Only 6 weeks left!

Another busy week here as time continues to fly by!

Classes:

Cryptography: We spent Tuesday going over some more of the Enigma counting questions. We had gone over that pretty fast on Friday, so I knew a review might be necessary. Then, we started talking about binary/ASCII to lay the ground for DES. Friday was all about DES. I've been using Cozzens/Miller's The Mathematics of Encryption: An Introduction to Cryptography to supplement our main book quite a bit and loved the BabyBlock example that was in their book. We went through that in class and thought that was much easier to explain than the full version of DES. I'd definitely recommend their book for anyone thinking about teaching a Cryptography class for non-majors.

Stats: Spent some serious time summarizing the chapter on regression. The students also had some nice examples of Found Statistics this time! Newspaper articles and such. Very nice. They are in the midst of their projects now, so I'm hoping to end class a bit early each week to give them time for data collection/analysis.

City life: 


Monday: Early AM appointment at Indian visa office to secure conference visa. Hoping that all works this time. However, the guy wasn't sure at first because he thought I was just visiting London and if that was the case I couldn't apply for a visa here. Ugh. I showed him the British visas in my passport and that seemed to convince him it would work. Who knows. 10-15 business days before I know anything. Worked the rest of the day even though it was beautiful outside!! I did walk to the corner bakery (Konditor and Cook) for lunch. I always see their chalkboard sign advertising lunch deals and mom suggested I try it some time. Monday's special was ham/bacon pasta bake. It was tasty. And only like 6pounds. Not bad. I made two meals out of it. They also had all kinds of salads and another main course option and quiche. Good to know if I ever need a quick lunch!

Tuesday: Class.  Weekly meeting w/ IES staff in which I purchased some crodoughs from Rinkoff Bakery in East London. Not my favorite thing, but they were on the must eat in London list.

Then, since it was such a pretty day I decided I MUST do something fun. So, I went out to the Docklands area and rode the Emirates Airline Cable Car. Great views! Then, I took the DLR back over to Greenwich Park and did my run there. Great place for a run this time of year! So many cool trees and the leaves have some color to them and there are some hills. Very fun run. Plus, I checked two things off my list!

Wednesday: 6:30AM Rave!! OK, so I didn't actually get there until 7AM, but it was quite fascinating. People were so happy and just there to dance. No drunk people, no people trying to dance all up on you. Just people who like the morning...drinking smoothies...or coffee. There were people painting you with glitter and face painters. And people dressed up like unicorns. And the theme was 80s Austria because they were giving away a free trip to Austria, so lots of people in ski gear and Bavarian costumes. There was even a guy dressed in Bavarian gear playing the saxophone at one point. Ridiculous. Certainly a fun way to start the day.

A snowman! For mom. :)

Post rave...Ed decided he needed a pic of my sweet rave outfit.

I even chatted it up w/ a fellow raver on the way to the tube station. He knew where we were going and so helped lead the way. Turns out he is a computer graphics guy that works in feature films. AND he's working on the same Tom Hardy film they filmed on OUR street a few months ago! Crazy coincidence!! And, he knew the scene they filmed here too. They are adding a church at the dead end. Just crazy. We had a nice chat and then crammed ourselves onto the crowded 9:15AM tube. I even learned the British word for grading: marking.

After that excitement, I had to get to work! Did lots of stuff for class and then that night we had a Jack the Ripper tour w/ the students. Fascinating stuff. So, for those of you that don't know who that is (like myself) let me give you a run down: Late 19th century, this guy kills 5 women (all prostitutes) in a span of 10 days or so.  And not just kills them, but like cuts out their organs and stuff. Pretty gross stuff. I guess just in time for Halloween. :/ Then, after those 10 days he disappears. I guess he's famous because he was one of the first serial killers in London to cause a real panic. But, the tour guide had this great conspiracy theory about how this whole killing spree was done by the Royal Family's doctor and that was totally cool.

The guide had this projector thing that he used to project stuff on to walls. Pics of the dead people and such.

Thursday: Class/work day. Went for a run at 4:30PM along the South Bank because it was SO nice outside. I guess everyone had the idea to be out there though and so it made for a terrible run. Dodging people. People just standing on the bridges taking pictures. Ugh. Bad move on my part. After the run, we had tickets to see Electra with Kristen Scott Thomas. Interesting play. I think I had read it in high school/college. Old school Greek tragedy. But, the plot was interesting, so that was good. The theater had closed captioning and I found that a bit distracting since our seats faced directly towards it, but otherwise it was well acted and the theater in the round setup was cool. Not sure I'd see something like that again though.

Friday: Happy Halloween! I dressed up as a Skytale cipher. Ed took a pic and I'll post it here once he sends it to me. Good stuff. Then, it was 70 degrees out so I decided to check out some tea shops. Wen to Amanzi and got a bubble tea. Then to Postcard Teas and East India Tea Company before stopping to get some lunch/tea at the Urban Tea Rooms. I went and ate my lunch in this cute garden square. A lovely afternoon. Then, it was home to do a bit of work.

Halloween celebrations: Met up w/ some students to have a drink at The Alchemist. Just watching them make the drinks was fun. Bubbles/dry ice/fire/popping candy. Crazy fun.

Then, we were off to the Vauxhall Fire Festival. Now, Halloween isn't such a big deal here, but it happens to be near their big holiday of Guy Fawkes Day where they have bonfires/fireworks to celebrate the failed attempt to burn down Parliament (and Guy Fawkes was one of the people involved in that attempt). SO,  I got to see my first Guy Fawkes bonfire at this festival. WEIRD stuff. They burned a scarecrow Guy and shot off fireworks and had people doing the Thriller dance and then someone read Jabberwocky. Weird. I think some of the students liked it. :)

Saturday: Ascot!! As a Kentucky girl, I couldn't miss the chance to check out some British horse racing. A few weeks ago I found a Travelzoo deal where you could go to Ascot, sit in Premier seating, have a free drink, and see fireworks. Amazing. So I bought it and told some students about it. Six students ending up joining me and we had a great day! It was sunny and about 60 degrees. Seven races total. And then a pretty terrible 2 hour wait for the fireworks, but we survived the cold, long wait and were treated to the most amazing 20-minute fireworks show I've ever seen with a great soundtrack. Some of those fireworks were nothing like others I have seen!

Some notes on British horse racing:

1) This was jumps season. Two kinds of races: hurdles and steeplechase. Hurdles wasn't too bad. The hurdles gave way, so even if a horse didn't jump high enough...no big deal. OH...and yes. They are all running around a regular track all at the same time jumping over these hurdles. Crazy. Steeplechase is way worse. Hard/brick like jumps. In the first race, 3 horses lost their riders. And, they ran around the track 3 full times AFTER the race before their trainers could reel them in. I thought it was very sad. Those horses had to be exhausted.

2) The races are much longer, 2-3 miles. That's a lot of running!

3) Turf only. No dirt here. There was even one flat race, so that was nice to see the basic comparison.

4) OH! No starting gates!!! They just bunch up in front of this little rope and then they let the rope fall and these horses start running. SO freaking weird!!

5) Betting is different. Not run by the track. Different companies are spread out all over the place and you decide who/where to bet. I stuck w/ Totesport. They had some interesting bets. You can pick a horse to win (standard). Place meant it just had to get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. That was a fun bet, but didn't pay much. They had exacta and trifecta. Then, they had swinger. I did that a couple of times w/ no luck. The idea: Pick 2 horses to place 1,2, or 3 in any order. Interesting. I think I ended up winning about 5 pounds. Not terrible. :)

6) Grandstand seating had no seats. Just rows for people to stand. There were some benches out on the grass, but otherwise no seating downstairs. Good thing we had fancy tickets.

Sunday: Another work day. But, I did score some free tickets to a taping of a game show pilot at the ITV studio down the street. I invited my former game show students that are on this trip and one of them agreed and then I found two other students to join us. It turned out to be a 5 hour adventure! OMG! The taping takes SO long! One hour of waiting to get into the studio scored us front row seats. Then, 4 hours of taping. It was a pilot taping, so it may never even air and they were experimenting and stuff, so maybe it's not normally like this, but UGH! I don't think I need to do that again. But, it was fun to see the show and concept. It was called Smart Ask and the contestants had to generate questions to try to stump a panel of experts. If they could stump the experts they won money. Liked the concept. I think I was over it after the first 1.5 hours...mainly because I was hungry. Got home around 10:45PM. I think the students liked it, but they were hungry too! Note: if you're going to a game show taping...eat before...and sneak in some snacks!!