AIESEC, University, The Founder of the Web...

It's all just too much!

I sprang out of bed bright and early on Tuesday morning for the return to University. After the neccessary shower, coffee (from my shiny new coffee maker yey), orange juice and waking a very hungover Thom from the dead, the three of us headed on our merry way down to the infamous Kings Buildings (where they ship off all the Science and Engineering students to make sure they don't alarm the Arts students). Some were more merry than others, notably me flashing my camera with everything and documenting the whole malarky. Thomas was notably less merry thanks to his over-merriness last night which resulted in a monumental rant about the grumpy old man downstairs, now dubbed Mr Spottiswoode as he seems to be under the impression he owns this street.

So far he has complained to us on three occasions already! The first time was for me "causing a disturbance" by quite reasonably moving in at a very reasonable time of day, the second time for Thom playing his guitar very reasonably and the third for Thom for "slamming" the door to our flat (i.e. closing it). His hobbies appear to consist of complaining, putting up little signs with regulations on them, plumbing, sweeping the hallway, vandalising people's bikes left maliciously in said hallway, complaining about that then sweeping the hallway again just to get him in the mood for some good old complaining.

Anyway, yes, University. It is good. It's quite exciting being back, choosing courses, ready to get stuck in to it all and so on. Should be some fun stuff this year - more lego robots, computer graphics, very advanced databases, neuroscience, etc. It is rather nice living the student lifestyle again, although the pressures of (actual) work seem to be trying to take up all my time (but I'm not letting them).

Today I went to see a talk by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the world wide web and head of the W3C. So a pretty important chap to all us Computer Scientists, and everyone really. A very enthusiastic and entertaining speaker with all sorts of ideas about the future of the web and more precisely the "symantic web". The idea is a lot like the world wide web but instead of linking documents together, data itself is described and linked up in a structured way across many different domains - scientific research, e-commerce, entertainment, mapping, calendars, history, recipes, what you like to watch on TV, who you know - everything will be described and then we can ask really interesting questions about the whole lot and get information at incredibly detailed levels. For example you could read a scientific paper, trace this back to the exact experimental conditions used: when, where, how it was performed - even things the experimenter did not think about - then use the raw data yourself in some other kind of analysis. Or you could walk into a restaurant and your phone would tell the ordering system your dietry preferences enabling them to serve up a menu specific to you, then maybe you could find out exactly what had gone in to your food, where it was made right back to the field it was grown in and the conditions at the time. You can see there is a huge wealth of possibilities when we start linking all this data together and using/analyzing it in unexpected or unforeseen ways. We're clearly a long way off from all of this but things are beginning to happen with web services, RDF and all those buzzwords. It should all be quite interesting.

Now, my third topic of the day: AIESEC. Declan and I found out who the blue man is today!! It was the introductory meeting of AIESEC Edinburgh. It all started in the traditional AIESEC manner: lecture theatre, dimmed lights, loud music and a swooshy powerpoint presentation. Then there was form-filling in aplenty, them seeming to want to know our entire life histories and previous ten phone numbers. It was a lot like filling in a job application form, but of course there was loads to write about what with all the wonderful AIESEC experiences I've had. So hopefully will get past the screening process and allowed to join in on all the fun! After all that stuff we all headed to the pub to get to know everyone. They seem like a really nice bunch, and there looks to be a lot of interest in the society so I'm looking forward to being "back" in AIESEC again this year. Yey!! I'm so happy they're a proper LC!! It seems they aren't quite as well-known (or financed) as AIESEC US and could do with improving their visibility in the eyes of local companies. I hope I can play my part in developing the LC and being part of the AIESEC experience. Oh, I'm beginning to sound like them. The brainwashing has once again taken effect! :-)

Looks like it's going to be a fun (and busy) year...

Does AIESEC Edinburgh exist?

As part of my "extended lunch break" today I went with Declan to fight my way through crowds of freshers at the Society Fair today. This is the part of Fresher's week where all the societies at Edinburgh University try and lure people in with free sweets and so on. It was absolutely packed, full of a mix of bright-eyed, slightly hungover and slightly lost-looking first year students. There are a lot of societies at Edinburgh - pretty much one for anything you could think of - religions, cultures, big student movements and every hobby or pastime under the sun. Among the obscurities this year was the BBQ Society. I asked them what they do during the winter. You guessed it. They BBQ. They want to move away from just burgers and bangers, maybe try something like fish. It's all about the food apparently.

But the main purpose of the trip was to find out if AIESEC Edinburgh actually exist and were present at the fair. And they were!! With a big banner, lots of posters and a guy in a bright orange T-Shirt (so much cooler than the San Jose AIESEC T-Shirts I must say). I was so pleased I forgot to introduce myself to the guy. They are actually decently organized, with about 30 members and something like 10 incoming and outgoing trainees each year. This is good news, because it means we don't have to take over the thing and run it ourselves (although I kind of would have liked that too). But I will definitely be getting involved in as big a way as I can. Introductory meeting's next Thursday. Can't wait to bring some Bay Area spirit to AIESEC Edinburgh! I'm sure there's so much more they can be doing what with all the other cultural societies at Edinburgh, work abroad programmes and so on. Some strategic partnerships methinks.

Looks like I'm going to have a lot on my plate this year though. There's an unbelievable amount to be done at work (especially in the run up to Christmas) and I need to get moving on my Uni project (as well as all the regular Uni stuff). I hope there's still some time for fun. And eating and sleeping :-)

Potterow tonight to pretend we are back in first year! Then it's Big Steve's birthday in Glasgow tomorrow.

Went to see Me and You and Everyone We Know at the Cameo the other day. Very funny. Go see it.

How am I not myself?

Finally saw I Heart Huckabees tonight! Been trying to persuade Lewis for about a year to lend me the DVD after catching a glimpse of it before Wee Steve rejected it on moral grounds in favour of Bill Murray in a blue wet suit.

Anyway, it was a great film (Huckabees, not A Life Aquatic). Very quirky and amusing and with lots of questions and possibly some answers about the meaning of life and other such nonsense. Very Kaufman-esque so you'll like it if that's your sort of thing.

Was home at the weekend for some truly scrumptious nosh made by my sister - a massive roast chicken with Spanish-style potatoes and green beans grown by my mum. Mmmm. Then on Sunday had another roast chicken! This time cooked by Matt and Mark (friends from Uni in Edinburgh) and served up with proper yorkshire puds. Two roast dinners in a weekend - not bad going at all. Also went to see an exhibition of Francis Bacon paintings at the Scottish Museum of Modern Art - lots of weird distorted faces, kind of interesting. But the best thing was this artist who had made a huge list of the names of everybody he could remember meeting in his life. There were about 1500 I think. Totally pointless really, but I quite liked it.

Met up with Andrew and Lewis on Monday for lunch in a "traditional" American diner on the Royal Mile, called The Filling Station. Not quite the real thing, but close enough and resulted in a traditional for me extended lunch break from work. We were discussing plans to go to Germany for Oktoberfest and came to the conclusion (not sure that I totally agree) that it's probably best to go later on instead, like December or something. Then we can get a bigger group together, plan it a bit better and it won't be in the first week of Uni. Sensible I suppose. And I could use the saved money to get a much-needed laptop for Uni. I can't believe I've lived more than a year without my own computer. You wouldn't have thought it possible. Anyway, it's led me to the conclusion that I definitely need to get one and stop scrounging off other people! Also, we finish for Christmas on December 2nd so that's loads of time for holidaying!! (and of course project work but not thinking about that just now)

Been discussing with Helen some plans for next summer when she'll be in the UK. We're going to do a little bit of a trip around eastern Europe - Czech Republic, Hungaray, Croatia, that kind of thing. Should be good fun and hopefully can rope a few other people into that too. Apparently the next Bay Area RoKS conference (AIESEC thing that got me and Wee Steve brain washed) is going to be in Lake Tahoe (well not in the lake itself, obviously). I wonder if they'll be able to live up to our legendary weekend trip there. Just as long as they be careful not to steal sweets and break torchiers! They won't have Steve running around naked in the snow so at least that's something, but I bet they also won't have power hours with fruit bowls full of very cheap wine. Which reminds me, I must see about getting involved in AIESEC Edinburgh and shake them into action. Get Golden UK (Get Pasty I think we were going to call it) needs to come about!!

Tomorrow - Tom back so it's not just me and some mystery person in the flat anymore (I swear they made a Kinder Egg toy and left it in the flat while I was at work today) So I'll have my sanity back. Actually, maybe not, it is Tom. We shall see. What fun is life without a bit of insanity anyway? You all know that.

Burnin'

I just discovered this thing called FeedBurner which allows you to merge multiple sources into a single RSS feed. Feeds are a great way of keeping track of blogs, news sites and other sites that update regularly. You subscribe to feeds using a Newsreader (such as the web-based Bloglines or the one built into Thunderbird) then you can quickly and easily see which sites have had articles added to them since you last checked. The articles then appear much like e-mail messages.

Anyway, using FeedBurner I've created a combined feed of my blog and a photostream of selected photos from my Flickr collection. Use this link to subscribe to it:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancunningham

Pedalling for Scotland

Hundreds of cyclists abandon their bikes for pasta

Drew and I undertook what turned out to be a pretty damn difficult feat on Sunday: Cycling from Edinburgh to Glasgow in the annual Pedal for Scotland charity bike ride. Being a charity bike ride, I think we both thought it would be quite easy, but not so. Quite the opposite. The weather was absolutely appauling (think bitter cold rain hitting you in the face at 30mph) and it seemed to be uphill almost all of the 50 miles. Thankfully, they provided lots of snack stops along the way - a pasta party in Linlithgow (with a folk band - I was transfixed), tea and home-baked cakes in a church somewhere and Tunnock's Caramel Wafers at The Time Capsule near the end.

There were a few comedy moments along the way - me almost knocking over the the Lord Provost of Edinburgh when high-fiving the poor woman at the starting line, a spoke flying off my bike mid-hill and evidence of the practice of fruit-lobbing at cyclists obviously from some of the more cultured citizens of Glasgow. Much relief was felt when we got to Glasgow after about 7 hours, inexplicably beaten by loads of kids who I'm amazed survived the thing. We rewarded ourselves with a good old fashioned Sunday Roast from Wetherspoons. That is the only food you must ever eat from Wetherspoons, the rest is utterly crap, especially the steaks.

Well done Drew for completing "the hardest thing you've ever done"! You are officially more buff than Wee Steve now, if that's what you want. Although I've heard he's been buffing himself up in preperation for the lying on the beach of some Spanish island he's doing right now.

Thanks to everyone who sponsored me. Between the 2000 of us I think about £50,000 was raised for Children 1st and Barnardo's. That's another event to add alongside Bay to Breakers on my annual sporting calendar.