Back at Work

I had 3 weeks off. During this time, I did a few excursions around Yorkshire, travelled on a steam train, took tons of pictures and videos. August was quite nice, with no really hot day (max temperature was 25C), but with some nice sunny days. I also used the time to familiarise myself with the Diffie-Hellman-Merkle algorithm, which allows to create a secure shared key for encryption/decryption, which is generated simultaneously on the client and the server, and does not need to be sent between them - allowing data to be sent encrypted over an insecure connection.

Now since Tuesday I am back in my office. I still have to solve that mystery why on some days exactly at 7:04 in the morning my PC shuts down... some mysterious remote control from the IT dept?

Did a few reviews for a conference (ISVC), wrote a referee report about an applicant due to promotion (at a foreign university), otherwise did just slacking off. Could watch during the daytime at 15:00 episodes of the US TV series Monk which is about a detective with some serious obsessive-compulsive disorder - one of my favourite programs while I lived in the US.

Now the daytime program for me takes place in my office, or in meetings. And a long list of things to do: preparation of teaching material, writing one or two paper manuscripts, preparation of a workshop. And of course apply for funding of my research work activities.

Steam Fair in Pickering

This weekend, actually already starting on Thursday, 6.August, until Sunday, 9.August, there was a big event in Pickering, which is a small town located at the south border of the North York Moors Park: a Steam Fair was held there, with all kinds of road steam engines on display: steam rollers, steam tractors, but also steam-powered fair attractions, organs, and flea market. A great sunny day on Saturday, and the event was well visited.

Lineup of steam tracktors, ready to drive into the show arena.

Organ, used at the Munich Octoberfest

Carousel and Helter-Skelter in the background

Sometimes the air was a bit polluted.

Draisine, predecessor of the bicycle, from 1817

"The Ashes" in Headingley

When living in England, one cannot escape that every 18 to 30 months or so the sports news are filled with talk about "the Ashes". As I learned, this is a competition between only two countries: England (yes, this is not the UK but England only, as one of the "Nations" of the UK) and Australia play cricket to "win the Ashes". And this weekend, Friday until Monday, this competition takes place here in the famous Headingley Carnegie Cricket Stadium. When I passed by the stadium Friday late afternoon, there was lots of activity. The weather had been great Friday and Saturday, so the drainage system on the grounds which had some problems a few months ago was not put to a test. Instead, the only tests were the matches, because in cricket a game is called a "Test". Don't as me why there are only test matches (when are then the real matches?) of what an "Inning" is (are there any outings?) - I am blissfully ignorant of cricket or any other sport... I once heard (by an American) that Cricket is nothing else than "Baseball on Valium", because unlike Baseball which is usually over in 2 1/2 hours, cricket test matches last usually a few days and appear to go on a very slow pace. Americans would not have any patience for that.

And what is the story about "The Ashes"? As my German friend Falk explained to me, in 1882 Australia won for the first time a cricket match on an English ground. Some saw this as the end of English Cricket, and so the wickets were burnt, and their ashes was kept in an urn. Since then, these two countries play every 2 years about winning this urn, "The Ashes". Most times Australia won the Ashes, and also currently hold the title. Following the recent news from Headingley, it does not look good for England this season eather...

There is good info on the Ashes on Wikipedia.

Problem with MS IE8 and FreePDF: Prints only First Page

I encountered a problem with Microsoft Explorer 8 and FreePDF: when trying to print a web site that would stretch over several pages from Microsoft Explorer using the FreePDF printer driver, only the first page is saved as a PDF file. I noticed this accidentally when trying to retrieve a previously saved page, which had then only been saved partially.

The same printing from the same web site works fine on Google Chrome.

I have no idea what the cause of this problem is, and I cannot point out if it is an MS8 problem or a FreePDF problem.

One solution is to do first a PrintPreview, then print from there - this works and creates a PDF with all the content broken down into pages.

Into the Summer Break

The Leeds Met Headingley Campus has become quiet now. The final year students had their Graduation Ceremonies last week and have now left the university. Many members of staff are taking their holidays now in summer, so the buzzing in front of the James Graham Building has come to a halt. Instead, the dismantling crews have begun to take the white Marquee apart which stood here on the Acre the past few weeks.

In September, the annual Staff Development Festival will be mostly in the new Rose Bowl, so there is no need anymore for the Marquee.

The Headingley Caedmon Webcam which I set up, has been featured on the Latest News page, and I have recorded for every day a set of image sequences which could be made into a time-lapse video. Now the camera will record an image series of the dismantling and the following recultivation of the Acre.

I am making the executable of the image capture software freely available for download/installation. In addition to the image capture, I have written a small utility for automatically placing an image from a webserver onto the Windows Desktop - is also available online. In the future I will release the source code of these projects as OpenSource, but I have to do a bit of code cleaning before.

"Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild Wild Women"

The above headline was the motto of Henry Allingham and he claimed that this was the reason for his longevity. He was 113 years old when he died this Saturday, and for one month he was the oldest man on Earth. Born in 1896, he was one of the last witnesses of the whole 20th century, linking the Victorian Empire with our current times. It must be fascinating to talk to people like him and hear the accounts of historical events from someone who lived through them. May he rest in peace after his long life.

His motto shows a very positive and humorous attitude. I myself do not smoke and very rarely drink Whisky, so that leaves only one thing... and that is all I am going to write about it.

Graduation Week 2009

The Leeds Met Graduation 2009 was held this past week at the Headingley Campus, in the white Marquee on the Acre. Each day another faculty had their celebration, and on Friday it was the turn of our Faculty Innovation North. In two celebrations, our students and the students from the Regional University Network were handed their award. Two honorary degrees were also conferred: to entrepreneur James Caan and to the CEO and Founder of MOBO, Kanya King. Later that afternoon, a reception was held to honour our former Dean Cath Orange who is leaving the university in a few months.

Away Day

Today our faculty had an "Away Day". From my work in Germany I associate this kind of day with "a day out", a "Betriebsausflug" with picnic and barbecue. But in the UK this appears to be different: the away-day is actually a day of work, just slightly away from the usual offices. Ours was in the Leeds Met Old School Board. There were actually very interesting discussions about the past year in the faculty, improving the student experience, and planning forward for the coming academic year. Was a good opportunity for all the academics in the faculty to talk about what worked and what did not work. Next week will be another such away-days, this time only for the Professional Group.

Graduation Week

This week there are the Leeds Met Graduation ceremonies, held at the Headingley Campus in the Marquee. I have set up the Leeds Met Caedmon Webcam to record an image every 30 seconds during the day. Friday will be our Graduation of Innovation North, followed by a celebration of our former Dean Cath Orange.

Visitors from India

Since my return from the US, I have been busy at work, catching up with things that were waiting for me. But the main activity was that our friends Falguni, Mitali, and Kiran from Anand in Gujarat, India had arrived on 22.June here in Leeds. We had visited them last November, and now they completed the visit exchange. Brian had taken care of them for the first week, and right when I returned they were on a visit in Stratford-upon-Avon. I picked them all up from there. On the weekend of 4.July Jane had organised a conference at the Northern College Barnsley about "Global Perspectives in Adult Learning", in which I took part on two days. Then this Wednesday the group went to Malham in the Yorkshire Dales for an excursion, and on Thursday I had organised a meeting at Leeds Met with them and a few people at Leeds Met with an interest in Climate Change. On Friday evening our friends left back to India.