Category Archives: travel

Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag

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(Apologies to the Godfather.)

My previous hard case for the Brompton was getting battered to bits by the baggage handlers, was too big for the bike anyway (was an old hard-sided suitcase that I bought second hand for $50), but had put in good service for two years. Options: (1) Look for a new one by driving around lots of second hand luggage places again, finding another almost-fit, or (2) Pay the money for a purpose-built professional case that fits rather snugly (and is quite light) and have more peace of mind that the B’s going to be ok when it gets to the other side. It’s expensive, but will be worth it in the long run…

I picked (2):

  hard case for the Brompton  hard case for the Brompton

(Click for a larger view.)

….and I’ve just unpacked the B in Aspen, Colorado, and ten seconds later, it’s ready to ride! In case you’re (somehow) a reader of the blog that has not been familiarized with the Brompton, click here for a view of it unfolded. Look in the “related posts” list below for some posts in which it makes at least a roll-on appearance.

I’m here for physics, as usual, and the bike is going to be even more useful than […] Click to continue reading this post →

When Worlds Collide, II

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I think I ought to explain, as promised, why I am in New York. The first thing to mention is that I wrote the previous post in this miniseries (it was written on a flight to Dublin, and finally posted when I returned) before I knew about any of what I’m about to tell you, so it is rather funny to me…

casino royale shoot

The week that I returned from Dublin I noticed a phone message from an editor of a magazine asking me to return their call. A couple of days later I learned what it was about. It’s a magazine that largely focuses on buzz about people and projects in the entertainment and fashion industry – Music (R&B, Hip Hop mostly), Movies and TV, etc., as far as I can tell, along with some coverage of parts of the business world. Its readership is mostly younger African American males, I think. As far as I can tell, the intention is not to be about those things in particular, but it is largely reflecting the interests of the readership it is targeted at. It’s a major product, jumping out at you immediately when you are in the magazine store (the striking picture of a woman on the front helps it grab your attention, of course).

Each year, the magazine does a special issue featuring a group of individuals who are doing “major things” in the industries I mentioned above. It is a combination of a focus on new talent that’s about to become more widely known, or just bringing to readers’ attention the existence of some of the people who are making significant impact in what they’re doing.

Somehow – I do not know how – they got my name. It turns out that they spent some time reading some of things I’ve written here at Asymptotia too. Now normally, you’d expect things to stop at that point, but in fact it did not. They decided to broaden things out a bit and include me (if I was willing) in this year’s feature issue.

I thought about it for a day. It is quite an honour to be approached, and I’m also impressed that the magazine’s editors are being creative in this way (it would be easy […] Click to continue reading this post →

So Good They Named It Twice

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empire state buildingI’m referring to New York, of course. The Empire State building, which I walked by a short while ago, is still pretty lovely (it has to be said that I’m more of a Chrysler building man, myself – must go and have a look for it).

It’s been several years since those days when I used to use New York as my Summer base camp, and it’s been too long. Four or five years, I think. I’d forgotten how much I missed the city, to be honest. It is certainly good to be back and see it all again, including the bitterly cold wind that can be channeled down the grid streets with the bits of snow side by side underfoot.

The city is even greater in my mind now that you can so easily connect to the airport using the subway, train and the AirTrain. (As I’ve discussed in other posts I am sure the same enhancement (but massively more so) will happen to Los Angeles when the new subway/train lines are built). When I was last […] Click to continue reading this post →

Random Travel Matters

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Well, I’m sorry if things have been a bit quiet around here for a bit. I’ve been very busy, and also eight hours out of sync with my usual cycle. Couple this to also being disconnected from the web in the second hotel I was staying in because of me being too cheap to pay the extortionate amount that they were asking for a connection (the other place had a free connection in certain public lounges, and luckily the signal leaked into my room enough to get me a good connection a lot of the time) and you get quite a bit of quiet.

merrion square and st stephen's church

I was in Dublin and London again. Dublin mainly on a work mission, London on the way back for non-work. I was having panel deliberations once again on a range of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fashionably Deconstructed

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Spotted in the windows of a Department store (Hermes?) in Dublin (click for larger):

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They are trying to invoke a car that has been taken apart and draped with hermes 2 splendid clothing to form the display. In the picture below (click for larger), the second window’s oil can, in the carefully chosen-to-match colour, is a […] Click to continue reading this post →

Memories, Physics, and Celebration

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It’s a pleasantly foggy morning here on the USC campus. It is 7:00am now (at least at start of writing), and it will all burn off in a few hours, I imagine, to reveal the sunny sky waiting for us. But right now it reminds me of the Cambridge morning of a couple of weeks ago. A foggy Saturday morning in fact. I took that photo of the spider web I used on Halloween with that mist in the background.

That Saturday of celebration of Andrew’s work (The Andrew Chamblin Memorial Conference) at Cambridge was a remarkable experience. I was exhausted through a good deal of it, since I had eight hour jetlag, but I’m so glad I went, and that I could contribute a talk. I met many old friends and colleagues, drawn mostly from the UK and European side of Andrew’s collection of friends, collaborators, and admirers in the field.

andrew chamblin memorial conferenceThere were talks by former collaborators of Andrew’s: Gary Gibbons, myself, Roberto Emparan, Robert Caldwell, Raphael Bousso, and Stephen Hawking (who also guided some of Andrew’s thesis work). Gary, in “Discrete Symmetries and Gravity”, talked about Andrew’s early Oxford and Cambridge work on various discrete symmetries in physics, particularly those of a geometrical origin. He’d played with various ideas in this context, including some applications to problems in […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Positive Sign

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I’m always pleased to see this sign. It is at Heathrow, on the walk down the perpetually dingily lit underground corridors connecting the terminals, the tube, the extortion Heathrow express, and the parking lots.

For a start, I generally like the idea that the ground floor of a building (the one you walk onto off the street) is the “zeroth” floor. (I mean no disrespect to this splendid country I live in, that has largely chosen otherwise, although every now and again in older buildings you see it.) So it is just great to see […] Click to continue reading this post →

Pause for a Pint of Guinness

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Well, it was only yesterday that I was telling the physics 100 class all about Special Relativity (lots of incredulous looks…. lots of reassurances, including: “You’re confused? That’s ok! It is one of the greatest pieces of science of the 20th Century… It’s not supposed to be trivial….”), but it seems like an age ago, and very distant. That’s because I’m in Dublin today. (Pesky wormholes.)

Just for a few days.

Guinness will be involved, I imagine (yeah!), although it will not be the primary focus. (The pint in the photo to the right is from a previous trip.) [ … ] Click to continue reading this post →

Saturday Morning Fun

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During the course of a coffee break during Saturday’s all day conference in Cambridge, I looked out of the window to an intriguing sight:

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(Click for larger.) They were doing needlework of some sort, and it looked like a lot of fun. They were happy to let the strange man (uh… me) take the photograph he asked for. Little did I know that one of them -Richard- actually reads blogs about science including this very blog and wrote in and asked if I was that particular photographer! Small world! […] Click to continue reading this post →