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 12/05/04 @ 04:11 pm

Revision picks up the pace

I've actually been managing to get some more serious revision done over the last few days. Even so, I've still got so much to do, and so little time to do it. I've just finished the third of my revision sessions, for which I managed to spend two hours describing the usual plethora of algorithms. I think I gave quite a good explanation of most (especially arithmetic encoding), although it can get very annoying when certain people pretty much non-stop criticise what I'm trying to explain... yeah, some algorithms can be quite tricksy in the name of effiency, but quit moaning about it! I know I'm ranting, but it really does grind on me when people sit around complaining, rather than getting off their arse and just getting on with it.

[pause for breath] Now that I've got that out of my system, let's see what else has happened this week. Monday was quite a busy day, in that I had three lectures, a seminar and a supervision. The supervision was on lambda calculus though, which is always good for a laugh if you apply yourself :-). Later on in the evening, we ended up pseudo-playing a game called Britain's Brainiest - primarily with the aim of testing Andrew, who (God forbid) is the captain of our college's University Challenge team. He had the trial yesterday, so we probably won't be in it for much longer...

Yesterday I went into the lab for my one lecture, only to have him walk into the lecture theater, announce that he had a sore throat, and cancel the lecture. That pissed me off a bit, given that I wasted a couple of hours, but then again these things happen. I spent the rest of the day revising, and went out to see Van Helsing in the evening - it was a great film, hilarious and incredibly energetic (the sort of film that gives you a welcome break from the reality of exam term).

Today, it's Nick's birthday, so we're going to Charlie Chan for a meal this evening. Unfortunately, I've then got lots of supervision work to do tonight - my supervisor only set the work today, and I've a supervision with her tomorrow... Anyway, I'm going to another seminar in about 5 minutes, on chemoinformatics, so I'll have to stop writing now.

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