Welcome to lanther.co.uk

Welcome to my website. Please feel free to browse at your will, using the menu on your left. The main page below is home to my (long neglected) weblog for those of you that are bored enough to take an interest in what's going on in my life :-). I'm currently a Principal Scientist at Adobe, working on the architecture for asset management and collaboration in Creative Cloud. Prior to this, I was the lead developer for Creative Cloud Libraries - a revolutionary new way of sharing creative content between different applications, devices, and people. I previously helped to develop Adobe Scout, which was a visual profiler for Flash and AIR applications. Prior to this, I was a researcher in the Language Based Technology group at the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen. I was part of the MT-LAB project, which is a collaboration between DTU, Aalborg University, and ITU, investigating formal verification techniques for advanced software systems. My particular research was concerned with probabilistic and stochastic analysis of distributed systems. I did my PhD in the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh, supervised by Professor Jane Hillston. Previously, I studied at Robinson College, Cambridge. I originate from Bridlington, a little sea-side town on the Yorkshire coast. In the summer of 2005, I was a Senior Technical Associate at Fraser Research, in Princeton, New Jersey. Non-academically, I've been studying Japanese since January 2006, and I have been playing the fascinating game of Go since September 2006. I was previously the president of the Edinburgh University Go Club, and was a member of the Japan-UK 150 sub-committee for Scotland. My current grade is around 3kyu. Other than that, there's not much else to say. Feel free to enjoy the site! 楽しんでください！ Michael Smith

Friday 03/11/06 @ 12:46 am

Ben More or less to the top and back

Not having had enough excitement at Firbush, I set off early last Sunday morning with Jaro and Petra on the 3 hour bus journey from Edinburgh to Crianlarich. They had originally intended to join the Edinburgh hill-walking club, but after one wig too many, decided against it. And so the three of us took the bus. Perhaps Matija would have come too, if he wasn't so busy fixing his sewing machine, categorically contemplating, and engaging in other endlessly delightful persuits.

Although muggins here needed some help finding the bus station (which to be honest is not too obviously located), we managed to catch the bus on time, and the journey to Glasgow was uneventful, if a little sleepy. Despite the clock change, it was still an 8.30 bus on a Sunday morning. Oh, what crazy folk we are! We had just enough time for a quick cup of coffee and a slightly dubious cooked breakfast, before hopping on the next bus northwards. And boy were we in for a treat - we shared our transportation vessel with none other than the great sage of the Scottish bus network! During the journey, he generously gave valuable insight after valuable insight into this most complex of transport networks. We learnt of the wonders of the Campbeltown bus and the optimum time to arrive before departure (an hour and a half to be nearly almost completely certain of getting a seat) amongst other things. Oh, and if you're ever in Tarbet, there's a classy wine bar (which isn't too expensive if you only drink beer), which gives the best view ever of the local buses. Now ain't that bliss!

Sad as we were to leave the sage's company, we quickly exited the bus at Crianlarich. Since the weather was so nice, we decided to go for another munroe. Namely Ben More, standing at 1174m, and visible even from the village.

Unfortunately, we first had to walk about 3km along the road before we could begin our ascent. This soon passed though, and we arrived at the small farmhouse where our climb would begin. This first stretch of path climbed gently enough to set a decent pace, and was complete with plenty of bewildered-looking cows for our amusement/dinner.

From the information Jaro had, we needed to depart this path when it started to descend again, and begin a slightly uncertain climb, which would eventually meet with another path to take us to the summit. Needless to say, we consulted the map and then promptly ignored it, deciding that "up" was generally a good direction to take.

Of course, the sheep were quite happy to give us encouragement (from a safe distance).

By this point the views were quite stunning, although a little mist had begun to assemble near the summit. Luckily this didn't last too long, and more importantly didn't come down to ensnare us.

It soon became clear that this "path" we were supposed to join either didn't exist, or didn't want to exist. In other words, we found ourselves clambering up the mountain side itself. We stopped for lunch about two thirds of the way up, before continuing with our upward struggle.

Luckily, by a combination of sheer will and not looking down, we managed to join up with something of a path - although by this point we were already (to all intents and purposes) at the top. It seems the path had gone somewhere round the back of the mountain, and we'd just taken the shortest path approach. Oh well. When we arrived at the summit, the views were fantastic. And of course I enjoyed a nice cup of coffee, to refresh me for the upcoming descent.

Since we were becoming aware of the shortage of hours of daylight, it was soon time to descend. This time, we chose to take the path, although this turned out to be more of a muddy, wet, bog of a thing, and so we made our way slowly and carefully.

Before long, however, we were back on the original path from the farm, and our descent entered its final stages. Although it was only 5pm when we reached the farm, it was already getting dark, and so we pressed on along the road (in something of a zombie state by this point), until we returned to the village. Naturally, we headed for the nearest pub (not that there was much choice), and set in for the long wait until the bus came, at 8.30pm. The food was very good, and we welcomed our nice rest (more precisely, we didn't want to get up again), until we had to venture out into the rain.

The bus did come, thankfully, and in fact to our amazement, the bus sage was on it yet again. In any case, the bus was full, and cramped, and stuffy, and we arrived in Glasgow not a moment too soon. In fact, we were slightly early, but luck was not with us, for the earlier bus to Edinburgh (that we might have sneaked onto) was already full. In the end, we arrived back shortly before midnight.

All in all, an excellent day's walking. Hopefully we'll do more like it in the near future, though next time renting a car might be better (not much difference in price, and much much more flexible). So, three munroes down, and only 281 to go. Woohoo!