).

A recreation of the original Boeing factory in the barn.

The original factory from the outside.

I finally managed to drag myself away from there at about 3:00 in the afternoon and got back into Seattle just in time to take an "underground" tour. In the early part of the last century the city had been having a lot of trouble with its drains (mainly thanks to the recent introduction of indoor plumbing!). At that time a bad fire razed most of the town to the ground and offered an opportunity to fix the problems. Needless to say the townspeople and the city officials differed on just about every aspect of how this should be done, which led to the merchants rebuilding their shops at the (old) ground level while the city eventually rebuilt the roads one-storey higher! The result was that shoppers had to negotiate ladders to get down from the road level to the level of the pavement/sidewalk, and that incautiously driven carts sometimes ended up falling off the roads (as did incautiously inebriated citizens at night!). The eventual solution was to cover over the sidewalks, making the street level of the shops what was previously the first floor and introducing underground tunnels around each block. The underground tour went through a few of these tunnels, giving some of the history of the area with a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humour, (and not a little toilet humour given the cause of the problems!).

After a brief rest, I went out and got one last cache for my visit to Seattle. That was in the area of the Seattle Public Library, which was right across the road from my hotel (I could see the cache site from my hotel-room window!). The Library is interesting for its stunning architecture (I remember reading about it in Time magazine when it was opened a few years ago). That was followed by a meal of fresh fish and chips on the waterfront, watching the sun set and the seagulls stealing food from people eating on the dock outside the restaurant! A very memorable end to a great break.

Day Two in Seattle: Aquarium, Caching and Science Center

2009-04-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

My second day in Seattle started with a trip to the aquarium (there's a photo of it from the harbour cruise in the previous posting below). That is an actual working/research aquarium, with some very interesting displays. In the entrance area, there is a huge tank with a depiction of the fish life from the Puget Sound (Seattle is on Elliot Bay, which opens up into Puget Sound). Just after I arrived they had an interactive "show" with two divers who were in the tank for cleaning and feeding and had headphones and microphones so that they could talk to the presenter on the dry side of the glass and the audience — very well done (you can make some of it out in the photo here, although there is a lot of reflection from the glass, actually more than 12 inches of acrylic). I had some lunch at the aquarium restaurant (but resisted the seafood options — it seems wrong to be eating their relatives in front of the tanks!).

From there I walked up into town through the Pike Place Market again to visit a small computer company who run the web-based systems on which geocaching works. They're bigger than I thought (35 employees and growing) and have a very nice set of offices in downtown Seattle (the servers are off-site, but nearby apparently). They do "official" tours on Friday afternoons, but very graciously allowed me to pop in briefly during normal office hours as I would be leaving on Friday morning. In the photo here you can see me standing below the company logo holding a HUGE geocoin and with the biggest geocache I have ever seen open in front of the desk!

From there I walked up to the Seattle Center again and visited the Pacific Science Center. That was what had triggered the visit to Seattle, as they were hosting a special exhibit on geocaching, GPS technology, etc. That was good fun (and a great way to introduce the uninitiated to geocaching). After completing the "maze" I wandered around the rest of the science centre and also saw an excellent IMAX movie on beavers (incredible creatures!).

Keeping in the geocaching spirit of the day I then did a few more caches (both the visit to the headquarters and the special exhibition also counted as caches), finding a couple in the vicinity of the Science Center (including one with the stunning fountain and view of the Space Needle that you see here).

After another ride back into the shopping area downtown, I walked through Pike Place (again!) to the waterfront and back to the hotel (with one more cache find en route!) as the sun was setting over the bay.

Sleepless in Seattle!

2009-04-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I just got back from a brief trip to Seattle. That was a great experience as Seattle is a beautiful city.

I left on Tuesday morning and the trip got off to a slightly inauspicious start, as my flight was delayed by some minor technical issue and we took off well over an hour late. Alaska Airlines managed to make up quite a bit of the time, but I was still running late by the time I had found a shuttle bus service from the airport and checked into my hotel in downtown Seattle. The "deadline" was to try to catch the 2:45pm harbour cruise. That was part of the "CityPass" deal, which provided a booklet of tickets for six attractions at about half the normal total price. Several of the included attractions were things that I really wanted to do anyway and most of the others looked like fun, so it was a really good deal (I didn't use the zoo ticket in the end, but still saved a lot!).

The harbour cruise was very interesting and gave a good overview of the city. We saw some sea lions basking on a buoy, and also saw a massive gantry crane (used to offload the massive container ships) being transferred from the barge which had brought it from China onto the dock.

From the waterfront, I made my up through the famous Pike Place market (scene of the famous fish-throwing fish market) to the central shopping area and took the monorail to the Seattle Center. Both of those (monorail and Center) are relics from the 1962 World's fair held in Seattle.

The main feature of the Seattle Center is the famous Space Needle. Entrance to the Space Needle was included in the CityPass deal so I went up and admired the views from the top.

After getting some dinner in the area and wandering around the Center (lots of interesting gardens, architecture, fountains, etc.) I went up the Needle a second time to watch the sun setting and the city lights coming on. A very good end to my first day in Seattle.

The Jelly Belly Factory!

2009-04-10T15:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me well will know that I have a sweet tooth (now there's an under- statement!). Well, on Tuesday Janet was taking Erin and a friend of hers through to the Jelly Belly factory near San Francisco. As they were driving right past Davis, I joined up with them for the excursion.

For those who haven't come across them before, Jelly Belly are the manufacturers of the Jelly Belly "gourmet" jelly beans. We took the (free) factory tour, which started off rather weakly with a lot of history, etc. before getting into the details of the manufacture of jelly beans (as is so often the case, a much more complex process than one initially appreciates).

One of the "gourmet" features of Jelly Belly beans is that they use a lot of natural fruit juices, etc. in the manufacturing process, and they also have some very interesting/different flavours (e.g. buttered popcorn, which really does taste like the real thing!). They really are very good jelly beans!

While the factor tour is free, it ends up in the inevitable shop, which is definitely not free (to be fair, we did get a small sample pack for free at the end of the tour). On display in the shop was one of the bicycles used by the Jelly Belly pro cycling team. After getting some lunch along the way, Janet and the girls dropped me off back in Davis after a fun day out.

Skiing, part 2

2009-04-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Rocklin schools are Spring Break at the moment, so we (minus the boys who are on a church mission trip for the week) headed up to the mountains yesterday (Thursday). We went back to the Donner Ski Ranch, where we had spent New Years Day for my first attempt at skiing. As it is late in the season, there are some good mid-week deals going and I was able to get a full-day lift ticket and hire skis and boots for less than the lift ticket alone had cost back in January. The resort was also much less crowded than back in January.

After a short time of trying to get back into the basic techniques we headed up the ski lift. My first couple of runs were a little chaotic, but then I actually started to get the hang of it. By the early afternoon, I was managing to get several runs in a row with no falls and no need to use the "butt brakes" to stop! I still doubt that I'll ever be a good skier, but at least I managed to master the basics reasonably well.

Adding to the enjoyment yesterday was the fact that a light snow was falling all day, so we were skiing in stunningly beautiful conditions as the pictures show. Erin had a friend with her and we met up with some other friends of the Hobsons (dad and daughter), which meant that we formed a few groups of people of similar ability, which helped add to the fun.

Yay!!

2009-04-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Farmers' Market Picnic in the Park is back! With the return of long evenings and good weather, the Wednesday evening Picnic in the Park has resumed (see some of my September 2008 postings for other observations and some photos). It actually started a couple of weeks ago, but today was the first day I was able to get there. We went onto Daylight Saving Time at the beginning of March (while I was in Chattanooga, actually), so the sun is setting at about 7:30pm now, and the weather is warming beautifully (maximum temps around the mid- to low-20's at the moment). Perfect for a lazy evening in the park enjoying some live music and good food.

The live music was a VERY blue blues band — music to slit your wrists to!

The range of fresh produce on offer at the market is a little different due to the seasons (no grapes yet), but I got some pistachio nuts and some delicious strawberries. I went Mexican for supper and had a super-burrito (a tortilla wrap stuffed with chicken, beans, rice, lettuce, sour cream, guacamole, etc., etc., etc.). Dessert was a delicious ice cream cone with handmade almond ice cream. Good thing I had to cycle home to burn off the calories!

Weekend in the mountains

2009-03-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

We had a very good, relaxing time up in the Tahoe area (Truckee, to be precise — just North of Lake Tahoe) for the weekend. I took the train through to Rocklin on Friday morning then we headed up to the mountains after the youngsters were finished school on Friday, so we got there at about 7:00pm, unpacked and headed out to get some KFC for supper. The cabin (rather luxurious: three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a family room, huge open-plan kitchen and living area, and double garage) was nestled in among pine trees and surrounded by deep snow. Apparently it looks out onto a golf course (in summer — the photo below shows the view in winter!).

On Saturday Colin and the kids went off skiing for the day. Janet and I opted out and had a quiet, relaxing time at the cabin reading, before heading out for a good, brisk walk for a couple of hours. In the evening we played some board games then had lasagne for supper while we watched some videos.

On Sunday morning we had a big, cooked breakfast and then headed across the state line to Reno, Nevada. The main reason for that is that Jared has been accepted into UNR (the University of Nevada, Reno), among a number of other universities. As we were so close, we decided to drive through for a look at the campus, after which drove around the town a little to get a feel for it. It is a very attractive campus, although the rest of Reno is a bit of a dump (like a down-market version of Las Vegas in some ways).

We then headed back to the cabin, grabbed a quick snack for lunch and packed the cars (with six of us and a stack of ski gear, it was easiest to take two vehicles) before heading back to Rocklin. All in all, a very nice break in beautiful surroundings.

Expanding musical horizons

2009-03-23T11:52:00.001-07:00

After a good weekend with the Hobsons, I left on the train on Sunday afternoon so that I could attend another concert in Davis that evening. This was "Bach's Birthday Celebration", and was my risk-taking event when I booked various concerts, etc. at the UC Davis Mondavi Center. Perhaps some explanation is required!

As a general rule, I have found that I don't enjoy classical music which involves singing (Handel's Messiah is a notable exception) — opera leaves me cold. So, booking for a concert of choral Bach music was a bit of a gamble.

Well, the gamble paid off — the concert was superb! It was put on by the Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, which has a HUGE choir (there must have been well over a hundred singers). They also had four soloists (I though the bass was a bit weak, but the other three were very good), and a very good sized orchestra.

The programme included:

The Magnificat
Lutheran Mass No. 4 in G Major
St. John Passion (excerpts)
Cantata #11 (Excerpt)
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Komm Suesser Tod

The last song was written by a Norwegian composer in honour of Bach: a lovely a capella song in a Bach-like style.

Another Cycling Adventure

2009-03-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Dedicated readers of this exciting blog, may recall the cycling adventure of 9 October last year when I cycled from Davis through to West Sacramento to visit the Social Security offices (and returned into the teeth of a howling gale!). Today I decided to take a different route and cycled up to Woodland (a small town due North of Davis). The main reason was to visit the Target superstore there to find a suitable birthday present for someone who turned 13 today. As spring is starting to settle in and it is a beautiful, sunny day I set off on my bike. The round-trip was just under 30kms, so quite a nice ride after a rather long ride-less spell over the worst of winter. However, just like my ride to Sacramento the wind was not cooperating! Fortunately, this time I had the head wind on my way to Woodland and was able to simply gear down and slog away (average speed: 18.8km/h — better than I expected, actually).

I'm not sure why Woodland exists. It seems to have a juvenile reform centre, a bunch of newish housing developments (which look they act as a cheaper housing option for people working in Davis — the supply-and-demand factors in Davis are much the same as in Grahamstown, chasing rents and property prices sky high) and some large shops (the afore-mentioned Target, CostCo [think Makro on steroids and with much higher quality!] and Best Buy [a popular computer/hi-tech chain]). Oh yes, and (even more bizarrely!) a few hotel chains, which I suspect are trying to capitalise on the proximity of Sacramento's airport.

I had a successful shop at Target (perhaps a little too successful — I ended up buying some T shirts for myself too!), and treated myself to coffee at Starbucks before heading for home. And, of course, now I had a tail wind! :-) Average speed 27.4km/h, including a brief stop to visit a geocache on the route home!

Sacramento Airport

2009-03-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

One last posting from my trip: on my return to Sacramento, I took a photo of the very interesting pillars in the baggage claim area of the airport. As you can see, they've been "decorated" to look like piles of abandoned luggage! Rather cute, appropriate art-pieces for an airport.

Hawaii

2009-03-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

I've already mentioned some of the aspects that I found really appealing about Hawaii, but at the risk of sounding repetitive, it is really beautiful! The conference was held in the Hilton Hawaiian Village: a cluster of several large tower blocks. Some of these seemed to be time-share/condo accommodation, and several were more traditional hotel blocks. Interspersed between the tower blocks were beautiful tropical gardens, swimming pools and "streets" of shops and restaurants, giving the "village" feel to which the resort's name alludes. The photo below is the view from the balcony of my room: you can see something of the gardens and the Pacific in the distance through the palm trees.

The state of Hawaii consists of several islands, of which Hawaii itself is the largest. However, SAC was held on the island of Oahu in the state capital, Honolulu. Interestingly, Hawaii only became a state relatively recently (1959). The locals pronounce the name with a distinct glottal stop between the i's: as Hawai'i. And one last random fact: if you drilled down through the centre of the earth from my hotel room you would come out in Western Botswana (alternatively, you could invert the coordinates and plot it on Google Earth, as I did!) — it really is on the other side of the world from "home", and the time zone difference back to SA was a full twelve hours.

The Hilton resort is right on the North-Western end of the Waikiki beach (my hotel room was at the coordinates N 21°16'56.50" W 157°50'10.76", if you want to check it out on Google Maps or Google Earth), with its own enclosed lagoon as well as access to the Pacific. Despite the fact that I had a slight cold, I couldn't miss the opportunity to have a swim in the Pacific, which was very pleasant (a little "fresh", but much better than the North-Californian version of the Pacific, which is icy even in mid-summer!).

On the Wednesday morning, I slipped out of the conference and took a tour to Pearl Harbour. That included entrance to the museum there and a visit to the USS Arizona memorial. The Arizona is a battleship that was one of the ships sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbour. Her main ammunition store was hit by a bomb and she sunk very quickly at her mooring bay in shallow water, so her main deck is just a few feet below the water level, with the base of a gun turret and a few other bits sticking out above the water. She also holds the remains of the 1700 or so people who died aboard her on that morning (retrieving the bodies would have been too difficult and dangerous, given the state of the wreck), and the memorial is a very sombre and meaningful reminder of the impact of the events of that day. The memorial takes the form of a large "bridging" structure over the centre of the wreck, with view ports out of the sides and into the water below, and a large marble wall inscribed with the names of the dead. The ship also holds a large reservoir of oil, which leaks out slowly (about 40l per day, our guide reckoned) — I have a photo of the slight oil slick produced.

On the way back to Waikiki, our tour bus took us through some of central Honolulu, including the state capitol building and the only royal residence on American soil: the 'Iolani Palace, used by the last two traditional monarchs of Hawaii.

On the last night of the conference, the organisers had arranged a dinner at the Polynesian Cultural Center up in the North-East of the island (the Center is run by the Mormons to provide employment for students at the adjoining campus of Brigham Young University). The dinner featured various forms of Polynesian dancing (including the famous Hula and a fire-dance — see the video below), and Polynesian foods (shredded roast pork, lots of sweet potatoes and coconut on all the deserts!). As the Center was a one-hour drive from Waikiki, it was quite late by the time we got back after the dinner.

SAC 2009

2009-03-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

My excuse, or rather reason, for being in Hawaii was to attend the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2009). That is a large (about 500 delegates), international (lots of European and Asian delegates) conference with several "tracks" focusing on different aspects of computing. I had helped with reviewing the submissions for one of the tracks on Coordination Models, which is the general area in which my own research falls. The Coordination Models track had a single session, on the Tuesday morning, but there were several others dealing with a number of other related topics (distributed systems, computer networks, mobile and internet computing) that had presentations of interest.

Again, there were some very useful papers and I made some good contacts with various people. Next year SAC is to be held in Switzerland (why do they keep choosing such expensive venues!), and I hope to be able to submit a paper on some of the work done during my sabbatical.

On to Hawaii

2009-03-14T11:38:00.001-07:00

With the two conferences back to back, I had one day (Sunday 8 March) to get from Tennessee to Hawaii. That was a good demonstration of just how big the USA is as it took most of the day and involved a change six or seven time zones. I say six or seven, because Sunday 8 March was the day that most of the USA (Hawaii being one of very few exceptions — I think Arizona also refuses to participate) switched over to daylight savings time. In order to get to the airport in Chattanooga on time, I had to catch the 4:00am shuttle bus, which meant getting up at 3:30am, which my body believed was actually 2:30am, as DST had kicked in at 2:00am that morning!

Getting to Hawaii meant three flights: Chattanooga to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Salt Lake City, and lastly Salt Lake City to Honolulu. I arrived in Honolulu at about 4:00pm (or 10:00pm Chattanooga time) feeling rather shattered after very little sleep the night before and a lot of travelling.

My first impression of Hawaii was the warmth, and then the openness. Given their beautiful climate a lot of buildings are very open to the elements: the airport, for one has open-sided walkways leading from the main terminal area out to the departure areas (this photo was taken at dusk when I left, so the quality isn't great — the gardens below are outside the departure-side airport lounges for first-class, etc.). Likewise, the hotel (a rather expensive Hilton) where the conference was being held had an open reception/lobby area (there were some huge wooden louvre screens along a few sides that could be closed if necessary, but I never saw them shut — you can see them in the photo below, which is of the back, more enclosed side of the reception area; the front was completely open). And many of the restaurants and bars in the complex were either completely open or had large expanses of windows or sliding doors that were just kept open all the time. The end result was a wonderfully relaxed, out-doorsy feel almost all the time.

The SIGCSE Symposium

2009-03-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

Of course, the reason for being in Chattanooga was to attend the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Technical Symposium. That is probably the leading venue for the discussion of computer science education and attracted a large (1200 or so) crowd, from all over the world. I found the conference to be incredibly stimulating (I wondered if some of that had to do with immersing myself in teaching and learning issues after eight months of pure focus on my research!). In particular, there were some excellent panel discussions on various topics.

There was also an exhibition of various things of interest to the educational community, with especially good displays of textbooks from all the main publishers.

The SIGCSE community is a very warm bunch, and they went out of their way to make first-timers feel at home, including hosting a luncheon one day just for the first-timers, and a few committee members and "pioneers". At the lunch we informed that we were now officially adopted into the SIGCSE "family"! It was the 40'th SIGCSE Technical Symposium and so there was a cake-cutting ceremony one day, with everyone singing "Happy Birthday"!

It was interesting for me to see a number of authors of textbooks that I have used walking around "in the flesh".

Several of the sessions (and in fact, partially the "theme" of the whole conference) dealt with addressing the rather stagnant popularity of Computer Science as a field of study, particularly for female students, and there were some very good presentations on ways in which these issues might be addressed.

I left with a bunch of new ideas for teaching, a long list of textbooks to try to get out of various publishers, and a strong desire to try to get back again in the future. Next year in Milwaukee?!

Chattanooga

2009-03-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

Getting to Chattanooga was tiring, mainly because I had to wake up at 4:00am to get to the airport for the flights. Yes, flights — there's no direct connection, so I had to take a flight from Sacramento to Atlanta, followed by a (very short) hop from Atlanta to Chattanooga. Chattanooga's airport is about the size of Port Elizabeth's, I'd guess — reasonably respectable. I was staying in the Holiday Inn, which was one of the "official" conference hotels, although it was a few blocks (about a 10–15 minutes walk) from the Chattanooga convention centre — a very impressive, huge convention/conference facility, which seemed to be quite new.

The Holiday Inn is an interesting hotel, as it is on the site of the original Chattanooga station, and of course, Chattanooga is famous because of the old Glenn Miller song, "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", which arose because of the importance of Chattanooga as the Southern terminal of the original railway down the East coast of the USA. When rail travel died an unfortunate death, in the 1950's and 1960's the station was abandoned until it was bought and converted into a hotel. The hotel reception area is in the very grand station building (the main photo above), with two restaurants and several guest rooms in converted railway carriages. There are also a couple of blocks of newer, standard hotel rooms, which I had booked to stay in (the room rate for the railway carriages was considerably more than that for the standard rooms). Well, on my first night the roof of my room started to leak, and the only other rooms available were a smoking room (not an option, thankfully) and a railway carriage room, which they kindly let me stay in for the standard rate! The accompanying photos show the outside and the inside views of the room (excuse the mess!) — it was rather fun!

Needless to say, much of the town and the hotel traded heavily on the Choo-Choo theme, and there was an excellent, HUGE model train display at the hotel. This photo shows only a very small part of it.

While the down-town area of Chattanooga is rather run-down with many derelict old buildings, they are clearly making a huge effort to recreate the town as a venue for tourism and conferences, etc. The conference had a formal dinner/reception on the Thursday evening, which was held in the Tennessee Aquarium, just a few blocks from the convention centre. That is a very impressive, very big aquarium spread over two buildings: one for rivers and for the sea (I did have to wonder just how fresh the sushi was and whether the inhabitants were impressed with seafood being served right in front of their tanks!).

Way overdue...

2009-03-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

but in my defense, I've been walk-about! More specifically, for the past ten days I have been travelling the breadth of the USA to attend two conferences. The first was the SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Symposium, held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the second was the Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), held in Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii. Both conferences were very good (if very different), and both locations were good.

I had both of these conferences in mind as possible events for my sabbatical, but was rather surprised when they turned out to be back-to-back. In some ways that was quite convenient, as the "triangle" airfare worked out a little better than two separate return trips would have been. However, the fact that they were on opposite sides of the USA did make the travelling a little hectic!

I'll post a bunch of blog entries with various bits and pieces and photos over the next few days. For now, I just want to say that Hawaii is beautiful — leaving to come back to Davis yesterday was not easy! (Note to the CS Department: if I don't come back in July you might just want to start the search in Hawaii!). And to just to get you hooked, the attached photo was the sunset on Tuesday, on the beach in front of the hotel!

Snow trip

2009-02-22T19:17:00.000-08:00

Saturday started off as a beautiful, sunny day so Colin, Janet and I headed up into the mountains to enjoy the snow. We weren't going to ski or do anything energetic, just enjoy the beautiful scenes after the recent snowfalls. Well, it was absolutely beautiful up in the Sierra Nevadas near Tahoe, as the accompanying photos show.

We had a nice, relaxed day, just driving around and stopping at a few viewpoints to enjoy the splendour of God's creation in its crisp, white blanket. By the early afternoon, the weather was closing in and it was good to be heading back home to spend the evening indoors with a roaring fire!

The photo with Colin next to the snow bank was taken to give an idea of the depth of the snow fall.

Tour of California: Final Stages

2009-02-22T19:12:00.000-08:00

Well, there were no great surprises in the final stages of the Tour of California. Levi Leipheimer rode an awesome time-trial and was then very ably shepherded by his team to the overall victory today. Lance Armstrong finished in an incredible seventh place overall, and Mark Cavendish very deservedly won the sprinters competition.

The ToC organisers were blown away by the crowds, estimated at over two million, who came to watch the tour (that's warm bodies on the roadside, not the TV audience!). That's particularly impressive when you factor in the really awful weather for the first half of the week. The big increase in numebrs was partly ascribed to Lance Armstrong's return from retirement — it seems to have provided a much needed good news story in the face of all the drug scandals of recent years.

It promises to be a very good year in the professional cycling world.

ToC: Stages 3 and 4

2009-02-19T21:16:00.001-08:00

Well, I haven't been wasting too much time watching TV this week, I'm pleased to report! The last two stages of the ToC have both been won by Mark Cavendish (generally accepted to be the fastest sprinter on a bike today — and he is really fast in a sprint finish). Much to my sister's delight he comes from the Isle of Man, which makes his TV interviews interesting — I can barely understand a word he says, so how the average American manages is anyone's guess!

Levi Leipheimer remains in the overall lead, and Lance Armstrong in fourth place.

Tomorrow is the time-trial stage, which is always a crucial and often deciding part of a cycle tour.

ToC: Stage 2

2009-02-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

Well, an excellent break-away by the local favourite, Levi Leipheimer, made for a very exciting end to today's stage of the Tour of California. Armstrong also edged up another position to fourth place overall, and their team (Astana) now have three riders in the top five — a very strong position for Leipheimer and the team.

Why do I suspect that my productivity might be a little low for the next week?!

ToC: Start of Stage 2

2009-02-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

It's a public holiday here today (President's Day), so I have a long weekend in Rocklin. That means I can sit in Colin and Janet's family room, with a fire going, watching the Tour of California — it's a tough life sometimes!

Today's stage started just North of San Francisco and took the riders over the Golden Gate bridge, which they had been able to shut down for the race due to the holiday. It would have been a stunning sight if the sun had been shining, but we have another day of very grey, wet weather. At least we're getting some live camera coverage today, albeit rather broken up a lot of the time and with much wiping of the lenses by the cameramen!

ToC: Stage 1

2009-02-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I was really glad I hadn't stayed in Davis for the start of the first stage of the Tour of California — it was a very cold, wet, windy day! I felt really sorry for the cyclists who had to get out there and ride in the awful conditions (they were so bad that the helicopters and planes that relay the TV signals from the camera motorbikes couldn't get up until they were quite close to the end of the day's route).

Francisco Mancebo had an awesome ride, breaking away after about five miles (on a 107 mile stage), and going on to win the race, despite being caught by two younger riders just before the end. Lance Armstrong continued to produce an amazing performance, leading the chasing group into the finish, and putting himself in fifth position overall at the end of the day. Not bad for someone who retired three years ago!

Toys

2009-02-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

One good thing that happened this last week was that I got access to the compute-cluster in the Computer Science Department here. That is a very cool toy! It has 36 Sun V20z computers, each with two processors and four gigabytes of memory (full specs below), all connected by a high-speed network to each other and a 4TB disk array.

There is some special software (Sun's Grid Engine) that is used to manage and share access to it, and I spent most of the week learning how that works. I'm itching to try out my latest research system on, but that will have to wait until Tuesday as it's a long weekend here (Monday is President's day).

2 x 2.6Ghz AMD Opteron processors
4GB of RAM (running at 400Mhz).
2 x 1Gbit Ethernet ports
2 x 100Mbit Ethernet ports
1 out-of-band processor for remote management
73GB hot swap SCSI hard drive

Tour of California

2009-02-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm way overdue for some blogging. Again, it's more because of nothing to say than busyness, fortunately.

Anyway, today was the start of the Tour of California. That was a short time trial, and took place in Sacramento. I didn't even think of going into town for it, as you would have to endure huge crowds and terrible traffic just for a few seconds of watching the cyclists fly past, and the TV coverage is great. It's also a rather cold, windy, drizzly day.

The main highlight of the day was Lance Armstrong's return to competitive cycling (he did ride in an Australian tour earlier this year), and the crowd went wild when he set off. His performance was pretty impressive for a 37-year old who retired three years ago, and he finished the prologue in tenth place.

This is the fourth year that they have run the Tour of California and I am very impressed at the number of top European riders that they have attracted — the line-up would not embarrass any of the top European tours. Team Barloworld is racing in Europe at the moment, which is a pity — I would have liked to see them racing here.

The first stage of the Tour starts in Davis tomorrow. I'll be watching the TV coverage again!

The Superbowl

2009-02-02T09:51:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was the day of the Superbowl. For most of my readers that's probably as meaningful as the fact that today is Groundhog Day! Just in case you're as ignorant as I was, the Superbowl is the final game in the (American) football series, and is a Big Deal here. For the past week or two the media have been in a frenzy, and shops and ads have been pushing everything from beer and chips to large-screen TVs in preparation for the big game. I had no real intention of watching, as "football" is still something of a mystery to me, despite numerous attempts by my house-mate and others to explain it. However, it turns out that most people watch it, not for the game, but for the major adverts that aired! Now that's something I can appreciate!

As it happened, Colin and Janet's Bible study group was having a social to watch the game/ads together, and I was invited to join them. We enjoyed some pizza and brownies (note the good, traditional American foods!) and then settled down to watch the game/ads, which had been recorded by our hosts. To my untrained eye, American football seems to consist of a few short bursts of action interspersed with seemingly interminable periods of standing around doing nothing. The joy of watching it late, was that we could fast-forward through all the tedium looking out for the ads, and any particularly dramatic plays on the field. And there was one of those. Even I could appreciate the record-setting run made by one player from his own goal line to score a touchdown for his team!

As for the ads, I thought they were good, but not as earth-shattering as I had expected (perhaps a sign of the tough economy). There was a strong preponderance of testosterone-rich ads for big trucks, fast cars, beer, chips and action movies.

At half-time there was a concert by Bruce Springsteen, which was pretty mediocre in the opinion of all present at our Superbowl party.

All in all, it was a very interesting cultural experience!

Just getting back to the point I made earlier about my lack of understanding of the rules of "football", just after we arrived at the Superbowl party, Colin and I got involved in trying to explain the rules of cricket to a couple of American men. As we chatting, part of my brain was analysing the discussion, and I had to concede that it must have seemed to them like cricket is as bizarre as American football is to me. I guess it's all case of what you have grown to understand and enjoy over a long period of time!

The Presidential Inauguration

2009-01-20T13:24:00.000-08:00

So America has a new president! I stayed on in Rocklin and went with Janet to watch the inauguration at Bayside church. They had arranged for the ceremony to be shown on the three massive projection screens in the church, followed by a short time of prayer for Obama and his government, which I thought was a very good way for the church to mark the occasion. (And, it was good to be indoors on another rather beautiful, sunny, relatively warm Californian winter's day, rather than braving the below-freezing temperatures and windy weather in Washington!) The ceremony was fairly brief, and I thought Obama's speech was good (acknowledging the hard work that has to be done to address some of the problems the US faces, although he was rather more critical of Bush's presidency than I thought was necessary or appropriate for the occasion).

A number of people have asked what it is like being here at this time (undoubtedly historic, whatever you think of the politics and politicians in the US). My response has been that there are very high expectations of change and, quite frankly, miracles (particularly with regard to addressing the current economic challenges). My pragmatic nature suggests that there is likely to be very little change (for all their brave speeches, politicians typically have less power to effect the sweeping changes that they promise their electorate during an election than they claim, or perhaps even think). Still, if Obama's challenge to look further than one's own situation and serve the needs of others and of the country is taken up it can only be a good thing for the country.

In this regard, on Sunday evening I watched a talk by Dr. Del Tackett of Focus on the Family, which dealt with the founding of America and the Biblical foundations of this nation. It was quite striking how, without exception, the "founding fathers" spoke about the importance of building the nation on a strong moral foundation, itself built on their Christian faith. In many ways, I think the US has lost touch with its foundations and that has had a deep impact on their society. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

Quick Update

2009-01-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

Someone asked recently if the lack of blog activity was due to busyness, or a lack of news to report on. I'm happy to report that it is the latter!

One thing I haven't really touched on in my blogging is my research (feel free to tune out now, if that sounds really boring!). The research has been going very well, and the time here has already been far more productive that I had imagined or hoped for. The last month or two (with the interruption of Christmas and New Year) has been a slight digression from my main research programme to look at some interesting aspects of how the Java programming language is used on the modern multicore computer chips that are becoming increasingly common. That was a particularly interesting detour for me as it took me back to relook at some of the work I did for my MSc research a few ;-) years ago now. The results of the digression are quite good, and I have also spent a week or two writing them up as a paper for possible presentation at a conference in Las Vegas just before I am due to return to SA in July.

Speaking of conferences, there are two coming up in March that I am hoping to attend while I am in the USA. The first is the SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) annual conference, being held in Chattanooga, Tennessee (made famous for its "choo choo" by Glen Miller!). That is the leading international conference on teaching and learning in Computer Science (and Information Systems, for that matter). I have often enjoyed and benefited from reading papers from the conference in the past, so it would be great to attend in person.

The second is the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, being held at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. Before anyone leaps to any unjustified conclusions, the venue has no bearing on my interest (well, OK, maybe a little!). One of the streams at this conference is on "Coordination Models, Languages and Applications", which is the area that my research has focused on for the past 14 (or more) years. I was part of the programme committee that reviewed the papers for the conference, so I would really like to go (and if I have to endure the organisers' choice of venue, I guess I can force myself to do so!).

Even being here, the budget for travel, conference fees, etc. is quite hectic (particularly with the R:$ exchange rate at 10:1), so I still need to do my sums to make sure I can do the travelling and still eat for the next few months!

Skiing

2009-01-02T12:43:00.000-08:00

What better way to spend New Year's Day than doing something completely new, like skiing! We set off fairly early yesterday morning and arrived in the Tahoe area nice and early — around 8:30am. Our first stop was at the Sugar Bowl ski resort where we dropped off Bryn and Jared with a friend of theirs (they had discount coupons for Sugar Bowl). The rest of us then went to the Donner Ski Ranch just over the road. Donner Ski Ranch is (a) somewhat cheaper and (b) has some easier runs for beginners than Sugar Bowl. The Tahoe area is beautiful in the snow. I have been there in the summer previously, which is also very beautiful but very different.

The day did not get off to a particularly auspicious start. The official "bunny slope" for beginners was short, but steep and ended at the ski lodge where there were a lot of people milling around. When one's ability to control direction and stopping is severely limited, that's a little scary. And trying to get back up after falling over is really interesting when you're wearing heavy, clumsy boots and long skis which try to head downhill at the slightest provocation! Both Janet and I had a rather bad initial experience and took a time out to get our breath back, feeling a little despondent, while Colin and Erin enjoyed themselves on the slopes.

They came back and reported that they had found a very nice run, a little higher up the mountain, but relatively unpopulated and very gentle. It took a little persuasion to get me up there (not least because the ski lift was that much more scary!), but I was very glad that I did, because the run was perfect. It started off with a very gentle slope away from the ski lift, then a gentle bend and a slightly steeper section before levelling out again, going into a couple of slightly sharper bends before levelling out completely before a gentle drop back to the main run down to the base of the ski lift.

I spent the rest of the day (with a short break) on that run, slowly mastering some of the basic skills. By the end of the day, I was staying upright reasonably consistently and managing to steer fairly well. Stopping at the bottom of the run proved to be a challenge, but the butt brakes work quite well! (I thought it was very rude of Colin to take a photo of me in this state!). I'm not sure I'll ever be a great skier, but it was a fun day of learning new skills in a stunningly beautiful setting.

Janet also had a much better time on the longer run and was doing very well by the end of the day. At about 3:30 we packed up and headed for home after collecting the boys who had had a great time snowboarding at Sugar Bowl.

While I am rather stiff today, it's not as bad as I expected/feared it might be.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T12:32:00.000-08:00

[This was started on New Year's Eve!] As we reach the end of 2008, it is hard to believe that my sabbatical leave is half-way over already. It has been going very well and I have made some great progress on my research programme, which has been far more productive than I had expected. It has also been great to experience living in the USA, even through the elections and economic problems (at least the Rand is looking a little stronger at the moment).

Anyway, I just wanted to wish you all a very happy New Year. May 2009 be a happy, successful and fulfilling year for you and your loved ones.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T15:19:00.000-08:00

As we reach the end of 2009, it is hard to believe that my sabbatical leave is half-way over already. It has been going and I have made some great progress on my research programme, which has been far more productive than I had expected. It has also been great to experience living in the USA, even through the elections and economic problems (at least the Rand is looking a little stronger at the moment).

Christmas Eve

2008-12-30T11:30:00.000-08:00

I seem to have gotten a little behind with my blogging again!

I've had a great Christmas in Rocklin with the Hobsons. One of the highlights was the Christmas Eve service at Bayside. The YouTube video here was the online "advert" for the service!

Well the service more than lived up to the expectations raised by the preview! The service was more like a professional show (and was free!) than a traditional church service. We went to the 12'th of the 13 services that were offered (starting a week before Christmas). As it was Christmas Eve, we expected a crowd so we got there early. They had set up a huge tent in the courtyard in front of the church to provide some shelter for people waiting for the services to begin. They had gas heaters in the tent to (try to) keep the cold at bay, and a group of three women singing Christmas songs to provide some entertainment. Our timing was impeccable, because we arrived early enough to be close to the front of the queue, and the doors opened about five minutes after we arrived, so the wait-time in the tent was minimal. We ended up with better seats than we usually get on a normal Sunday morning!

The service itself started off with some communal singing of Christmas carols, and then got into the less traditional part. The usual (very accomplished) worship band had a small string section join them for the musical items. They performed the music that accompanies the YouTube video (Carol of the Bells — a beautiful piece of Christmas music that I had not encountered before this year). There was also a female soloist who did a lovely version of Oh Holy Night, which is probably my favourite Christmas carol. The pastor gave a very good, topical message, which was itself interspersed with some video clips (some funny, some very thought-provoking).

The Messiah

2008-12-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a fairly quiet week, other than doing some Christmas shopping. I moved into a new office on Wednesday (it seems that one of the common features of all universities is a lack of space!). The new office is in a separate building, close to the main CS Department building, but I'm not sharing the office (for the moment anyway!), as I was before.

I spent the weekend in Davis again, mainly because I had booked to attend the performance of Handel's Messiah on Saturday night. That was performed in the university's very smart theatre complex (try to imagine the Grahamstown Monument theatre on steroids!), the Mondavi Center, by the American Bach Soloists. They are a very accomplished group of performers who were joined by some superb soloists (a little unusually, they had a countertenor for the alto solos). It was an outstanding performance, and a most enjoyable Christmas highlight.

The programme notes had the following, interesting observation on the custom of standing for the Hallelujah Chorus: "...Handel's Messiah is certainly the most well-known and universally enjoyed major work in the Baroque oratorio genre—if not among all “classical” music works—and that standing as a group, in the name of tradition, unites the audience with the performers for a few minutes in a most energizing way... you have only to look at the performers when you stand at that wondrous, thrilling moment: you will see their smiles and their spirits lifted even higher, knowing that millions upon millions of people have stood at that very same moment in music, and in virtually every corner of the world". We stood!

Today (Sunday) has been a fairly quiet day in Davis. I enjoyed the service at University Covenant Church this morning, and then stopped off at the little Austrian restaurant for brunch on my way home again (see the blog entry for 16 November). It's been grey and rainy all day, so the afternoon was spent curled up with a good book (the latest P.D. James novel).

Colin has business in the San Fransisco area tomorrow, so will pick me up on his way back to Rocklin in the evening, where I will be spending Christmas. I'm looking forward to the break and spending some time with the Hobsons, although Janet has to work between Christmas and New Year (Colin has the week off, but is forced to take it from his annual leave — labour practices here are somewhat harsher than in SA!).

Interestingly, the day after Christmas is not a holiday here (no one has heard of "Boxing Day"!). Also a little different: the churches all have Christmas Eve services, but no services on Christmas day itself. The Christmas Eve services are a very big deal. Bayside is holding 13 services this year (a few more than last year), starting from a week before Christmas. They've got a dedicated Christmas website, which is worth a look! We are booked in for the 8:30pm service on Christmas eve, which is likely to be one of the most popular, apparently, so we will need to get there really early. They've set up a huge tent in the courtyard area in front of the church to provide shelter for people waiting to get in. I say we are "booked in" because they've been issuing tickets as a way of trying to balance the numbers (9 of the 13 were "full" on Thursday already). It promises to be an eye-opening experience!

I may not get a chance to write an update before Christmas, so let me take this opportunity to wish you a very Happy and Blessed Christmas, and may 2009 be a happy, and joy-filled year for us all.

Tour Guide to African Visitors!

2008-12-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

I've had a very good extended weekend with the extended Hobson family. Colin's brother Jonathan and his wife Ann, from Port Elizabeth have been visiting for a few days. The three of them picked me up from Davis early on Thursday morning on their way through to San Francisco where Colin had some business to attend to. We dropped him off just North of SF, and headed further North. Our first stop was the earth quake trail which I had visited several years ago with Janet. That is a fairly short walk along part of the San Andreas fault-line, and has some very interesting displays about the California fault-lines, past earthquakes, etc. One of the most impressive things is a section of a wooden fence where one part was displaced about 5m by the big 1906 San Fransisco earthquake. There is also a very peaceful looking field with some blue poles running through it. The poles mark the fault line!

Our second stop was the Muir Woods section of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This is a lovely national park with some magnificent redwoods (the first "real" redwood forest I have visited). We had a good time on one of the walks through the forest. By the time we were finished there, Colin had finished his business, so we headed back towards San Fransisco and picked him up (which meant I could give up my responsibilities as tour guide!).

Colin took us down to the Golden Gate bridge where we stopped at some of the viewpoints. While I had seen the bridge before, I had never taken the time to stop off and enjoy the views, displays, etc. From the bridge we headed into San Fransisco proper and found the street with the "painted Ladies" — a row of beautiful old Victorian-era homes that feature on many of San Fransisco postcards, calendars, etc. We then browsed around the Chinatown area and some of the shops in the central shopping area, inlcuding Macy's which has some very impressive Christmas displays.

Alcatraz with the moon rising.

San Franscisco in the setting sun.

On Friday Colin took the day off and went fishing with Jonathan. They had a good time and Colin actually caught a couple of fish (he hasn't been having much luck recently). Ann and Janet went off shopping, while I caught up with some work. In the evening, we all went into Sacramento to see the local pantomime (Cinderella). That was very good fun, but not particularly well-polished or professional.

The rest of the weekend has been relatively quiet, with some shopping, some braaing, church (on Saturday afternoon!), etc.

It's turned grey and drizzly through the day today, but we've had stunning weather for Jonathan and Ann's visit. Our day in the San Franscisco area on Thursday was beautiful, with the sun shining brightly and no wind at all.

Winter in California

2008-12-09T21:49:00.000-08:00

I seem to be doing a good job of catching up with my blogging tonight!

Just a quick comment on the weather: central California can get cold! The last few weeks have been settling into more wintery weather, which consists of a lot of very chilly fog, it seems. Minimum temperatures at the moment are in the low- to mid-single figures, with maxima in the low- to mid-teens (Celsius — I can't work in Fahrenheit, but fortunately the local weather website allows you to select Celsius as an option!). I nearly froze cycling into campus this morning in a light fog. When I got to the office the view was amazing as the Sun was shining faintly through the fog, looking just like the moon (white and one could look directly at it).

On my way home this afternoon, I stopped off at the local bike shop and bought a pair of thick, full-finger cycling gloves (my thin, fingerless, "normal" cycling gloves were close to useless this morning)!

Of Elephants that are White!

2008-12-09T21:34:00.000-08:00

Last night, we had a very nice Christmas "pot luck" supper and "white elephant gift exchange" at the church "small group" that I attend in Davis. I made a green bean dish that Janet had made for our Thanksgiving dinner, which was very nice, and turned out to be very popular — I had to email the recipe to everyone this morning!

The white elephant gift exchange got a little tricky for me as one normally takes something from around the house that you don't want any longer that would be suitable as a gift. Having arrived only a few months ago with one suitcase of belongings, that didn't really work for me! I had found a nice, cheap wooden bowl in a charity shop in Rocklin a couple of weeks ago and put some Lindor chocolate truffle balls in it, which turned out to be very popular. The "rules" of the exchange are that, when it's your turn, you can take a wrapped present from the pile, or else you can "steal" a gift from someone who has already got one, forcing them to take a new gift from the pile. One complication is that a gift can only be stolen twice and then it belongs to whoever holds it. Rather to my surprise, my makeshift gift turned out to be highly sought after and was the only one that got "stolen" twice (and it wasn't just the Lindor chocolates — the person who ended up with really liked the bowl!).

I took a gift from the pile rather than "stealing" one, and got a CD audio book of one of Max Lucado's recent books (3:16, which I haven't read yet). I was rather pleased with that, and had to work at putting off someone who was eying it out for a possible steal!

Thanksgiving

2008-12-09T21:14:00.001-08:00

I've been a little remiss on the blogging front. In my defense it has been fairly busy here, and I've been trying to fend off a cold (thanks to Jared who was sniffling through the Disney trip! Actually, he was a trooper on the trip as some of the rides and the hectic schedule couldn't have been fun when he wasn't feeling well.).

Thanksgiving was the Thursday after our Disney trip (27 November). In some ways, it was a little anti-climatic: we prepared some food at the Hobsons (Colin braaied, sorry, barbecued the turkey!) then went to a friend of Janet's for the meal (mid-afternoon lunch/dinner). There were three families there with a sea of kids and it was all rather chaotic. I was also struck at the lack of "ceremony", which seemed odd (I had expected some sort of discussion/reflection on what we were each grateful/thankful for, but it didn't happen). When I brought this up with Colin and Janet later, they said that it is usually customary to have some sharing along those lines, and they had felt that it was a rather "flat" Thanksgiving. Anyway, on the Saturday evening, we sat around the kitchen table in their home, rather than in front of the TV, for supper (which, appropriately, was Thanksgiving leftovers) and took the time to share together. That was a rather special event, which left me feeling a lot more positive about the idea of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Saturday and Sunday afternoons that weekend were spent putting up the Christmas decorations: various lights and a manger scene outside; and a Christmas tree and various other model scenes inside. It is all very American and rather over-the-top, and rather nice! The attached pictures don't really do justice to it all, and I still need to borrow a tripod from Colin and try to get some night-time pictures of the exterior lights.

More Disney

2008-11-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

I scanned a couple more artifacts from our trip to Disneyland. These show the evidence of my vertigo-defeating roller-coaster ride (on California Screamin'), and my artistic flair (or lack thereof!).

The Wonderful Land of Disney

2008-11-25T15:29:00.000-08:00

Just back from Disneyland after an amazing three days! It's hard to do justice to the experience (if you haven't been you have to go sometime!), but perhaps the word "magical" sums it up best. From the moment you arrive there is a great, fun, wholesome atmosphere about the place. A good friend in South Africa expressed the wish that I would "let [my] youthful excitement enable [me] to enjoy it", which was definitely the case. On the Saturday evening, after the incredible show we watched, a little kid (about three-years old, I would guess) near where we were sitting turned around to his parents with huge eyes and said "Mickey does magic!" at the top of his voice — some of the magic was in making this 40-something feel like he was three again! But I'm getting the story all out of order!

We left Rocklin in the middle of the afternoon on Friday, after the kids were finished school, and travelled down to LA through the evening, arriving rather late (about 10:45pm) and tired. Despite the late arrival we were up early on Saturday and off to Disneyland to make the most of the day (and to beat the crowds as much as possible). We had planned our weekend days there using the amazing RideMax software package (highly recommended for anyone planning a visit to the Disney resorts to avoid excessive waiting in line). There are actually two theme parks there: the Disneyland Park itself ("The Happiest Place on Earth"), and Disney's California Adventure Park.

We started off on the Saturday at Disneyland with a simulator space ride, which was great (I had been on a similar ride at the Star Trek exhibition in Las Vegas some years ago). From there we headed to an "interactive" ride based on the Buzz Lightyear character from Toy Story, shooting at targets with a laser gun from a moving car on a track, which was great fun. We then did some fun, gentle, kid-oriented rides: It's a Small World After All (Christmas-themed vignettes of various nationalities), a ride based on the Wind in the Willows story and a great one based on Peter Pan (in a suspended flying "boat" cable-car).

From there the experience got a little more hectic as we did three "roller coaster" type rides in quick succession: Thunder Mountain (a roller coaster with an old-time gold-mining theme), Splash Mountain (in a water channel in a canoe-like boat with a long water drop) and Space Mountain, a rather more nerve-wracking experience of a roller-coaster ride simulating a flight through space, so in almost-complete darkness with spots of star-light. A little later in the day we rode the Matterhorn bob-sleigh roller coaster. Anyone who knows me well, will know that I don't particularly like heights so these rides required some serious motivation! (Nothing close to what was still to come though!)

One of the highlights of the day was the Indiana Jones ride. This takes you through an incredible replica of an ancient ruin in cars made to look like jeeps, as it tells an Indiana Jones style treasure-hunting story, complete with rickety bridges, rolling boulders, poison-dart traps, cobwebs and other nasty surprises! The Pirates of the Caribbean ride (on which the movie was based in an odd reversal of the usual pattern of movie-inspired rides) was also excellent: an underground water ride through the pirates' world.

In the evening, we settled down to watch the "Fantasmic!" show: an amazing combination of light, sound, lasers, boats, flames, fountains, fireworks and Disney characters set in the middle of an artificial river. This was the event that had me feeling like a three-year old again. It was followed by an incredible fireworks display, marking the end of a long, wonderful day.

The next day we arrived early at the Disneyland Park and headed straight to the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage ride, which was a very fun ride in a semi-submerged boat (you sit below water level looking out through underwater portholes) with various characters from the move making an appearance as one went around an artificial lake. After a few more rides there (including another flight through Space Mountain), we headed over to the California Adventure Park (which opens a little later) for the rest of the day.

California Adventure has a little less of the pure "Disney" feel (an issue which they are addressing) and focuses on various aspects of California as Walt Disney knew it. One of the main areas there is the Paradise Pier section, which recreates a traditional sea-side amusement park (unfortunately, the artificial "sea" is drained at the moment, as you can see in the photo). And one of the main features of Paradise Pier is a genuine roller-coaster called California Screamin' (no cute, kiddy-friendly ride on a fake mountain: a real roller coaster with heights, scaffolding, heights, massive drops, heights, a LOOP, heights, oh and did I mention some heights!)! Despite my misgivings I was persuaded to give this a go and actually enjoyed it! One of the good features (for me anyway) was that it starts on the level with a massive acceleration that shoots you up the first climb, rather than the traditional slow ratchet up to some dizzy height before letting gravity do the rest. I have to confess that I closed my eyes for the duration of the loop! However, to prove it wasn't a complete fluke, we did it again immediately (give or take 15 minutes in line!) and the second time I kept my eyes open for the loop! (And I bought the (expensive) souvenir photo to prove I rode it!).

After that things got a little more calm for the rest of the day with an excellent fake-rapids river ride. That left one fairly soaked, but fortunately Colin and Janet had done it previously so had come equipped with rain ponchos for the experience. Despite the ponchos we still got quite soaked on our two rides there, but it was really good fun. We did also do a haunted hotel ride which involved some bouncing up and down in a "broken lift" ride.

Later in the afternoon we did a couple of other rides that pressed some of my "height buttons". The first was an amazing "Soarin' Over California" experience where one is suspended in a tilting, twisting chair in front of a huge IMAX-style screen. As the screen displays various scenes of California the chair tilts to simulate the effect of flying (with added smell effects and winds at appropriate points) — very impressive. We then did a smaller roller coaster (Mulholland Madness, with a California highway theme). In some ways that was almost more scary than California Screamin' as the high, sharp corners were not banked, giving the impression that you are about to hurtle sideways off the rails and plunge to your death!

To cap off a day of conquering height fears we went on the Maliboomer: a 180 foot vertical boost from ground level, followed by a series of more gentle "bounces" until you return to the ground (and I did it with my eyes open!). We had a great time in the Disney Animation Academy where we got to sit for half an hour as a Disney artist guided through the process of drawing Goofy (I'm not about to give up my day job, but under his expert guidance, even I could produce a vaguely convincing Goofy!).

The day ended off with what was probably my favourite ride in California Adventure: the new Toy Story Mania! ride. That is a very interesting "4-D" ride where the cars stop in front of 3-D projection screens for you to play various traditional "amusement park" style games (throwing hoops, darts, balls, etc. at targets using a "cannon" mounted on the car). The 3-D effects are excellent and the ride is great fun (even better fun was beating the teenager in the car with me!).

Monday was a "bonus" day as we had got three-day for the price of two tickets through the AAA (American Automobile Association). Colin had to do some business in the area, so headed off in a taxi while the rest of us packed the car and headed to the park. We hadn't used RideMax to plan the day, so had to "wing it", fortunately with some good insights into how RideMax optimises the experience. We rushed into Disneyland and got Fast Passes (allowing you to "jump" the line at a later time during the day) for the Indiana Jones ride before getting in line at California Adventures to try to beat the crowds to the Toy Story Mania! 4-D ride. That was successful (and wise, as it is hugely popular) and we had a great time there. That we followed by another dose of California Screamin' (eyes open) to really prove it wasn't a fluke the day before!

We then headed back to Disneyland and managed to fit in Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain and a cute Snow White and the Seven Dwarves kiddy ride before meeting up with Colin, grabbing some lunch and heading back to Rocklin. The weather, which had been really good to us with warm, sunny days started to turn a little overcast as we left LA — we had been really blessed with the best possible weather for this time of year.

All in all, it was an incredible, magical experience, and great to be able to do it with such good friends.

Sunday in Davis

2008-11-16T16:28:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been another great day in Davis. I went to my first service at the University Covenant Church, which I really enjoyed — the pastor is a great communicator/preacher, and there was a really friendly, relaxed atmosphere, with a nice mixture of new and old songs.

After that I treated myself to brunch at an Austrian café/restaurant, Konditorei, nearby. I had the Spinach Quiche breakfast, followed by a slice of "Kaffee Kuchen" (coffee cake, in the sense of to-accompany-coffee, not as in coffee-flavoured). Delicious!

This afternoon, I went for a long ride around the outskirts of Davis (which eased the guilt of brunch a little!).

Seems a pity to have to go back to work/research tomorrow after a day like that!

Fall Fun

2008-11-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a great day here in little old Davis, CA! As mentioned in my last post, I am staying in Davis for the weekend (a first), and decided to do some geocaching. A particular cache had caught my eye (Erin's Roundabout, GCC00B) for a number of reasons (it appeared to be in a picturesque part of the UC Davis campus, it wasn't a tiny (micro) cache, which are all too prevalent around here, and Colin and Janet's daughter's name is Erin!). I decided to use that as the centre of a search for caches in that area (West of the main campus), and came up with several promising-looking caches in the vicinity.

After a rather late start to the day. I set off on my bike and soon arrived in the general area of the first cache. There was a bike rack there (at a "lodge" very reminiscent of the Continuing Education Centre at Rhodes, only without the accommodation), so I locked the bike up and set off caching on foot. The first cache for the day (Mallards Hideaway, GCDE36) was right there and a very easy find, with several eponymous budgies swimming around the area.

From there my quest led me along the South bank of Putah Creek, which I fear I may have badly maligned in an earlier post by comparing it to Rhodes' Cotch Creek! Well, this part of Putah Creek is beautiful, with wider, lake-like areas, and surrounded by the trees of the UC Davis arboretum (cf. Bots!). What was particularly striking was the beautiful red, yellow and orange fall (sic) colours of the trees. It really makes the drab browns of an African autumn look a bit pathetic!

At the end of the path, I reached Erin's Roundabout and, after quite a bit of hunting found the cache and dropped off some travel bugs, including Cabey's Shutterbug, which I thought was appropriate given the picturesque nature of the spot.

From there I returned on the North side of the creek, finding my third cache for the day (The Gaze, GCJQEE) along the way. That was another beautiful spot in the arboretum (more fall trees nearby!) and a fitting spot to drop off a geocoin of my own. That was significant because the coin was made by friends Correen and Renier who cache as eragonSaphira, and I am busy at the moment reading the third of the books in the Eragon (Inheritance) series — a very good series, by the way.

After returning to my bike, I set off in search of my fourth cache for the day (Solano House, GCHV72). That is a two-stage multi-cache. The first stage is a very interesting monument giving the history of the first pony express mail service that passed through the area, using a nearby (now ruined) building as a staging post. At the first stage I gathered the necessary clues to find the second stage (the actual cache itself), but was unsuccessful. I think I was in the right area, but there was a profusion of thick rosemary bushes and I could not find the cache (at least I smelled good after my hunting around in the undergrowth!).

After hunting there for sometime, I gave up and set off for the next cache (Yamar's Unusual #6: The ORB, GCQEBQ), which was a very easy find with a most unusual container! The cache was between a parking lot and the railway line, and there were some passing trains and a student learning to drive a bus in the parking lot to provide some additional entertainment.

By that time, it was getting on for mid-afternoon and I hadn't had any lunch so I set off home. En route, I realised that I was passing fairly close to the site of a cache (Solano Park, GCZXAZ) that I had not been able to find in August, partly due to some "muggles" (i.e. non-cachers!) hanging around the site. When I got there, I found some other geocachers hunting for the cache too — it's always fun to bump into other cachers on the hunt! They found the cache, in a spot I know I looked in when I visited in August! There was a log on the geocaching website to say that the previous cacher had found the cache lying around and had "replaced" it where they assumed it should be, but I'm not so sure!

All in all, it was a rather fun day out in Davis, enjoying the beautiful, sunny, warm autumn/fall weather.

Public (Non-)Holidays

2008-11-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

Today is a public holiday in the USA, ostensibly! It is Veterans' Day.

However, most US businesses do not recognise most holidays, so almost everyone works just like any other day. Fortunately for me, it is one of the holidays that UC Davis observes. The schools also have the day off.

Since it was a holiday, and I intended to take it, I took a long weekend break from Davis (Friday to Tuesday), to spend in Rocklin. I did do some work on Monday (debugging the programs I am writing for my research programme), but am studiously avoiding anything like work today!

I will probably spend the coming weekend in Davis, as the following weekend we are going to Disneyland for three days, which should be great fun! We get back on the Monday evening, and the Thursday after that is the Thanksgiving holiday here (a big deal that everyone does observe), so I will probably stay on for the rest of that week and the following weekend.

Centenaries

2008-11-05T14:40:00.000-08:00

I mentioned a while ago (see the blog entry for 24 September) that there was a "weird symmetry" between Rhodes and UC Davis, as both are around 100 years old (RU in 2004, UC Davis this year). Well, it get weirder! I happened to browse across to the University of Bristol website (i.e. where I took my last overseas sabbatical and got my PhD) this morning, and it turns out that they will be celebrating their centennial next year (2009). What is it with me and 100-year old universities?!

I guess, in view of the observation that about "70 of the 85 institutions that have survived continuously for the past half-millennium are universities" (see the blog entry for 22 October) that shouldn't be too surprising, but it seems like a really strange coincidence.

Of Weather and Time Zones, and Saving the Daylight!

2008-11-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a few posts ago (October 22), daylight-savings time was due to come to an end, which it did this last weekend (at 2:00am on Sunday morning to be precise, when the clocks went back to 1:00am — giving a one-off gift of an extra hour's sleep!). So far, it hasn't been as bad as I remember it from the UK in 1994 (perhaps I was better prepared for what to expect!). The evenings are getting dark around 5:30 (rather than 6:30), but it's still no worse than winter in Grahamstown. At the other end of the day, the sky was just starting to lighten up at 6:15 this morning when I got back to Davis from the weekend in Rocklin, which was a pleasant change from the pitch dark.

Of course, the time-change means we are now ten hours behind SA time — even more inconvenient a difference than before!

The weather took a turn for the worse over the weekend, with the halloween drizzle carrying on for most of Saturday (the newspaper reported a total of about 1.6" (roughly 35–40mm) of rain for Friday and Saturday. That made for a very good day to stay inside and read, which was pretty much what happened! Sunday brightened up a bit, but today (Monday) has been colder (about 15°C) and drizzly again. Oh well, I guess winter and the attendant rain had to come sometime.

Of Pumpkins and Candy!

2008-11-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

Coming from Africa, halloween has never been a big deal. Of course, in the US of A it is!

I came through to Rocklin early for the weekend, as I had been requested to help with carving pumpkins on Thursday night. That is remarkably easy and was good fun. Erin did one of the pumpkins (on the right) and I did the other.

On Friday evening (after the long-suffering Freckles had been decked out in his Yankee Doodle costume!), a friend of Erin's came around and the two of them set off to scrounge candy off the neighbours, with Colin and I in attendance to keep an eye on the young ladies (and to ensure that the candy was of a suitable standard!). Before long, our group had swollen its numbers considerably and Colin and I were "guarding" a rather large group of rather loud pre-teenage girls trick-or-treating the neighbourhood. At one stage it started to rain quite hard and we offered shelter by a kindly neighbour.

Many of the people had gone to great lengths to decorate their homes — fake cobwebs, pumpkins by the truck-load, strobes lights, flashing illuminated bats, and various other ghoulish decor items were liberally on display!

The evening ended off with the group gathered around the Hobson kitchen table, sheltering from the rain and drinking hot chocolate while the adults sat in the lounge with glasses of red wine and dealt with one or two last visitors in search of candy (business was apparently quite slow chez Hobson, which has left us with the most unfortunate problem of a slight candy mountain that needs to be dealt with!).

I have to confess that it all seems like rather a lot of effort to extort candy from kindly neighbours, but the kids were all having fun, and there was a great neighbourhood vibe out on the streets.

An awesome thought

2008-10-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

I have recently started reading the book The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership by Steven Sample, the President of the University of Southern California (USC). More about that when I've finished reading it, but for now, I was led to look him up on the USC website and found an interesting article that he wrote in 2003. What blew me away was the following paragraph:

[University leaders] must understand that the decisions they make today are made for the long term. In his book The Uses of the University, Clark Kerr observed that since the year 1520 only about 85 institutions have remained continuously in existence in recognizable forms. They include several Swiss cantons, the Roman Catholic Church, and the parliaments of the Isle of Man, Iceland, and Great Britain. But some 70 of the 85 institutions that have survived continuously for the past half-millennium are universities. So when [university leaders] consider their role, they should think in terms of centuries.

That's an interesting and challenging perspective to try to grasp for anyone who works in a university.

Still picnicking in the park!

2008-10-22T19:48:00.000-07:00

("Picnicking" always looks misspelled to me!). Yup, it's Wednesday so I went along to the Farmer's Market Picnic-in-the-Park this evening (I seem to be settling into a routine of going there every other week). It was an absolutely beautiful autumn/fall evening: warm and sunny (I was wearing shorts and a tee-shirt). I enjoyed a burrito (a tortilla filled with all manner of good things: chicken, beans, salsa, cheese, sour cream and guacamole in this case) while listening to the band (a very good all-woman group playing some nice blues and folk music — their multi-part vocal harmonies on the folk songs were superb).

After that I picked up some fruit — it's always nice to be able to sample the produce before buying. There are still strawberries and grapes available, but I suspect the offerings are going to start to get a bit thin as we get into the colder part of the year. Daylight-savings time comes to an end soon, which will mean it gets darker an hour earlier in the evening (a very unpleasant phenomenon when you're not used to it, as I discovered in the year I spent in Bristol) and I guess the picnic-in-the-park will become a rather less enticing way of spending Wednesday evenings then.

Hope Walks

2008-10-22T19:18:00.001-07:00

Well, it was another good weekend with the Hobsons in Rocklin. The highlight was the Hope Walks event on Saturday morning. That is an annual fund-raising walk held at various venues all over the USA to support a number of charities. The Sacramento venue was the William Jessup University (a small, private university), which is right on Colin and Janet's doorstep.

The walk itself was only 1.6 miles, on paved paths around the university grounds, but was very good fun. It was a little overcast which made for rather pleasant walking conditions. We met up with some friends, Larry and Lori, and walked with them for most of the way (the finish line photo shows Janet coming in with Larry and Lori). The charities supported are mainly Christian organisations working in Africa (with AIDS orphans) and Cambodia (with child sex slaves — a huge problem in that area). The Sacramento walk had over 1000 walkers and reportedly raised about $35000, which is pretty good going. After the walk there was a chance to see some exhibitions on the work that the various charities are doing, including mock-ups of a "typical" African home and school.

After that we all went off to watch Erin's soccer match (even her brothers came this week!). That ended in a 2-all draw after a fairly evenly matched game. Thereafter I treated us all to some do-it-yourself frozen yoghurt at Big Spoon Yogurt. That was a rather interesting experience: you decant your choice of flavoured frozen yoghurt into a cup and can then add various sauces and toppings (from 75 choices!). After all that your cup is weighed and you pay for the total weight. After some in depth research, I can thoroughly recommend a generous serving of strawberry yoghurt, topped off with cherry sauce, mini cheesecake chunks and flaked almonds! (Decadent, but we had done all that walking earlier in the morning!).

The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell

2008-10-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (Oren Harari, McGraw-Hill, 2002). That's not my usual kind of reading matter — for some reason, I have never been attracted to biographies. However, this was recommended by Bill Hybels (of the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit) when he interviewed Powell in 2007 on his approach to leadership. The interview was really good, and the book kind of hovered on my radar until I bought it recently (together with another leadership book based on Winston Churchill — as you can see, I'm trying to deal with my biography-phobia!).

Well, it turns out that the Powell book is really good! To be more accurate, it is not so much a biography as a leadership book based on the life and experience of Powell, who has had a remarkably successful career as a leader by any standards. In Harari's words: "The lessons in this book constitute a clear strategic, philosophical, value-based, and ethical blueprint by which Powell leads". Some of the discussion is (understandably) somewhat militaristic, but Harari does a good job of bringing the principles out.

A great quote from Powell himself, which sums up his leadership philosophy rather well: "Leadership is not rank, privilege, titles, or money. It is responsibility".

I think I sense another StaffDev series coming on!

Link to the book on Kalahari.net.

Apples, Apples, and More Apples!

2008-10-13T11:24:00.001-07:00

Well, I had another great weekend with the Hobsons. We went to church on Saturday afternoon and then had dinner with some friends of theirs — a very pleasant evening. Then on Sunday we headed out to Apple Hill® (see more below). On Monday, Colin was headed down to the Bay Area for business, so I was able to get a lift back to Davis with him at a slightly more reasonable time than my usual 5:15am start to the week!

Getting back to the apples: Apple Hill® is a group of farms out to the East of Sacramento who have formed a tourist trap of note! There are about 50 farms (mostly apple farms, unsurprisingly) in the area who have organised various activities, events, etc. The drive out was very scenic as one starts to climb up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range (it's on the way up to Tahoe). We started off at High Hill Farm, which is one of the main spots. They had some delicious apple donuts we had been recommended to try, and various craft stalls (somewhat reminiscent of the Village Green at the Grahamstown Festival, although on a smaller scale), lots of fruit and apple products (juice, pies, the afore-mentioned donuts, etc.) for sale, a trout pond, etc., etc. All of this was set among a forest of beautiful pine trees. Right next to High Hill is the Fudge Factory Farm. No prizes for guessing what was on sale there, or that it was a great hit with the younger generation and a certain African tourist somewhat known for his sweet tooth! There was also a group fund-raising for a wolf shelter who had a wolf on display — a magnificent creature.

After browsing around there we moved along to El Dorado Orchards where we spent a fair amount of money on the crafts between us. Erin and a friend of hers who was with us for the day made candles at a stall there. There was a lot of fruit on sale there, and in hindsight we should have bought some apples there (yes, we did go to Apple Hill and come back without any apples!).

From El Dorado we moved along to the Jack Russell Farm Brewery where we had a late lunch (but, again, did not sample the speciality of the farm!). At all the farms we were struck by the number of people who had brought their dogs, and we did see a JR here (not the one the farm is named after, who is apparently 17 now and does not make too many public appearances). Lunch consisted of some delicious burgers.

Our final stop for the day was at Honey Bear Ranch, where we enjoyed some fudge or baked goods for desert (I had an delicious apple-berry crunch — like an apple crumble, but with berries mixed in with the apples). That place had a water wheel spinning lazily in a small pond area and the obligatory craft stalls.

All in all it was a very pleasant day-out, enjoying the warm autumn/fall weather.

Bikes

2008-10-09T16:42:00.001-07:00

My mention in the previous posting about needing a lighter bike prompted me to write about the second-hand bike market here.

There is a strong market for "classic" bikes, which would be written off as junk in SA. For example, there is a 1970's Fuji bike (the one in the picture) for sale now for $300 (approx. R2400) and an old Schwinn going for $499 (R4000). Back home there is almost no market at all for older second-hand bikes and they certainly wouldn't be commanding prices like that.

That's a little frustrating when you're looking out for a cheap, but reasonably good condition second-hand bike, but much better than the throw-away mentality that says old bikes are worthless.

Anyway, it was a rather surprising and interesting observation for me.

There is also an amazing range of different bikes available (not just "mountain or road" — there are hybrids, cruisers, commuters, tourers and fixed-gear bikes, and that's before you get into the really way-out things like recumbents and tricycles!). There is a notably strong contingent of believers in single- and fixed-gear bikes (a more palatable option in the flat terrain here, I guess!). If you're interested, take a look at the range offered by Ken's Bike and Ski Shop (a local bike store in Davis) — just browse the menus (and sub-menus!) down the left side.

Well, that was an adventure!

2008-10-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

It seems that I need a social security number here (for a number of reasons). The usual application process involves going to the nearest Social Security Administration (SSA) office in West Sacramento. Except that they come through to Davis once a year at the start of the new academic year to deal with all the foreigners arriving on campus for the first time. Well that seemed like a bargain to me, so I trotted along on 16 September and signed up!

Then, last week, I got a letter from them in the mail: they needed to see my passport before they could process my application! This despite the fact that they had checked my passport when I saw them in Davis in September. So much for avoiding the trip to Sacramento!

After several attempts to phone them and make an appointment I finally gave up and decided just to go through (fingers crossed that they would be able to help me out there and then). That meant weighing up the options for getting there. Without a car there are three main options: (1) hire a car; (2) take a bus; or (3) cycle. (1) is a little expensive for a simple visit to an office. (2) is rather complicated, involving taking a regional bus through to West Sac then a second local bus service to get to the SSA office. (3) is a good way to get some exercise and get there for free (appealing to both the cyclist and the Scot in me!). So, I set off this morning on my bike and had a relatively pleasant ride there, although it was a bit windy. It took just over an hour to get there (about 13 miles, or 20kms), with almost all of it bar the last 500m or so being on either bike paths or bike lanes (I love this country's attitude to cycling!).

Once I arrived at the SSA office a computer disgorged a ticket with a number and I settled down to wait. That didn't take too long (about 40 minutes) and the official who saw me was very friendly and helpful and tut-tutted that they hadn't checked the passport details when they were here. Apparently my card should be in the mail shortly.

I managed to avoid the temptation of shopping at Ikea, which is very close to the SSA offices, but did spend some time in the HUGE Walmart superstore there before hitting the bike trail back to Davis. Well, the trip back was "interesting". The "bit windy" conditions had turned into REALLY WINDY conditions (the weather bureau is reporting "37 km/h gusting to 58 km/h" — I guess the numbers are less wierd in mph!), and the journey back took rather longer and was a lot less pleasant than the ride there.

Anyway, I survived the adventure and got my exercise for the week! I really do need a lighter bike though!

Phil Wickham

2008-10-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

As mentioned a few weeks ago (see the "Thriving Musicians" entry below), I was blown away by Phil Wickham when I heard him in concert. Well his two CDs that I had ordered had arrived last week (delivered to the Hobsons), and I've been listening to them since the weekend and am still thoroughly enjoying them. As I said after hearing him in concert, he has "some beautifully poetic lyrics (without being cheesy), and ... an incredible vocal range and style".

There are some short samples from his CDs available on the internet, if you're interested: (1) the first, self-titled album; (2) Cannons, his second album. One of my favourites is the title track from Cannons, and Mystery from the first album is great too.

True North

2008-10-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

One of the things I did accomplish last week was to finish reading the book True North by Bill George (Jossey-Bass, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7879-8751-0). He was one of the speakers at the Global Leadership Summit in August this year, and is on the teaching staff at the Harvard Business School, after several decades of leadership, most notably as the head of Medtronic, one of the world's leading companies in the area of medical technology (such as pace-makers).

In the book, he expands on the idea of "authentic leadership", which he introduced in his previous book (called Authentic Leadership, strangely enough!). Essentially, this means that one needs to be true to one's own unique combination of personality, gifts, passions, etc. as a leader (rather than trying to emulate someone else's style or methods of leadership). I really enjoyed the book, as it developed a number of themes around finding your own integrated leadership path. One of the strengths of the book is its heavy use of anecdotes by a large number of leaders from all kinds of backgrounds to illustrate the principles of authentic leadership.

It's well-worth reading if you're interested in some of the recent trends in leadership development (or staying tuned for a possible StaffDev series!).

Link to the book on kalahari.net.

An update...

2008-10-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

(Why do I keep titling these posts with ellipses? Talk about overusing a grammatical feature of the English language!).

Anyway, enough of my grammatical choices. It's been a few days since I last posted an update here, so I figured it was overdue. The rest of last week was relatively uneventful. I didn't get to the Farmers' Market last week, but I did manage to get out and ride the Davis Bike Loop. That is great fun as it avoids roads as much as possible (the ones it does use all have bike lanes) and uses the excellent network of bike paths, taking you through a whole bunch of lovely little neighbourhood parks, through green belts, etc. The map below might be a bit flakey because it relies on a third-party site for my bike route, but should show "home" (the blue point), UC Davis CS dept (the yellow point) and the Davis Bike Loop route in blue:

View Larger Map

The weekend was spent with the Hobsons in Rocklin again. On Sunday afternoon Colin and I went for a ride around one of the bike trails in their area. Again, a stunning set of purpose-built trails led us through the area around Bayside church along a little creek. I could get seriously used to cycling in the USA under these conditions, compared with the near-death experiences one has along African Street in Grahamstown!

Monday...

2008-09-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

... was a very good day!

The Department here has (finally!) managed to organise some space for me (as at most universities, in my experience, space is at a premium). It's a very nice office, overlooking the courtyard formed by the U-shaped building. I'm sharing it with another researcher from another research group.

On Monday night, I joined a church "small group" here in Davis. I had been missing going to some form of mid-week fellowship meeting and so I contacted the local "Covenant" church (Bayside Church, where I go on the weekends in Rocklin is a Covenant church) about their small groups. The group is a very nice bunch of people (from 20- to 80-something, with a mix of singles and married people). The group is studying the book of Galatians at the moment. The church itself is called University Covenant Church, and looks like a great church. Hopefully, I will get to visit one weekend!

Another good weekend...

2008-09-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it was back off to Rocklin for the weekend again. I've been getting lifts on Fridays and Mondays with a friend of Colin and Janet's, Jon, who lives a block away from them and works at UC Davis, commuting daily. He was helping cater the breakfast for a fund-raising golfing tournament the next day so we stopped off at a bulk goods store on the way back to do some shopping. Three trolleys-full of breakfast ingredients later the back of the car (a large American SUV) was loaded!

Colin and Janet had a movie "date" on the Friday evening (part of the church's married-couples' ministry) so Erin and I went off to get a DVD. We ended up using "RedBox" - a very high-tech DVD vending machine (this one was situated at a nearby service/gas station). You simply select your movie using a touch panel, swipe your credit card and a slot spits out a DVD! Once you've watched the movie, you simply return to the machine and put it back in the slot. We rented The Bee Movie, which I had seen before, but the Hobsons hadn't. That is great fun and family-friendly - well worth watching if you haven't seen it already. While we were out, Erin mentioned this place called the Cheesecake Factory. We got a delicious Lemon Raspberry Cream cheesecake. They're a little expensive on a South African credit card, but it was pay-day and a rather nice treat!

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful. The weather was beautiful and we swam on Sunday afternoon. That may be the last swim of the year as the pool has been getting rather cooler as we move into Fall (sic!). There are rumours that there may even be some rain before the end of this week (there hasn't been one drop since I arrived in July - the rainfall is very seasonal).

Jon, my lift to and from Davis, works odd hours, as he manages a roofing maintenance team and they start work in the middle of the night to take advantage of the cooler conditions. That means getting up really early on Monday mornings to get back to Davis. However, this week I got to lie-in as we only left at 5:30am (normally 5:15am)!

Caching update

2008-09-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

Well, my puzzle-solving skills are clearly not too bad, as I found the second geocache referred to below very easily. To be fair, the puzzle did involve some conversions from hexadecimal number notation, which is kind of trivial for a computer scientist!

That's the cemetery cleared of geocaches. I'll need to start wandering further afield!

Caching and photos

2008-09-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I spent some time looking at the local geocaches today, and discovered that there are two in the cemetery behind the house. One was straightforward, so I walked around and did it at lunchtime, while also collecting the clues for the second (a puzzle cache). I've subsequently solved the puzzle (I hope!) so will need to go back to complete that one. However, I did take some more photos (see below).

The photos include the wild turkeys that roam around the area (along with guinea fowl), the view of our house from the cemetery, and what Californian grass looks like in its natural state (almost everywhere you go there are sprinkler systems automatically inundating every patch of grass with water - which strikes me as bizarre when the state is facing fairly severe water shortages if there are not good rains this winter!).

The Market Again

2008-09-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

Or Picnic in the Park.

This time I remembered my camera, so there is some photographic evidence. You can see the market, the crowd enjoying themselves on the lawn and the band (not as good as last week's band, I must say) below.

I could get used to Wednesday evenings at the market (however, it closes for the winter in a few weeks time, so I am taking advantage while the sun is shining). I grabbed some supper again. I went American this week and had a delicious hot dog, followed by a magnificent sticky bun (kind of like a Chelsea bun, but topped with a toffee/nut mixture) while I listened to the band playing. After that I bought some more of the delicious strawberries that I had got last week and some very nice looking tomatoes (will see how they work in the ratatouille I have planned for supper tomorrow).

All in all, another great evening at the local farmers' market!

Fall Convocation

2008-09-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

This morning I attended the "Fall Convocation" — a formal start to the new academic year here, addressed by the Chancellor (equivalent to a South African Vice Chancellor, as far as I can tell — i.e. the executive head of the university). The convocation was held in the main auditorium of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts — a very grand 1800-seat theatre on campus. The proceedings were opened and closed by the university's orchestra. It was an interesting event as UC Davis is entering its centennial year, commemorating its origins as an agricultural college in 1908 (the students are still referred to as "Aggies" — c.f. Rhodents!). The Chancellor spoke very well, referring to the history of the university, and was clearly quite emotional as it is his last year before he retires. I really enjoyed his passion and his very evident care for the people who make up this (and any other) university. There were five other speakers who represented a good cross-section of the university and who reflected on their experiences and the past 100 years of institutional history under the theme of "A Century of Doing What Matters".

Of course, there is another wierd symmetry for me here too, after Rhodes celebrated its centenary just a few years ago (in 2004), as Dave Woods was nearing the end of his tenure as Vice Chancellor.

Where to find me

2008-09-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

In the interests of keeping up the visual interest levels in the blog, I've hacked together a Google map of some of the main spots of interest. The blue marker is where I live and the yellow marker is the Comp Sci Department at UC Davis. The green marker is where Colin and Janet live in Rocklin, and the pink marker is Bayside church.

You can zoom in, pan around, etc. on the small map below, or click on the link below the map to open up Google maps and have a good look at it all.

View Larger Map

Dental care

2008-09-22T15:54:00.003-07:00

Well, after a great weekend in Rocklin it was back to Davis this morning to face an appointment with the dentist :-(. I had chipped a tooth last week and made an appointment to see a dentist whose practice is not far from where I am staying here. He recommended a crown to repair the tooth, but at a cost of $1300 for the crown procedure, I settled for the cheaper option of a filling - a great bargain at only $331! He did a very thorough job and took almost an hour over the whole process, which was great (the only thing that really felt any pain was my wallet!). Needless to say, the SA Rand is apparently in a slump today following Thabo Mbeki's resignation on the weekend.

Thriving musicians...

2008-09-20T16:01:00.007-07:00

Last night I attended an awesome concert at Colin and Janet's church Bayside (and my church for the next year too, I guess!). The concert was part of the Thriving Musician Summit conference being held at the church, and featured some of the speakers at the conference. The concert kicked off with two of the worship leaders/song writers from Hillsongs in Australia. As we sing a lot of the Hillsongs songs in church back home, it was great to hear them from "the source" as it were, and that was a great opening to the concert, getting everyone into a worshipful frame of mind (although the sound quality was not great for this part of the concert).

That segment was followed by someone I hadn't even heard of previously: Phil Wickham. Well he was amazing! He started off a little loud (some heavy rock), but then moved into some more mellow songs, but all of his songs were marked some beautifully poetic lyrics (without being cheesy), and he has an incredible vocal range and style. I'm going to be looking out for his CDs.

Last, but not least, was Lincoln Brewster, the worship leader at Bayside, who was launching his new CD, This is the Day. He was battling with a dry, scratchy throat, but put on a great, energetic performance, and sang some of his old favourites as well as some songs from the new CD.

All in all a great evening of amazing worship.

More photos on the web.

Of bikes, and ducks and cycling tracks...

2008-09-18T22:49:00.004-07:00

This afternoon I set off for my first real ride around Davis (trips to campus and the shops don't really count!). I set off to do a loop around the town. There is an excellent layout of bike lanes on most roads, which makes it quite safe and easy, although there are more robots (or should I say traffic lights!) than I would like to see. I had a great ride and was starting to head back home, when I came across a road marking indicating part of the Davis Bicycle Loop. On the spur of the moment I decided to turn off and take that route, as I had a vague recollection that it would lead me in the right direction. Well, it did... eventually!

The Bike Loop takes one on a lovely scenic route through the town, avoiding the roads and sticking to the excellent network of cycle tracks. They have really gone to a lot of trouble with that, providing dedicated bridges, underpasses and overpasses and an incredible network of paths. Some of the bridges over the two main highways are really impressive (although my dislike for heights was severely tested over one of them!).

The path took me along the Putah Creek through the UC Davis Arboretum. Putah Creek is UCD's answer to Cotch Creek, only with more water, but even grungier (hard to believe, but it's true!). The water can't be too grungy, because the creek is heavily populated with ducks and geese, as the accompanying photo (taken a few weeks ago) shows. And yes, the water is that green!

Anyway, I had a great ride, thoroughly enjoying the ducks, geese and 30km of great bike trails.

Life in a small university town...

2008-09-17T21:22:00.004-07:00

One of the reasons that I picked UC Davis for this sabbatical trip was the similarity between Davis and Grahamstown. While there are probably more differences than similarities in fact, there are enough of the latter to make me fell quite at home a lot of the time.

This evening I went along to the "picnic in the Park at the local farmers' market. It's worth clicking on the link, because it really was like it looks in the picture there: a live band playing some mellow music, good, cheap food on sale from various stalls, families picnicking, children playing (and dancing to the music), a few students chilling out, etc. I mooched around some of the stalls and bought some of the fresh produce on offer (some delicious grapes and strawberries - all of which could be sampled before purchasing), then treated myself to a very nice, filling Indian meal (chicken curry with rice and various other side dishes) while I listened to the band play. The band was from Sacramento and played a lovely selection of old 60s and early 70s music (they appeared to be big fans of the Credence Clearwater genre of music!). All in all it was a lovely evening out in mellow, relaxed surroundings.

The academic year here starts next week, so I expect to see a rather sudden increase in the general busyness levels in the town - reminiscent of Grahamstown in February. There has already been an upturn in the number of students around, but with a much larger population than Rhodes (30,000+ compared to 6,000) I guess it's going to get a whole lot busier next week!

Time for some photos...

2008-09-15T14:18:00.007-07:00

I've been meaning to add some visual interest, by putting some photos on the blog, so here goes. The first is of my bedroom - note the laptop and, by inference, the hard work being conducted! Then there is the view of the graveyard, and lastly the view of the house from the street.

You can sort of make out the rather less-than-exciting view through the blinds (see the previous blog entry below)!

I've moved!

2008-09-13T14:40:00.005-07:00

Well, this was the week. I finally took the plunge and moved into my new "digs" in Davis on Wednesday. I'd moved most of my stuff down on Monday (coincidentally, Colin and Janet were buying a car from someone there, so were going through that evening), so I just caught the train down on Wednesday with my last few bits and pieces. It's been a productive couple of days of finding the nearest grocery stores (a few options within reasonable walking distance) and getting some of the administrative formalities at the University completed. On Thursday I attended an "orientation" session for visiting academics, which was very informative and helpful. Then, on Friday, I managed to sort out some other admin issues like getting a UC Davis staff ID card and signing up for email and network access on campus. I should be meeting with the researcher I am working with for the year on Monday, so the "holiday" part of my leave is starting to draw to a close.

I came back to Rocklin for the weekend on Friday evening, and helped Colin and Janet with their garage sale this morning. The sale is actually a huge neighbourhood effort, sponsored by one of the local estate agents. There were over 250 households participating in the area, and "our" street won the prize for the best rate of participation (gift vouchers for some restaurant in the area). One of the neighbours was selling a small office/typist chair for $5, which is perfect for my room back in Davis (one of the few things I still needed to get), so it was a good day's buying and selling here.

I've attached a photo of the view from my "desk" at Colin and Janet's (I may have irritated my sister slightly by describing it to her on the phone the other day!). The view from my desk in Davis is a lot less interesting - mainly consisting of a pathway and the neighbour's house.

People are good...

2008-09-07T14:58:00.003-07:00

Well, it's been a busy week. It started with the Labor (sic!) Day weekend. On the Saturday, Colin and Janet had some friends around from Petaluma (the town near San Francisco where they used to live). It turns out that their son is on a "gap year", campaigning for Barak Obama and other things before going to university next September, so they have his double bed and desk that they were going to put into storage. That "problem" was soon solved, and we borrowed a trailer from some other friends of C&J here and collected the bed and desk on Monday (the public holiday). We dropped the furniture off in Davis on the way back (Davis is on the highway between Sac and SF, so it was very convenient). Also on the way back, we stopped off at Ikea (an AMAZING scandinavian furniture chain - I fell in love with their stuff years ago in the UK - lovely quality and style, with very reasonable prices) in Sacramento where I bought some bedding.

We went to church on Saturday evening again, as the Petaluma friends wanted to hear the guest speaker: a young Australian man, Nick Vujicic, who was born with no arms and no legs. He had an amazing story to tell of his life, and how God had helped him to deal with the frustration of his disability.

On Monday evening we went out for supper to a very nice Italian restaurant to celebrate the boys' birthday on Tuesday (hard to believe that they're 17 now!).

Getting back to furniture, C&J have also lent me an old chest of drawers that they had been given years ago, and which Colin had in his closet here, but wasn't really using. That didn't have a top on it, so we bought a piece of wood, which Colin sliced, diced and routed with his impressive collection of power tools - the top is now the best part of the whole thing! I took that and the Ikea bedding through to Davis on Tuesday when I had to see the letting agent to put in my application form, so my room is almost ready for occupation. I'll probably move down to Davis sometime this coming week and start getting settled in down there.

It's been a good week for the Hobsons too. As well as Bryn and Jared's birthday on Tuesday, Janet had a job interview on Wednesday and was offered the job. It is perfect for her, part-time close to home and building on her skills in web design. She starts there in mid-September.

Hunting for Accommodation - Mammoths Would Be Easier!

2008-08-28T22:33:00.004-07:00

Well, it's been a rather busy time of hunting for accommodation in Davis since I got back from SA.

The day after I got back, I saw a very nice flat attached to the back of someone's house (the appointment was set up before I went back to SA). That was ideal in many ways, but I was pipped to it. Thereafter I started combing the internet, the local Davis newspaper, email lists for international students and staff, etc., etc. and following up a stack of leads. On Monday I went through to Davis on the train (there is a very good commuter service from North of Sacramento right through to San Francisco). For most of the day, I literally pounded the pavements (only they call them sidewalks here - pavement is the stuff you drive your car on in the USA! Somewhere I once read a lovely quote along the lines of America and Britain being two countries divided by a common language) looking for flats. I walked for miles and the only place I found that was available was over $1100 per month, which is well beyond my budget. The basic problem is that accommodation in Davis is subject to the same sorts of factors as Grahamstown: too many students chasing too little accommodation, chasing up prices and making short-term rentals difficult to find.

On Tuesday I spent a day on the phones and internet again, and set up some viewings for Wednesday. That turned up one good lead: a very nice apartment, but expensive (over $1000 per month) and far from campus, but with a lease ending at the end of June 2009 (most Davis leases run through to the end of August, which is not ideal for my sabbatical). One visit to a potentially promising place fell through, which was rather frustrating.

Anyway, today (Thursday) I managed to reschedule Wednesday's missed appointment for later in the afternoon and set up a new one (someone who had contacted me after a friend of theirs passed on my name following an unsuccessful contact). And Bingo! The second place turned out to be a really nice setup - a room in a house, sharing with a great young couple (and their kitten) with a stunning view of the currently-uninhabited part of the Davis cemetery - i.e. a lovely view of a small stream and a rolling green grassy area, populated by (live!) wild turkeys and guinea fowl! They gave me a set of keys on the spot (despite the fact that I will only be able to get the first month's rent to them next week) and were just very easy-going about the whole arrangement. In many ways it is a very similar set-up to my own in Grahamstown (just a little strange to be the tenant rather than the landlord!). It's fairly close to the University (about 2 miles - easy cycling distance), and to shops, etc. However, I trust that the proximity to the Davis cemetery won't be of any use! :-)

It has been amazing to have been able to use Colin and Janet's home here as a base while house-hunting (leaving them is going to be difficult when I move down to Davis!). They have been incredibly generous in providing a roof over my head, meals and the loan of a car for the numerous trips to Davis (including a considerable rearrangement of their own and the kids schedules and routines to free up a vehicle - usually the boys' Ford Focus).

Anyway, I've given myself permission to take it easy on the research front until the Davis term starts (around 22-25 September) so I'm not in a great hurry to move down to Davis yet! I'll probably leave it for later next week, but it's great to have finally found a place to stay for the year.

This weekend is a long, holiday weekend here, as Monday is Labour, sorry, Labor Day! Then Tuesday is Bryn and Jared's birthday. So there's lots to celebrate at the moment.

Great weekend...

2008-08-24T20:10:00.003-07:00

On Friday morning I was chatting about doing some caching with my friends Colin and Janet, and the possibility of doing it in conjunction with some boating on one of the many nearby lakes, when Janet suggested we leave on Friday evening and spend the night camping at the lake. Well, we did!

We arrived quite on late on Friday night and had to do some night boating as the campsite was a "boat in". Thanks to Colin's boating skills we found a camp site and set up OK in the dark. We woke up the next morning to an absolutely amazing view down the lake (a very long, thin lake - check out 39°14'21.57"N 121°15'50.46"W on Google Earth).

After a delicious breakfast of scrambled egg and bacon burritos (what is about eating in the fresh air that makes everything taste so good?!), we enjoyed some boating on the lake, including tubing. We had a three-man tube that is towed behind the boat - great fun!

We then heading up the lake to an inlet where we had some lunch, before walking up the river (about 1.5km) to an amazing, old covered bridge... and a geocache! After spending some time at the bridge and chatting to two lovely ladies at the visitor's centre, we hiked back along the river bank to another geocache! Unfortunately, we then needed to leave, so it was back to the boat, to get down the lake (with a little last tubing for the kids), get the boat out of the water onto the trailer and drive back home.

This morning we went to one of the three Sunday services at Bayside church (my first Sunday service there - in the past I had only been to their Saturday evening services). They had a very good visiting preacher from another church in Sacramento. The afternoon has been a gloriously lazy time of sitting around the pool reading and swimming. I could get seriously used to being on permanent holiday in the Californian summer!!

Back to SA

2008-08-24T20:01:00.003-07:00

Well, immediately after the Leadership Summit, it was back to SA for a brief visit. It was great to have the opportunity to see everyone there, and to check out the work on my house. It was also really good to be able to see Theo for his birthday (and to fit in a bit of geocaching!). The cache at Paul Kruger's church was rather special, and we also had a good time hunting down two caches on the T.U.T. campus (a very pretty campus).

Fortunately, the flights to and from SA avoided any travel on JetBlue, and the flying was actually very uneventful.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit

2008-08-23T19:27:00.002-07:00

I had thought about trying to get up to Chicago to attend the GLS in person at Willow Creek, but the relative costs (R10000 versus R600) and logistics (I needed to fly back to SA shortly after the Summit) eventually swayed things and I went to the satellite site at Bayside (Colin and Janet's local church). They were off camping with Janet's sister and brother-in-law, so I was on my own to look after the menagerie, and to do my first solo outing on the (wrong side of the) roads (successfully!).

The GLS was amazing as always. Bill Hybels was his usual inspiring, stretching, challenging self. I went straight-away and bought his new book, Axiom, which looks great. I thought there was perhaps more emphasis on social issues this year (not a criticism). Wendy Kopp of Teach for America left me wondering if there was a possible model for South Africa to follow in terms of addressing some of the problems in school education. Bill George's presentation was a little "academic" in its style (not a bad thing!), but I thoroughly enjoyed it and bought his two books. The interview with Brad Anderson of Best Buy was also a highlight for me - an excellent example of a servant-leader in action.

Hmmm....

2008-08-23T19:26:00.001-07:00

It seems that keeping this blog up-to-date is going to be a bit of a challenge!

A lot has happened since the last entry, which I will try to catch up in a number of postings.

Spirit West Coast

2008-08-06T17:44:00.004-07:00

Having arrived in California, the first engagement was to head off down to Monterey for Spirit West Coast (SWC), a huge Christian music festival (described by Janet as "Woodstock without the drugs"!). Well, SWC was AMAZING! The highlights for me were the Third Day concert (Third Day are one of my favourite Christian bands) and the Newsboys concert on the final night (Janet has seen Newsboys about 5 times and thought it was the worst of the five, but they really rocked and it was a great finale to a great experience). Seeing people/groups like Jars of Clay, Kutless, Todd Agnew and Aaron Shust live was also great, and I was struck at how they (and several of the others) really worked on keeping the focus off themselves and their "performance" and on God.

There were also some Christian comedians who were quite entertaining, and several seminar or "message" sessions which were thought-provoking and encouraging (in particular, one seminar on the influence of the media in society was very thought-provoking in terms of my own "entertainment choices").

The site of the festival (Monterey) is near the coast and reinforced all my negative impressions of the California coastal climate: the evening concerts (open air, admittedly) required a long-sleeve, thermal undershirt, a sweatshirt and a thick, fleece-lined, padded jacket, plus a polar-fleece beanie to keep my head warm - it was COLD!!! The days were lovely, warm and sunny, with a cool breeze, which was very pleasant, until the sun started to go down. On the last day, when we had to pack up and head back it turned foggy and miserable, which was well-timed - the festival would not have been fun in such conditions. On the way back we stopped off at the world-famous Monterey aquarium. It is an amazing aquarium and we had a good time there for a few hours before hitting the road for the drive back to Sacramento.

Never fly on JetBlue!

2008-08-06T17:37:00.002-07:00

Well the Great Sabbatical Adventure got off to a rather rocky start! My flight on JetBlue from JFK to Sacramento was cancelled on the day I arrived (Sunday 27 July) due to "weather". There were a few showers in NY, but nothing that should have caused the level of drama that I experienced. That meant finding a (highly over-priced) airport hotel (which the airline declined to pay for - "we don't pay compensation for 'weather events'"!) and then catching the Sacramento flight the next day.

I arrived at the airport the next day only to find that the flight (the one and only direct NY-Sacramento flight) was cancelled again due to a domino-effect from the chaos caused by the "weather" conditions the previous day. Tuesday night's Sacramento was fully booked, so there was no guarantee that I'd get on that one! By this stage I was starting to wonder if I would ever get here. Because of the wide-scale flight cancellations on Sunday, all the flights to California were fully-booked, but they put me on stand-by for a flight to Oakland (just outside San Francisco), which I didn't get onto. Fortunately I made it onto the second/last Oakland flight for the day (still on the stand-by list).

Of course, that still left me rather far from Sacramento and the Hobsons. When I phoned Colin from Oakland airport to see what I should do from there, I got this funny stereo effect, and turned around to find him sitting down next to me! He had had to do some business in SF that day and had stayed on to fetch me from the airport - I don't think I have ever been so glad to see him before! That was about 9:30pm, and after a longish drive, we were safely home here in Sacramento just before midnight.

My impression of JetBlue was not at all good: they were highly inflexible in terms of prioritising passengers displaced by the cancellations or providing any kind of assistance to stranded passengers. Hopefully I never have to fly on them again!

The Field Trip

2008-07-19T01:59:00.004-07:00

Well, I had a great week, visiting several ICT-related companies with the Honours class. We went to Sensepost, Openvoice, Telkom, BSG, The Innovation Hub, Deloitte, Red Five Labs and IDI, most of which have employed several of our previous graduates. It was really good to see (1) what is happening in the IT industry in SA, and (2) just how well our graduates are doing and how much the companies appreciate the education that they received from Rhodes. The other thing that really struck me during the week was the magnitude of the skills shortage in SA: almost every company we visited was looking to employ significant numbers of new people and were were very focused on recruiting the Hons students. I knew there was a skills crunch in the country, but the magnitude of the problem still surprised me.

It was also good to see the really cutting-edge, innovative work being done at companies like Sensepost, Openvoice, and Red Five Labs, and to experience the passion and drive at places like BSG and IDI.

Tomorrow is Caleb's eighth birthday, so the big party takes place later today, with a racing car theme. It seems my services will be needed as a marshal on the race track - could be interesting! :-)

And it's just one week to go until I fly out to the USA.

The Great Sabbatical Adventure Begins...

2008-07-13T11:48:00.003-07:00

Well, I'm finally on my way (albeit rather slowly and indirectly!). The trip to CT last week to get the visa was uneventful (I took a wodge of supporting documentation, none of which was needed as it happened!). I took advantage of the trip to CT to visit an old friend for lunch, which was a good spin-off from the trip.

Got back to G'town late on Thursday night and spent the next two days packing up before flying to Gauteng for the Hons field trip. That starts tomorrow, and promises to be quite fun with visits to Sensepost, Openvoice, Telkom, BSG, The Innovation Hub, Deloitte, Red Five Labs and IDI.

Anyway, it's good to be en route to the USA (and with a valid visa!).

Update

2008-07-05T01:59:00.002-07:00

Well, again, it's been a while! In my defence, it has been fairly busy with the June exams, end of term and trying to get organised for my sabbatical trip to the USA. That is all well on track at the moment: I go down to Cape Town next week for the visa interview, and the necessary documentation, etc. has all arrived in good time. Then it's off to Jo'burg for a week with the Honours class on their field trip, a week in Pta and I fly to the USA on Saturday 26 July.

Stay tuned!

Ubuntu Rocks!

2008-05-15T13:07:00.003-07:00

Well, the more I use Ubuntu, the more impressed I am. The initial installation on my Dell laptop was completely painless, and it has been pretty smooth sailing since then. Open Office is dealing with all but the most hectic Micro$oft Office 2007 files (and earlier versions of M$ Office files are no problem at all). There are still a few last wrinkles to get out, but there are good online guides to doing so.

Perhaps the most impressive part has been getting VirtualBox up and running to deal with a few applications (mainly geocaching related!) that must run under Windows XP. While a little mind-blowing to have XP running in a window under Linux as though it is running on an independent computer, it works like a dream.

Why didn't I do this ages ago?!

More wandering and caching...

2008-05-12T13:10:00.005-07:00

Well, again, it has been a while! In the meantime I have been to Portugal (Madeira, to be precise) for the WebIST 2008 conference, which was an excellent conference. The keynote talks were particularly outstanding with superb speakers on a wide range of web-related topics. While in Madeira, I was able to do some geocaching and found two city-centre caches. Nice to have a foreign flag showing up on my geocaching profile!

Madeira is an amazing little island, and I thoroughly enjoyed the short visit. The climate is balmy and mild, and the island is very rugged and picturesque. Some day I would love to go back for a "proper" holiday visit and explore a little more of the island than there was opportunity for during the conference.

On my return to SA I have stopped off in Pretoria (again!) and hit another geocaching milestone today: my 100'th cache. It was a particularly interesting one at a site near Cullinan that has converted several old railway coaches into luxury accommodation. The owner took great pride in showing us around and even demonstrated the old jukebox (playing real records!) and a hand-wound gramaphone. Not things you experience every day! The grounds of the site have a number of interesting old vehicles of all sorts on display, and it was a very interesting place to celebrate my geocaching "century".

My new Dell laptop chose the trip to Portugal to reject Windows Vista, which I was having some serious doubts about anyway. That has precipitated a leap into the waters of Linux, which I have been considering for some time now. Fortunately, Theo is a Linux guru of note, so being in Pta for the "transplant" is turning out to be very useful. So far, very good - I am very impressed at the ease-of-use and general "polish" of Ubuntu Linux.

Follow-up to Around Africa on my bike...

2008-04-16T00:30:00.002-07:00

Further to my post on 11 January, Riaan Manser came to Grahamstown last week and spoke about his experiences while cycling around Africa. The talk was as inspiring as the book and shed new light on him and his adventure, particularly the life-threatening parts of it. His challenge to take responsibility for your life and to make conscious decisions about your future was particularly appropriate for the largely student audience.

His next crazy venture is to kayak solo without any support around Madagascar. He thinks that will take about eight months, but he's telling everyone it will be a year after his experience of time estimation on the cycle trip!