December

In December I went to my last conference, ACSAC in Austin, Texas. Somehow I always managed to end up getting accepted at Texan or southern state conferences. Anyway, the conference was interesting; I was surprised to see that many government agencies there taking part. A lot of NSA people etc. Here are some pictures. And yes it was in December, thus the Christmasy theme.

A winter landscape at the entrance of the hotel all made out of gingerbread:

Mandatory Hotel-room-view picture on Austin

Also in December I started doing many more job interviews which eventually landed me a job which I started in Feburary. But first I had to finish my PhD.

January

February

Quick trip to Milan to eat a fantastic steak served by the fattest cook (ever?). But you really want cooks to be fat.

Obviously I took the picture when he wasn’t facing us but the flash gave me away.

March – May

Started my new job in a hedge fu^R^R err investment company. My new joiners cake

Oxford Street way too early in the morning:

To finish off my newly picked up skill, a balloon dog:

I went to Copenhagen over a weekend last month with a couple of friends. It’s not an extremely exciting city in itself but there were some interesting parts (for example Christiania).

I drew a perfect circle. It is nowhere close to the world freehand circle drawing champion though.

I made my first risotto ever ever (with a pressure cooker). It was surprisingly good.

Curtsey to my housemate, we now have probably the nicest gin mix kit available in London. Every bottle you see only contains a single ingredient of gin and you can mix your own with your own quantities (sample flavours are juniper, coriander, nutmeg, etc).

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Apart from that, I attend the ACSAC conference next week in Austin and also should really finish my phd thesis .. submission date is beginning of February..

Another thing I came by. How do you prevent people from pissing in a corner?

Exactly, you remove the corner!

On Wednesday, I’ve been to the Sipsmith Gin distillery as part of the London Cocktail Week. The copper pot you see in the background is where every bottle of Sipsmith has been produced in! We also got a taster of different cocktails by mixologist Jared Brown, who has written about 34 or 35 books on cocktails.. he couldn’t remember the exact number.

There’s only one picture of this event .. might be the gin’s fault.

An empty flat was occupied by (strange) squatters in our building. Just recently they got evicted and kicked out .. and now they (don’t know who) transformed the flat in what looks like some high-security area ..

Last friday four years ago I came to the UK! Happy Anniversary

Yes, this is one glorious (self-made) burger of which I just ate two of.

What’s new? This week we got a paper accepted at the conference ACSAC in Austin (somehow all conferences seem in Texas..) in December. This is very good news and gives me some more material to write up in my thesis (which I should start soon..).

I also ordered an amazon Kindle (ebook reader). Once it arrived I will post an in-depth review here!

Posted from mobile.

Weird, creepy exhibition somewhere in east London.

Posted from mobile.

More and more this develops into a monthly blog! Because of that and because I have a new, nice android phone I might try and change this blog into a picture blog where I upload pictures from my mobile on the go. Me and you will see if I’m going to do that or not.

The picture above is the new Overground line which opened in the last weeks in east London. Funny enough, the overground at this station is below the underground …

With the opening of the Overground another mystery was solved: what the large opening, pictured below, is for. It’s a tunnel opened for that new line .. and we can hear trains passing in front of our house every other minute! But it’s actually not too bad.

I have a lot of new pictures, however they are on the old phone which is archived already! Oh Well.

Jobwise, this wednesday I have a talk at kings college at a workshop on information flow and security.

Some people complained that there’s too many food pictures on this blog, for that reason I end this post with a nice plate of pasta I made recently: