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 21/12/05 @ 11:15 pm

Edinburgh Visit

On Sunday afternoon, after I'd cleaned the flat, been food shopping, met the landlord and baked mince pies, Alex and Carl arrived in bonny Scotland. I rushed over to the train station to meet them, finding that for once the train was on time, and so I didn't have to wait for long. As we left the station, Carl and I had our work cut out to steer Alex away from the temptations of Princes Street Gardens, including the colourful ferris wheel and other Christmas attractions.

Heading back to the flat, the two Bridlingtonians were in for a culinary treat, as I laid on a lavish banquet! German Alex joined us, to add confusion to the naming situation, and we cracked open a bottle of his German wine, and feasted on garlic bread and spaghetti bolognaise (literally lashings of it, as I overestimated quantities).

To finish things off, we enjoyed my freshly baked mince pies for dessert, although Alex was literally full-to-bursting by then, and failed not to remind us with her cries of "I'm so full". As it was getting late by this point, we retired to bed, watching the first two episodes of Fruits Basket before going to sleep.

The next morning, by the time we were ready to leave, it was a little later than we'd planned. In any case, on the way into town we made a short detour to see the statue of Greyfriars Bobby by Candlemaker Row.

Returning to South Bridge, we popped into Forbidden Planet, before heading on up to the Royal Mile. Taking our time, we wandered up the High Street, and booked a tour of Mary King's Close, before arriving at the castle.

Since Carl and Alex had already seen the castle, we didn't go in, but instead turned right to head down Castle Bank towards The Mound and Princes Street.

We wandered along Princes Street a little way, then explored Rose Street before stopping in at BHS for a quick bite to eat for lunch. Afterwards, as was inevitable, Alex dragged us to the Princes Street Gardens, where we hitched a ride on the ferris wheel.

Having placated Alex, we went over to the German Christmas market to have a look round, before heading back up to the Royal Mile.

Since there was still some time to spare before Mary King's Close, we looked around a tourist information centre for a bit, before going to the tour centre. Since I'd been on the tour before when my parents visited, it was all a bit repetitive, though it was still an excellent tour and I highly recommend the place. Our tour guide was a little more eccentric than the one we had last time, but it was still very interesting. By the time the tour had finished it was getting dark outside, and so we quickly headed over to the Museum of Childhood before it closed.

Having been on our feet all day, the next port of call was a sit down and a drink - namely in the Brass Monkey! This is an excellent pub, close to the Festival Theatre, with a room at the back where you can lay down and put your feet up, whilst supping on a pint of ale!

It was only shortly after 6 when we left, so we ended up going to the restaurant that we'd booked for dinner a little earlier than planned - at Pancho Villas, a very nice Mexican restaurant on Canongate.

Once again we completely stuffed ourselves, having a starter, main and dessert, but the food was excellent, so we didn't really care. Before long it had gotten rather late, so we had to pay the bill quickly and rush off, so as to get to the ghost walk on time! I'd booked us on the same walk I'd been on with my parents at Halloween, namely the Ghosthunter Trail of Mercat Tours. Although it was a rush to drag Alex all the way up the High Street, we made it on time and the tour was excellent. It takes you deep into the vaults beneath South Bridge, and is full of spooky tales aplenty. Since the ghost walk didn't finish until 11pm, we went straight back home afterwards to get some sleep.

Tuesday began with our usual semi-late departure, and we decided to head over to Ocean Terminal to see Britannia. Getting a day pass, we caught the bus into town, and then changed at Princes Street to get to Ocean Terminal. On the way, we bumped into Christophe, who was on his way to the airport, going home for Christmas. Once we arrived, we had a wander round a few of the shops, then stopped at the most confusing cafe ever for lunch - the length of time it took me to find out how to get a panini toasted! After lunch, we climbed aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia!

It's an excellent tour, complete with audio guide, and you can roam just about everywhere on the ship, as you can see.

Alex particularly enjoyed the body press, as a way to recover from indulgent eating!

After we'd finished the tour it was time to get the bus back into town. Since it was still early, we wandered up to the Whisky Heritage Centre, to take a tour and sample some real Scottish whisky! It was pretty fun, and we got a free glass out of it. Afterwards we walked over to Grassmarket, which was very prettily lit up, and found a little Italian cafe to have a coffee (or in Alex's case a hot chocolate) before moving on to the restaurant - Howies on Victoria Road. The meal was excellent and complete with crackers!

We had already booked tickets for the cinema, so to kill some time we walked back up to the castle, and then down onto Princes Street, on our way to the Omni Centre on Leith Street.

When we arrived, and collected our tickets, we went over to the screens only to be ushered through to the VIP 'gold class' section, since we'd paid the extra to watch in style. Before the film began, we relaxed in the bar with a few drinks.

The film, Chronicles of Narnia, was excellent, despite what I've heard from other people. The screen itself was equally good, with leather seats, no screaming children, and ultimate comfort. There was even a little button to press, to call someone from the bar to get more drinks! It all finished quite late, and so we went back home and straight to bed.

Wednesday was rather a less eventful day, beginning with a late awakening, and then me having to pack my suitcase for the trip home for Christmas. Lunch consisted of using up my remaining eggs and bread, etc, to have scrambled egg on toast. We did, however, have enough time to head into town for a bit of last-minute shopping. While Alex was distracted by H&M, Carl and I went round nearly every shoe shop on Princes Street (and believe me there are a lot of them), looking for some slippers for Alex. In the end we found some. Soon, however, it was time to head back to the flat, only stopping briefly to pick up some black pudding, where we ordered a taxi and were on our way to the station, to catch the train home for Christmas!

Sunday 18/12/05 @ 11:58 am

When snow melts, what does it become?

And so, a week tomorrow, it is Christmas Day! At last I have all my shopping finished, and I now await the arrival of Alex and Carl this evening (of course, before then I have to clean the flat and bake some mince pies ;-). Once again, the last three weeks have sort of rushed by in a blur, and so I'm left to make another belated summary.

The last week of November was the last week of teaching, which was something of a relief, to say the least. Since I was covering for a couple of people, it was busier than usual, but I got through it in the end. On Friday 2nd December, I gave a talk about my research at PEPA club, which seemed to go ok, despite the frantic last-minute preparations. In other words, on thursday night, after I got in from my last 4-hour demonstrating stint, I set to work both baking a cake (which I'd volunteered to do, since it doesn't seem fair for Jane to do all of the baking) and preparing slides. The cake was a lemon drizzle, which despite its humble appearance actually turned out very good, and indeed went down very well. Suffice it to say that the remaining cake that I brought back to the office soon disappeared ;-).

That evening was the Informatics Christmas party, complete with Ceilidh, which is traditional Scottish dancing (a bit similar to line dancing, but with kilts and bagpipes). I managed to avoid joining in, though Hua had a good time and was worn out by the end ;-). It was a pretty good event, if only for the company and the free food/drink, but I still left before everything was over, to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

On Saturday, Sandy and Elisabeth arrived in Edinburgh, so I went to meet them at the train station and guide them to their hotel. It was good to catch up with them, and we had a bit of a chat, before I left Sandy to prepare his slides, and showed Elisabeth how to get to Blackwells. Since they were meeting various relatives and friends over the weekend, I didn't see them for the rest of the weekend.

On Monday morning, I went to pick them up from the hotel, and we took a taxi down to the JCMB. After getting them settled into the visitors office, it was soon time for Sandy's visitation schedule to begin. For lunch we went over to the Swann building, and were joined by Phil Wadler and Jane. Later in the afternoon, after a few more visits, Sandy gave the LFCS seminar, which went down very well. Hopefully, he's got some more people thinking about naming semantics from a programming language perspective, so I'm hopeful that there will be some useful alliances out of this. Sandy felt like the visit had been productive, and he was keen to keep in touch with a few people in particular.

In the evening, we had dinner at Howies on Waterloo Place, which was very nice. Unfortunately Jane couldn't come, as she was exhausted (plus she had to travel down to London for the Roger Needham award ceremony the next day). Sandy, Elisabeth and myself were joined by Ian Stark and Paul Jackson though, and it was a great meal. On tuesday, Sandy and Elisabeth took the train back to Cambridge. Hopefully I'll be seeing them again sometime soon!

The rest of the week was fairly quiet, except for me coming down with a cold. I didn't get as much work done as I wanted, and in fact I've felt the last two weeks like I've been slowing down somewhat. I must really be in need of a break! I managed to get some more Christmas shopping done at the weekend, though annoyingly I left one of my shopping bags somewhere, never to be seen again. Oh well, these things happen I suppose.

Last week was similarly fairly uneventful, although we had the LFCS/ICSA/IPAB Christmas party on thursday afternoon. Somebody (Bill?) had decided to play some Chipmunks-style music, and the range of food was a bit eclectic, but it was pretty good overall. We spent most of the time playing cards (with the set we got from a Christmas cracker at the Ceilidh), which I haven't done in a while. I wonder if Jorge ever found out the name of that bread...

Anyway, I had better be getting on with preparations for this evening. Anyone would think I'm turning into a housewife or something!