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

Tuesday 02/08/05 @ 01:21 am

From Bernardsville to New York

Once again, I'm getting behind with the old updates. It's been a month, and time is rapidly slipping through my fingers. Only a month left in the old US of A, and then it's a hectic mad rush to get up to Scotland - looks like I need to go up a few days earlier than expected, so I'll only have a couple of days to recover after the flight back. Oh well, there's no rest for the wicked ;-).

So what have I been up to these last few weeks? On the whole, nothing too exciting; plenty of C++ hacking and network simulator-related mishaps, plenty of sweltering heat, plenty of new DVD purchases, and of course the old Harry Potter. The last two weekends have been a little more exciting, so I shall now proceed to illustrate my exploits. Be warned, ye who read on... well not really, but too many disclaimers never hurt anyone.

The weekend before last, John and I were invited over to Sandy and Elisabeth's for the weekend. You see, they have a flat in Princeton which they use during the week, but they also have a somewhat larger house out in Bernardsville - about an hour's drive away. So, we left work on Friday slightly early, and trundled across country. After stopping off for some shopping, we arrived at the Fraser's house, which is magnificent!

The house is situated in the middle of some woodland (they have about 9 acres of land), and there's a veranda round the back, with lovely views over the woods, that go down to a small stream. There's a lot of trouble in that area with deer, since they damage the foliage, eat the saplings, etc, but it does have the advantage that you often see them, right in the back garden.

If you noticed in the picture of the living room above, they have a projector and screen for watching TV etc, and we watched, over the weekend, the final phase of the Tour de France, and a film or two, on the big screen.

On the Saturday afternoon, we drove over to a nearby national park, with the rather amusing incident that the attendant thought that John and I were Sandy's children, and let us in for free ;-). It was a beautiful day, and we walked through some splendid woodland.

Apparently, this was the site of some great battle during the war of Independance, where Washington and his cronies camped out. So we took a peek at the soldiers huts on the hill.

Sunday was a quiet day, and we didn't really do a lot. In the evening, Tim (Sandy and Elisabeth's eldest son) and his wife came round for dinner, which was nice. John and I then left with Sandy, to pick up Dave from the airport, on the way back to Princeton (he'd just been back to England for a week's holiday).

So, that was one weekend, and now onto the next. This last Saturday, John and I headed into New York, to meet up with a couple of John's friends - Riddi, who's training with Goldman Sachs, and Tal, who's doing a biochemistry-related internship over on Long Island. It was a pretty fun day, though we spent rather a long time wandering back and forth between subway stations, trying to find Riddi (doesn't help that Spring Street has two ends!). We also managed to get on the train to Central Park, forget to get off, and ride right past it, up to Harlem. We suddenly realised this, and quickly jumped off the train and got on one in the other direction!

We made a very brief trip into the Natural History museum, before deciding we didn't have enough time to do it. John liked the big dinosaur though.

We then headed into Central Park, which is pretty fantastic. I certainly prefer it to the boring flatness of Hyde Park et al.

Quite luckily, we'd arrived on a day when there were lots of musical events going on. People skating to music, a jazz/swing band, a rock concert, break dancing - it was all happening, and all free (modulo well-deserved donations).

We spent a lot of time wandering around, trundling along between the overly tall buildings.

There was an amusing incident when Riddi started bargaining with a dodgy handbag salesman. Overall, plenty of shops and plenty of people.

In the evening, we walked down to Times Square, and managed to pick up some reduced-price tickets to the Ha Comedy Club. So we grabbed a quick dinner, and rushed over there, in time for the 8.30 showing. It was excellent - some of the comedians were very good. After a little more walking around, John and I headed back to Penn Station, and (after a slight mixup with the timetable) hopped on a train back home. Other than being too late for the Dinky when we got back (we shared a cab with an interesting guy who'd just started up a research lab on some new medical technologies, in Arizona), it was a great day out!

Sunday was rather uneventful, other than finishing reading Harry Potter, and so here I am, on another monday evening. It's starting to get a bit late, so I think we're going to head out for dinner fairly soon. Oh, the exciting things I do!