This was one of the opening lines of the guy providing entertainment for the conference dinner of the meeting I attended in Warsaw last week. The guy was an extremely accomplished Polish pianist, with a self-deprecating sense of humour. He interspersed jokes with stuff like playing the bit from Beethoven’s 9th symphony called ‘Ode to […]
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I am an enjoying a conference in Warsaw – the 17th International Conference on Crystal Growth and Epitaxy. We must be enjoying it, a lady from a neighbouring table asked 6 other attendees and me to keep the volume down – it seems we were talking and laughing too loudly – in a beer hall […]
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Its early August, and the beginning of the next academic year seems an infinite amount of time away, but the two months will go quickly. This summer I am doing what I wanted to do last summer but didn’t have time for, which is to add a couple of optional assignments to my second-year computing […]
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I am currently between conferences (Barcelona a week ago, and Warsaw next week), and so I am working on a paper. It is on a model of crystallisation via a process that has many steps. I have a general model of this sort of process and am making predictions for how this differs from when […]
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I have just got back from a meeting in Barcelona. My hotel was just round the corner from a local bakery. I got in the habit of having a cafe solo (Spanish espresso), orange juice, water (it was 30+C and very humid at midday), and a xuxo for breakfast. Xuxo is pronounced approximately shooshoo, and […]
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I am currently attending a conference, the 7th International Discussion Meeting on Relaxations in Complex Systems, in Barcelona, Spain. My commute to the venue from my hotel in the morning takes my past the Gaudi designed Casa Batlló. I also passed it last night on my way home from a great tapas bar: (Quimet & […]
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