Competition

I went to Clic language school this morning with Laura to get the low down on the Spanish language course I plan to start next week. I'm not going to go the intensive route like Laura, just 3 hours a week. I was surprised when my possible instructor came out to meet me and gave me an oral placement test. I was super nervous, but did ok. The instructor was really kind.

One of my goals on this sabbatical is to figure out how some of the many data science competitions out there like, DrivenData and Kaggle work. Today I downloaded the introductory competition data set from DrivenData, applied what I've been learning so far about machine learning, generated a competition entry and uploaded it:

Did ok for a naive logistic regression with almost no tweaks, 57th out of 418. Looking forward to playing around with it tomorrow and adding a few more sophisticated approaches. I think students will find this compelling and fun.

As we near the autumnal equinox, we're losing daylight as fast as at anytime of the year. It's definitely noticeable here. Here the sun light skims the tops of the building on our block as the day comes to an end:

There's a pastry shop around the corner from us that comes highly recommended. Knowing it wouldn't be open this evening, Laura and I walked by anyway to see its hours of operation. It opens at 10am. Not sure if we'll hit it tomorrow, but at least we know when it opens. I took a shot of the street it's on called Calle Pureza. The original shot is at an angle because it was a low-light situation so I had my phone on a tripod hanging off of the side of an orange tree. I decided it would be cool to rotate it and put it on a black background (using Gimp). The result:

Fun fact, I used the Pythagorean theorem to create a black canvas of the correct size to contain the rotated image. The original image was $4640\times 3480$. That means I needed a background canvas that was at least $\sqrt{4640^2 + 3480^2}=5800$ on a side to accommodate the maximally rotated image. That's what you see above, a black square of dimensions $5800\times 5800$ with the rotated image overlaid.

Arcs

Laura made an excellent chicken/pesto/pasta dish this evening. Just makin' it up as she goes, so don't ask her to do it again! A+ for presentation too:

After dinner we walked down to the Catedral de Sevilla just to see what we could see. Along the way we visited one of Laura's favorite hidden plazas, Plaza del cabildo. It is enclosed by a curved building and is not noticeable just walking along the streets nearby. I was in a mood to point my camera straight up. Here it just catches the arc of the roof edge:

The plaza is lined with several shops. This one is a rare coin shop as you might deduce from the name printed above the window:

We passed the nearby Real Alcázar de Sevilla. The corners of the enclosing walls explain clearly why the rook chess pieces look the way they do:

We still haven't made time to tour the inside of the Catedral de Sevilla, but here are a few external shots. So much detail on these main entrances:

One of the taller towers of the Catedral (also more upward pointing camera work:

Also, enjoyed watching this tourist happily not getting the hang of this Segway, haha:

Park Bench

Today was a breezy, cool day with puffy clouds. It's really the first opportunity I've had to just go to one of the many parks here in Sevilla and sit with my Kindle. I was not the only person with that idea:

Also, as in the US, Saturday is a big wedding day. Here's a newlywed couple working with their photographer down by the river, just beneath the bridge:

Speaking of weddings, bachelorette parties seem to be a popular and visible thing here. This crew was walking down our street with the bride-to-be leading the way:

Not sure if alcohol was involved, but I'm certain it was imminent. The friends all wore sashes saying "Amigas Cachondas" which translates politely to "racy girlfriends". Looked like they were going with a pirate theme. These parties also occur on small chartered river boats like this one:

***

I started a new audiobook today, Don Quixote by Cervantes. I wasn't sure how it would go, but it's really good. Written around 1600, it's amazing how many of the usual tropes we see in modern fiction can be found in just the first couple of chapters of Don Quixote. Also, it's funny. Downside, the audiobook is 38 hours! Largely this is the result of a lovely, but very deliberate (i.e. slow) narrator. Fortunately, I've found that running the audio speed at around 1.3x still leaves the narration perfectly acceptable and cuts the run time down to around 29 hours. I listened to it on my morning walk this morning. It's somewhat surreal to be listening to a book that was written by an author in Sevilla over 400 years ago.

***

Last night I mentioned that we walked down into the cathedral area and saw some flamenco dance. Frankly, it was more just modern dance, but hey, any excuse for art in my opinion. Here's the video that I didn't want to wait for last night:

Friday Night Pizza

Another Friday, another pizza place. Although this place, trattoria pizzeria La Bambina, is more of an Italian restaurant. In keeping with getting out of the tourist areas, this is about 2.5km from our flat, but worth the walk. We had pizza, but definitely want to go back and try the other Italian dishes there:

You can tell the food was good because I almost missed it with my camera.

La Bienal continues and on the way home we stopped near the cathedral and watched a dance performance. I have some video, but as per usual, it's still uploading, so tomorrow... I did take a few long exposure shots of some of the surrounding square and the trip over to the square from the restaurant. This is a firehouse:

 This is the square where the dance was happening. The chandelier is new:

 Here's a long exposure down one of the main tourist streets as the tram goes by:

 Here is a picture of the next bridge down from our bridge (the best bridge). It's called Puente San Telmo:

As promised, here are some of the videos from the opening of la Bienal last night. Lots of excited rowers:

Some famous flamenco singer, but I don't know who:

A little bit of the flash mob flamenco people all around us:

Flamenco Flash Mobs

We live in the Triana neighborhood of Sevilla. Triana is the birthplace of the flamenco tradition (encompassing voice, dance, and guitar). We are fortunate to be here during la Bienal, a month-long celebration of flamenco held every two years here. Our bridge (the best one) is closed this evening and there are musicians playing and marching on it. Down by the river is a stage and there are singers, dancers and guitarists playing in turn (still going on as I write this).

Laura and I went down to the river to watch for a bit. Turns out there was an organized flash mob of flamenco dancers. We watched as a dance number started and suddenly everyone in the crowd around us started singing and dancing and moving their arms in time with the lead dancers. Kids, adults, men, women, we even saw an impressive wheelchair flamenco dancer going at it. It's fascinating to think that these traditions are embedded in the people of our neighborhood. So deeply, in fact, that they can just walk out to the river on a moment's notice and start synchronized flamenco dancing with their neighbors. I can't really think of anything similar in the US except perhaps "the alley cat" haha.

In other news, the bodega across the street, Diego's, after a 4 week hiatus and a new paint job, re-opened. The nightly noise is back and better than ever! At least the building has been cleaned up substantially. The painters painted over the graffiti on Diego's roll up doors this morning. A vast improvement. Laura and I want to start a betting pool on how long it takes for someone to tag that sweet sweet blank paint. Here's a during and after painting sequence of great graffiti cover-up:

Speaking of graffiti, this mural popped up this week along the river path where I run. I promptly reported back to Rachel:

 In conjunction with la Bienal, this photo exhibit was set up over night on our main street here in Triana. These are just two of the dozen or so up and down the block:

 This evening, the flamenco bronze that marks the entrance to Triana had a big 'B' at its base for 'la Bienal':

 The bridge is closed to traffic:

 Lots of boats on the river:

 Plant/flower based adornments along the bridge:

I have some video, but getting them uploaded is something I'm not willing to wait for this evening. I'll try to post tomorrow.