The BFG

Just wanted to add in a photo (professional) of one of the giants from the Paradok production of the BFG-- to give credit where credit is due, this is borrowed from David Monteith-Hodge's website which can be found at:

http://www.photographise.com/blog/?p=483

I think this one was the BoneCrusher, but I can't remember for certain.

Below is a picture of the BFG, who was a very tall human (about 2m I'd guess), but in an interesting interpretation spent nearly the entire production is a sort of crouch, which did add a sort of height effect courtesy of the other production tricks. The most prominent was Sophie being represented both by the actress as well as a Sophie doll that mirrored the events on stage.

Different planets, same species

Live from whatever planet Sarah Palin lives on:

“We're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do,” she said on the Fox News presenter’s nationally syndicated radio show.
“So this speaks to a bigger picture here that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policies.
“But obviously we gotta stand with our North Korean allies.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/sarah-palin/8159130/Sarah-Palin-in-North-Korea-gaffe.html


And, in the world of reality:

Severe weather update: some schools to reopen on Wednesday
Published Tuesday 30 November 2010
Some primary schools in Edinburgh are to re-open on Wednesday and 4th-6th year pupils at all secondary schools should attend (1st - 3rd year should stay at home).
With colder temperatures and more snow expected, the situation remains changeable so parents are urged to continue checking the Council's website and Radio Forth for updates.
Councillor Robert Aldridge, Environment Leader, said: "I want to thank everyone for their patience. With such a lot of snow falling in such a short space of time, it's inevitably going to take some time to clear residential streets and restore other services to normal. I also want to thank those people who have been good neighbours to vulnerable people and the Council staff who have been working flat out to keep the city moving."

snow, blue skies, and a home day for me

Happy St. Andrew's Day! How funny to see the Tartan and Saltire on the Google main page!

When I got up this morning, the sky was grey. By 8am the snow was coming down in a thick curtain of huge white flakes. At 9am the skies are partly cloudy with sun poking through and the brightest blue I've ever seen beyond, but I've already cancelled my meetings because I don't want to deal with late/delayed/stranded buses.

The kids have no school again, and apparently Lynn and Kenna are going with Belinda and Isla to see their horses which are stabled just outside the city. Since I'll be home Taran can stay here and have a reading day, as I have no illusions that he wants to see a pony, much less a horse.

Snow isn't foreign to Scotland-- there are parts of the country that get it regularly and where it sticks for more than a few days-- as this photo of Balachulish shows. Haven't been there, but am definitely looking forward to seeing the North sometime in the not too distant future.

Schools closed

Well, we did get about 3-4" of snow, and the temperature is steady between 29-33F. School was closed today and will be closed again tomorrow. Most of the city's buses are running, though our recycling wasn't collected :)

Here are some photos-- clearly the best one is the guy in the kilt, clearing the sidewalk in front of a shop on Princes Street.


I spent the day at home working on my manuscript resubmission. Lynn hung out with the kids for the morning and they went to Belinda and Isla's house in the afternoon, trudging through the unshovelled snow.

Scotland thinks its Wisconsin

29 November 2010 06:07 GMT

Drivers stranded and schools closed as snow chaos grips Scotland

A9 reopens but severe snow is continuing to cause chaos across the country with schools closed and treacherous road conditions.

Drivers have been stranded, and schools and roads closed, as the severe winter weather that struck Scotland over the weekend continues to cause disruption.

Much of the country woke up to yet more snow this morning, with further flurries predicted throughout the day and a danger of black ice.

The Met Office issued severe weather warnings in Grampian, Strathclyde, Central, Tayside, Fife, Lothian and Borders and South West Scotland.


The A9 was closed between Perth and Stirling for Sunday evening and Monday morning, but reopened in both directions around 10am. The M90 was shut from Perth to Kinross, the A93 at Spittal of Glenshee was also closed again for a second day. Snow is still causing delays on the A80, M80 and M876.

Chief Inspector Donald McMillan, head of Roads Policing for Central Scotland, said: "The weather conditions overnight have led to significant problems on the roads network. We are still asking motorists to only undertake their journeys if absolutely necessary.

"If you are making a journey by car, please ensure you have the maximum visibility by clearing all snow from your windows. Some drivers are taking to the roads with windscreens obscured by snow."

Midlothian Council said that all its schools would be closed to pupils because of the weather, though staff had been asked to attend. All schools in Dundee were also shut, along with Perth and Kinross, , Fife, Angus and Edinburgh. Elsewhere there were major school disruption in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

ScotRail warned those travelling by train to expect disruption, particularly in the central belt where further heavy snowfalls were forecast.

Forecasters said that more snow is likely across most of the country with the cold snap expected to last until the weekend at least. Coldest overnight in the UK was Altnaharra in northern Scotland, which recorded a low of minus 16.1C (3F).

Victoria Kettley, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said: "There will not be as much snow as on Sunday but there will be 2-5cm widely and over uplands easily up to 10cm through the day and overnight.

"It will remain cold as there's still the easterly wind so it'll be a maximum of 2-4 degrees centigrade in coastal areas and inland it would be lucky to get above freezing."

Edinburgh weathers...

We begin to understand why weather is always the first topic of conversation, and why that conversation tends towards bemused frustration. The day began with a blizzard (for Edinburgh, anyway)-- about 3" of snow fell in a few hours while cold winds blew pushing the wind chill down to about -5C (frigid for Edinburgh). The wind died before noon, and around 1pm the sun emerged. Now, at 3.15pm, a thick fog has enveloped the city, while temperatures moderate significantly. The only constant about the weather is that it is totally impossible to predict for more than a few hours in advance, and not always that.

Images of Edinburgh

Here is, arguably, my new favorite image of Edinburgh. It is, apparently, William Crozier's painting, Edinburgh (from Salisbury Crags). This is exactly the idealistic image of Edinburgh I have in my mind-- the colors, the architecture, the landscape.

A day out

As we've noted previously, the Scots take their holidays seriously. Again, I rely on a photo from the internet (though we took a few as well) to best show the scene. This is a photo taken from Light On night, when the city turns on all the lights around the Mound and Princes Street, as well as the big Christmas tree on the Mound itself. Of course there are fireworks-- the Scots are quite big on fireworks. We missed the actual moment (though I was walking home about 15 minutes before the event), because of kids' activities in Stockbridge, but next year we'd plan to hang around and see the lights go on and perhaps even the fireworks.


This is Princes Street Gardens East-- a grassy rose-garden most of the year, cleared once in a while for special events (like the World Archery Championships in September), but now completely built up into a winter carnival. As Lynn pointed out, we do fairs like this America, we just don't do them in the middle of winter at night. The Ferris Wheel is lit up, there is a shiny golden carousel, various other rides (including a child's roller-coaster), a big ice-skating rink, and so on. We took the kids last night and they rode the teacups-- but it really was quite chilly (though many of the Scots demonstrated their fortitude by going without gloves and, in some cases, jackets).




It was actually a relatively big day yesterday, especially for Taran. He and I went to the Central Children's Library, which was quite warm and pleasant, though nothing like a library in the States-- it was smaller than the children's area at Sun Prairie Library, for example. Then we had lunch at Snax Cafe, Taran's favorite restaurant, just off campus. It's really a local student burger/breakfast place, with very cheap food.



But the big treat was going to see a local production of Dahl's The BFG. It was a wonderful play and Taran loved it. The bad giants were really well done, and they used a variety of neat, simple stage effects to deal with the challenges of staging a book that included a 20ft tall giant. I'll post some other photos and Taran's enthusiasm soon. We even got a picture of Taran with Sophie (who turned out to be from Oregon).

Kenna's first blog

Nursery is so much fun. And when you were in Scotland when you were little I hope you came into nursery one time. When Daddy was gone, I missed him so much.

More dark and stormy :)

Well, Edinburgh is working harder to live up to its reputation. The weekend was relatively cold, windy, and wet, and today followed suit. I actually spent the entire day indoors (Monday is my writing day, anyway), and Lynn only left to get the kids to and from school.

The kids have been crankier. Kenna has become very recalcitrant, fighting about very small things like getting dressed, while also pestering her brother for attention. I would say she needed more attention, but she gets attention constantly and seems to have lots of friends at school. Lynn and I think it may be an environmental issue: the combination of the darkness outside and the cold air inside-- I think it's triggering hibernation-type effects where the kids at least, and perhaps Lynn and myself as well, are being prompted by our bodies to get more sleep and eat more calories. We've begun putting Kenna to bed earlier, and she's regularly sleeping 12+ hours each night now.

Taran is trickier. By last week we'd reached the point where we decided there was something in the food causing trouble, and so on Weds last we put him back on a diet without processed foods (I suspect the Cheerios, Lynn suspects the fluoride tablets), and he seemed to be doing better... and then we took the kids swimming on Friday. We'd gotten passes from British Gas for open swim, and the closest location was a hotel downtown. The pool itself and the facility were nice enough, but we've always seemed to have trouble with Taran and hotel pools. Perhaps the high chlorine level? Regardless, Saturday night Taran was coughing at bedtime, and we commented that it seems like everytime we take Taran to a public pool (other than the PAC which used an ultraviolet system to keep the chlorine amount down) he has coughing fits and behavior problems. Sunday the coughing was worse, and we gave Taran hydroxyzine, our standby for coughing/allergy/itching/sleeping problems, and he slept through the night soundly, but was coughing much worse this morning, and his behavior today was awful. We thought we'd seen behavior problems with the hydroxyzine, but he was just a wreck today. I think there is a sleep issue for him as well, and so today we moved their bedtimes forward 30 minutes. Kenna was asleep before 6.45pm, and Taran is now in bed and will hopefully be asleep by 7.30.

We had a nice visit with Eyal and Ionathan on Saturday, and Eyal's father brought us a basic Hanukkiah and kosher candles all the way from Israel. Taran's eyes lit up when he saw it, and he and Kenna spent the afternoon trying to get Ionathan (who is 2) to play with them, but he was just too shy, and of course they are loud and a bit crazy. Sunday we visited with Ashley's family (Ashely is one of my colleagues), and their three kids were just fantastic keeping our kids busy all afternoon while we ate and chatted. It was great.

Lynn is fully into the apartment hunt now. We're experimenting with the underfloor heating in the bathrooms, and my guess is that we're closing in on running the heat constantly while we're home (just in 1-2 rooms at a time) to keep warm. My appreciation for modern insulation methods now knows no bounds-- we could heat our entire house in Wisconsin in -20C weather for the cost of heating 2 rooms in this flat at 2C weather. I'm not sure how much better the heating situation will be in another flat, but it surely can't be worse, and if we're paying £200-300 less per month, that more than makes up the heating bill.

I can't seem to find enough writing time these days, but I'm really enjoying the networking within the University structure. I am trying to follow my supervisor's advice about sticking to my primary responsibilities, and have set boundaries where possible, but will need to do even better, as I'm just involved in too many projects right now. Soon I need to ramp up my research again, and I'll be even more busy once teaching really starts next term. The upshot is that I'm enjoying the desk research and writing so much I wish I could spend most of my time on it-- a strange conclusion from a person who expected to want to focus on teaching...

Cheers from mostly dark and a bit stormy Edinburgh!

Taran's knowledge treasure hunt 6

Studying the Universe: The Universe
Why are observatories built on mountains away from cities where the air is clear?

When Dinosaurs Lived: After the dinosaurs
Name three things that ice age hunters made from animals to survive.

Our Planet Earth: Air and Water
What does the Beaufort ("Bo-fort") scale measure?

Taran's knowledge treasure hunt 5

Our Planet Earth: People and the Earth
What used to be on the land where people create farms?

In the Factory: Machines
What kind of vehicle takes milk from farms to the dairy?

The Solar System: The Universe
Usually Pluto is the farthest planet. How often is it closer to the sun than Neptune?
Pluto has one moon named Charon. Who is the moon named after?

Taran's knowledge treasure hunt 4

When Dinosaurs lived: Evolution
How many years ago did the first fish move onto land?

People and Places: Europe
Fish are caught in floating nets. What are shellfish caught in?

Our Planet Earth: The Land
What is the difference between stalactites and stalagmites?

swimming in edinburgh

Here's a nice shot of the castle at night, mostly just to show the incredible variety of colors that only seem possible here.


We had a very different sort of day today-- we used "free swim vouchers" courtesy of Scottish (British) Gas to get access to the swimming pool at the Edinburgh Carlton (Barcelo) Hotel. A small pool, but a spa (hot tub), sauna, and steam room, and lots and lots of warm air and hot water, which were luxuries in themselves. The kids wore themselves out, had huge dinners and went promptly to sleep. There is a closer, public swimming pool, Glenogle Swim Center, but we've not made it there yet for open swim, and it was nice to get a free one in.

Lynn's big (follow-up) ladies night is tomorrow: I'll be doing a self-skills audit and mentoring plan for myself. And hopefully some paper writing as well.

The kids are consistently tired, but generally well-settled. Taran has made friends at Stockbridge and has finally gotten past all the opposition, apparently, as he's now earning credits for his House (Henderson) and getting "golden time" on Fridays where he can trade Pokemon with friends during school hours. I must admit, however, that I'm hard-pressed to pry out of him any kind of academic work at school...

liking scotland

One has to admire people who assess the encroaching darkness, wind, rain (and sometimes snow) and say, "I've got a great idea, let's have a carnival. Outside!" Indeed, the Ferris Wheel has been set up and lit up, along with the carousel, nicely bracketing the spiky dark broodiness of the Scott Monument. The photo below is not mine (as usual), but it is representative of what Princes Street will clearly look like in another week or two. The well-lit castle-like building in the background is the beautiful and elegant Balmoral Hotel where I enjoyed afternoon tea two months back. Very posh and Scottish, at the same time. If you look carefully you can just barely make out the shape of the Scott Monument Tower looming over the Ferris wheel.

Clearly, the winter holidays are taken quite seriously here, and by that I mean people plan to have a seriously good time, no doubt aided by a few warming beverages.

Who rides a Ferris wheel at night when the temperature is 2C and the wind blows 25kph...

weather, work, etc.

Just a quick note. Weather has been moderate-- upper 30s and 40s. The wind picked up today a bit. Over the next 10 days, the low temp is predicted at 36F and the high 45F. That includes days and nights.

Work's been really busy. Preparation finally underway for next term's classes-- I'll be co-teaching two. Research about to finally get re-started, and lots and lots of writing to do. Deadline for AoM submission is 11-Jan, and I'm hoping to have three full submissions.

Kids seem to be doing well, but Kenna's been very tired. I worry the cold in the flat is getting to them. Lynn went and looked at other flats in the catchment, but one was too small and the other wasn't advantageous enough to be willing to switch to, given that it's still quite expensive.

More soon :)

Friends in Venice

A wonderful one-day visit to Venice wouldn't be complete without seeing the Piazza San Marco, a ride on a vaporetto, a lengthy winding walk around the entire city (nearly), the Bridge of Sighs (now terribly marred by advertising), pizza, and an incredible seafood lunch at a true local restaurant on Murano. As it was, the trip also included a wonderful hotel, a visit to the University, and time to wander the canals.

But the best part of the trip was, of course, the company.

Kenna the creeper climber

From our trip to London, a photo of Kenna in the mouse-house ball in the Kew Gardens Creepers and Climbers indoor play area. Kenna sat in this spot for more than 15 minutes. Perhaps it was just very warm up there.

appreciating edinburgh weather

Today was classic Edinburgh. Cold, blustery and rainy all morning. I worried that Lynn and the kids got doused on the way to school, since I saw Lynn didn't take an umbrella. By early afternoon, the sun came out and my office got uncomfortably warm. By nightfall, the wind had picked up, the rain returned, and I got partly drenched on the way home, because the wind rendered my umbrella nearly useless. I fully appreciated the Edinburgh mindset of: "I'll just get there and dry off." The wind is still blowing hard, and the rain is so odd it is funny. Nothing for a while, then a rapid patter on the windows and skylights, lasting as long as 5 minutes but often as short at 5 seconds. It is not unusual to walk through town and find a 50ft length of wet pavement surrounded by dryness. That's where it rained.

I leave for Venice tomorrow morning. The more I do this the more I realize I'm just not a good international traveller. It's rather embarrassing, really-- but it makes me anxious. I don't like changing money, or trying to figure out transportation. Sometimes I worry I should really just stick to the US, Canada, and the UK (I wouldn't have previously put the UK in there, but I can hardly claim to be anxious about traveling around here now).

The UK Border Agency gave us most of our VAT tax back. Rather, they sent us a letter saying they would, which is probably pretty much a guarantee. Everything takes longer here-- and just when you think nothing is going to happen, it finally gets sorted.

Lynn's social calendar is amazing. There's stuff for her and the kids to do constantly. I'm exhausted just looking at it all. I'm also exhausted working on this manuscript resubmission. As usual, I underestimated the work required to just get it done. I'll be spending all of my 5 hours in Schipol tomorrow on that.

Cheers from dark and stormy Dunedin!

From Wikipedia:
"Edinburgh has also been known as Dunedin, deriving from the Scottish Gaelic, Dùn Èideann. Dunedin, New Zealand, was originally called "New Edinburgh" and is still nicknamed the "Edinburgh of the South". The Scots poets Robert Burns and Robert Fergusson sometimes used the city's Latin name, Edina. Ben Jonson described it as Britain's other eye,[32] and Sir Walter Scott referred to the city as yon Empress of the North.[33]"

Here's my personal favorite:
"Robert Louis Stevenson, also a son of the city, wrote, 'Edinburgh is what Paris ought to be'."

cold inside

Cheers from chilly Edinburgh. As Lynn pointed out today, it's not really that cold (even considering the dampness)-- if you bundle up, you can be quite comfortable walking around. After all, it's about 2-5C (34-42F), and even with the windchill it's nothing like a Wisconsin winter. And it really won't get much colder than this.

That's not the problem.

The problem is that it's cold INSIDE. We can't keep the flat warm. My guess is that it's about 60F in most of the flat, and more like 50F (or colder) in the North facing rooms on the 2nd floor. The wind comes off the Firth, up the hill and THROUGH the single-pane, paint-insulation-only windows directly into the rest of the flat. The estimate from British Gas to heat the flat for a year was £3600 (yes, that's around $5000). Clearly, we aren't spending that much, mostly because we're just living with the cold for now. The kids don't seem particularly bothered (Taran tends to run around barefoot), but Lynn and I can really feel it. There's just not much we can do-- 14' ceilings are quite grand, but the windows wouldn't pass inspection in any Midwestern city.

In any case-- a busy few days, and then Friday I leave for 1 day in Venice to work with my co-authors on a paper. Back Saturday night (late). All else seems good, but very very busy.

Stanford is 6th in the BCS, Wisconsin 7th. Who'd have thunk it?

Check out the text from a climate website-- note that the "rainiest months" in the description don't actually match the data...

"Edinburgh has very unpredictable weather, sunny summer days sometimes rapidly changing into damp, showery conditions or vice versa. Summers are generally fine though, with mild temperatures and bright sunshine, although days might start out misty. Winters are long and damp with many frosty days. December, January and February are the rainiest months, but snow in winter is infrequent. The best time to travel to Edinburgh is during spring when parks are a riot of colour and the weather pleasant."

uk services, ha ha!

Well, suddenly the American capitalist-driven system seems elegant, sophisticated and efficient once again...

Oh, I still appreciate an economy that provide universal health care, and I'm the last person (perhaps literally) to complain about the Tube services, and I love the country-wide train services (London to Edinburgh every 30-60 minutes!), but once in a while...

We returned from a fun weekend in London with the Vellas (more about that in tomorrow's posting) with the expectation of problems with phone, internet, etc. Lynn had commented that the internet wasn't working when she left on Friday, and her phone stopped working around the same time. In the meantime, we'd gotten strange emails from Paypal about troubles with our bank accounts, and my NatWest card gets rejected about 50% of the time.

Here appears to be the strange confluence of problems:

1) My NatWest card expires this month. According to NatWest, it expires at the END of the month, and is valid through the month. They claim a new card will be sent "2 weeks" prior to that. In the meantime, my card is getting rejected roughly 50% of the time. At the hotel on Friday, some restaurants (but not others), and so on. I can get money out, and when I went to the branch at Imperial on Thursday I was assured the account was active and the card working. It is what it is-- in other words, it's only working part of the time. Prediction: no new card arrives, the account becomes inactive at the end of the month. Near-term fix: move all the funds out of the account to our Bank of Scotland accounts, although...

2) Bank of Scotland, which has generally batted above .400 (which is VERY good for a UK bank) with us, transferred the direct debits from Natwest to them. After all, we were dropping NatWest anyway, since they are almost totally unhelpful and, in effect, leaving Scotland (something their London compadres are in fact, unaware of). The process appears to have batted about .400, which I suppose makes sense. The biggest problem appears to have been with 3 (our mobile provider). Lynn lost mobile service on Saturday, with a text message that direct debit hadn't gone through and therefore our payment was late. We've restored it today by paying the bill by phone (rather than online, see #3 below), but the explanation from the 3 customer representative was that they received the information to debit the new bank account but when they tried to do so it was rejected by the bank because (and I quote) "the bank had received no instructions." So, apparently, when BoS offered to transfer our direct debits and, by extension, pay our bills out of that account, they didn't actually mean they would, in fact, PAY OUR BILLS. What sort of instructions did they need? Something like "Since you said you'd pay the bill, PAY THE F'ing BILL!" ? Who knows which of the other direct debits have been similarly f-ed up? I guess we'll just wait and see which services stop working.... which brings us to #3...

3) Our internet is down. So our first theory was that VirginMedia ran into the same problem as 3, so (once we'd re-established phone service) we contacted them. But it turned out that there is some sort of network fault covering our entire neighborhood, reported initially on 3-Nov, and they hope to have service re-established on 10-Nov (yes, that's Wednesday). In the meantime, we're stealing bandwidth from some kind soul in the neighborhood running a non-password encrypted wi-fi network, and aside from that Lynn's iPhone runs faster on 3G than this does. We can't, in a bit of irony, perhaps, actually LOAD OUR VIRGINMEDIA account on this borrowed bandwidth, because it's too f'ing bandwidth intensive (attempting to get us interested in current culture, I suppose).

Oh for the simplicity of American industries driven by the flawed but pure intent to make as much money as possible! My comment to Lynn was that while such mechanisms might not be appropriate for health care, they damn well appear to make sense for financial systems and telecommunications. They may be evil, but they get the job done.

Cheers from chilly and dark Edinburgh!

Cheers from London

A few days in London on my own, doing academic sorts of things. Meetings with research colleagues about research and publications. Providing a lecture to entrepreneurs about business planning. Mentoring early stage ventures on pitching for funds. Lots of walking, as usual.

I've got a photo of my tiny hotel room, but this laptop doesn't have bluetooth so uploading will have to wait until early next week.

Tomorrow Lynn and the kids train down and we're spending the weekend with American friends living here full time. Science museum tomorrow afternoon, Kew gardens on Saturday, and hopefully Hyde park on Sunday before catching the train to return. Too many logistics (especially with Tube engineering work disrupting easy transit on Sunday), but presumably it will be rewarding for them to see parts of the big city.

There was a tube strike on Weds when I arrived, but other than an overcrowded ride from KingsX to Victoria I wasn't significantly inconvenienced.

It was strange to feel how much lighter and warmer London is than Edinburgh-- I could more appreciate the sense of Scotland being a land of eternal winter to the Southerners...

Recovered, I think

Well, it's been a long 2 weeks since the viva-- most of it spent mostly sick, dealing with sick kids. We all seemed to have some kind of sinusitis, but antibiotics save the day once again.

Lynn's been in Gairloch for 2 days visiting a long-lost Hoofer, and I've given the ol' college try to taking care of the kids for a couple days, with mixed results, I think. They were miserable yesterday, better today, but I'm sure will be quite pleased to have their mom back.

I go to London tomorrow for some venture mentoring. Lynn and the kids will follow on Friday and we'll spend the weekend with the Vellas, hopefully seeing Kew Gardens and some of the sights in South Kensington. It is their first ever visit to London :)