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Lots of interesting things have been going on, but I've been bad about writing about them!
At the very least:
- From Sunday a week ago to this most recent Wednesday, I went to ACL HLT 2011 in Portland, and it was really rad! Saw a bunch of really good talks, chatted with NLP people that I'd met before (some of them at MTML, back in January, some from Google, etc), and some that I hadn't met in real life! Including![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
knightofstarz and gregh1983, who turn out to be cool dudes IRL.
- This past weekend, we did the Pride parade! It was amazing. Lindsey, Martin, Mark and Alec all came with, and we eventually navigated public transit (which was packed) and the enormous joyful pandemonium crowd scene to find all the Googlers (Gayglers and Friendly Straightglers alike) -- the contingent from the company was enormous, easily several hundred of us. A sea of people in largely matching Pride shirts with cute androids and rainbow flags on them. And we danced and hopped down the street in front of a festive trolley-looking bus, also packed with dancing Prideglers. I jumped up and down and high-fived the people watching the parade. There was a lot of cheering. (also, we handed out Android pride stickers and rainbow temporary tattoos and ... GChapstick? People seemed really into the branded lip balm. Not sure why.) I think most of clowning is in the body language, really -- the costume is really secondary.
- Oh, and last weekend, Lindsey and I did a pretty convincing job at the annual ICFP Contest. It was a super-beautiful problem this year. Also, we totally implemented and used the Y combinator in SKI calculus, and it worked. It turned out to not be effective technique, but it was really exciting that it worked. In fact, as our approaches got dumber and dumber, we did better and better. This was our best ICFPC showing yet, though, both in terms of raw effectiveness, and also in terms of working together. So, hooray! :)
At the very least:
- From Sunday a week ago to this most recent Wednesday, I went to ACL HLT 2011 in Portland, and it was really rad! Saw a bunch of really good talks, chatted with NLP people that I'd met before (some of them at MTML, back in January, some from Google, etc), and some that I hadn't met in real life! Including
knightofstarz and gregh1983, who turn out to be cool dudes IRL.- This past weekend, we did the Pride parade! It was amazing. Lindsey, Martin, Mark and Alec all came with, and we eventually navigated public transit (which was packed) and the enormous joyful pandemonium crowd scene to find all the Googlers (Gayglers and Friendly Straightglers alike) -- the contingent from the company was enormous, easily several hundred of us. A sea of people in largely matching Pride shirts with cute androids and rainbow flags on them. And we danced and hopped down the street in front of a festive trolley-looking bus, also packed with dancing Prideglers. I jumped up and down and high-fived the people watching the parade. There was a lot of cheering. (also, we handed out Android pride stickers and rainbow temporary tattoos and ... GChapstick? People seemed really into the branded lip balm. Not sure why.) I think most of clowning is in the body language, really -- the costume is really secondary.
- Oh, and last weekend, Lindsey and I did a pretty convincing job at the annual ICFP Contest. It was a super-beautiful problem this year. Also, we totally implemented and used the Y combinator in SKI calculus, and it worked. It turned out to not be effective technique, but it was really exciting that it worked. In fact, as our approaches got dumber and dumber, we did better and better. This was our best ICFPC showing yet, though, both in terms of raw effectiveness, and also in terms of working together. So, hooray! :)
