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.

Souvenir Shopping

Neither Laura nor I are big shoppers. That said, we've known since we got here that we'd like to buy some kind of souvenir to commemorate Sevilla. Before leaving Hungary, we bought a modest water-color painting of one of the ubiquitous bright yellow trams that served us so well during our stay there. This time around, we're looking for a print or painting of the Triana Bridge (the best bridge). We've seen a few items like this around town and the plan was to pull the trigger on something today. There's a shop down the street that has some nice prints. We thought it might be cool to get something hand-made right in our neighborhood. To boot, Laura noticed that this store was represented in a craft fair this week over by the cathedral. Noting the operating hours of the craft fair, we went over this afternoon around 5:30pm only to find it closed because of Yet Another Procession (YAP).

Fortunately, the craft fair goes for a couple more weeks, so we'll get there eventually.

***

The full moon this evening rose around 9:15pm local time. I still haven't figured out how to photograph it clearly, but it was lovely to see:

The subject of our much sought after print in the evening light:

Make Spain Great Again

I saw this VOX party tent at the end of our street this evening:

This is the Spanish equivalent of "Make America Great Again". Nationalistic, anti-immigrant etc.

***

Laundry day:

I'm really enjoying the return to summer weather. Laundry is so easy. Put it on the roof, pick it up two hours later. It never rains. In the winter, I'd put laundry off and put it off until finally it had to be done. Then it would take days to dry on the rack in the apartment.

***

I think I've done what I can do with clustering. On to supervised learning.

***

I talked to Kathy on the phone for a while this evening.

***

Since the MLB season started, we've been in the habit of watching the Seattle Mariners in the mornings here. They're so bad now, that a few days ago, we started watching the Phillies instead and just catching the Mariners highlights. We may have jinxed the poor Phils though because now they're playing as poorly as the M's.

Oh well, we also have the Giro d'Italia to watch each day.

YAP

Yet Another Procession. Hearing loud fireworks overhead for the better part of a half hour this afternoon, I was wondering what the heck was going on. When Laura got home from class, she said there was another procession going on. They do like their processions here in Sevilla.

***

The Galilean thermometer was damaged in shipping, so I ordered a replacement:

It arrived today. It's all glass and a wonder that these items ever survive shipping. This one is intact. I'm going to ship the damaged one back tomorrow using the packaging that this one came in.

***

The days are getting longer and longer here as we approach the summer solstice:

***

Learned a bit about my clustering problem today. Turns out the clusters were mostly sorting the students by their grade point averages. I'm going to try a different approach tomorrow by normalizing the grade point vectors and hope for more interesting clusters.