Life is a Rabbit Pellet

Ramblings of a Zimbrindian's travels, life, and research.



Sunday, June 11, 2006

Back to Chicago

I'm missing New York already. Correction, I'm missing Manhattan. I miss the people walking around, the subway, the smell, the unceasing activity (even if the cab:car ratio is very very high at 0300), the sheer humanity and energy of the place. I need to live there. Oh man, I so need to live there. Let the plotting begin.

The plane came in late yesterday, delayed about an hour by bad weather. We certainly had some rather interesting bumps early on in the flight; it occurred to me that I haven't written a will yet. Perhaps I'll make my sole heir the mad security guard who refused to let me in to the NYU accommodation at Brittany Hall I had paid for (and hence left me to spend the night on the streets the day before I presented my conference demo) because (a) he didnt like me, and/or (b) he didnt like the slip of ID paper the hostel had given me during the day. That way, he'll inherit all my debts.

Unfortunately, I'm slipping back into my old habits. It seems I can only work when surrounded by lots of people. I had so many plans yesterday, and ... now they're all gone. Mostly. Bloody hell. What did I do today? Answered some important business emails, touched base with the astroboss to update him on planetarium (and planetary) dome explorations in New York and Melbourne, discussed conferences to hit with my advisor, received a notice that one of the two papers we submitted to Interspeech was accepted (the twits accepted the stupid hacky paper and rejected the good scientific one), tested code (some email correspondence involved) for converting Chinese characters to Pinyin, did 50% of the work required for creating an alternative Mandarin corpus, did 20% of the work required in reviewing a journal paper. And laundry. Did 100% of that, assuming the machine worked right. I had meant to the c++ coding for more functional load calculations today, but couldn't. Didn't. Wouldnt.

I have two choices. Admit defeat and go home, or refuse (but remain defeated) and postpone the admission till dawn. Or finish reviewing that paper, and write a report on it, and then read after some sleep. I'll try that. That way, at least something will have been achieved.

Oh, and I did spend an hour booting a semi-deflated football around with Leandro. Surprisingly, I can dribble better than I can goalkeep. Or aim. And only for short periods. And only because I'm willing to run more than he is. (He's just recovered from a foot injury - he was on a crutch two months ago.)

The ball is, were it possible, even more deflated.

I got accused of being social during the conference. I really should be more careful; such talk is most damaging to my antisocial reputation.


(2 hours later...)


Finished writing 80% of the review. 700 words. Now I'll need to add some citations, and some stats that the authors ought to add to it (just a few greps, shouldnt take more than an hour) but that can wait for postshuteye.

Methinks more work needs to go into making human-readable captchas.