Lots of stuff has happened since my last post, but I've been incredibly busy with both wandering around Germany, and working on finalizing my presentations, so I haven't been able to take the time to write up posts. I'd like to eventually do so for each day, so I can keep a personal record of our travels and the conference. Today, however, I must make a brief post which will be a bit out of the chronology of the documentation of our trip thus far.
Today Chris and Martin were awarded with the Best Paper award for VL/HCC 2008. This is a huge honor, and especially impressive since it's Chris's first published paper. I thought before the conference that they had a good chance of winning the award since they received extremely positive reviews for their paper (I even told Guoning my prediction that Chris's paper would win), but every time I mentioned it to Chris, he brushed it aside, thinking that they had no chance. Anyway, I'm glad he was wrong. I know this was a paper that had gone through a few review processes, undergone some significant revisions and resubmissions, so it's very encouraging to see that sort of diligence and hard work payoff. Congratulations guys!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Munich - Day 3
It took us forever to fall asleep last night. We thought we were all straightened out time-wise, but this turned out not to be the case. We got a couple games of Risk Express in though, so it worked out alright.
After amazing breakfast #2 (in which there were, incredibly, many meats that weren't there yesterday), we headed out to Deutsches Museum, which both the guidebook and Martin suggested we see. It was a really cool museum. My favorite exhibits were:
* The marine navigation exhibit, which included a German U-Boat and a ton of 1:50 models of ships throughout history.
* The computer exhibit, which had 18th century mechanical calculators and a counter built from water troughs and siphons (which I want to try to make into a decorative fountain).
* The technical toys exhibit, which was nearly everything I wanted the toy museum to be (sadly, there was no "history of boardgames").
* And most unexpectedly, the glass exhibit, which had lots of cool bottles and a bunch of fascinating information on how they stain, frost, etch, and otherwise manipulate glass.
Also, the view from the sundial garden at the top of the museum is awesome.
We spent nearly all day at the museum. At about 3pm we realized we hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we decided to hold out until dinner and get the buffet / "Bavarian Evening" at Hofbrauhaus for €10, which we heard about yesterday.
After leaving the museum, we still had a couple hours to kill. First, we rushed to the post office to buy stamps. It costs a whole €1 to send a postcard to the U.S! Then we went to check out St. Lukas Church, which we'd seen from the sundial garden and looked pretty cool. It turned out to be one of the best cathedrals we've seen yet. I rank its exterior 1st, and its interior 2nd out of cathedrals we've seen so far.
Next we caught a bus back to the main shopping district and went back to my new place of worship, the huge and wonderful toy store, Obletter. I bought Ingenious, as I promised yesterday, and resisted buying many more games, since I'm already over-budget. Chris caved to the smallest quantifiable amount of peer pressure ("you should get it") and bought Busen Memo, after much more giggling. The lady at the counter made the purchase even more memorable by actually tsk-tsking him as she rung it up.
After slouching about a bit more, it was finally time to head to Hofbrauhaus. When we got there, it took us about 15 minutes of going up and down the stairs to figure out where the thing was. When we did, we discovered that it cost €19 instead of €10 (we're guessing because it is Friday). After some hesitation, we decided to go for it, since we'd been reasonably thrifty on the day, how often are you in Munich?, and maybe the Bavarian Evening would be as amazing as expected.
When we got inside, we almost instantly thought that we had made a mistake. The entertainment was an oompah band almost exactly the one downstairs, and we were the youngest people in the huge room by at least 20 years. The other clientele were almost entirely large tour groups of sophisticated old people from other European countries. Fortunately, as we got closer to the main act, some younger folks and quite a few Germans started filtering in, easing our worries. The show ended up being really fun, with a dirndl-clad yodeler, an alphorn quartet, lots of lederhosen, and a couple of songs played entirely by shaking different sized cowbells. Basically, if you can think of a Bavarian stereotype, it was present, and it was all really impressive and fun.
Finally, as the "Recently Played" list to the right indicates, we wrapped up the day with a game of Busen Memo.
After amazing breakfast #2 (in which there were, incredibly, many meats that weren't there yesterday), we headed out to Deutsches Museum, which both the guidebook and Martin suggested we see. It was a really cool museum. My favorite exhibits were:
* The marine navigation exhibit, which included a German U-Boat and a ton of 1:50 models of ships throughout history.
* The computer exhibit, which had 18th century mechanical calculators and a counter built from water troughs and siphons (which I want to try to make into a decorative fountain).
* The technical toys exhibit, which was nearly everything I wanted the toy museum to be (sadly, there was no "history of boardgames").
* And most unexpectedly, the glass exhibit, which had lots of cool bottles and a bunch of fascinating information on how they stain, frost, etch, and otherwise manipulate glass.
Also, the view from the sundial garden at the top of the museum is awesome.
We spent nearly all day at the museum. At about 3pm we realized we hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we decided to hold out until dinner and get the buffet / "Bavarian Evening" at Hofbrauhaus for €10, which we heard about yesterday.
After leaving the museum, we still had a couple hours to kill. First, we rushed to the post office to buy stamps. It costs a whole €1 to send a postcard to the U.S! Then we went to check out St. Lukas Church, which we'd seen from the sundial garden and looked pretty cool. It turned out to be one of the best cathedrals we've seen yet. I rank its exterior 1st, and its interior 2nd out of cathedrals we've seen so far.
Next we caught a bus back to the main shopping district and went back to my new place of worship, the huge and wonderful toy store, Obletter. I bought Ingenious, as I promised yesterday, and resisted buying many more games, since I'm already over-budget. Chris caved to the smallest quantifiable amount of peer pressure ("you should get it") and bought Busen Memo, after much more giggling. The lady at the counter made the purchase even more memorable by actually tsk-tsking him as she rung it up.
After slouching about a bit more, it was finally time to head to Hofbrauhaus. When we got there, it took us about 15 minutes of going up and down the stairs to figure out where the thing was. When we did, we discovered that it cost €19 instead of €10 (we're guessing because it is Friday). After some hesitation, we decided to go for it, since we'd been reasonably thrifty on the day, how often are you in Munich?, and maybe the Bavarian Evening would be as amazing as expected.
When we got inside, we almost instantly thought that we had made a mistake. The entertainment was an oompah band almost exactly the one downstairs, and we were the youngest people in the huge room by at least 20 years. The other clientele were almost entirely large tour groups of sophisticated old people from other European countries. Fortunately, as we got closer to the main act, some younger folks and quite a few Germans started filtering in, easing our worries. The show ended up being really fun, with a dirndl-clad yodeler, an alphorn quartet, lots of lederhosen, and a couple of songs played entirely by shaking different sized cowbells. Basically, if you can think of a Bavarian stereotype, it was present, and it was all really impressive and fun.
Finally, as the "Recently Played" list to the right indicates, we wrapped up the day with a game of Busen Memo.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Munich - Day 1.5 to 2
Since the numbered list format worked so well yesterday, I think I'll go back to it today.
1. Yesterday, after I made my previous post and we had each taken showers, we debated whether or not to hit the town or go to sleep (we were dead tired). We ended up making the correct decision to get our first beer in Munich. After doing so, we felt pretty outstanding and walked around the city for a couple of hours. We found some cool parks, a lot of old buildings and statues, and walked through the setting up of the main Oktoberfest grounds. On top of one of the Oktoberfest buildings there was a giant lion drinking a beer. Also, I had Chris take my picture in front of a giant concrete snail that marked the entrance to a park.
2. We slept for about 12 hours last night and woke up just in time for the hotel-provided breakfast. It was pretty incredible and included around 10 different types of meat. I'm usually a pretty light meat eater, so with that, and the sausages I had for lunch and dinner, I'm pretty sure I've had more meat today than I have in an average week back home.
3. Our plan today was to head downtown, check out the Glockenspiel, go to the toy museum, and generally wander around. When we got to the Glockenspiel (after a couple of detours), this guy came up to us with coupons for a bike tour. So we ended up doing that, which took most of the afternoon. It was really fun. We ate lunch at the second largest beer garden in Europe, rode through the largest city park in Europe (four times the size of Central Park), saw a bunch of naked guys at said park, watched some people surf on the river, accidentally wore our hats inside the most incredible cathedral I've ever seen (garnering some dirty looks until a guy pointed at his head, clueing us in on our faux pas), and generally learned a lot about the city.
4. On the bike tour we rubbed three out of four lions' heads on this wall, which supposedly gives you good luck (rubbing all four means you're greedy). When we finished the bike tour we had some time to kill and decided we should find this toy store I read about on BoardGameGeek. We figured that it probably wasn't in the guidebook, but we checked anyway. It turned out to be one of only four stores in the "miscellaneous" (i.e. not food or lodging) section--pretty lucky. Then it turned out to be only two blocks away from us--wow! So, as we were walking, Chris said we should buy some lottery tickets. Bam! Right there in front of us was a lottery ticket store. But it was closed. We figure it was the Fates' way of saying, yeah, you're pretty lucky right now, but not that lucky, so we'll save you some cash.
5. The toy store, Obletter, was amazing. I bought Risiko Express and am going to head back to get Einfach Genial (a.k.a. Ingenious) which was only €4.99. I took about 500 pictures of the game section. Agricola and Monopoly were sitting right next to each other on one stand. Germany is an amazing place. Also, I took a picture of Chris checking out Busen Memo.
6. We finished the day at Hofbrauhaus, which claims to be the most famous bar in the world (other Muncheners and tourists corroborated their story). It was cool, but just a little disappointing. We weren't served by a buxom Bavarian beer maiden, as we had hoped, and we're pretty sure the guy who did wait us thought we were going to walk out on our bill. He was watching us the whole time and when he brought our bill, stood and waited for us to fish out our money (even though we each still had food and beer remaining). Upstairs there is a buffet, which we didn't realize until afterward. For those arriving later, I suggest you give that a try.
7. We never ended up going to the toy museum. When we stopped to figure out where it was, it turned out we were standing, literally, directly underneath it. But the main exhibit was "100 years of teddy bears", which sounded distinctly unlike something we wanted to see, so we walked around instead.
8. Overall, it was a very successful day. We saw a ton of Munich, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of sausage and saurkraut, priced out dirndls (€40 - €250), and generally had a pretty outstanding time.
Update: Chris's corresponding post with pictures!
1. Yesterday, after I made my previous post and we had each taken showers, we debated whether or not to hit the town or go to sleep (we were dead tired). We ended up making the correct decision to get our first beer in Munich. After doing so, we felt pretty outstanding and walked around the city for a couple of hours. We found some cool parks, a lot of old buildings and statues, and walked through the setting up of the main Oktoberfest grounds. On top of one of the Oktoberfest buildings there was a giant lion drinking a beer. Also, I had Chris take my picture in front of a giant concrete snail that marked the entrance to a park.
2. We slept for about 12 hours last night and woke up just in time for the hotel-provided breakfast. It was pretty incredible and included around 10 different types of meat. I'm usually a pretty light meat eater, so with that, and the sausages I had for lunch and dinner, I'm pretty sure I've had more meat today than I have in an average week back home.
3. Our plan today was to head downtown, check out the Glockenspiel, go to the toy museum, and generally wander around. When we got to the Glockenspiel (after a couple of detours), this guy came up to us with coupons for a bike tour. So we ended up doing that, which took most of the afternoon. It was really fun. We ate lunch at the second largest beer garden in Europe, rode through the largest city park in Europe (four times the size of Central Park), saw a bunch of naked guys at said park, watched some people surf on the river, accidentally wore our hats inside the most incredible cathedral I've ever seen (garnering some dirty looks until a guy pointed at his head, clueing us in on our faux pas), and generally learned a lot about the city.
4. On the bike tour we rubbed three out of four lions' heads on this wall, which supposedly gives you good luck (rubbing all four means you're greedy). When we finished the bike tour we had some time to kill and decided we should find this toy store I read about on BoardGameGeek. We figured that it probably wasn't in the guidebook, but we checked anyway. It turned out to be one of only four stores in the "miscellaneous" (i.e. not food or lodging) section--pretty lucky. Then it turned out to be only two blocks away from us--wow! So, as we were walking, Chris said we should buy some lottery tickets. Bam! Right there in front of us was a lottery ticket store. But it was closed. We figure it was the Fates' way of saying, yeah, you're pretty lucky right now, but not that lucky, so we'll save you some cash.
5. The toy store, Obletter, was amazing. I bought Risiko Express and am going to head back to get Einfach Genial (a.k.a. Ingenious) which was only €4.99. I took about 500 pictures of the game section. Agricola and Monopoly were sitting right next to each other on one stand. Germany is an amazing place. Also, I took a picture of Chris checking out Busen Memo.
6. We finished the day at Hofbrauhaus, which claims to be the most famous bar in the world (other Muncheners and tourists corroborated their story). It was cool, but just a little disappointing. We weren't served by a buxom Bavarian beer maiden, as we had hoped, and we're pretty sure the guy who did wait us thought we were going to walk out on our bill. He was watching us the whole time and when he brought our bill, stood and waited for us to fish out our money (even though we each still had food and beer remaining). Upstairs there is a buffet, which we didn't realize until afterward. For those arriving later, I suggest you give that a try.
7. We never ended up going to the toy museum. When we stopped to figure out where it was, it turned out we were standing, literally, directly underneath it. But the main exhibit was "100 years of teddy bears", which sounded distinctly unlike something we wanted to see, so we walked around instead.
8. Overall, it was a very successful day. We saw a ton of Munich, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of sausage and saurkraut, priced out dirndls (€40 - €250), and generally had a pretty outstanding time.
Update: Chris's corresponding post with pictures!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Eagle Has Landed
Chris and I have successfully made it to our hotel in Munich. It's right downtown and really nice considering how cheap it is. A couple notes from the journey:
1. I saw the Isle of Man in person for the first time ever (from the airplane).
2. The Netherlands is a mindbogglingly wet place. Reservoirs of water just criss-cross the entire countryside. Irrigation ditches are 20 meters across. The whole place looks like it's built on a filled-in swamp. We saw a huge freighter really far inland, just chilling in a canal that was only 150% of its width. Also it's got huge fields of wind turbines right off the coast that Chris said looked like Sim City. Anyway, what little I saw of it from the plane makes it look like a bizarre and awesome place. I want to go.
3. The Amsterdam Airport is insane. First, picture the busiest airport you've ever been in, then reduce the width of all concourses by half. At least, that's the way it was for our brief and hectic layover there. Another kind of weird thing is that Dutch is very much a second language there. All the signs are in big English letters, with little Dutch captions. The ads don't bother with the Dutch at all.
4. As far as we can tell, the Munich train system runs on the honor system. We bought tickets to go from the airport to downtown, and five day passes to get around after that, but we have yet to see anybody actually take a ticket or look at a pass. We still have our tickets that we bought at the airport. There are little blue boxes at the stations that we later realized you're supposed to put your ticket in, but again, no verification whatsoever. Either we're missing something or Germans are an honest folk. Pretty cool if it actually is able to operate that way.
5. Did I mention our hotel is sweet? Our (shared) bathroom overlooks a cathedral. Also, we have three beds, so we can afford to make at least one friend.
1. I saw the Isle of Man in person for the first time ever (from the airplane).
2. The Netherlands is a mindbogglingly wet place. Reservoirs of water just criss-cross the entire countryside. Irrigation ditches are 20 meters across. The whole place looks like it's built on a filled-in swamp. We saw a huge freighter really far inland, just chilling in a canal that was only 150% of its width. Also it's got huge fields of wind turbines right off the coast that Chris said looked like Sim City. Anyway, what little I saw of it from the plane makes it look like a bizarre and awesome place. I want to go.
3. The Amsterdam Airport is insane. First, picture the busiest airport you've ever been in, then reduce the width of all concourses by half. At least, that's the way it was for our brief and hectic layover there. Another kind of weird thing is that Dutch is very much a second language there. All the signs are in big English letters, with little Dutch captions. The ads don't bother with the Dutch at all.
4. As far as we can tell, the Munich train system runs on the honor system. We bought tickets to go from the airport to downtown, and five day passes to get around after that, but we have yet to see anybody actually take a ticket or look at a pass. We still have our tickets that we bought at the airport. There are little blue boxes at the stations that we later realized you're supposed to put your ticket in, but again, no verification whatsoever. Either we're missing something or Germans are an honest folk. Pretty cool if it actually is able to operate that way.
5. Did I mention our hotel is sweet? Our (shared) bathroom overlooks a cathedral. Also, we have three beds, so we can afford to make at least one friend.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Grandmaster Allison
Last night at fencing, Allison beat our instructor Joe. She's the first student that's ever beaten him. It was awesome.
We've both had Joe at bloodpoint (4-4) a couple of times, so we knew it would just be a matter of time until one of us pulled it off, but he's really good at turning it up a couple notches when we get close.
When Allison scored the fifth point, Joe just froze, like he couldn't believe it, and Allison threw her arms in the air. He was a very gracious loser after it sunk in.
Congratulations, Allison!
On a completely unrelated note, Chris and I are in the airport, almost on our way to Germany. See ya!
We've both had Joe at bloodpoint (4-4) a couple of times, so we knew it would just be a matter of time until one of us pulled it off, but he's really good at turning it up a couple notches when we get close.
When Allison scored the fifth point, Joe just froze, like he couldn't believe it, and Allison threw her arms in the air. He was a very gracious loser after it sunk in.
Congratulations, Allison!
On a completely unrelated note, Chris and I are in the airport, almost on our way to Germany. See ya!
Friday, September 5, 2008
Missing Data Structure
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