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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

Thursday 22/04/04 @ 06:13 pm

First day of lectures

I had my first lecture of the term today, which has the rather interesting title (for a CompSci course) of Economics and Law. It seems like it's going to be quite interesting - definitely something that I should know more about! There is a slight problem that my DoS can't find anybody to supervise it, but then again there is only one question on it out of all the papers, which I doubt I would choose to answer anyway...

The last few days have been fairly quiet to be honest, although I'm sure that's going to be changing soon. I've had a tutor meeting (the result of which, along with an email to the domestic bursar, is that there shouldn't be a problem having college accommodation over the summer), and a DoS meeting. I've also finished writing my Data Structures and Algorithms revision notes, so I can now start looking at the next course on my list.

I've started to think about arranging revision sessions, like I did last year. The interest looks pretty good, so I think I'm going to start early next week. I'll have to sort out the room bookings and finalise times etc. pretty soon. I'm using compsci.lanther.co.uk as a general information/resource page for this.

In other wildly exciting news, I spent this afternoon (with Nick and Andrew) spring-cleaning the kitchen. It really was getting into rather a nasty state, but it's looking much better now - I practically managed to get through a whole bottle of cleaning fluid (OK, that's a slight over-exaggeration, but we used a lot)!

It looks like this weekend is going to be pretty busy, as Carl is coming down for a couple of days. Of course, this means that I'm going to have an extra player in D&D on sunday, so if all the regular players and Donny turn up, I'll have 8 players - aaargh! I'm sure I'll cope somehow, although it does mean I'll have to get this week's prep done early (i.e. tonight/tomorrow). Anyway, with any luck the weather will hold out tomorrow, so we'll be able to have a barbeque... I shouldn't have said that; I can feel the storm clouds coming even as I speak!

Right, well I'd better be getting on with some more stuff now (which includes eating at some point). I'm going to see Shaun of the Dead with Matt later on tonight, assuming nothing else comes up. Come to think of it, Kill Bill Volume 2 is out tomorrow, so I shall have to see that sometime soon!

Well back to the grind then...

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