Last week I took this photo after dropping Andrea off at the train station to go into Barcelona. The four columns are one of the symbols of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
I’m in the unfortunately situation that my primary debit card expires in December. This can be problematic, since I’m usually in Granada with Andrea’s family from Christmas until around the 6th of January.
Last time my card expired, two years ago, I ended up without a debit card for a week as the bank seemed to lose the first replacement card that was sent. This is especially bad timing, since in Spain Christmas gifts are given on Three Kings Day, the 6th of January, so the first week of January is prime present buying time.
So, this time I was more prepared.
At the beginning of December I went to the bank and spoke to a bank teller who looks strangely like a younger version of the last spanish president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (pictured). Maybe it was his nephew or something.
explained that my debit card was expiring at the end of the month and that I’d be away for two weeks from the 23rd of December. I asked them to order a new card for me now, so that it would arrive before I left. I was told the card would be ready the following Thursday.
So, the following Thursday evening I went to the bank and collected my new card. As I did, I asked if I could start using the new card now, or if I had to wait until January when the old one had expired. The lady at the bank looked at the card and then told me that this card had the same expiry date as the old card. It turns out that Zapatero’s nephew had ordered a duplicate card, and not a renewal of the card.
In disbelief I asked why I would want a duplicate of a card that was due to expire in three weeks time, and asked if she could please order me a renewed card. I was then told that I couldn’t have a renewal on that card, as it’s only valid for people up to the age of 30.
I finally managed to convince the bank that I didn’t care what specific sort of card I got, so long as I could use it to take money out and purchase things. I was told to return the following Thursday.
This evening I went back to the bank, at the same time as last week (the same time that anyone with a job goes to the bank if they need to), only to find it closed. The nice lady at the bank who has hopefully ordered me a debit card which will still be valid in 2 weeks time failed to mention that the bank wouldn’t be open in the evening the following Thursday (most branches here are open on Thursday evenings, it’s strange that it wasn’t).
So, now I’m going to have to go back to the bank on Monday morning before Andrea and I leave for Granada and hope that this time they got the right card.
Yesterday, Andrea and I were in the Santa Llucia christmas market in Barcelona. I hadn’t been there in a couple of years, but I was somewhat surprised to see all the christmas tree vendors also selling eucalyptus branches.
Andrea asked one of the vendors and we were told that eucalyptus has become a popular christmas decoration in the last few years because it flowers around christmas. Indeed, the red flowers could be seen everywhere.
We didn’t buy any, but having just come back from a trip to Australia, it’s nice to see a bit of my “home town” here in Barcelona.
Funnily enough, when I searched for “Mercat Santa Llucia” on flickr, the first photo that showed up was the one I’ve included here (photo source).
P.S. I promise to write more about our trip soon. I’ve already started organising and uploading photos to flickr.
My friend and ex-Titanite Dan Garland has recently started up a new project in London. We Got Coders is a training organisation for agile web developers focussed on Ruby on Rails.
The different (and interesting) part is that, after the first 3 months of class-room training, they send their students out to real companies as freelance developers, paired with a senior developer.
The students get real world experience and the company gets first refusal on whether to make a job offer on the student once they graduate from the programme, having already had experience with them on real projects (albeit under guidance).
The catch for the students is that they pay for their training themselves, and they’ll only be admitted to the programme after being vetted (they’re expected to have some amount of interest in programming or a bit of experience before beginning).
I think it’s a really fantastic idea and I’ll be closely watching to see how it goes.
Dan even used my email signature in one of his classes the other day. (I was very proud.)
Yesterday Andrea successfully defended her P.h.D. thesis. The presentation of her work was fantastic and her responses to the questions asked by the thesis board were spot on. (In Spanish it’s called the tribunal, but I think that’s a little harsh a word in English, but it gives you an idea.)
After seeing the amount of work that Andrea has put into this thesis over the last few years, and especially the last 6 months, it was incredibly satisfying to see it all pay off. As I sat there watching her, having just begun to give her presentation, I realised that it was all coming to an end, the final moment of her P.h.D. had just begun and it would all be over soon.
Andrea’s parents and her sister Sonia came to Barcelona to see the presentation, and her aunt and uncle who live here came along as well. Everyone came away impressed with the clarity with which she was able to explain such a complicated topic. Needless to say, all her family were very proud to see the fantastic result of the four years that Andrea has spent in Barcelona.
So, now Andrea is going to have some much needed time to relax (along with a little bit more work before the end of the month). She certainly deserves it.
Many years ago, the security researcher Bruce Schneier wrote the following, oft quoted, statement
It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics.
Later on, I read that he had changed his opinion somewhat, and it’s true that for the last 5 years or more, Schneier has written far more about the social and political aspects of security than the mathematical and engineering ones.
Today it has been revealed that the US government has been working with vendors of cryptographic software to secretly “break” their software. This errors may go unnoticed to everyone else, but for those in the know, it means that the cryptography can be broken.
These are not mathematical breakthroughs, they are deliberate errors in the implementation which allow the mathematics to be avoided.
In another article published today, Schneier has given a sort of call to arms to engineers, urging them to “take back the internet.” I think that it’s possible that he is considering that old quote and wondering if he wasn’t, perhaps, right the first time.
Andrea and I spent most of August in Granada with her family. We had a great time relaxing and recovering a bit from the hectic last six months, which was great.
We arrived just before the wedding of one of Andrea’s cousins. The ceremony was at the church inside the Alhambra and the dinner afterwards was in one of the carmens below. The setting was spectacular. Although I had my camera with me, I managed to take few photos, and most of them were pretty poor. I’ll have to try and do better in the future.
It was pretty hot (we had a week or two where most of the days made it over 40ºC), so I took to running in the mornings, before it heated up too much.
There’s not a lot more to tell. We spent a lot of time with Andrea’s family, and caught up with some of her friends while we were there as well. I read a couple of books, which is pretty much my definition of a holiday.
We are now back in Barcelona while Andrea prepares for her PhD defence on the 10th of September.
I’m a little late to this, somehow I seem to miss these big news stories. A bit more than a month ago, Iain Banks died of cancer.
I hadn’t even heard of Iain [M.] Banks until 2005 when I moved to London and the tube was full of posters for his latest science fiction work, The Algebraist.
I read the book and immediately sought out more. Ironically (and unintentionally), it was his non-Culture novels that I read first, and The Algebraist and Against a Dark Background are still two of my favourites.
I really enjoyed the Wasp Factory too, although I’ve always been more into science fiction than more literary works. I suppose I’ll have to try some of his other non-sci-fi books as well.
It’s sad to hear of the death of another of my favourite authors, especially one who seemed ready to continue writing forever.
Funnily enough, to some extent, I am now an algebraist.
Today I went along to the PhD defence of Manel Taboada, who was one of the people who started the agent-based hospital emergency department simulation project with me back in 2008 when I was doing my masters.
It was fantastic to see him finish his PhD and also to see how far the research project has come since I (went crazy and) moved to the mathematics department.
So, congratulations Manel!
Last week I was in Warwick for a summer school on number theory in cryptography. All the speakers were fantastic and I had a great time learning about some of the cryptographic applications of number theory and also trying my hand at some of the problems that we were given.
The university seems to be really nice, at the very least I know that the mathematics department building is, the coloured stripes behind the photo above were made by letting paint dribble two stories down the wall.
I also met lots of other number theory students, mostly also doing their PhDs as well. A great group of people, all of them.
To complete the trip, I managed to get my copy of Galois Theory signed by Ian Stewart, who is a professor at the University of Warwick. This was the first book that I studied when I started my PhD, and my first introduction to any sort of abstract algebra. Although the copy I actually read was from the UAB library and about 30 years older than the one I now have signed.