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

Wednesday 08/06/05 @ 06:50 pm

Is this an exam I see before me?

Just a quick update; the last few weeks have been hectic revision and stressing about the exams and such. I've just finished two of them, and have the final one tomorrow, so I'm feeling less stressed already, and looking forward to the end-of-exam-and-degree celebrations. This time tomorrow, I hopefully won't be sober, and this time next week, I'll be in America!!

I'm not one for lengthy post-mortems, but the two exams I've done have gone fine. Sure, I've made a few silly mistakes, but there haven't been any disaster questions (i.e. half marks or less), and there have been a few that I ought to get close to full marks on. Basically, I estimate about 73% to 86% for the first paper, and 72% to 88% on the second. They seem to be pretty fair bounds, so I'm willing to bet my 95% confidence interval there. So long as tomorrow's paper goes well, I shouldn't have too much problem getting a decent first (though how well will be down the generosity of the examiners... or possibly the wad of �20 notes cunningly attached to my script ;-p).

So, in 24 hours I will be as free as a substituted variable that avoided capture. Don't ask me whether that's free as in 'free speech' or as in 'free beer'... though given that I can speak even more freely after drinking the free beer, I'd opt for both. Yay for positive feedback!

Well, given that this is the first update in a while, I ought to give you something to think about. Take a look at this image:

Look carefully in the top left-hand corner now (you'll have to click on it to enlarge it)... see what I mean ;-). I noticed this while watching the Chronicles of Narnia - don't you just love the BBC ;-). And for those of you who think I'm loony...

You're probably right.

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