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 27/04/05 @ 08:37 pm

Summer's in the air

I finally got my dissertation finished (or at least the first draft of it), and on surveying the damage I'm about 2000 words over the 12000 limit, so I'm going to have to cut things down a bit. Hopefully there's enough waffle in there that I can cut out, to bring the wordcount down. Last night, I ended up working until around 5am, which is unusual even for me - I was just getting SemCom working with small-step semantics (which I'd already implemented, just not properly tested), when I found a problem with the multiple matching analysis - it was failing to amalgamate some rules (and therefore not backtracking properly) because I was being too specific (which was ok for big-step rules) - basically, I had things like Assign(e1,e2) and Assign(Id(x),e2) coming up as separate clauses, and so an assignment with an identifier as its lvalue was not attempting the second case at all. In the end, I fixed it by amalgamating at the top-level expression, and doing individual pattern matching for each sub-case, as this allows backtracking to work properly. All is working well now though... phew!

Anyway, on Monday, I had the evening off, and went bowling with Matt, Nick, Christoph and Kristi (two of Nick's friends from France). I did manage to locate Matt, and we stopped off at the Geography department along the way, so he could print off his dissertation. We tried to get to the bowling alley by the back way, and almost stumbled into what looked like a high-security detention facility, but found the way in eventually. We were told at first that we were too late for the 'unlimited play' option, and would have to pay �4.95 per person per game! Bloody ridiculous! Luckily, it turned out that they had a 'monday madness' deal, which was three games per person for the same price. I played pretty poorly as usual, though I did manage a few strikes. Nick just likes to show off :-P

After bowling, we went to Bella Italia by the Granta for dinner - it's a lovely place. It's in an old mill, and they have the tables built so you can look down into the water flowing beneath you. Good food, good wine, good company - what more could you want? We attempted to go to riverbar afterwards, only to find that (predictably) it was shut. Though this time I did actually read the opening times, and its apparently closed every monday for private functions. That explains a lot...

So, other than dissertation-writing, yesterday and today have been very quiet. I went into town this afternoon for food-shopping at sainsburys, and you can definitely tell that summer's on its way. The trees have leaves on them again, people are out punting, and the colours are so vibrant. For example, here's the view from my balcony:

And no, before you ask, Matt isn't usually standing there ;-). Anyway, lectures start again tomorrow, so it's going to be all go from now on. Roll on the end of the exams!

Oh, and before I forget, Alex has set up a LiveJournal, so all must go and wallow in her worldly words of wisdom.

Sunday 24/04/05 @ 08:19 pm

Word limits...

I've been making good progress with this here dissertation today, and though I've still got more to write, it looks like I'm going to be on track for a draft tomorrow. Unfortunately, the 'hard' word limit of 12,000 is rapidly approaching - I'm at the 10,000 mark already, and there's still more I need to say. Oh well; looks like there's going to be some serious editing later... perhaps my experience at playing an axe-wielding maniac will come in handy for once, though Tultrig was rather better at cutting horses than dissertations.

Other than that, today has been largely uneventful, modulo the slightly burnt pizza, which I blame entirely on Johnny Cash. And on a more uplifting note, I shall leave you with something that's moving, there in the back room...

Oh, and wish good luck to my brother Chris, who'll be hearing back from his job interview tomorrow.

Saturday 23/04/05 @ 10:15 pm

Back down south...

So, today I arrived back in Cambridge; the journey down wasn't so bad, it took three and a half hours, and we stopped for a bacon butty from a roadside hut along the A1. After much heavy lifting, and then lunch, my parents left me to the usual unpacking routine. And I believe I made record time today - I started at half one, and was finished by five! My room now looks its usual self, though the tidiness will gradually diminish over the course of the term, as it usually does.

This evening, I've just been out for a meal with Matt at B-Bar, a nice little establishment that we've been frequenting since last term. Nick was supposed to be joining us, with some friends, but he didn't show up, so we started walking back to college, only to get a phone call... So we headed back again, much to the confusion of the bouncers, and had coffee. It's been nice to see them again, but I've had to leave a bit early to get on with some work. I'm pretty exhausted though, so I don't imagine I'll be up too late tonight. In any case, it'll be an early start and work-filled day tomorrow. Woohoo!

Friday 22/04/05 @ 11:41 pm

Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's a dragon...

In the spirit of Carl and Saira I felt obligated to do this, short as it was ;-). Somehow it reminds me of Captain Planet, you know the whole "earth, fire, wind, water, heart" thing? In any case, dragons are cool, like my sword-wielding dragon from Enigma in York!

You are an earth Dragon! You have a knack for
Nature or animals, and are peaceful, careful,
charming, and optimistic. You can throw a
tantrum now or then, but who doesnt? You value
simple things in life, such as friends,
familly, and Nature.

What elemental dragon are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Friday 22/04/05 @ 02:31 pm

Taural is alive! (but where's Dean?)

Just found out that Carl has been updating his LiveJournal, so may you all bask in his wisdom. Nice to see the name Taural still in use, after the little one-off I ran last Easter :-). Alex has also been nagging me for a rant-space on this site, which I will create for her as soon as I have time to rejig things, and make a nice easy-to-use interface for her. So what out for Agony Alex, coming soon to your screens!

That all said and done, I shall return to frantic dissertation-writing. I'll have to start packing later on today, as I'm heading back down to Cambridge tomorrow for the final term as an undergrad! I feel sad about that, but I'm sure whereever I end up next year will be great, and I won't be too far away to travel down and impose myself on Andrew et al (though maybe I'm safer staying away, if the cocktail-making gets going again ;-)...

Monday 18/04/05 @ 01:24 am

Semantics of lazy updates...

Ok, so I'm probably not going to explain my laziness when it comes to updating this blog. Yes, I'm very busy at the moment, but that shouldn't really be an excuse. The question is, what's been going on in my life since Christmas, that has left me so out of it? Where do I begin? Here goes....

Aside from all the usual study crap, I've been sorting out both an internship for this coming summer, and a PhD place for the next 3-4 years. In other words, the usual sorting my life out kind of thing. This summer, I'm heading over to Fraser Research in Princeton, to do some research on formalising flow control algorithms for large scale access networks. It should be absolutely fantastic, and I can't wait! Of course, I have to get through my exams first, and I have a worryingly large amount of revision and project work left to do. With regard to the latter, the dissertation is about half way there, but there's still some 'extensional' coding I'd like to do, depending on time. Hopefully I'll be in a much better state by the end of the week when I go back to Cambridge; just need to keep cracking on with it.

As for my PhD, I've applied to Edinburgh, Birmingham and Cambridge, on the topic of statistical abstraction of real programs - I've put my research proposal on my academic page. I visited Birmingham toward the end of March, and was up in Edinburgh last week - I must say that Edinburgh is a fantastic city; reminds me of a larger version of York. It's managed to retain the charm and history of a country town, whilst developing into a thriving city. I particularly like the castle, and also Arthur's seat, which is a big rocky crag that dominates the city skyline. I won't say much more about my applications, since things are still in progress - basically it's a case of dependency on funding, so I'll just have to wait and see.

Legacy of the Easter bunny

Other than visiting Edinburgh, I've done one or two things this Easter break, though nothing particularly exciting. Alex has been on holiday in Italy - that pope-ular place - and brought me back a nice leaning Pisa mug. It looks somewhat precarious when full of coffee. Speaking of coffee, I've taken to making large cafetieres of the stuff. I know it's not good for me, but I do like my German blend... these days I feel less inclined to drink Java, given that I'm coding in OCaml. Pity that coffee beans don't grow in the desert.

In other news, I now have a shiny new laptop, a Thinkpad R51, on which I am running Ubuntu linux (Hoary). In thinking of a name, I simply had to go for Chade (as you can guess, I've been reading too much Robin Hobb recently ;-). I've been incredibly impressed with both the laptop and the distro - excellent compatibility, and I haven't had any real problems as yet. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the graphics card on Sonata (my main PC), which has now completely died - it's a Gainward (I won't be going with them again), and crashed about a month ago with VGA output dropout and a corrupt VGA BIOS screen on reboot. It did work again after a complete power cycle, but it's now gone completely. I'm not impressed, considering when I first got the card, it died after just two weeks, and it took a month to get a replacement from them. I've now got a new PNY GeForce6 card, which seems fine so far.

Yesterday, I went through to Hornsea with Carl and Alex, with the particular aim of going to the elusive chocolate shop, acclaimed by Alex. After their generous portion of chocolate bread-and-butter pudding (Carl had some other chocolatey delight I believe), we were all completely stuffed. We ended up going rowing on Hornsea mere, which was good fun, except for us getting grounded on several occasions, and my rather embarassing maneuvering to start. Alex was a great help in sitting there and shouting at us. Unfortunately, she was too far from my oar for me to significantly splash her; Carl and I, on the other hand, were rather wet by the end!

Afterwards, Carl had to head back to York, but Alex and I had a traditional film night, complete with Chinese takeaway, and watched Castle in the Sky, The Princess Bride, Grease 2, and a couple of epsodes of Narnia. My DVD collection continues to ever increase, though I'll have to go a bit easier on it next term, until I start working and get paid!

Hey now little mouse, show me what to do!

As for the rest of last term, there were a few bits and pieces that happened, namely:

• The roleplaying campaign I've been in since October has finished - entitled 'The Numbers of Ja'arj', I played a Dwarf called Tultrig; the servant to a family of snivelling brats, on a quest to save the world from being plunged into chaos, but mostly adding to the problem. I found out at the end that my two destinies (picked at random at the start of the campaign) were 'lucky' and 'forever alone' - the latter I thought was rather sad, but did explain the hostility of everyone towards the poor old Dwarf. It wasn't as bad as one of the other characters, whose destiny was 'pointless death' - he plunged to his death down the side of a cliff whilst the rest of us were fighting the final battle with the evil wizard Dark Roy (actually spelt in a more occult way, but I still profess his relation to Killroy ;-)
• Sarah came to visit around the middle of the term; although it was only a short stopover, we managed to have the obligatory lunch at Charlie Chan's (though Matt and Sarah managed to turn up about 20 minutes late ;-), and we had a nice walk back to college, and a look at Paris photos and stuff (which I still intend to put online, when I have time).
• I've had plenty of meals out and stuff, which has not been having a great effect on my waistline - oh well, I'll have to start going to the gym over the summer. I managed to meet up with David quite a few times, and warped his mind even further than it already is by introducing him to such delights as Papa Lazarou (League of Gentlemen), The 10th Kingdom, Foamy the squirrel, and Look Around You (there was a new series of this recently, but nowhere near as good as the first). We managed to meet up with the elusive Katharine at the start of term, and then briefly (i.e. for an hour) at the end! Intending to be organised in arranging these things doesn't always work...
• As mentioned before, the SemCom project has been going nicely - at least up until the review meeting I got right on target with things, and was ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, the rest of term got really busy with supervision work, and so my head start was lost. In any case, I'm pretty impressed with what I've done so far, and it's certainly beyond what I initially set out to do (though it would be nice to get the .NET stuff all working). I'll put up the documents as soon as the dissertation and stuff is finished. I also recently got it to generate code for F#, the Microsoft Research version of OCaml for .NET. I'm pretty impressed with it as a whole, though I seem to have found a bug in fsyacc, and it's rather annoying that 'assert false' is not polymorphic, as it is in OCaml.
• I've managed to get a suprising amount of reading done recently - last term I gobbled through Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy (which is excellent), after reading the Illuminatus Trilogy (weird but pretty good) and David Farland's Brotherhood of the Wolf over Christmas. This holiday, I've read Brideshead Revisited (which Andrew was nagging me to read for ages, and rightly so), and am now working through some more David Farland. Of course, the next Harry Potter will be out this summer, and I'm eagerly awaiting A Feast For Crows (George R R Martin's next book). I also bought the Game of Thrones board game recently, but I need somebody to play it with :-(
• Over Christmas, and this holiday, I've been through to York a few times with Alex, to see Carl. We've done most of the things there are to do there, although we still have the brewery on our list. At the beginning of the month, we went through, and Alex and I had lunch at Little Betty's Cafe, while Carl was doing his Sunday football stuff. I was quite pleased, since they served Blue Mountain coffee (yummy!), so that was nice. We visited the Yorkshire Museum, and of course ended up in shops like Travelling Man and Enigma (the place I bought my dragon from). In January, we managed to get to the Castle Museum, which is fantastic - they have a mock-up of a Victorian street, complete with cobbles and shops and the whole set-up. I still enjoy walking round the Shambles though; I love quirky little old streets and stuff like that :-)

So long and thanks for all the fish

Well, that was a nice long update; once again, I intend to keep up to date more often. And perhaps I will, given that I tend to get bored during revision time. We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose :-)