Armed Forces Week

Every year in Spain there is an armed forces expo for about a week. This year it happens to be in Sevilla. Our bridge (the best bridge) gets closed to vehicle traffic often, but this is the first time I'd ever seen it closed to pedestrian traffic too:

Turns out there was a sound reason:


This helicopter flew up and a bunch of soldiers rappelled out of it onto the bridge deck. Our bridge has the best activities.

The pontoon bridge extended entirely across the river along the base of the bridge. A long line of civilians waited to walk across:

Later in the day, there was a mounted exhibition in the bull ring. This team was lined up on the street waiting for their cue to go in:

Turns out their cue was a bunch of paratroopers dropping into the open air bull ring to kick things off:

***

In other news, I read another chapter of Algorithms to Live By on Networking. I continue to be impressed at the authors' abilities to relate CS to real life. Today they discussed the problem of communication and how computers confirm the receipt of information. It's similar to how we say "ok" and "uh-huh" and "what?" as a matter of course in a conversation. We confirm that we're receiving the information or let the speaker know that something got lost.

They also discussed the problem of two computers needing a network connection at the same time. Typically computers ramp up network speed gradually as long as no other computer wants the same connection. As soon as a second computer wants the connection, the speed is cut in half. If it happens again, it's cut in half again. The speed climbs linearly, but is cut exponentially. Turns out this is what's needed to keep our networks from bogging down. We do something similar in conversation when both parties speak simultaneously. We wait for the other person go. If it happens again, we wait longer.

I also continued working on my cellular automata visualizer.

And, continued prepping for my calculus class in the fall.

Finally, I've been collaborating on ideas about a first-year course via email and did a bit more of that today.

Yet another bridge (YAB)

There's a celebration/exhibition of Spanish military going on here this week. Apparently, the engineer corps is going to build a bridge next to the Triana bridge (the best bridge):

These floating pontoons are staged and ready to be extended across the river.

***

I did a little more recreational coding this morning on my one-dimensional cellular automata visualization tool. Once I'm dong, I'll post a link here.

I also started prepping my classes for the Fall 2019 semester. It's a bit early, but I'm worried that once I get back to WW it might be challenging to find the time in the 6 weeks before the semester starts. I'll feel better if I have them mostly ready to go before I leave Spain.

Space Invaders

I spent a bit of time writing a one-dimensional cellular automaton generator in P5JS. We're signed up to do a tile painting class when my sister gets here the week after next. I thought it might be interesting to paint a one-dimensional cellular automaton on mine:

Admittedly, it looks a bit like a space invader, but I have some time to tweak it a bit. This is actually just the very tip of this fuller 1DCA:

which is definitely more interesting, but I'm not sure I could paint something like this on a 10cm x 10cm tile.

***

Another hot day here in Sevilla. I took a picture of the Corpus Christi gate again:

not as ornate (or as large as the feria gate), but coming along nicely. They have until June 20th to get it worked out, so I think they'll be fine.

Bilbao to Sevilla

We had an early afternoon flight back to Sevilla today from Bilbao. It was grey, cold and rainy in Bilbao as we lifted off. In Sevilla about 90 mins later, it was clear sunny and 35C-a remarkable climate change. Bilbao and northern Spain are beautiful. If I had another year here, I might think about living up there. Everything is so green, hilly and forested.

We took the bus from the aiport. Laura got off early to go to class. I went home, emptied the suitcase, cleaned the house a bit, and went to the gym.

I also made a much-needed trip to the trashcan, but was rewarded with a lovely sunset view of the downtown:

***

With only a month left here, I need to prioritize some of my projects and see what kind of progress I can make in the next few weeks here.

San Sebastian to Pasajes

This morning we took a bus (1.5 hrs) to the town of San Sebastian about 100km east of Bilbao. We found an article about a hike from there to the next town, Pasajes, about 5km further to the east. Other than the damp weather which made some of the trail pretty slippery, it was a beautiful hike along the coast. After a sharp initial climb, we were rewarded with a nice view of San Sebastian:

Further along the trail, we had frequent glimpses of the coast and the Bay of Biscay which lies off of the northern coast of Spain:

The area we walked had numerous intersecting trails.

Eventually, we figured out we needed to follow the white/red bars. Once we realized that, we found that the trail was pretty clearly marked the whole way:

There were a lot of nice flowers along the trail:

Dropping down into the town Pasajes, we needed to take this water taxi across the inlet:
 

 It was only .8 euro and was pretty quick:


From Pasajes, we took the bus back to San Sebastian. We had a late lunch, wandered around a bit. Visited the beach:

And headed back to the bus station for the bus back to Bilbao. At one point, Laura noted we were 5 degrees removed from home: Walla Walla, Sevilla, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pasajes. Tomorrow we wind that back down to 1 degree with a flight back to Sevilla.

Bilbao

We've been all over middle and southern Spain, but Bilbao is our first trip to the northern part of Spain. Right on the Bay of Biscay close to the French border, Bilbao is about half the size of Sevilla at around 350K pop. Surrounded by green hills, it's definitely more temperate, less dry compared to Sevilla. Our main goal for the trip was to visit the Guggenheim Museum. Situated downtown along the river, this modern art museum is nearly as interesting on the outside as it is on the inside. This giant spider lurks outside:

These large, shiny, stainless steel party favors also adorn the exterior:

 Inside there are a number of permanent and transitory exhibit spaces. I guess my favorite artist in the museum was Jenny Holzer. Her medium is text (very thoughtful text) imprinted on canvas or other everyday objects like paper, stone, or even LED reader boards:

This one was particularly disturbing. An LED reader board with quotes from Syrian refugees surrounded by a sea of actual human clavicles:

These massive steel constructions were designed to walk through. In fact, walking through them was an interesting and somewhat disorienting experience, but the view from above the hall was equally interesting:

 Every once in a while the fog machine outside fires up:

After the museum, Laura and I decided to climb up to the top of a nearby bridge to get a bird's eye view of the museum. After huffing and puffing our way up about 15 flights of stairs, we exited onto the bridge deck... right next to the elevator:

The view was worth the work though. The spider is fun to look at from this perspective:

This puppy in front of the museum is a collection of wildflowers growing on a steel frame:

Our hotel is in an old building away from the center. The hallways are like a maze going up and down stairs as they enter and exit adjacent buildings that the hotel has expanded into over the years:

The bathroom sink couldn't be smaller, but the shadows playing through the shelf above add a nice aesthetic:

This evening, we went to Plaza Nueva for dinner. Along the way, we crossed the river:

We randomly stopped at this place and had a bit of bar food and a couple of beers:

After, I had helado, but it disappeared too quickly to photograph.

Transition Day

I had a relatively normal work day today. I spent a bit of time working with cluster algorithms, read another chapter of Algorithms to Live By, and ran a load of laundry.

I'm back in the habit of walking Laura to her class and then to the gym in the afternoon. The Corpus Christi gate in Plaza de San Francisco continues to develop:

After dinner, I caught the airport bus to... well... the airport. Laura got met me on the bus after her class.

We flew to Bilbao in northern Spain for the weekend. The highlight being the Guggenheim museum. The bus, flight, bus went smoothly and we got to our hotel in Bilbao at around midnight.

Corpus Christi

Living in Sevilla, the 2nd most Catholic city in the world, I'm learning or re-learning a lot about Catholicism. In the Plaza de San Francisco, they are preparing for YAP (yet another procession).

This plaza, just down the street from the cathedral will be the main spectating area for the procession to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. This Catholic feast day is exactly two months after Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter Sunday). The workers on the scissor lift are building the "gateway" for the procession.

Also visible in this photo are the recently erected shade tarps that are popping up over plazas all over Sevilla:

As we approach the solstice and the very hot time of the year here, the city puts up these shade tarps over many of the plazas and heavily used pedestrian avenues. The provide a bit of relief from the high blazing sun.

***

I've been having some discussions with Justin and Sharon about developing a course for Whitman's first-year course sequence. The first-year course has recently been changed to allow groups of faculty to develop a syllabus that fits their area of expertise and interest to teach to the incoming first-year students. The new format will start in the 2020-21 academic year. We're working on some mash-up of data, algorithms and applications to art, humanities, science and social sciences. It's pretty broad right now, but we hope to meet in August and sharpen it up a bit. It's been fun chatting about it with them.

***

I've been working through a clustering course on datacamp. I'm still struggling with methods of interpreting clustering algorithm results on high-dimensional data. I had some ideas today about applying dimension reduction to the resulting clusters and comparing their principle components. I haven't really ironed out the details yet though. There's not much literature about this, or, at least, I'm not finding it, haha.

That's a wrap

Today was my last day of my Spanish class. I'm the only person that started at the beginning of the course last fall and continued uninterrupted through the year until now. Everyone in this picture:

started sometime later in the year. Moritz (German) is in front and across the back from left to right are Valentina (Italy), me (US), Marisa (Spain, teacher), Laura (Italy), Mike (UK), and Lisa (Canada). The class will continue for a few more weeks without me. I decided to stop now to focus a bit on my own work and to accommodate upcoming travel and visitors. I enjoyed the class. For me, it was a low-key way to get some practice with the language.

***

Laura and I went back to the Bulebar Cafe for another night of "Pint of Science". This evening someone from the University of Sevilla talked broadly about big data:

It was in pretty fast Spanish, so I was only getting about 20% of it. I did manage to get an IPA from the US. It was pretty good and only 3.50 euros. The availability of different kinds of beer here in southern Spain is pretty limited, so you have to strike when you can:

***

In Algorithms to Live By the authors talked about "overfitting". I've been impressed with their ability to map these ideas from data science to real life. In this case, overfitting is the problem of tracking the known data so closely that you are unable to handle new situations. IRL this is equivalent to developing a strong habit or reaction to a set of circumstances and then reacting poorly to a similar, but in some way novel situation. While there are many such examples, the extreme example they provided was in the training of FBI agents. In training, a common lesson they practice is taking a gun away from an assailant. In training the student may do this exercise many times in a row and at the end of each round they hand the weapon right back to the instructor. In one instance, this habit became so ingrained that an agent, after disarming an actual assailant, immediately handed the weapon back to the assailant--a distressing case of overfitting.

Cookies and Watermelon

Laura made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies today:

After 11 months, she's finally got the very finicky oven figured out.

We also splurged and bought a whole watermelon at the grocery store. Pretty good:

***

We bought and shipped some souvenirs home. The shipping was more than the cost of the items, but worth it to us.

***

I started reading The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. It's this year's Nebula Award winner, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Very good so far.

***

I read a lot about non-negative matrix factorization. I'm still trying to figure out how to assess said factorizations and to figure out how to use them for dimension reduction.

Pint of Science

Shot this timelapse of the full moon rising over Sevilla the other night. Sadly, I still haven't figured out how to get the gopro to focus the moon. I think I need a neutral density filter. Anyway, it's still kind of pretty:

***

These guys have been busking this week in our neighborhood. They're pretty good:

*** 

Today is Day 1 of the worldwide "Pint of Science" event. This is an annual effort to organize scientific talks in bars around the world. Palma let us know about the event going on at her sister's bar. Laura and I went this evening to see a math talk:

It's clear that things are aligned properly when I can watch someone talk about countable and uncountable infinities and drink a beer at the same time:

 Watch out Walla Walla, we're doing this next year.

***

Laura and I did a bit more souvenir searching this morning. In this ceramic shop around the corner, you can order custom painted tiles. This fellow was working on one such commission:

We're slowing converging on a few items. I think we're going to mail them home.

***

The weather was lovely today. The sky was so blue above the buildings:

Standard operating procedure in European cities is using bollards to separate streets from sidewalks. I liked how this street used basic cannon balls as bollards:

It's like they had an artillery exchange here a long time ago and instead of cleaning up the balls, just lined the streets with them instead.

Right down the line

Whitman's graduation is occurring today as I write this. I'm a bit sad to miss it. There are a few students, I will really miss seeing around campus.

***

Laura and I walked over to the cathedral area to do a bit of souvenir shopping and the craft fair.

There were a few interesting things, but nothing really in the sweet spot. In the theme of taking pictures of places we've taken for granted all year, this is a shot down the tram line in front of the cathedral:

I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure I didn't get run over by the tram.

On the way back to Triana, we stopped in one ceramics shop around the corner from us and found a few promising items. I think we'll shop in our neighborhood a bit this week and see if we can find some things we like.