X….mas!

Crazy. Restaurants and bars are already inviting people to book their Christmas dinners.

CAV

I was attending CAV (computer aided verification) over the weekend in Grenoble. I gave a talk at the QA workshop which went fine. Most memorable though was the food. Extremely good, varied and nicely presented.

Thriller

Since the day Michael Jackson died you hear his songs everywhere. In Bars, radios, from cars passing by, and even Tube-Musicians played some songs.  I also saw two pretty good (and drunk) MJ impersonators on the Tube, though they only remembered “Who’s bad!” from the lyrics. Whether you liked him and his music or not, it’s still quite interesting to notice this group dynamic.

Week in words

I had a very busy week with a friend visiting , looking for houses and preparing for the workshop on the weekend etc. Once again it seems I’ll be moving. This time after a break of 8 months non-moving though .

My current housemates bought a flat for themselves and by chance a friend of mine is looking for a new place too so we’ll probably move together. We found a very promising place but it’s not confirmed yet!

I’ll be going to Grenoble this weekend to present my work at QA’2009. My paper can be found in this Berkeley technical report (in the middle).

******

Due to technical reasons and purely for Google I’ll link again to my research page. As my username has changed, the location of the website has changed, thus Google’s index is pointing to a not existing site.

Pepsi Raw and Twitter

I drank a Pepsi Raw today. Apparently, they distributed small samples at Liverpool Street. It’s a pepsi but with all natural ingredients. Unfortunately, it’s not very good.

The interesting thing is that they suggest to give feedback via Twitter:

Truth

I noticed this 9/11 Evidence Summit poster hanging around at uni. I might attend.

Pics

A very sunny, and warm Sunday at Sunday Up market:

The “Fuck the World” book:

The author of this book basically sticked dozends of sticker “FUCK” stickers on public signs and signals. This is exactly my kind of humor. Here one example:

The Hangman book. 90 Pages of .. hangman, to play against yourself:

The Future

So I went to Wagamama the first time close to my place. It’s quite good japanese’ish food with nice staff. While eating, I noticed the nice, flickering candles (tea lights) and thought it adds to the athmosphere. A closer look revealed that the candle is actually not a candle but an LED light! I immediately tried to figure out how this thing tricked me into believing it was a candle for 40 minuts. It contains multiple (3-4) diodes closely stacked on each other. The lights are turned off and on in a pseudo random way to simulate the flickering of a real flame. Cool.

BD, QA, TM, FY & co

I’ll post on my birthday since my last update is already too long ago!

Anyway, this is quite an old image/story but it’s still pretty funny, that’s why I’ll post it. In December, I bought myself a new phone (blackberry) and of course immediately forgot my password and the 3 security questions I set on the T-Mobile website. A bit later I was on the hotline with them while they asked me the security questions which I couldn’t remember, however the Indian guy on the other end of the line probably had the answers to the questions on his screen. Since I couldn’t remember them I was given the choice to get them texted to me. I chose that option and this is what I got. Good I did not remember them.

A version of my current paper has been accepted to some small workshop on Quantitative Analysis of Software. I’m going to present my work next month in Grenoble.

Screens

Large screens have appeared on CCTV poles in our street. Currently, they display ads about an upcoming festival. I wonder what they will be used for otherwise. Quite strange somehow: