Is It Too Early For Christmas Decorations?

I walked with Laura to her class this morning just to get some air. I noticed this little deli decorated for Halloween.

As I continued about 50 yds down the street, I saw this bakery had one-upped them by putting up their Christmas decorations:

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It rained most of the day today. I mostly stayed in and worked on a paper. Made a lot of progress, but every once in a while I got up to walk around. The bar across the street was business as usual, at least from what I could see from our window:

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This evening we had dinner at Café & Tapas sort of the McDonalds of tapas bars. It's main advantage is that it's right around the corner. Good for when it's cold and rainy.

And the food is pretty good.

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Emily passed her phd qualifier today. We sent her some Cold Stone Creamery Cupcakes to celebrate.

I know I wasn't as stressed as she was about it, but I was definitely feeling a bit of stress. I think most folks that have done a hard science phd will say that passing the oral qualifier was the peak of the experience. The thesis defense and degree are less uncertain, more under control. You don't choose to defend your thesis unless you're ready. The qualifier is always iffier--maybe you're ready, maybe you're not, we'll see. Emily was ready. She's smart, she worked hard and she passed.

Impromptu Flamenco

Laura's language school, Sevillahabla!, had an international pot luck this afternoon. Students were asked to bring dishes of food from their home countries. Laura brought an apple pie and some baked macaroni and cheese. I was invited and so headed over there around 2pm. Laura's dishes were pretty popular. One of the Spanish teachers repeatedly complemented her on the apple pie. I think if Laura wanted to, she could run a pretty successful restaurant here, in spite of the wicked competition here (there're literally restaurants everywhere here).

Just as the gathering seemed to be dying a natural death, one of the teachers asked one of the students, a Japanese national here in Sevilla learning flamenco guitar, to play his guitar. He generously obliged:


This turned into a dance party. Two of the Spanish teachers showed their flamenco dance talents. Later, it just turned into a dance party:

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I liked the way the morning sun hit this mural with the feather branches hanging across it:

Generally a lovely sunny day here. The weather is supposed to change this weekend with highs only in the 50's for a while, unseasonably cool.

...por los Cuernos

I got to my Spanish class a little early today. Since no one was there, I snapped a picture of my little classroom:

Outside of my classroom is this motivational poster. "Take the bull by the horns."

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Still playing with cell phone sensor data. Here's the accelerometer as the phone rests on the floor of our elevator going from the ground to the fourth floor:

In theory, I should be able to integrate this twice and figure out how tall the elevator shaft is. It's not quite happening though. Well, something to think about tomorrow.

It's All About Record Keeping

For about 100 years after the "discovery" of the new world, Spain had a monopoly on all trade and economic activity relating to the Americas. The center of that monopoly was the city of Sevilla. During that monopoly, Catholics, tired of merchants using the space around the cathedral for vulgar trade and shipping activities, forced the creation of a building to house these "unsavory" activities.

Some time later, the river from Sevilla to the ocean became un-navigable. Spain subsequently moved all of this trading active to Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast. The trade building in Sevilla became a tenement building. It stayed that way until after the Napoleonic era. At that point, Spain converted the old trade building, now a tenement, to an archive. All documents pertaining to the new world were consolidated into this one building in Sevilla called:

The Archive of the Indies. Inside is row-upon-row of original documents:

On shelves like these:

They even have fire extinguishers everywhere. Presumably to avoid the kind of tragedy that occurred most recently in the National Museum of Brasil:

Of course, you can't just open a box and look at the documents, though visiting scholars are allowed to do so in special rooms on the premises. However, there are a number of sample documents on display. Here are a few I like. All were behind plexiglass so there is an unfortunate glare. This is a map of the Mississippi River region from the 1500's. If you look closely at the bottom you see a bit of the arc of the Gulf of Mexico:

This is a map of the Dominican Republic (for Rachel), also circa 16th century:

This is a crib sheet of Spanish to "native" language translation. If you really zoom in you can recognize some of the Spanish words in the left-hand columns. Presumably the native words in the right hand column are phonetic spellings:

There were other artifacts too. The inside of the lid of this "treasure chest" had a fantastically intricate and complicated latching mechanism. Turning a crank in the middle caused this complicated collection of levers to retract all of the latches around the edge of the lid simultaneously:

Finally, like many other museums in Sevilla, there were a Murillo exhibit going on. This is the 400th anniversary year of the famous Spanish painter's birth in 1618. This sketch of Murillo depicting the baby Jesus lying asleep on a cross with his arm draped over a human skull is really bleak. The angels watching over him from above are sad, presumably knowing his destiny:

I've really gotten to like Murillo as I've looked at his work around Sevilla. He was a very thoughtful painter with a fantastic ability to convey complicated theological ideas through his imagery.

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Started using github a couple of days ago to develop a software project. I have to say, it was a lot easier to get going with it than I expected. The newly release desktop tool is wonderful. It really keeps you organized.

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Really warmed up today, maybe 80 degrees. Supposed to get cool over the weekend, maybe lows in the 40's. That would easily be the coldest weather we've experienced here so far.

Bullet Points

• There are a lot of small children in our building. They make a lot of fun sounds. Laura and I love the sound of our building in the evenings. Happy families.
• Spanish class was good today. I met a guy named Martin from Berlin that moved to Sevilla to do a two-year post doc in genetics. He knows less Spanish than I do and was having a bad day. I hope our conversation afterwards cheered him up a bit.
• The weather was sunny and warm today.
• The workers continue to work on painting the building.
• I managed to create a github repository for the project I'm working on. This in spite of the fact that poor github was having major technical difficulties today.
• Emily is struggling with getting back on the right time zone. Definitely not conducive to studying for her qualifying exam on Fri. Somehow she'll make it work tho.
• I watched workers deconstructing the lane buoys on the river this morning after the weekend's boat racing. Very efficient.
• We went to the Primark (think Target for Europe). I needed another pair of pants since one of the pairs I brought with me to Spain has a tear. We also bought some towels for the various house guests we'll be having over the next couple of months.