Ok, wow.

Posted on October 6, 2009 by hds

I met up with a cousin of mine last night – Kelly, who I’ve never met before. We went out and saw a flamenco show and saw some of Barcelona by night, especially Gràcia, of course. Over the course of the evening I was listing off things to do in Barcelona and when I got to the Sagrada Familia Kelly said she’d never even heard of it. Needless to say I made a big fuss of saying that if she only does one thing the next day before leaving, it had to be going to see Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece.

This morning I received a text message, it just read: Ok, wow.

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Back from India

Posted on September 30, 2009 by hds

I’m back from India, well I’ve made it as far as London in any event, I’m here working for a week.

Bangaluru (it’s name has been officially changed back from the anglicised Bangalore) was fantastic. The conference went well, and although my paper was on the edges of the conference topics I had an audience and even got a few questions, which was nice. It was fantastic seeing some of the city, although I’ve been assured that Bangaluru is not at all representative of the rest of India – I’ll have to go back some day and do it properly.

The people there were all friendly and interesting (at the conference and otherwise) and I found a nice little example of the state of globalisation – all the attendees from Australian universities were originally from elsewhere and all those originally from Australia were living elsewhere.

I’ve got some photos up under Pepe gets outsourced to Bangaluru, I’ll add some descriptions later.

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Back to Barcelona

Posted on September 17, 2009 by hds

I got back from Madrid yesterday on the AVE – which is really cool, but I wish I’d travelled during daylight so I could see what 300km/h looks like. Didn’t really have a choice though.

I had a great time there and met some really cool people, went out pretty much every night and spent the days I wasn’t working seeing the sites, including some very impressive art galleries (the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen). Some highlights on the art side were seeing so much exceptional artwork in the Prado (I went two days and still didn’t finish), but most of all seeing [Guernica](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting) – which was fantastic.

I met some cool people there, including a group I went to Toledo with on Friday. There are photos up of Pepe’s Adventures in Madrid which include the Toledo shots as well.

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I’m in Madrid

Posted on September 15, 2009 by hds

I’m in Madrid, organising a visa for my trip to SCC 2009 in India. I’m still working my days for Titan from here (from the very funky Café Olmo for part of today). I’ve met some cool people and am having a really good time. Far too good a time to be bothered writing a long post about it just yet.

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Erd?s number

Posted on August 31, 2009 by hds

After showing Johannes around all the obligatory Barcelona sites and party lifestyle in the last few days we were recuperating a little this afternoon when he reminded me about Erd?s numbers, which I’d first heard about from an xckd comic. I was quite happy to learn that through my research coordinator I have an Erd?s number of at most 5, it goes like this:

Paul Erd?s -> Branko Grünbaum -> Jaume Llibre -> Ferran Cedó -> Emilio Luque -> Me

Now I’ve got to go and find someone living with a 2, since I think 3 is probably the most I can hope for.

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TeXShop functionality

Posted on August 27, 2009 by hds

I’m revising an article at the moment (well, right now I’m procrastinating and writing a post), which I’ve typeset using LaTeX, as per usual. For LaTeX work on the Mac I use TeXShop, which comes bundled with the TeX suite for Mac, and I’ve just found a fantastic function by accident. Command + click on text in the source file and it circles that point in the PDF. The same works the other way around too, command + click on a point in the PDF and it highlights the text in the source file. It’s brilliant.

Now, back to work.

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Now what?

Posted on August 22, 2009 by hds

La Festa Major de Gràcia is over for another year, which I suppose means I could get some sleep. Between that and last weekend in Mollet I’ve been out the last eight nights in a row. I’m actually not really sure what I’m going to do today, I feel a little lost.

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Barcelona country music scene

Posted on August 21, 2009 by hds

Who would have thought such a thing existed, but as Joe, Amanda and I found last night on Carrer Providència the country music line dancing scene in Barcelona is alive and well. I stood there “boca abierta” as a huge group of people kept going song after song seeming to know not only the steps to each dance, but which dance went with which song.

Apparently Plaça del Nord at 9pm on a Tuesday is the place to be if that’s your sort of thing.

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És festa major!

Posted on August 18, 2009 by hds

That roughly translates into staying up until the not so small hours of the morning, partying while it’s dark, sleeping when it’s light, and I think there’s also a rule against sobriety.

I spent the weekend in Mollet (Anna’s home town) attending the festa major there, where it’s much more an all night thing than Gràcia. Mollet is split into two groups for the festa major, Els Morats – who are all about eating – and Els Torrats – who are all about drinking. Obviously I’m with the torrats.

We saw La Limoncello on Friday night, which a couple of Anna’s cousins are in (I also scored a copy of their CD, which you can download free too) and then stayed out until about 6:30 the following morning. On Saturday night we saw the correfoc (a big precession with lots of fire crackers) and then saw a presentation called El Moll Fer, which I understood very little of because it was all in catalan, but if you’d like to try your luck, you can find it at the Torrats page. After more music we headed to a breakfast (which turned into a water fight as well) at around 8 in the morning.

Now it’s the Festa Major de Gràcia so I haven’t really stopped, and there are still three days left.

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Festa Major de Gràcia

Posted on August 17, 2009 by hds

The Festa Major de Gràcia started on Saturday, and as is tradition a lot of the streets are decorated. Where I’ve previously lived in Gràcia there weren’t any decorations, but Carrer Progrés has got some fantastic decorations up in the theme of mythology.

I took a few photos yesterday when I got back from Mollet so you can get an idea of what it’s all about.

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