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

Monday 04/07/05 @ 10:01 pm

Graduation

This weekend has been one of the most hectic, ever! On Friday, after the morning meeting, and celebratory icecream at lunch time, Elisabeth gave me a lift to Princeton Junction station. I then got the train to Newark Airport, arriving in plenty of time to catch my 6.30pm flight to Heathrow. Other than having some kid sitting behind me and kicking my chair throughout the entire flight, it was reasonably uneventful, and I arrived into Heathrow at 6am the next morning. London was absolutely dead, and I got the Heathrow Express to Paddington, the circle line to Kings Cross, and the train to Cambridge, with no difficulty.

So, I arrived at college at about 9am, and found that my room for the night had indeed been correctly arranged with the Domestic Bursar, which was good. I went and rudely awakened Ruth and then Matt, then had a much needed shower and freshen up. My parents and Ali, having arrived in Cambridge the previous night, came over to meet me at college, as did Chris, who got the train down from Harrogate.

We began with a buffet lunch, where my Mum drank copious glasses of sparkling wine, and I was able to find various people, including Alan! I then had to rush around to collect graduation tickets, and fluffy costumes and the like.

After getting changed, we assembled in front court for the graduation photo, then had a short rehersal with the praelector, before processing into town. Despite being very hot and uncomfortable, this was really quite fun - we provided quite the spectacle for the tourists, and completely stopped the traffic on Queens Road, while we crossed. Once we arrived at Senate House, we had to go up in order and kneel down in a praying position, whilst the praelector recommended us for degree (in latin), and the warden (in his heavy red Santa suit) did his hand-clasping thing, and sent us off. So, I now officially have my degree :-)

After the ceremony, we headed back to college, where I got changed, and then headed for afternoon tea. We then drove over to the guesthouse my parents were staying at, and I opened my cards and presents, on probably the most hectic birthday I've ever had. Having been unable to book a restaurant for dinner, my parents insisted on walking down the river side/Magdalene bridge area, i.e. the busiest area of Cambridge, particularly on a Saturday night. Naturally all the street cafe type places were full, and Teri Aki wasn't good enough for them, so eventually I just gave in and directed them to the Curry King (honestly, it's like trying to direct a pack of squabbling brats at times!). Not much of a birthday meal, but at least you can't really go wrong with a curry. In any case, I was pretty tired by that point, so I headed back to college with Chris for an early night.

The next day, we got up reasonably early to go punting. This was good fun, and my Dad did an excellent job of it. Ali even had a go!

At one point, the pole got stuck in some mud, and my Dad lost it. Happens to the best of us, but this didn't put my Dad off. He got out the paddle, and expertly manouvered back over to it, retrieving the pole and resuming punting.

For lunch, we drove over to Grantchester, to the Rupert Brooke. At least I managed to reserve us a table the night before, so there was no messing about this time. An excellent Sunday roast as usual, the meal was very good, and we finished just in time to head back to college and pick my bike up, before my parents dropped me off at the station. All in all, an excellent trip back to Cambridge, and well worth it, despite the bickering ;-)

It was a good thing that I got a reasonably early train back to London, as it was half an hour late arriving, due to works on the track. The rest of the journey to the airport was uneventful though, and Heathrow was quick, as usual (it's amazing how efficient their security check is, compared to at US airports). The flight was on time, and I was sat next to a pleasant couple who were on their way back from a holiday to Ireland/Scotland. They did, however, manage to consume most of the flight's stock of whiskey, and knocked over my glass of (red) wine at one point. Luckily, I was wearing black jeans, so no problem. Other than the train to Princeton Junction being half an hour late, the rest of the journey back was fine, and I arrived home at about midnight.

So, today is Independence Day, and I'm back in Princeton, just sitting outside in the shade of our garden, enjoying the sunshine. It's back at work tomorrow, and we need to be up early to get our Social Security numbers. John flies out to Paris tomorrow evening for his interviews at ENS. As for me, it's another two months of good weather, good company, and fun research. Isn't life hard ;-)

Friday 01/07/05 @ 04:56 am

What is freedom? We just don't know

So, another week has passed since my last update. I fly back to England tomorrow, for both my graduation and 21st birthday on Saturday, so that should be great fun! Hopefully the flight will be on time, and I'll be able to make my way through the Bob Geldoff crowd...

Last Friday, in the evening, John and I went with Sandy to the Lehigh Valley Velodrome in Pennsylvania. It was a perfect evening for it, and the racing was great. I particularly liked the Madison races, where a pair of cyclists form a team, whereby they sling-shot one another whenever they swap over (it's the most efficient way to transfer momentum). Other than that, the weekend went by uneventfully, as has most of this week at work. I've moved my attention over to access networks (although I still have one foot in naming semantics), which is starting to get quite interesting, now that I have some intuition of the problem space.

Last night, John and I made another visit to the supermarket, at the local shopping mall. We were rather impressed, when we found some shelves full of products from none-other than Great Britain... it was in the 'ethnic section' :-). In any case, we were able to treat ourselves to a spotted dick pudding, and apparently, Elisabeth can get us some custard, so the world is looking good!

When we got back from the supermarket, it started raining in earnest. This was of no concern to John, however, who decided that since he was going to have a shower, he might as well take advantage of the forces of nature.

We have yet to receive complaints from the neighbours, but I don't know how long that will last.

Now, as I'm sure you all know, this monday is Independence Day in the old US of A, and in the run up to the celebrations, there is a lot of patriotic feeling. Not wanting to be left out, John and I did our part, by filling in the 'patriotism pack' kindly deposited at our door.

This evening, in fact, was the Princeton firework display; an early celebration of this war that we, ummm... lost. Not that that means we can't enjoy the fireworks. The evening began in the office, with my hard working colleagues pictured below. As you can see, Chee Wei is working hard as ever, whilst John is demonstrating the effects of too much NFS hacking.

Once we left the office, with the intent of meeting Sandy and Elisabeth at the picnic site, John, Dave, Chee Wei and I set out in the direction of the Engineering library. It's a pretty impressive building, and we managed to get our printing password to work, so all was well and good.

The firework/picnic site was by a good old American baseball pitch (home of the Princeton Tigers, so I am told).

We had a nice picnic, whilst waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Of course, before they began, we had to all stand up for the American anthem, as is the ritual here, and we greatly enjoyed this local custom as you can see.

The display itself was pretty impressive, and went rather mad towards the end, with a profusion of smoke that even started to obscure the fireworks themselves!

By the end of it all, we had all had our fill of bright lights and loud noises, though Dave was a little shell-shocked that it was all over.

So, all in all, an excellent evening. I now need to pack, check train times, and make sure I'm all prepared to catch my flight tomorrow. Wish me luck!