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

Friday 02/09/05 @ 01:15 am

Sun, Sand and Liberty

So here I am, at the end of one of the best summers I've yet to live through. As it stands, we fly back to England tomorrow (technically today ;-) evening, which means we have to pack up, clean the apartment, and get to the airport in time for the 6:20pm flight, which arrives in Heathrow at approximately 6:20am the next morning. The only thing that worries me is the potential weight of my baggage - I'm hopeful that it'll be under the limit, but even so it's going to be a nightmare to carry around on the tube. At least I only need to get the train up to York (where my parents are picking me up), so it should be manageable... I hope ;-)

Once again, it's been a while since the last update, and another month has passed without so much as a comment on my beloved blog. In my defence, it has been an incredibly hectic month; we had the trustees meeting on monday, at which we presented the achievements of the summer (which has been very successful, overall). Over the last month, the pace of work was steadily on the increase, due to this looming deadline. Well, it's over now, and the trustees were very impressed, so this last week has been a little more relaxed. Having said that, I've only just finished writing the documentation of my work - which turned out to be a 20-page report (as a side-note, thumbs-up to InkScape!). Hopefully, at some point in the future, it will be published, but there's a good deal more work to be done before that (verification, anyone?).

Anyway, despite our busy schedule, the last month hasn't been entirely work, work, work. On Thursday 4th August, we had our company outing to the beach - more precisely, a little town called Point Pleasant, on the New Jersey coast. In the spirit of Fraser Research outings, we drove there in the company car - not in the sense of it being owned by the company (it's Elisabeth's), but in the sense of it containing the entire company (all six of us!).

Setting off mid-afternoon, we arrived at the beach in time to enjoy the perfect afternoon weather - hot, but not too humid, leaving the sea at just the right temperature for swimming.

On arrival, we laid out the rugs/towels, and with plenty of chilled water (if Goedel had met Elisabeth, he would have renounced his incompleteness theorem ;-), and settled back to enjoy the sun, the sand, and the weather.

Of course, tempting as it was, the water couldn't keep John away for long, and I even joined him for a bit, There were some pretty big waves, one of which nearly lead to disasterous consequences - namely, John losing his swimming trunks to the depths of the Atlantic. Luckily, he made a swift recovery, and lived to tell the tale, returning in true Baywatch style.

As the afternoon drew on, we packed up our beach-gear, and headed back to the Fraser mobile.

Driving over to the other side of town, we ended up at the marina, next to which was a very nice fish restaurant. Before dinner, we had a few drinks, and enjoyed watching the sunset over the marina.

Dinner was excellent, if a bit fishy, and we were all well-fed and content by the end of it.

Before heading back to Princeton, we drove back to the seafront, for an evening stroll along the boardwalk. To our surprise, there was also a firework display going on, which was incredible - more impressive than the Princeton July 4th fireworks. An apparently they have a display like that every week! It was all a bit much for poor John.

In the weeks following the beach, we didn't have much more excitement, other than the usual weekly meetings at the Frasers' for pizza and icecream. Don't you just love America ;-). On Monday 22nd August, our plan was to go through to Philadelphia for the ACM Turing Award Lecture, and also to meet up with Peter Sewell, who was there for SIGCOMM. Unfortunately, the weekend before this was due to happen, we came into the lab to find disaster. The occupant of the apartment above the lab had a leak in his bathroom, which is directly above the server room. So, Dave came in to find water coming in through the ceiling. Luckily, we found out in time to turn off and cover up all the machines, take down the ceiling tiles (which crumble and break when wet), and call various people. The cleanup crew came round that same evening, and we had dehumidifiers on the go for the next week, but disaster was at least averted. As it turned out, we were able to go through to Philadelphia as planned, after all.

Late on monday morning, we all once again piled into Elisabeth's car, to drive down to the home of liberty. Being such a historic city, we went fairly early, to give ourselves time for sightseeing before the talk.

Once we had parked up, had a wander around, and had lunch, our next problem was to decide what to do. The obvious place to look was the 'Independence Visitor Center', which was full of crazy Americans in period costume.

Leaving the center, directly across the road, was the liberty bell exhibition, and a number of really rather historic buildings. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go into the building where they signed the declaration of independence, but we had a look around the others.

The liberty bell itself, was a bit of a disappointment, not least due to the big crack down the front of it. You'd think they'd have fixed that by now ;-).

The red brick building that I'm standing in front of is the Independence Hall, and the other building is where the first senate and congress was.

We were able to go into the latter building, and were given a guided tour, telling us all about the history of the place. On the ground floor was the congress, with the senate directly above.

We ended our tour of Philadelphia's historic district with a stroll around Washington Park.

Since time was drawing on, we then had to get back to the car, to drive over to the other side of Philadelphia, where the university, and talk, were. We got there in plenty of time for the reception, and then piled into the Irvine Auditorium for the talk. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn gave a very polished talk, and I think they've been successful in getting people to at least rethink their assumptions about the Internet today. It's nice to know that the idea of 'clean slate' Internet design is starting to take on.

After the talk, we met up with Peter, and headed out to a very nice Italian restaurant for dinner. Of course, Sandy didn't miss an opportunity to spread the word, although I think it was a bit lost on Peter, who was still suffering a little from jetlag. Overall though, it was a great day!

The rest of that week was spent frantically finishing off research/coding, and then preparing presentations for the trustees meeting on the monday. Once the meeting was over, this last week has been a bit more relaxed; even having the chance to play a little quake over the network. On wednesday, the last day that Chee Wei was still with us before flying back to Singapore for a holiday, we had a nice meal at a chinese restaurant over at the Princeton shopping centre. They did a very interesting dish, consisting of some fish in a seaweed batter, which was very salty, but good. We even got to put our lazy susan flow control into practice ;-).

Yesterday afternoon, John and I headed out with Sandy and Elisabeth for a drive over to the Delaware River. We went via a large shopping mall, where I picked up an extra suitcase for the journey back. We drove out in Sandy's new car, which has in-built GPS navigation, among other things.

Once we arrived at the river, we stopped off at a bridge, for some fresh air, and a look at the fantastic scenery!

Driving a bit further along, we stopped off at a restaurant by the river, for some pre-dinner drinks and appetisers, as we watched the sun go down over the river.

We continued into a nearby town, where we found another nice restaurant, looking directly over the river, where we enjoyed a very nice fish dinner.

Today was rather hectic, as I had to get sorted out for going home, and also finish off my documentation of the work I've done. In the morning, John and I headed out souvenir shopping, and I also picked up a couple more t-shirts, and some grumpy monkey coffee (to smuggle out of the country) along the way. The afternoon has been spent frantically documenting, and then in the evening, Dave, John and I took Sandy and Elisabeth to the Blue Point Grill for dinner. An excellent meal for our final evening in Princeton.

And now, I must go to bed; tomorrow is going to be a long day, in more ways than one ;-)