[Wherein we review an academic conference in the High/Low/Crush/Goal/Bane format used for reviewing juggling conventions on rec.juggling.]

High: My old Codeplay colleague Ally Donaldson's FAT-GPU workshop. He was talking about his GPUVerify system, which takes CUDA or OpenCL programs and either proves them free of data races and synchronisation- ( Read more... )

Impressed by their consistent stand in favour of civil liberties, and concerned worried absolutely frickin' terrified by the way none of the other parties were treating climate change with the seriousness it merits, I joined the Scottish Green Party shortly before the election, and spent a few evenings posting leaflets, hanging up placards and so ( Read more... )

I've just got back from the 2009 British Juggling Convention in Norwich.

High: the German Wheel workshop. Real feel-the-fear-and-do-it-anyway stuff, but really good fun once I got going ( Read more... )

High: hanging out on the beach after the conference dinner with Tom, Steve Lack, Eugenia Cheng, Peter Lumsdaine, Emily and Louise, and Telyn Kusalik. Great fun, good company, an amazing starfield, and cold but invigorating water to swim in :-) Also, in general, the surroundings: Carvoeiro's a beautiful place ( Read more... )

High: Meeting Charlie Dancey, and him turning out to be a really nice bloke [as is his juggling partner Haggis McLeod, for that matter]. Charlie's Encyclopedia of Ball Juggling, which I bought purely on the strength of an Amazon recommendation while I was buying James Ernest's contact juggling book, really opened my eyes to the fun and ( Read more... )

The Scottish Juggling Convention's been and gone for another year, and it rocked. Great people, both new and old, an amazing show, haggis juggling, and all the other things we've come to expect. It was the first convention for both of the organisers (in one case, the first convention she'd ever been to), and so it was a bit rough around the edges; ( Read more... )

My review of the 83rd Peripatetic Seminar on Sheaves and Logic, in rec.juggling HLGCB style:

High: Francis Borceux's seminar on synthetic differential geometry (constructing infinitesimals by replacing the topos of sets with something more fancy) or Tom's four-line definition of Lebesgue integration. Both seriously cool. And the dinner at Balbir ( ( Read more... )

At 3.30pm last Wednesday, having packed all our stuff, wormwood_pearl, Sarah, Gavin, Graham and I met outside the juggling club, quickly packed our stuff in the trailer, then had a pleasant and swift drive down to Cornwall for the British Juggling Convention. We arrived in good time, put our tents up, and had a pleasant night's sleep.

Yeah, right.
( juggle juggle juggle )