Dancing King

This evening we went to see the Christmas light display we attempted to see a few days ago. They're three wire-frame arrangements of lights meant to signify the three kings of the manger story:

Every half hour loudspeakers around the plaza play some Christmas music and the crowns flash in patterns timed to the music. It's fun to see and it definitely drew a crowd, but no where near the crowd of a few nights ago, thankfully.

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Other than that, pretty relaxed day. Laura made some chili for dinner. The weather continues to be lovely, low 70s today (yes laundry occurred). Sadly, it appears we're in for a stretch of cloudy and 50 degree weather right as Rachel arrives.

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We spoke to Rachel on the phone today. Also, spoke to Halley for the first time since we left WW. The time difference makes it a challenge, but definitely need to work harder at keeping in touch.

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I finally finished my Christmas present for the girls.

Bridge Slide

This is La Puente de Alamillo, or as I usually call it, "the phallic bridge". It has an interesting feature at the base of its most prominent feature.

The "prominent feature" slopes down to join a pedestrian walkway. I've often looked at that sloping feature at the bottom and thought it would be fun to climb up and slide down. This morning, I saw a bunch of kids doing just that. Here's a video from afar:

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Emily found a recipe for chana masala last week. It looked so good, so Laura made some for me today:

It was pretty spicy, but really hit the spot. Plus, there's enough leftover for lunch tomorrow.

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We walked over to Alameda de Hercules to see what we could see with respect to holiday activities. It was a happening place. Lots of vendors, ice skating, kids everywhere. This caught my eye (and several other eyes based on the line):

From there, we caught the bus out to Costco to pick up a few things. We're back now and in for the evening.

A date which will live in infamy.

Not really, I just always think of that quote on Dec 7th (Pearl Harbor Day).

The painters finished up the shutters today. Here they are, freshly painted, awaiting placement:

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Fairly typical day, but we had to plan a bit at the grocery store since they're closed on both Sat and Sun this weekend. Saturday is the Catholic holy day, Immaculate Conception, and they're always closed on Sunday.

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I found a good datacamp course that talks about machine learning with time series. It seems to fit well with the weather prediction project I've been working on this week.

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This evening we went to the Plaza de San Francisco. The claim was that a Christmas light installation was going to premiere at 7pm. Turns out the publicity was wrong and the premiere wasn't until 9pm. We were not the only people fooled. At 7pm, the plaza was packed:

Even the vendors were fooled. Eventually at about 10 minutes after 7, it started to filter through the crowd that nothing was going to happen until 9pm. People left in droves. It's on every evening for the rest of the holiday season, so we'll just hit it later.

We wandered around a bit waiting for the ill-fated 7pm premiere time and went through a nearby church that's normally closed. There was a line of folks lined up to pay homage to Mary by kissing the hand of a statue of Mary in one of the alcoves. Folks walked up singly or in pairs, prayed briefly and kissed the hand of the statue. There was an attendant there that wiped the hand after each kiss:

I suppose this devotion will continue through the holy day tomorrow as well.

Constitution Day

Other than the stores being closed, not much happened here in Sevilla to commemorate Constitution Day. The constitution of Spain, developed in the wake of the Spanish dictator Franco's death, was finally approved by a referendum of the people on Dec 6, 1978. This year marks the 40th anniversary of that referendum. One might think that an anniversary that is divisible by 10 would be special, but it doesn't appear to be. I suppose the 50th will be special, but I'm not likely to be in Spain for that. Although, who knows, after the US becomes a 3rd world country, maybe I'll immigrate to Spain.

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The bridge was lovely this evening:

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Sevilla takes its Christmas decorations very seriously. Each street has its own design for lights. I managed to snap this just walking around the neighborhood this evening (except for a couple that I added just to fill out the 3x3 square):

I don't like the rectangular ones as much as the others. But, to each his own I guess.

Av. de la Constitución

We walked up to Av. de la Constitución this evening just to see what we could see. Also, since tomorrow is a national holiday, Constitution Day, it was particularly apropos. It marks the establishment in 1978 of the current form of Spanish governance. It looked lovely in its Christmas lights, but really smokey from all the chestnut roasters:

There was a nativity in the alcove of one of the government buildings at the end of the avenue. Definitely not something you'd see in a gov't building in the US (that pesky separation of church and state, haha):

Just around the corner from this we heard what sounded like a political march. We went around to investigate and saw a group doing a Take Back the Night sort of political demonstration.

It was attracting attention and a number of TV newscasters.

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I worked a bit more on my weather project today. Using a nearest neighbors classifier I started getting reasonable results. Still with not much sophistication, I'm able to predict frozen fog 12 hours in advance with about 50% accuracy, but still a lot of false negatives. I have  few ideas on how to improve it. It's a surprisingly rich project.

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Spanish class was interesting today. Our teacher tried to explain when to use the preterite past tense or the present perfect tense (which is also a past tense). I kind of have it down, but I'm far from being able to use it on the fly in conversation.

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I talked to Emily today while I walked along the river. Research seems to be going well. When I got home, we switched to video and Laura and I both got to "chat" with Benji the bunny.