Patrick in Spain

Posts Tagged ‘Plans’

Today was our last day in Liverpool. We were be here Tuesday and last night, and the today, we’re flying over to Dublin.

So, we leave the train station where we just arrived from London. Outside the station, nobody knew exactly what direction to head in, and it turns out that whoever got directions only got that “it’s really close once you leave the station”. As it turns out, that’s not quite the case. We picked the direction with more lights and headed that way. It took a while to get to the first corner, so when we reached it, it was time to figure out where Hatter’s hostel was. There was a bar across the street, so a couple of people went over to ask for directions. Apparently, they got an earful. First, they asked the bartender, and he started out fine. He got stuck though, and asked one of the waiters. Apparently multiple waiters ended up talking, and so did some of the regular customers. Eventually, we see them come out with an older gentleman who we learned was named Joe.

Joe chats with us for a minute as he ponders the directions. Shortly, a woman walks up to us. She doesn’t look homeless, but she’s definitely not in her right mind, most likely drunk from the same bar. She asks for 20 pence to make a phone call. So, one of us asks her if she’s knows the way to Hatter’s hostel. She says she does, so Joe gives her the 20p (They don’t actually say “pence”, they just say “p”, if I haven’t mentioned that before). Ben, however, didn’t notice that she’d already been given the money, and proceeded to give it to her himself. We asked her where Hatter’s was, and she kind of blankly stared at us, so Joe, deciding she didn’t really know what she was talking about and with Ben having given her additional 20p asks for his money back. “You didn’t give me 20p,” she responds. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but this sounds like it could be headed in an amusing direction. “Yes, I just did,” Joe retorts, his slightly intoxicated, Liverpool accent thick. “No, ya di’n't,” she replies again. Finally, apparently frustrated, Joe shouts “P*ss off, ya f*ggin’ slag!”

Anyway, we ended up getting directions 3 more times, multiple of which mentioned a “wig wam” shaped building. It turned out, the cathedral they were referring to really was wigwam shaped. My camera was buried in my bag at the time, but one of the others got a couple pictures.

The Hostel was okay, slightly smaller that a freshman dorm with its own bathroom and 4 beds in two bunks, so we had 2 rooms for all 8 of us. We were pretty hungry at this point and headed down the street, opposite of the direction we came, to see if we could find a place that was still open to get some food. We found this place that was pretty much a Döner Kebab, where we got some chicken fingers, burgers, and whatever the typical Döner Kebab meat thing is. When we went back outside, we realized that we were here earlier, and that this was in fact relatively close to the train station compared to all that winding around we did. Oh well, at least interacting with the people was entertaining.

We watched TV for a little bit as we finished our food, but after that pretty much took showers and crashed since it was kind of late. Just like London, there was free breakfast in the morning of cereal, milk, toast, and juice.

The next morning, we got a couple cabs (There are 8 of us) and headed to the Liverpool football (soccer) stadium. Apparently, there are two stadiums in the area, one blue (the opposing team, Everton) and one red (the local team, Liverpool). Dennis, Ben, and kind of Vlad were all Liverpool fans, but the rest of us didn’t particularly have a preference. The driver of the cab I was in was a Liverpool fan, and thus by the rules of rivalry, had to down Everton. As we were heading up a hill at one point, he pointed off into the distance and said,  “And if you look over that way, you can see that blue s***hole [Everton Stadium], though I don’t know why you’d want to.” Later, he made another comment to the effect of “Better dead than blue.”

When we finally got there, we grabbed some hotdogs at a little cafe and listened to their American music, since everywhere has American music, before the tour was supposed to start. Only Ben, Dennis, and Conrad actually went on the tour since it was like €12. The rest of us just chilled in the cafe till they were done, except for Vlad who went to get shave old school barbershop style. Unfortunately, the place he found, the main guy was out for lunch. Since we didn’t have enough time for him to really wait, he got a shave anyway with an electric. Once they finished, we visited the gift shop where Vlad and Ben got shirts. After that, we called the Beatles Fab Four Taxi Tour cabs which came and got us. First off, I recommend the tour to anyone that makes it to Liverpool. It was definitely worth it. Better than any of the bus tours they offer.

On the Beatles Tour, we visited pretty much all of the historical Beatles sites in Liverpool. Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, various houses that the members lived in, and even the church where some of the founding members met. The cab drivers were really nice, and knew a lot, which made it much more enjoyable. One of them was an Everton fan, though, and ragged constantly on Vlad (who was the only one wearing his recently purchased Liverpool shirt). Our cab driver, probably to make it more even, often ragged on the other driver for being an Evertonian. Anyway, the tour was a bit long, but I found the whole thing to be enjoyable. We got out at every stop to give time for pictures and detailed explanations of the Beatles story. I only found out after the fact that a couple of the people on the trip really didn’t care about the Beatles at all, but I won’t list their names for their protection. Overall, though, I think everyone had a great time, and it lives up to all the hype.

The drivers dropped us off at the last attraction which was where, if I recall correctly, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married. They probably would’ve driven us back, but Hatter’s was only a few doors down, so it wasn’t any trouble just to walk. Once back, I purchased the three hours of internet card which Vlad split with me. I was going to let him use 15 minutes of it for free, and I told him to sign out when he was done. I took a short nap, and when I awoke an hour later, he was still using it. After he finished, he’d used like an hour 15, so we just split the cost of the card at that point.

By this point, we were hungry again, so we got something to eat at a little shop. After that, we headed to a club/bar thing called Bumper. It was pretty close by, only a couple blocks over, and had a really nice atmosphere. Mostly young people in the 20 to 25 range, and it had the feel of the kind of place people went to hang out and dance, and not so much to pick up random strangers. The kind of place you could get to know all the regulars if you came frequently enough. Everyone got a drink (soda for minors), and we chilled out on a couch and had a good time. The music selection got more interesting as the DJ became more intoxicated (hopefully all the empty bottles on the table weren’t his, as he probably could’ve inebriated a small elephant with that amount).

The next morning, we got up really early to catch our flight. We called another set of cabs and checked out. We piled in, and the cabs took off. Now, I can’t say how the other groups cab went, they pulled off slightly before us, and we didn’t see them again till we got to the airport. Ours went phenomenally. Instead of pulling out behind the other cab, he did a U-turn and headed in the other direction. I was a little concerned at first, but after a bit, we just went with it.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned the zig-zig lines in another post, or in just a picture, but England has these lines on the road in some places:

They mean that you aren’t supposed to pass other cars, here. Essentially everywhere else, you are allowed to pass. Well, our driver passed in those sections, looked both ways and ran a couple lights, and sped us to that airport faster than was legal, I’m certain. Going only like 10-15 miles, and having left slightly behind them, we shouldn’t have beat the other taxi by 5 minutes, but we did, and it was awesome.

After that, we went and got on our flight to Dublin. The only complication we had was that the one bag we were checking was overweight, so Anya removed some things from it. Vlad later had trouble getting through security with Ben’s shaving gel because of that, but it didn’t affect us making it on the flight, and Ben will have to buy more gel.

Getting settled in in Dublin, and I’ll update again when I can.

I had a pretty good week this week. I’ve been mostly walking back from school to get some exercise in (it’s right at 4.0 miles) as well as to save trips on the metro. We also planned our trip to the UK. I’ll probably try to cover things in this post mostly in the same order as I have in the past couple of posts with classes first followed by things I visited and things I plan to go to still.

My classes were good this week, but I have to say that I didn’t quite enjoy them as much as last week. In Algorithms, Merrick covered mostly modular arithmetic and finished up some thoughts from last week. Although we covered modular arithmetic a lot in CS 1050, he found a lot of new material to present, in my opinion. The gist of modular arithmetic, to explain it briefly, is that sometimes you can take a long (often infinite) set of numbers and have them fit on a much shorter scale with repetition. So, for example if we wanted to do all the integers from 0 to 15 in mod 4 it would look like this:

Normal: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Mod 4 : 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1,  2,  3,  0,  1,  2,  3

So, if you thought of time as a number line of all the hours since the start of time, that would be impractical. It’s a quarter to 1.22721379 × 10¹⁴ O’clock (About 100 trillion hours) just doesn’t compute. Instead, we work mod 12 such that hours go 1 through 12 repeatedly (or 0 to 23 in mod 24) because this makes more sense for us.

Note: Mod is similar to the remainder after division, but is distinctly not the same. If you divide 37 by 5, there’s a remainder of 2, and that is the same as 37 mod 5, but when you take negative numbers, it doesn’t work the same. -37 mod 5 is 3.

Anyway, there are some neat tricks that come about from this kind of math. An example would be (we did this one for homework) is the number 4¹⁵³⁶ – 9⁴⁸²⁴ evenly divisible by 35? At first, that definitely seems like a daunting task, but if we work in mod 35, it’s easier. Assuming mod 35, we want 4¹⁵³⁶ – 9⁴⁸²⁴ to be zero because if it is evenly divisible, then there won’t be a remainder after division (and anything that comes out to 0 after the mod is the same for positive and negatives). So, I’m going to hide the solution in a box both because it is long and mathy in case you don’t want to read it and to give anyone time to think if you want to try to see for yourself if it is evenly divisible.

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Anyway, enough math for now. Kevin, Joe, and I went to Mount Tibidabo the other night to take some evening shots of the city.  Unfortunately, when we left, it looked like my camera was fully charged, but when we got there, it seems I misread it, so I wasn’t able to take many pictures. Kevin, however, was able to, so I think I’m going to ask him for those this week.

I’ve been eating in a lot more this week. Both Thomases (How do you pluralize Thomas?) and I have been walking the 4 miles back from school each afternoon in order to save trips on the metro. When we get back, we’ve spent a couple euro on bread to get baguettes, and then chorizo meat and edam or gouda if we’re out of meat or cheese. For dinners, I’ve found that vegetables and pasta are pretty cheap to buy daily, and I’ve been getting a kilogram of meat or so that lasts a bit. I haven’t found any ground beef, which I find surprising. All I’ve found is ground beef pork mix, which tastes pretty much the same, in my opinion. Overall, I’ve found eating in to be a mostly nice option. The biggest flaw is that I lack some basic cooking equipment that makes it a little more difficult. For example, an oven and measuring cups.

So, I found one and was shown another ice cream shop here recently. The first is over by the Picasso museum, which I need to visit. The flavors I’ve tried there were chocolate (which was amazing), Rochet (Which tasted just like the candies), and Café (which actually tasted a little like rum). They were by far better than most ice cream I’ve gotten in the US, especially the chocolate. A few days later, Anya showed me this place in Plaça del Rei where she said her family thought had some of the best ice cream (and by ice cream, I mean gelato). I had their chocolate, which was also amazing, and another flavor that I can’t recall, so I guess I’ll be foreced to go back there to find out.

The city also goes crazy over soccer, or fútbol. The Barcelona team won, I believe, the European cup. Bacelona rioted after the game that night and apparently did 100.000€ (Where we use commas in numbers, they use decimals, and where we use decimals, they use commas. Go figure.) in damages. I started to go out to take pictures of the mayhem, but I was hearing explosions so loud that they hurt my hears with the window closed, I decided to stay in instead. It was certainly interesting to see from the room, but too dark and distant to get any real pictures.

Lastly, a few of us are planning to go to the UK. We bought tickets and we’re going to visit London, Liverpool, and Dublin. I’ll post details later in the week.

Well, I had a pretty good second week here, probably a lot better than the first, to be honest. There are once again still a ton of photos to be published and captioned, and hopefully I’ll get some of that done later today.

So, I believe I last left off around Wednesday of this past week. On Wednesday, I had a relatively long day. Algorithms class started at 9:00 AM, followed by Barcelona Leap (Entrepreneurship) at 10:30, a 30 minute break at 1:30, and then Ethics from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Algorithms was generally good on Wednesday. We spent nearly the whole hour and a half going over the homework from the night before, and everyone kind of got into it. On the last problem, which took around 40 minutes of discussion, we were trying to find a way to tell if there is an odd-length cycle in a graph. For those who don’t remember their graph theory, a graph is essentially anything that can be drawn as a whole bunch of circles with lines connecting them. If you took a city map, the intersections of streets where you could from one to another would be a circle, and the streets would obviously be the lines that connect them. More formally, the intersections would be nodes and the streets would be edges. It’s a super useful concept in computer science. Additionally, a cycle is anytime you could drive away from place A and get back to place A without repeating the exact same path. And finally, an odd-length cycle would then be to leave place A and get back there having only crossed an odd number of intersections in the process. Anyway, the class was nearly done coming to conclusions, and I thought of a way that what we were deciding seemed wrong, so I asked and put it on the board, which basically required nearly the rest of the class to discuss more. Professor Furst got about 10 minutes of actual lecture in edgewise at the end.

This discussion and other similar ones took place a bunch this week, so I won’t bore anyone with all the details, but when Merrick finally showed us the solution to the problem, we were awestruck by its simplicity. Feel free to try to figure out how to determine if there is an odd-length cycle on your own first.

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Okay, I lied, one more. How can you, algorithmically/programmatically solve xⁿ (x to the n power) in log(n) time?

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Leap was also awesome both times last week. I’ve gotten used to Merrick’s no laptop policy, and he’s plenty interesting, so it was a good time. We first performed a technique called Market Gap Analysis. The technique basically lets you identify a market to whom you would like to sell a product. As we learned, it’s entirely a mistake to say “X would be a really cool product. We should make it, and I’m sure people will buy it”, as this succeeds only about 5%. Instead, you should find a group of people that have a need and sell to them a product that they can use. Additionally, innovation is probably necessary since you’re relatively unlikely to have invented a new market. Our group identified the Entertainment sector as the area we were going to focus on, then the groups of children, teens, college age adults, and adults. We expanded each of those, but chose teens as emo, goth, punk, prep, fangirls, and a few more. The group decided on fangirls (girls 8-18 that have an obsessive love of different media such as bands, book series, movies, and celebrities) as a market we could analyze and serve with the members we had.

Computational Photography was pretty decent also. The biggest thing we discussed was JPEG compression, which is basically a way that computers and cameras can take very large raw images and compress them down to just a few megabytes without making the pictures look terrible. The gist is just that you analyze the pixels and throw out things that are relatively uncommon. This works really well on real photographs, but not so well on computer generated images.

In terms of travel, Kevin and I went to La Sagrada Familia and actually went inside this time. We took some great photos, but I have to say, for 11€ for entry and 2,50€, I found the experience slightly disappointing. I don’t want to downplay how beautiful and awesome a structure it is, but it’s significantly less complete than I could’ve imagined. The inside, except for the ceiling and a little bit of stained glass, is scaffolding. The most complete and amazing part is the outside, which can be seen from the street just as easily. Going up to the top was certainly neat, but there was essentially one walkway and a couple balconies that had good views, but I don’t know if they were an extra 2,50€ worth of views. Lastly, there was a museum on the bottom most floor that was included in the initial 11€ that was rather nice. Definitely not one of the best museums I’ve been to, but it did have some neat exibits. Overall, I’m glad I went, and I would recommend people to go in the future, as it’s neat to get a piece of the history of the building as it’s being created, and it’s only going to get more complete.

I’ve been trying to decide where I want to visit on the break next week. Most of Barcelona Leap group seems to be going to London, and that sounds like it would be fun. I would kind of like to be able to have a real conversation with the locals. Brian and Vlad have said they were going to Paris, which also seems cool, but maybe somewhat expensive. I kind of wanted to go to Germany, even, but I think it would not be best to go alone, so unless I can find someone more or less today that wants to do that, I’m out of luck this time around.

Went out Sunday night for Kevin’s birthday. It was a pretty good time. We wandered the city and found some new places, and got some ice cream. It was just the two of us, as we were both a little burnt out at the time from big group things that didn’t go as pleasantly as possible. We also went out last night and found some delicious ice cream next to the picasso museum.

On a final, and unhappy note, I found out last week that Stephan’s father passed away. I’ve tried calling him a couple times, but I can’t tell if I’m even getting to the right place, since I don’t think his message had his voice on it, and he put the menu in Spanish, if I recall correctly. So, I think I’ve left a message, but I’m not sure if he got it.

I figured it would be best to get a post in before leaving the States. I’ve accumulated most of the stuff I think I’m going to need for the trip except a camera, which I’ll shop for Sunday. Plane leaves Monday (May 11th), and I’ll be flying Delta with the rest of the group. I’ve got a few books to read and a new laptop battery, so I should stay pretty well entertained.

I got a number of things from Rick Steve’s Travel Store like a money belt, small lock, travel guide, and phrase book. I took 4 years of Spanish in high school, and I hope that with that and the phrase book, I’ll make it just fine. From what I understand, many of the residents of Barcelona speak Catalan (Wikipedia, Ethnologue, Multitree) and Spanish, and they do not speak so much English on the whole. I figured as much, and I’m prepared to mostly be speaking Spanish when not in the room or at school. Speaking of which, I’ll be attending the University of Barcelona.

Krystal and I watched Disney’s Bolt today. It was pretty great. A good, cute, kids movie that was still enjoyable for us. It was definitely one of the better things I’ve seen recently. There was a lot of light-hearted humor, and it was not weighed down by the darker parts. Overall, it’s a pretty solid movie for just about anyone, safe for work, kids, and those with delicate sensibilities. It actually felt a lot like a Pixar film, in my opinion, and while Disney owns Pixar, it does not seem like they actually did any work on it, so good job Disney.