mtml: day 1!
Jan. 23rd, 2011 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexr_rwxToday was my first full day, waking up in Haifa for the MTML conference. Pretty interesting!
It got off to kind of a rough start; I'd expected to be able to get an adapter to plug in my laptop in one of the four airports I visited on the way to getting here, but surprisingly, no dice. So my alarm didn't go off like I expected it to, so I promptly woke up at 9:30, just as the workshop was starting...
Popped downstairs, snagged some breakfast on the way out the door (the hotel has breakfast, and apparently breakfast in Israel often involves salad; I had some nice cut-up grapefruit and a danish), and found my bus stop. I probably should have gotten a cab or something.
I knew which bus I was supposed to take: the 37. The bus showed up pretty soon, but not before I spoke with a friendly guy, maybe 20, who tried addressing me in Hebrew first. Apparently I look like I'm from here or something. I asked which stop the university was, and he was going there anyway, so I hopped off with him and several other young people with backpacks.
Turns out it was the wrong university. Semi-undaunted, I got on the next bus using the same bus ticket (you can keep taking buses for a few hours), and went further along the route. Way up the hill (Mount Carmel, I expect) I got to a place that sure looked like the university; I knew I was supposed to go to the 30th floor to the Observatory, so I even found this enormously tall building...
Spoke to the security guard there, and he didn't understand much English, but I was like "am I in the right place? Is this the University of Haifa?", and he pointed down the hill. I was like "ok, what the crap -- this sure looks like the university" -- but it could have been an office park, and the lobby of the building was oddly sparse, and I couldn't read any of the signage.
I really should have learned some Hebrew, especially the alphabet, before coming. Sounding out signs would be pretty helpful. The street signs are mostly in Hebrew, English, Arabic -- but nearly all the signs in the university are Hebrew-only.
So I walked back down the hill, found another bus stop (after sort of a confusing detour into a park), got addressed in Hebrew again, had a conversation about languages with a friendly older guy, and then went further along the bus route. I figured that I had gone too far, though -- was definitely in a commercial area, with little shops and restaurants -- got off the bus again, determined to ask directions, buy a power adapter, and maybe just get a cab.
I found a nice little electronics shop, got a power adapter for five shekels (like a dollar and a half), and asked the guy in the shop how to get back to the university. He suggested I take the bus back the way I came, so I did -- deciding that, in fact, the area I'd been with the security guard probably was the building I was supposed to be in.
(turns out it was. dumb security guard.)
I missed the first two talks of the day, but I showed up, at noon, just as the third one was starting. And the talks have been quite good, and I've been having great conversations with people, some younger grad students as well as some well-known professors.
(Wren![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
winterkoninkje: a few people have asked about you, when they find out I'm from IU. Chris particularly, and maybe Jason? They're both awesome.)
After the talks, we headed over for a reception with falafel for dinner, and Sergei Nirenburg, who seems to like speaking Russian, pulled out the accordion and played some tunes, with Shuly, the conference organizer, singing along. Oh, and Jason looked like he was about to dance...
After dinner, I headed back to the hotel, on the bus (but more confidently this time) with two other guys roughly named Alex (with various spellings and diacritics), and two guys from Latvia; they're all younger grad students, quite friendly. We got off at basically the right bus stop, but had a hard time figuring out how to get to the hotel from there exactly. But we got it handled, and we're all having breakfast tomorrow, before heading up to the conference.
The most important thing I learned today: there's so much magic telepathy that we have from (a) knowledge of the cultural expectations of a place, like how to ride the bus, check in to a hotel, ask for directions, (b) being able to read signs, and (c) (perhaps most importantly) having internets, maps, and clocks in our pockets. All three of these failed on me today, and it was really quite disorienting.
Contrastingly, just a few days ago, when Lindsey and I went to Chicago, we breezed on in, used our magic cultural/technological telepathy to know exactly where to go, how to talk to people and what to do, and breezed on out, new passport in hand.
It got off to kind of a rough start; I'd expected to be able to get an adapter to plug in my laptop in one of the four airports I visited on the way to getting here, but surprisingly, no dice. So my alarm didn't go off like I expected it to, so I promptly woke up at 9:30, just as the workshop was starting...
Popped downstairs, snagged some breakfast on the way out the door (the hotel has breakfast, and apparently breakfast in Israel often involves salad; I had some nice cut-up grapefruit and a danish), and found my bus stop. I probably should have gotten a cab or something.
I knew which bus I was supposed to take: the 37. The bus showed up pretty soon, but not before I spoke with a friendly guy, maybe 20, who tried addressing me in Hebrew first. Apparently I look like I'm from here or something. I asked which stop the university was, and he was going there anyway, so I hopped off with him and several other young people with backpacks.
Turns out it was the wrong university. Semi-undaunted, I got on the next bus using the same bus ticket (you can keep taking buses for a few hours), and went further along the route. Way up the hill (Mount Carmel, I expect) I got to a place that sure looked like the university; I knew I was supposed to go to the 30th floor to the Observatory, so I even found this enormously tall building...
Spoke to the security guard there, and he didn't understand much English, but I was like "am I in the right place? Is this the University of Haifa?", and he pointed down the hill. I was like "ok, what the crap -- this sure looks like the university" -- but it could have been an office park, and the lobby of the building was oddly sparse, and I couldn't read any of the signage.
I really should have learned some Hebrew, especially the alphabet, before coming. Sounding out signs would be pretty helpful. The street signs are mostly in Hebrew, English, Arabic -- but nearly all the signs in the university are Hebrew-only.
So I walked back down the hill, found another bus stop (after sort of a confusing detour into a park), got addressed in Hebrew again, had a conversation about languages with a friendly older guy, and then went further along the bus route. I figured that I had gone too far, though -- was definitely in a commercial area, with little shops and restaurants -- got off the bus again, determined to ask directions, buy a power adapter, and maybe just get a cab.
I found a nice little electronics shop, got a power adapter for five shekels (like a dollar and a half), and asked the guy in the shop how to get back to the university. He suggested I take the bus back the way I came, so I did -- deciding that, in fact, the area I'd been with the security guard probably was the building I was supposed to be in.
(turns out it was. dumb security guard.)
I missed the first two talks of the day, but I showed up, at noon, just as the third one was starting. And the talks have been quite good, and I've been having great conversations with people, some younger grad students as well as some well-known professors.
(Wren
winterkoninkje: a few people have asked about you, when they find out I'm from IU. Chris particularly, and maybe Jason? They're both awesome.)After the talks, we headed over for a reception with falafel for dinner, and Sergei Nirenburg, who seems to like speaking Russian, pulled out the accordion and played some tunes, with Shuly, the conference organizer, singing along. Oh, and Jason looked like he was about to dance...
After dinner, I headed back to the hotel, on the bus (but more confidently this time) with two other guys roughly named Alex (with various spellings and diacritics), and two guys from Latvia; they're all younger grad students, quite friendly. We got off at basically the right bus stop, but had a hard time figuring out how to get to the hotel from there exactly. But we got it handled, and we're all having breakfast tomorrow, before heading up to the conference.
The most important thing I learned today: there's so much magic telepathy that we have from (a) knowledge of the cultural expectations of a place, like how to ride the bus, check in to a hotel, ask for directions, (b) being able to read signs, and (c) (perhaps most importantly) having internets, maps, and clocks in our pockets. All three of these failed on me today, and it was really quite disorienting.
Contrastingly, just a few days ago, when Lindsey and I went to Chicago, we breezed on in, used our magic cultural/technological telepathy to know exactly where to go, how to talk to people and what to do, and breezed on out, new passport in hand.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-23 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-23 10:11 pm (UTC)Which summer did you go to U of Haifa? Did you enjoy it?
(also: how's it going? your LJ is pretty quiet these days; are you blogging somewhere else? ...)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-24 01:33 am (UTC)And I can totally see you seeming like you should know Hebrew there :)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-24 04:51 am (UTC)I'll specifically say hi, from you, to them :) (trend I've noticed here: people mention Joshua in roughly the same breath as Moses. I didn't understand the extent to which Joshua was srs bsns!)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-25 02:25 pm (UTC)Take a picture of a door, and have the app decide how you should open it based on various features...
- location via GPS or wireless networks or something -- it could go look up ways people have previously opened the same door (door crowdsourcing: alternatively, have people on the web vote on ways to open the door, given the picture)
- machine vision problem and case-based reasoning: find pictures of similar doors; maybe this one can be opened in the same way
- machine vision with motion planning: maybe a picture of the door is enough for the system to build a 3D model of it and then work out ways that it could move...
no subject
Date: 2011-01-26 12:59 am (UTC)This reminds me of a story I've heard about Carl Sagan, but I can only vaguely remember that. Something about college graduates, or something...