korean spam

For the last year or so I've been scanning my yahoo spam for messages that inadvertently slip through. I've probably found 2 or 3 in that period, but the escalation of volume has continued, and I stopped the practice three weeks ago. There are now 1056 in the box, as in indication of the volume, and I reckon 60% or so are in korean (the rest are loans, fertility drugs, porn and cheap software). This makes for a bemusing sort of spam - I can't read it, and the illustrations are so cryptic that they give no help to deciphering the nature of the product. It was the same at DSTC, and just recently they seem to have found my other webmail account. For the moment, my uni account hasn't been picked up to any great extent.

rennes beach

I'm just back from a ride, the first I've done for a while - I put it down to the distraction (welcome distraction, but distraction nonetheless) of having guests for a month or so. I didn't manage 50k this time - just a shade under 40 - and although it was the same canal, I went in the direction this time, out towards and past what might be generously called the local beach. There were quite a few people out, on bike, on foot, and just sitting and lying around the parklands which form the more notable part of the beach area.

hot ashes

Its been perhaps 20 years since Australia had a competitive cricket series with England, but they now find themselves up to their armpits. I can remember maybe 2 tests (AUS vs WI in Adelaide and AUS vs RSA in Sydney) in the last 20 years as exciting as the 2nd & 3rd of this series, so to have 2 in a row is just incredibly good for Ashes cricket. Having English cricket back in the media, and rightfully (for August) ahead of the football, is long-overdue and very welcome.

Personally, I lived and died on the BBC online radio commentaries of both 5th days, and am counting the days to the 4th test, the 5th test, and then to boasting about Australia's majestic victory to Laurie Tratt in Montego Bay.

Pointe du Raz

Currents at the Pointe Du Raz.

Here's a belated photo looking west from the Pointe du Raz, taken when Lee and I were there a few weeks ago.

Trip to paris

Jardin de la Musée de Rodin.

After Brittany, Lee and I headed east for the obligatory visit to Paris. The first afternoon we headed up to Sacre Coeur to have a look out over Paris. The hill itself was bitterly crowded, but a minute stroll over the hill down into Montmartre saw the masses off, and we enjoyed the atmosphere of the obviously very expensive area. After dinner we dropped by the tour eiffel to see it lit up.

The next day we popped into the Louvre, the first time I've been in my half-dozen trips to or through Paris. We checked out the french sculptures, italian paintings, egyptian relics, and arts of africa, the asia pacific, and north america (somewhat bemusing to see an exhibit devoted to 2/3rds of the earth). The french sculptures were really nice, but the Italian paintings were far too crowded to be pleasant. The Mona Lisa bore the brunt of my resentment, since I was unable to properly appreciate the Titians and Tintorettos because the queue to take photos of the little lady took up so much of the room. We joined the queue, as much to say that we had braved it as to see the painting. Shocking.

In the afternoon, already half gone, we walked around the tuileries, place vendome and the obelisk. After a lie-down in a parc on the champs-elysees, we had dinner in a restaurant just of the main drag, then popped down to see the arc de triomphe at sunset.

On our final morning we used the hour before our train left to visit the Musee de Rodin, or at least the sculpture garden, in front of which I appear above. This was my favourite place of the trip: not too crowded, nice sculptures, and a genuinely nice place to hang out.

back to work

I've been back at work for the last week and a bit now. Upon returning I came across a call for papers for the MTIP workshop at Models, so I contacted Mike Lawley and we rustled up a paper together on Tefkat, which I hope to present, since no DSTC (Disbanded, Stopped, Terminated, Ceased) people will be at Montego Bay.

On Montego Bay, things are looking grim for my bank account. The conference hotel is in reality a resort, 16km from the town itself, and I've been told this afternoon that my budget is US$70 per day for accomodation, food, and misc other. This is a little less than half the conference hotel rate, which I estimate puts me in a $1000 personal hole for the week if I can't find some other way to manage it. If I had a license, I could stay in a cheap dive in town and rent a car, but that ain't gonna happen in the next month. Its weird how the french public service is quite happy to throw money about willy-nilly in some ways (tenure), but not in others.

photo finish

When Lee and I were in Quimper, we visited the Maritime Museum there. To be honest, its not the sort of stuff that flicks my switch, and a lot of the time I couldn't be bothered labouring through the written french descriptions of the exhibits.

At one point, though, Lee called me over and said there was a piece on a guy who visited the Solomons and Australia in the late 1700s. That struck me as interesting, so I had a read. The guy was La Pérouse, and I was shocked to read that the plaque said the he visited the Solomons on January 1st of 1788 and then Sydney Harbour (then Port Jackson) on the 26th of the same month. Now, being a good patriotic Australian, I noted that as an important date, because its when the first fleet landed at the same harbour. I was a bit shocked, and to be honest suspicious of French revisionism, that a frenchman was there on the same day.

As it turns out, Captain Arthur Phillip (who in fact reached the continent a week earlier, but found Botany Bay unsuitable for settlement) was equally shocked upon seeing French ships in the harbour on the day. La Pérouse had in fact been sent to explore the southwest Pacific in response to Cook's voyage in 1770 (or thereabouts), and had undertaken a massive voyage around the Pacific rim, and was later given instructions to check out the colony while stopping in Russia.

The English he met there (dare we call them Australians? perhaps not) were unable to give him food, and in the end were among the last westerners to see him or his crew alive. His ship was later found wrecked in the Santa Cruz islands in the south west of what is now the Solomons.

Anyway, I found all that jolly interesting.

more brittany

Another week, another round of tourism.

The original plan last Tuesday was to catch some trains up to Bayeux and Rouen and check out Normandy, but forecasts of bad weather and dodgy train timetables made us reconsider, so we took the easier option and jumped a TGV out to Brest, via St Brieux. After an afternoon there exploring the maritime museum and various parks, we caught the train down to Quimper, where we ran into a large celtic/european cultural festival. We took in a concert or two and wandered around amongst the crowds, and along the way established (or, in my case, reestablished) the opinion that Breton dancing is entirely without rhythmic, diversionary or any other sort of merit. We had a quick visit to the gallery there, but had to cut it short, which was a shame.

On Thursday morning we caught a ridiculously cheap but out to the Pointe du Raz and had a scramble on the rocks. It was a very different day to my previous visit. The visibility was high, the winds low, and the gulls largely absent, and the flowers that had been so colourful had seen their hues quite dulled by the sun in the month since.

After an afternoon of sun, we were pretty tired catching the TER back to Rennes, and collapsed basically on arrival, even forgetting to check the score in the cricket.

siblog

So Lee got in a bit over a week ago, on a Saturday afternoon, and has been staying with me. We've pretty much gotten her to every place worth seeing within reasonable reach of a day trip: St. Malo, Mont St-Michel, Vannes, various trips around Rennes, and even Betton and the canal yesterday. In between times I've been filling in some gaps in her cultural education, in the various forms of Firefly episodes, and Blade Runner, and revisiting both of our childhoods in the form of the Mysterious Cities of Gold. Notably, the latter has fallen into my basket of childhood pleasures that stand up less well to the passage of time.

This afternoon we're looking to head up to Normandy for a couple of days to look at beaches and the like. We'd go to Switzerland, but I'm still working out troubles with my carte de sejour (which should all be sorted next week, the lady assures me), so am nervous about leaving (or more accurately re-entering) France.

In a spare moment, we've set Lee up with here very own blog, over at Vikings and Fjords. The name doesn't fit so long as she's parading around sunny Brittany (I'm unable to convince Australians that Brittany is a rainy place!), but should do better once she gets to Oslo in August.

trading places

Mick flew back to Australia on Thursday, after trips to Spain, Scotland and Switzerland. Meanwhile, Lee arrives in Rennes in a couple of hours after a few days in KL and a very, very long flight. I really should have gone to meet her at the airport in Paris, but I didn't get my butt into gear. In any case, I'm excited to see her, although things are a bit of a mess here in terms of thing scattered and undone.

hamlet's ghost

Paul Keating evidently believes that the current ALP opposition is incapable of holding John Howard accountable in the public eye. Perhaps the only thing more discouraging than a retired politician who won't let old grudges die is when he is justified in doing so. *Sigh*

sport and podcasting

After tennis with Franck last Thursday and a big bike ride on Sunday, the natural consequence was more tennis on Monday, this time with Seb as well as Franck. I put myself against the other two for the first hour or so. I much prefer it that way; better for my fitness, and in theory at least I should be more reliable than them, and this is becoming more and more true as I slowly work out my problems on my forehand.

Today, Raphael dropped in for a visit from Lille, ostensibly to speak with Jean-Marc about a European project they're putting up, but the opportunity to talk about other stuff was also useful.

In other work news, I'm still getting nowhere on reviewing a paper for tomorrow, nor on updating the camera-ready copy of my Jamaica paper. I think I've narrowed down my little model type well-formedness niggle, though.

Meanwhile, I'm listening to more ABC radio than I have since college, with Philip Adams & Robyn Williams on Radio National, Karl Kruszelnicki, Jon Safran & others on triplej and grandstand all having podcasts out there for me. I'm also getting into WeFunk's archives in a pretty big way - makes outstanding cycling radio.

weekend

After wasting Saturday on NBA Live (on defense I've got these hands, and on offense I've got handles like pots and pans!), I got a little more done on Sunday. OK, so I watched a couple of games of football - 3 for the weekend - but I also got on my bike (literally and figuratively) and went for a ride on the track along the canal d'ile et rance. A few months back I rode this coming back through Betton from the foret de rennes, but this time I went quite a bit further, up a few kilometres past Chevaigne. Turning around after just over 27km, I was feeling alright, but there was a stretch of 4 or 5km of coarse bluestone gravel that really put the hurt into my legs, so by the time I got home the 53.6km was not lost on me.

adieu

DSTC is dead, long live, er ... Oh, right. Well, DSTC is dead.

Sometimes you don't burn bridges, they just fall down.

google mapping

So, I work here (crescent building), I live here, and this morning I went out here (the big square building) to hand in a certificate which I was given here (a building on the SW corner of the square) and for which I bought a 55 euro stamp here (the inverse T-shaped building NE of the big carpark).

It'd be nice to be able to put pins in the map and draw lines between them, because I reckon I probably clocked up about 15-20km on the bike running around this morning. It will also be nice when they get around to linking the map and search engine up properly like they've done for the US version.

Update: Oh, its all just way too cool. The basketball tournament the other week was here, we climbed on rocks last week here, listened to techno here. I could go on, and probably will at some later point...