Helpful People

Cool and breezy this morning. I went out for my usual walk thinking I'd warm up, but came home cold an hour later. While I was oblivious, it clearly rained buckets over night. Lots of puddles and rivulets on the grounds along the river. Laura said she heard it coming down. I wear foam earplugs, so I didn't hear a thing.

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Mostly hung around the flat and read or watched Netflix. I also did a little bit of a data visualization class on DataCamp. This afternoon I decided to go out to a park and read. I haven't spent much time at Parque de Maria Luisa in front of the Plaza de España. It's a bit of a walk, so I decided to take a bike share over instead. I pulled the last bike out of the station around the corner. I tried to pedal, but the crank just spun. I looked down and saw that the chain had jumped off of the gear. I was just about to get to work trying to fix it when a guy came up and energetically offered to help. He kinda seemed to know what the problem was, so I let him take over. He started working on it when a second random guy came up and started helping. Once again, I kinda stepped back and watched. These bikes are heavily used all over Sevilla. I figured these two had seen this issue before and would have me on my way much more quickly than I would alone. I watched a bit and the problem was a bit more complex than I initially thought. The shifting mechanism on these 3-speed bikes is one that I'm not too familiar with. Regardless, they got it straightened out (and I'm pretty sure I could replicate the fix if I encountered it again). After a few "gracias's" and "adios's" I was on my way. Also, I was left feeling pretty good about my fellow Sevillians.

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The bike worked flawlessly over to the bike station two bridges south of our bridge (the best bridge). I walked across the bridge and noticed another cruise ship at the dock there:

At the other end of the bridge is the back entrance to Parque de Maria Luisa. Right at that entrance is a lovely fountain Monumento a Juan Sebastian Elcano:


The park itself is a maze of paths, fountains, trees, plants and benches. I took a bench along this path:

I read a chapter and changed spots to a bench at the Plaza de España. The cool clear air made for good photography. I like this one with the shadow of a palm tree in the foreground:

The fountain had a perpetual rainbow in the late evening sunlight:

Tourist carriages were circling in front of the north tower:

While there, I finished the book Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil. This was a deeply affecting book for me. Instead of a gee-whiz look at a data analytics future utopia, O'Neil describes the ways in which algorithms and data are being used in ways that are harmful to society. In most cases, algorithms are being used by companies to more efficiently separate us from our money. Unfortunately, these techniques are so esoteric and opaque that our elected officials are quite unable to formulate reasonable regulations and oversight of the use of these tools (even if they had the will to do so). I think this book will be required reading in the machine learning course I'm developing.

Spin Cycle

The days are noticeably shorter here than when we arrive--just like everywhere else in the northern hemisphere, haha. Here's a photo of the sun just lighting up the building this morning on Calle San Jorge, the street parallel to us between here and the river:

Pretty quite, not too many folks about.

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Relatively normal day. Laura and I went grocery shopping. Had to do the usual big Saturday shop since everything's closed on Sunday. Laura found some bacon, so we tried BLTs for lunch:

Even added a bit of guacamole. Tasty.

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I continued to play around with the vibration sensor on my phone. Today I did a load of laundry. Our little washer can do a spin cycle that will knock your socks off (or at least get most of the water out of them, haha). The washer claims, right on the front, that the drum spins at 1200RPM. I've always thought that was amazingly fast. I realized today that I have the tools to test that claim. I recorded the vibrations of the washer during the spin cycle, did a Fourier transform on the data and made this heatmap:

If you look closely, you see that the frequency of vibration tops out at about 19 Hz at around 6 mins into the spin cycle. That's 1140RPM! Not 1200RPM, but close enough. The step pattern of the trace is also interesting. It ramps up to 5 Hz, spins for a while, then ramps up to 16.5 Hz, spins for a while, then up to 19 Hz, and spins for a while before dropping a back down to 0 (which is below the resolution of this technique). I'm not sure what the constant 3 Hz vibration is. Maybe the water pump. These phone sensors are a lot of fun. Now I'm obsessed with finding things to measure.

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This evening I sat by the river and read a bit. I noticed this very orange orange in a nearby orange tree with the bridge providing a nice backdrop. So, I took a picture:

Incense and Heatmaps

October 12th is a national holiday in Spain. It commemorates the landing of Columbus in the Americas. A lot of Spaniards are sort of ambivalent about that event now, but a day off is a day off, haha. In a lot of ways, it was quieter than normal, at least earlier in the day when I went out for my walk. Speaking of my walk, I was this ode to autumn at the base of the bridge on the Sevilla side:

This is worth zooming in on. The little sign in the middle says "Bienvenido otoño" ("welcome autumn"). The leaves are all hand made--either crocheted or decorated dried leaves. This was clearly left by folks that miss traditional autumn colors. I have to say, I miss them too. It gets cooler here in the winter, but the trees don't drop their leaves.

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I continued to work of my frequency analysis. Emily suggested a heatmap instead of an animation. I figured out how to get python/matplotlib to do a heatmap and was pretty happy with the result:

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This evening there was another religious procession. Streets closed, marching bands, throngs. After the procession Laura and I went out to San Jacinto to get some dinner. One of the street vendors was selling incense burners. The vendor was actually burning incense in one of them. It smelled just like the incense from catholic churches back in the US:


He was busy too. Lots of people looking for incense burners I guess.

Animated Spectra

I tagged along with Laura on her language school's "cultural activity" again today. I guess it was a good thing too, since Laura and I were the only ones that partook. Our guide was Lucia again (same as last week). She's on the left in this picture:

Of course that's Laura on the right and one of Lucia's students in the middle.

Lucia took us to an art gallery maintained by the University of Sevilla called CICUS. The exhibit was small and had the theme Ausencias (absence):

An appropriately vague and squishy theme that was fun to think about in the context of the pieces inside. I only took one picture inside the gallery of this piece:

The black is just electrical tape on a white wall. The white is light from a projector. The light was animated and moved around in ways that complemented the black tape design. Sadly, it was out of alignment. I desperately wanted to fix the projector, but thought maybe it was supposed to be out of alignment. However, on the way out, we noticed a flyer for the the exhibit that featured a photo of this piece in which the light was aligned with the background. Then I really wanted to go back and fix it, but instead I left.

Lucia did a nice job speaking Spanish with us. I could understand about 80% of what she was saying.

The gallery was off of a courtyard at the CICUS. The tilework was lovely:

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After the tour, Laura went to class and went home and worked on math. I did finally manage to create an animation in python. This animation is a spectral analysis of measurements of me walking/running taken using the inertial sensor in my phone (all smart phones have them). With a bit of Fourier transforming and finding the peak of the spectrum, I was able to see that when walking I have a step pace of about 2 steps/sec. When running, it's around 3 steps/sec. Here's an animation of the spectrum for my 30 minute walk/run:


None of this is really my research, but learning these technological tools will help with a variety of classes next year.

Automatic Ladders

Had my second day of Spanish language school today. I started a light-intensity 12 week course. It meets twice a week for 1.5 hrs. The class is small, just 3 students and a teacher. The content is pretty basic, but the speaking and listening is right on target. I think it will be good practice. The teacher is pretty good. She seems well-prepared, experienced, and tolerates terrible Spanish (which is good for me).

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I seem to have the beginnings of a cold. My first Spanish cold. I hope it's not too bad. Mostly just coughing right now. No real congestion.

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On the way home today I saw some movers moving furniture out of a 2nd story apartment. They had a ladder leaned against the building that had a motorized platform that was capable of raising and lowering furniture off of the balcony and down to the ground. I'm sure that people that live in big cities have seen these before, but I'm from Walla Walla, so I thought it was interesting:

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Mostly did math after Spanish class. Discovered that doing animations in jupyter is ridiculously difficult. Still not there yet.

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Took the trash out. On the way back, I took this shot of the street in front of our flat:

Just another night in Triana.