Back in action!

Another exciting week here. I'm still not 100%, but I had to get back to doing things! Too much to do w/ too little time left!

Monday: We started Monday with a trip to the Museum of London. They have a new exhibit on Sherlock Holmes and since we had read a couple of his stories in Cryptography class, I thought it'd be fun to check it out. The first cool thing was that they had one of the stories we read ("The Adventures of the Dancing Men") wrapped around this little entry way outside of the museum AND they had the little stick figures on the side of the building (which the students noticed before I did). Super cool. The inside of the exhibit was just okay. There was one little display case about cryptography and Sherlock and another on fingerprint analysis done by Galton (which we had discussed in Stats), but the rest of it was just paintings/photos of London at the time Sherlock was written. This makes sense since it was an exhibit AT the Museum of London. After checking that out, I glanced around a bit at the rest of the museum. Not really my cup of tea. There was a tiny exhibit on Paddington Bear, whcih was fun. Oh and I saw the Lord Mayor's Day chariot thing. That was cool. After the museum, I did some work and got ready for our dinner w/ the Provost. The Provost was here Sunday-Tuesday checking out the program and such. We had him and his wife over for dinner on Monday w/ some of the IES staff. It was quite nice. Ed even pulled the old play the oven trick again. Good stuff. 

Secret entrance to the exhibit

Tuesday: Today's crypto class was some of the math behind MD5. We did hexadecimal and bit operations. This was all based on a module I've been working on w/ two colleagues over the last 6 months, so it was fun to see it in practice. After class, I did my 10 mile bridge run. I ran all 13 bridges in the heart of London from Battersea Bridge to Tower Bridge. Not as many steps as I thought. I took a pic of each bridge, but it was while I was running, so they weren't the best photos ever. Fun run for sure. I think I spent the rest of the day hard at work. That night we took almost all of the students to this great cheap cinema (Genesis Cinema) near Whitechapel. We saw The Imitation Game, which is the film about Alan Turning. I thought it was great! It was cool to get to see that after studying all the code stuff in class and visiting Blechley. Plus, it was fun to see a movie w/ 30 students. We had almost the whole theater to ourselves, so that was fun too. Great movie...you should see it if you get a chance! They do a great job telling the story of a female codebreaker too. :)

Wednesday: Today was the last day of upper-level math class. The students gave some nice presentations on more advanced cryptography topics. But, on my way to class I stopped at Herman Ze German to have some sausage and German orange soda. Tasty. And perfect timing as I finalized my German Christmas market plans that morning. After class, before I headed out there was a crazy protest walking down the street outside the IES building. Something about free education. Insane. After I made my way out of that mess, I headed to the Tate Modern and had a lovely afternoon exploring the museum. Definitely my kind of stuff. Plenty of good surrealism, cubism, and minimalism. Plus, these statutes by two different artists. But, I totally was in love with them. Nice to finally see this museum since I run by it so many days each week!

OK, so I think this is Richier. Love this.

This one (and the one below too!) is by Giacometti. Love!

Crazy modern art #1.

Crazy modern art #2

Thursday: Stats class today. ANOVA and checking in on projects. Then, I did an afternoon run on the water. That night Ed and I headed over to ITV studios to see The Graham Norton Show. This is like the UK version of The Tonight Show. Normally you have to queue for like 3 hours, but Ed had put his name in to do this segment called The Red Chair and they liked his story, so we got to go straight in to the theater. Boom! The show's guests were Jim Carey, Jeff Daniels, Jude Law, Tasmin Grieg, and Nichole Scherzinger (from the Pussycat Dolls). It was super fun watching the show and seeing the celebs interact. There were 6 or so other Red Chair contestants and only 3 ended up getting to tell their stories, but Ed wasn't one of them. Bummer! But, it was still cool that he got to go backstage and it saved us hours of waiting in line in the cold, so no loss there! The show will air on BBC America in a few weeks probably...so you all should look for it!!

Friday: I had a real case of the Mondays today. I got up at 6 to finish class prep, but still wasn't ready when I needed to leave at 8. Didn't have breakfast because I was in a hurry. Hopped into the local grocery next to work to grab some pastries and they didn't have my favorite in stock that morning. Left some files I needed for class on my computer here so couldn't pass out the things I wanted to in class. Left some stuff to hand back to students at home too. My shirt had static in it. Just annoying things. Nothing terrible, just annoying. We finished up talking about MD5 today in class and started a discussion about steganography. That's fun stuff. So, at least that was good. The previous night, I had asked Ed to go to lunch with me at 12:30 at a wine bar near the IES center because I had a Groupon that was expiring soon. He forgot about it and so we were running a bit late to lunch, but once we got there it was nice and fun to have fancy food in the middle of the day. After that I went home and did some work until I went and did a TimeOut offer I had purchased months ago. Headed out to catch a bus only to realize half-way to the bus stop that I had forgotten my Oyster card. My case of the Mondays continued. Once I made it to my destination, I had a nice cocktail on the 27th floor of the Milbank Tower and then watched a movie (The Rewrite w/ Hugh Grant) in this little theater they created on the first floor of the building. Loved the movie. It was a ridiculous romantic comedy about a screenwriter who had to become a college professor in some tiny town in order to make a living. It definitely helped improve my mood.

Saturday: I got up early and ran towards Asda so I could get my run in for the day. I carried my grocery bags in one hand which was a bit annoying, but it felt efficient to run somewhere. I did some shopping there, and then had a terrible time paying because they wouldn't accept my swipe card even though they had accepted it the week before. I'm done w/ that place. I also lost an ear bud cover in there. So, that was annoying. Did some work during the day and then met up w/ my friend Pete to check out the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. Total bad idea. That place was insane on a rainy Saturday. We had to queue to get in the building. THEN, it was a 45 minute wait to see the dinosaur room. We passed on that. But, we did see one dino and a whole bunch of stuffed dead animals. Now, I don't get this. I can see real tigers at the zoo. Why would I want to see dead stuffed ones? Weird. We also looked at exhibits about volcanoes and hung out in the earthquake simulator. I was a real Debbie Downer about the whole place, but it was still fun because it was just so ridiculously bad that I had to laugh. I might attempt to go back on a weekday after I get back from India. Maybe it would be less crowded then. In order to make up for this bad idea (of checking out this museum on a Saturday), Pete and I had a nice drink at a pub nearby. Then, I headed home to get more work done! Work, work, work!

Only dino sighting.

Darwin. I guess this was cool.

Sunday: It was a rainy, cold day today. So, great time to get more work done! But, after working from 7am-1pm or so, I decided I deserved a break. So, I met Pete and we checked out Draughts, a board game cafe in East London. They have like 500 board games and you go, get a table and play as much as you like. We had to wait about an hour for a table, so we got a cup of tea and checked out all the games while we waited. We ended up playing a two player version of Carcassonne, called The Castle. Don't do it. It's not as pretty as regular Carcassonne. Super cool place (but I so forgot to take a photo!). Nash--this is what we needed in Scandinavia! Plus everything was in English. Then, I wanted to check out this restaurant called LMNT that I wanted to take my parents to when they were here, but we ran out of town. We walked a few blocks, made it to the restaurant....and it was closed! Like for good. There was all this trash and broken furniture on the outside and the windows had been painted over. It had to happen recently, because I read reviews about the place that were posted in the last month. Total bust. I'm beginning to think Pete is bad luck (first no inflatable rabbits on Southbank, then history museum bust, then this). Whatever. It's fine. It was just funny at this point. So, I got out my trusty Yelp app and found a wine bar a few streets away. We went there and it was adorable and just fine. Then, it was back to work again! Fun outing.


And for Mom, this week's Paddington statues (one made of wood, Sherlock, and one with pigeons!):