My first "PhotoSynth"

I just learned that Microsoft has now released their impressive Photosynth tool, which can link pictures automatically into some sort of panoramic view, without any user interaction.

So I quickly used pictures from my visit at Nicosia in March to create such a synth. You can hover with the mouse over the picture and click around, to zoom in or out:



I will search among my other pictures for suitable scenarios, and in the future I will specifically take pictures of interesting objects, so as to create these synths.

Last Day in Nicosia

Today the whole group will move to a place near Larnaca, to spend the remaining days of the "Intensive Programme" seminar. The workshop about publishing a paper is almost done; 5 sessions have been organised, one is remaining. But the time limit is not handled very strict, as the advising and consulting goes on an individual basis. Each of the student has a different background and status within their PhD progress, and one cannot give a general approach which is suitable to everyone. So I have tried to sit down with each student individually, to go through their status, their work, and distill ideas for a paper. Some of students who are more advanced in their PhD progress are ready for publication and have already writen abstracts. Others have still to find their focus of the work, so they need to study more on the literature. What we did today: I set up a pseudo-review on SurveyMonkey, with one of the abstracts from a student. This allows all other students to review this abstract as if they were members of a program committee. I hope that this is useful for each of them.

Wednesday evening Graham arrived from Leeds Met. We walked as a group to the cafe "Indigo" to have dinner and to watch the soccer game Germany-Turkey. Thursday then was again my workshop in the morning, also Graham contributed with a lecture.

In the evening, there was finally internet in the dormitory room, so I could upload my pictures. Graham, Verena, and myself wanted to go into town, to go to the Turkish part for dinner, but the taxi that I had called did not arrive within the next 60 minutes... so I decided to stay in the room and use the web for the Flickr upload. I also designed a new interface for the mobile GPS application I had in mind.

Today we will depart in the afternoon at 16:00.

4th Day: Seminar

Today the main focus was on individual coaching of each student towards writing their paper. There was a deadline for a joint paper submission, in which I myself was involved with two other students, and we had to submit the contept outline today - done now.

There was still no internet in the hotel room this morning, so internet only works here on the campus.

Seminar, 2nd Day

The seminar starts again at 9:00 am in the morning, and it is again my turn to begin. The students had the assignment to identify conferences, but due to the time constraints and the lack of internet in the dorm, there had not been much progress. So I give a few pointers, then organise each of them into groups according to their topic, so that they can do a joint search for those "outlets" for their paper which they would produce.

A few students identify clearly suitable conferences, while others still struggle with their topic. This makes it difficult to apply a homogeneous lecture, and I will have to do significant individual tutoring.

In the afternoon there is "self study" for the students. My lack of sleep catches finally up with me, and I have a rest in the dorm and sleep for two hours.

Then at 5pm, I head back to the campus to participate in an interview, which a group of students has prepared for an evaluation of this whole seminar. There is an evening session as well, and at 8pm we meet again for heading to dinner into town.

This time I call the reliable taxi driver Nikos; he organises 2 more taxis, as we are now 10 people. We drive directly to the Ledra Street, walk towards the border, and cross it. Fill out that paper which serves as the "visa" for the illegal part of Cyprus, then move across. Much more empty there on the other side. Bright lights, but few people. I buy a cob of corn from a street vendor. I realise that the Cypriot money which I have with me from the time when Cyprus did not have the Euro, is also not valid here... I must have spent all those bills two years ago.



The Mixed Kebab is good, as always. Afterwards we walk a bit further into the Turkish part. A few guys in T-Shirt stand around, but suddenly there is a commotion, and two of them attack two others, pull out a gun, and put hand cuffs on them. Then they push them into two cars, and speed off. Police action? We are puzzled. I had not dared to take pictures of this, as I was not sure what was actually going on. Later the restaurant owner nearby mentioned that this was a police raid.

He noticed that we are Germans / Austrians, and invites us to come on Wednesday evening to watch the soccer game Germany-Turkey. This would be great and certainly fitting... will see if we actually do this.

Evening in Nicosia

The dormitory and the campus of University of Cyprus are relatively far away from the Nicosia city centre: about 5km. Too far to walk, and busses to only once per hour, in a schedule which needs to be interpreted with a +/- 30 min uncertainty. So we do have no other choice than taking a taxi. Or better, two taxis, as our group os 6 people. We get dropped off somewhere near the centre, walk then towards the Ledra street.

We find a nice restaurant, someone has recommended it. Inside we sit down and order Meze, this fabulous collection of starters and main dishes, sampling everything. Erwin watches the game Spain-Italy.

After dinner we walk towards the border, which has now changed a bit since I was there 3 months ago: the wall has been removed, and instead of soldiers there are policemen. The buildings at the side have been "secured", empty shells left over from the war. Neither of us has their passport with them, so we cannot cross. Something to do tomorrow.

Morning Shopping

I slept about 2 hours. Before going to bed, I had sent my blog entries through the mobile phone, with GPRS roaming. I hope to stay below 1 MB...


Student Dormitories

The sun was bright already at 7am, so I decided to get up. Since there would be no breakfast served at this hostel, I would have to get some on my own. The guard was asleep in his cabin, as I passed by. I walked about 1/2 mile into side streets, but no shops in the neighborhood. When I returned, the guard was awake and told me about that mini supermarket 1 mile down the main road. So I walked again, along the dusty road. Reached the "convenience store", got some drinks, a sandwich.

Then walking back to the hostel. Most of the students were up now, had breakfast with things they had bought yesterday. Most had arived earlier than 3 am.


Road towards Nicosia Centre

Departure - and Return to UK

I sleep long in the morning, to get a rest. Have breakfast at 9:30. Then a brief walk along the Ledra, to see if the crossing from the Greek south into the Turkish north has already opened. No, it has not. Behind the fence screen there are workers busy with demining and fixing the crumbling house walls. Activity, but no opening yet. In the newspaper I read that the crossing will open in the next week. I also read that this crossing has been closed since 1963... that is strange. I thought the war was in 1974, when Turkey annexed the northern part of Cyprus. What was in 1963? Nobody in the newspaper mentions that... seems that everyone here knows it anyway, and does not really want to bring it up. I will have to do some search on this. It seems that the island had some divisions already before the invasion, and that the tensions are really within Cyprus and not necessarily a consequence of the external invasion by Turkey (some info on this is on Wikipedia. But this seems not really a politically correct attitude – all the officials from the Greek side (tour guides, representatives) stress how bad and savage the Ottomans were, and how much Cyprus is Greek orientated. Well, it is not me to judge – but there seems to be something artificially inflated in those assertions... I had noticed this already during my last visit here 18 months ago, when one of the speakers constantly mentioned how important human rights were, but only in the narrow context of the Cypriote conflict.

There is a severe water shortage in Cyprus, due to draught and mismanagement. Starting yesterday (Friday), water was rationed: In Larnaca and Limassol water is supplied only during a few times of the day. This includes hotels too, only the airport and hospitals are excluded. Paphos and Nicosia are currently spared, but the rationing is looming in the next few weeks. I asked at the hotel info desk, and they assured me that they have their own tank and could bridge those outage times. Would be quite annoying if one could not take a shower, or not flush the toilets for a whole day... I am beginning to reconsider my plan to come to Cyprus again this summer...

The taxi for my pickup arrives at the hotel 10 minutes before the scheduled time, at 11:30. This time there is a lot of space – I am alone in the Mercedes. Arrive at the Airport at 12:00. Long line at the check-in for Monarch Airlines, 1/2 hour waiting. Long gone are the good times of "Platinum Elite Priority check-in" at Northwest airlines... I still have the labels dangling from my luggage. The plane takes off in time, back on the way to London Gatwick.

CIRCLE Conference - 2nd day

My talk is at 9:00. There are about 9 attendees, the rest must be in the other two parallel sessions. I meet another colleague from Leeds Met: she is working on technology-enhanced learning and is glad that a few more technology-oriented people attend this conference. We agree to have a meeting next week at Leeds Met, to discuss some joint projects. My talk goes well, the introduction to Web 2.0 is positively received. There are a few more talks this morning which deal with the application of technology in various areas of eGovernment, Market Research, Marketing, etc.

A few participants have to leave already, but I stay for the whole duration into the afternoon. It is a great opportunity to learn about another field and to make contacts across disciplines.

At this conference, there were overall 70 papers, and 120 participants, as we learn at the concluding session. Next year, CIRCLE will be in Dornbirn, Vorarlberg. It seems that the topics of this conference are quite relevant to some of the PhD students from the Danube-University Krems – I will inform them about this event; maybe a few could publish papers then.



In the evening, there is another joint event: the bus drives to the coastal city of Larnaca. We stop at the beach promenade with its palm trees and walk to the St. Lazarus Church, where the grave of St. Lazarus (died 90 A.D.) had been found in the 9th century. I did not ask how they were so sure it was really Lazarus – afterall, the Carbon-dating method had not yet been fully developed in the 9th century.



There is a prayer service in this Creek-Orthodox church, as our group slowly intrudes there, to step down into the crypt with the empty sacrophaguses.

We continue to the art cafe "1900" for a drink.

Then further on with the bus a short distance to the fish restaurant "Monte Carlo" where a generous fish meze is being served. Back at the hotel around midnight.

CIRCLE Conference - 1st day

The conference location is at the University of Nicosia, the former "Intercollege". The campus is about 5 km away from the city centre, and a bus transfer has been provided by the conference organisation. Unfortunately, only one bus goes in the morning to the conference and back in the evening. Since the public transportation in Nicosia appears to consist only of taxis (I have not seen a bus with line numbers on it yet), we would have to share a ride from the hotel to the conference location. At this first morning, the bus has been scheduled to depart before the breakfast is served – so most of us in the Centrum Hotel decided to skip the bus and leave after breakfast, sharing taxis – still enough time to arrive there before the first session starts.




The topic of the CIRCLE conference is "Consumer Behavior and Retailing Research". This is a bit off my own research interest, but I can contribute with a technology perspective: my talk on Friday will be about "Marketing in Web 2.0". The conference is organised in 3 parallel tracks, so it is not possible to attend all talks. The quality of the presentations varies from interesting student proposals to complete research studies.




In the evening, a tour is given through Nicosia. Well, we cover only a small part of the town: an area where "buildings have been reconstructed in the style of the 19th century". Unfortunately we no not see any of the really remarkable buildings, but we get a detailed explanation of the parking lots and the soccer/football places around the old city wall. We enter a bistro for a drink, then the bus continues to a village south of Nicosia, for an evening Meze with lots of meat and wine. A "show" is performed: dancers pretending to be part of the customers, begin to dance to the music and invite the guest to join in. It is possible that somewhere on Flickr/YouTube some pictures of me might appear...

After returning to the hotel around midnight, it is time to think about my presentation the next day: well, I just have to add to my existing set of slides (two: title page with my name, and an empty conclusions slide) a few more. Am done after midnight at 1:30.

Conference Inauguration

At the University of Nicosia, the former Intercollege, the conference is opened by the conference chair Prof. Ruediger Kaufmann from U. Nicosia. The Cyprus Finance Minister gives a speech, followed by a very inspiring keynote given by Prof. Leo Paul Dana (New Zealand). The official program concludes with a Cypriot dance group performance. The evening concludes with a wine tasting and a few finger food snack items. Unfortunately there is no Wifi at the conference site, so I can access my email only later in the evening back in the hotel.

PhD Seminar

The main reason why Claudio has invited me to this conference was the participation in the newly launched European PhD supervision program. In the afternoon a seminar is held for those PhD students. I learn that this collaboration with Austrian Universities actually pre-dates the collaboration with Krems DUK!

In Nicosia

There were no conference events scheduled for the morning, but due to the time difference of 2 hours between UK and Cyprus, I only had a relatively short sleep. After the breakfast I decided to use the time to walk around a bit. Since the hotel is nicely located in the centre, I walked along the streets, taking a few pictures in the bright sunshine. The centre seems not to have many preserved buildings; there are many shops, a few derelict buildings with scars from the war (1974). Then a few freshly renovated sites, proudly displaying plaques about the European Funding which made the renovation possible. Several stores with handy-work shops: a chair maker, shoe repair, classic car repair.





At the north end of Ledra, one of the main streets in the centre, one soldier guards the closed crossing into the Turkish occupied part. In one of the houses here, in each window journalists with picture and film cameras point across the border, filming something of relevance. As I learn later from the newspaper, the UN has now got permission to clear the area there, removing mines and unexploded ammunition, for opening this crossing. Last time I had been here 1 1/2 years ago, it looked different: there had been a bridge with stairs, leading along the street towards north, and a sign had told about the crossing to be opened soon. Now the bridge is gone, and just a mobile non-transparent fence closes the street. In a few days the crossing will be opened – maybe I can witness it.

Arrival on Cyprus

The tour operator Tamasos was supposed to pick me up and drive me to the hotel in Nicosia, about 45 km away from the airport. Yes, there was a guy waving a sign CIRCLE, I went to him, and he told me there would be 4 more. Ok, I would wait outside. Went through the door into the warm evening air. What a contrast to icy Leeds! In the morning there was still almost frost in Leeds, and now here in Larnaca it was around 17 C. I decided to go back into the building, to get something to drink for later. Who knows if I would be able to find something at that late hour in Nicosia. When I came out again, I kept waiting for the guy from Tamassos. But he did not come... so I got worried. Called the agency, they gave me his mobile number, then I called him. Yes, he was still here, had not yet left. As we were talking and giving each other our position where we were, I saw him walking with his mobile... good, I had not missed him.

5 more people arrived: my colleague Claudio from Leeds Met plus two other Leeds Met academics, plus two acquaintances of Claudio. Together, with the luggage, we were supposed to fit into one car. No, not a van: a regular Mercedes taxi. Ok, it was one of those Limosine taxis, with stretched body. A Mercedes 220D or something, but from the 70s (the old /8). The 6 of us were squeezed onto the 2 back benches, the trunk with the suitcases almost did not close. But it worked out ok, and we arrived well in Nicosia.

I decided to walk a bit outside near the hotel. Local time 23:30. There were still a few kiosks open, so I had worried for nothing. One stand in the street offered warm olive bread – a good midnight snack.

The Wifi in the room was weak, I was not able to connect to the internet.