Author: Sam Bail

“Up a bit, then left!”: Day 0 and 1 at FutureEverything 2012

Sam Bail

I moved to Manchester around the same time FutureEverything was on 4 years ago, when it was still called FutureSonic – and I never managed to figure out what exactly the festival was about (let alone pay for a ticket…), until last year where one of the academics at our department was invited to a panel discussion and I realised that it was probably something I’d be interested in. Luckily, this year they’ve had a few places for poor but proactive people like me, and I was fortunate (or poor and proactive enough) to get one of those places.

The festival officially launched on Wednesday evening, with a few drinks and some short welcome talks from FutureEverything organisers, our city council leader Sir Richard Leese (who, according to my neighbour, gave exactly the same talk as last year), the head of the Arts Council, and Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic politician, activist and geek, who will also be giving a keynote talk on day 2 of the conference.

I had to miss the morning talks on day 1 and arrived just in time for a presentation by the BBC on their digital coverage of the London 2012 Olympics. While I had not been particularly interested in the Olympics (except for the opening ceremonies – I just love the excessiveness of Olympic opening ceremonies!), knowing that there was some technology and possibly even data (loads of semantic web technology, metadata and even tagged videos) to play around with, especially during the Young Rewired State week which happens to be around the same time as the Olympics, sounded very tempting. The only downer came after the talk when I was told that the data were indeed accessible and could be used, hacked, and mashed by anyone, however, publishing the results of such a hack  might not be possible due to copyrights held on the data. I’m hoping to get some more information about the situation from the beebs.

The post-lunch sessions I attended where themed around personal data, identity, and security, which was both interesting and worrying. I am fully aware that my data is constantly being used, tracked, and analysed (after years of refusal I caved and got a Nectar card, which allows me to access my stats online and see when I shopped for how much at which Sainsbury’s… so if they haven’t yet found out that I’m a 20-something female with erratic eating habits who bakes a lot, they will know now), and avoid using social media in a personal capacity. You won’t find drunky pictures of me on Facebook, I’m afraid. Imagining, however, how insurance companies use personal data on, for example, shopping habits to estimate your life expectancy (Wall Street Journal article here) makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Next on for a short talk was Jeremy Newman, who introduced a strategy for preventing identity fraud: By building up a network of trust, where the identity of a person is confirmed by the people who know them and “vouch” for them by identifying their picture. Well. Nice idea, but it seems to have way too many holes (what stops me from using someone else’s name and picture to assume their identity? How can blind people vouch for others if they can’t see the pictures? Do I really want to go through the process of having other people verify my identify whenever I change my appearance?) that might need addressing first.

The last session I attended was part of the ongoing “Reuse and Replicate” talks and workshops, with some great insight into the MDDA’s wireless sensor network project that will monitor environmental factors along the Oxford Road Corridor. Back home, I tuned into I’d Hide You, a live online / real life game in which people with cameras mounted on helmets run around the Northern Quarter trying to “snap” each other with cameras, while the spectators can give them directions via a live-chat. I was pretty impressed by the quality of the game (real-time live video streaming of people moving, reading out the messages we sent them), and the players were all fun (“I might just go for a little drink here…”), but it felt like there was something missing – an actual goal. I’d love to see the concept used for a treasure hunt or a capture the flag type game, but simply running around the block and artificially creating clashes seemed a little pointless after a bit. Oh, and they should totally add point & click features – like “Player 1, read… poster! Take… book. Use… book…with…sausage.”, that kind of stuff. Having said that, they will be playing all weekend, so I’m quite looking forward to a live video-stream of the Northern Quarter on Friday and Saturday night.

I’ll report back with more FutureEverything funsies soon.

Futures: Teaching Kids How to Code @ Hack To The Future

Sam Bail

When I’m not busy eating, ranting, or aimlessly writing Python scripts, I spend quite a lot of time trying to promote science and technology to the general public with Manchester Girl Geeks. I was invited to give a talk at Hack To The Future in February, a hack day aimed at teens, with the goal of getting them more interested in technology and programming. The BBC Learning team was there and filmed a short interview with me, of which a snippet even made it into this clip. I’m still waiting for the one moment where I give an interview and don’t look like I just rolled out of bed after a particularly heavy night out. On that note:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf

Animals Are Cut In Two: My favourite vegetarian places in Manchester

Sam Bail

Om nom nom. I do like a bit of good food every once in a while.* As a vegetarian hailing from the land of sausage, where no part of an animal is considered too inferior to be turned into something supposedly edible, I was shocked to find a wealth of meat-free offers on British menus. After years of eating side salads (and not even those sometimes, as the potato salad is traditionally made with beef stock in the Southern regions of my homeland), I was introduced into the delicious world of Asian food, pies (PIES!!), ubiquitous falafel, and generally delicious animal-free pub grub. It’s about time for a round-up of my favourite (and not-so favourite) vegetarian and veggie-friendly places in the rainy city. Without further ado:

The Greenhouse, Great Western Street, Rusholme

Ah, good old Greenhouse. Definitely not a place for a romantic dinner, but always fun with a big group. The menu is roughly the size of two phonebooks and ranges from vegetarian haggis (nice!) and old-fashioned classics such as nut roast and stuffed vegetables, to international dishes like curries and stir fries, with occasional excursions into the slightly freaky – deep-fried avocado or peach and stilton dip anyone? From the outside the Greenhouse looks a little bit like a voodoo cottage, while the interior seems to have been put together with finds from yard sales all over the world. If I was to describe the Greenhouse in one word, I’d say “interesting” – worth a try though!

Greens, Lapwing Lane, West Didsbury

Saying that Greens used to be nicer before they doubled in size makes me realize how long I’ve been in Manchester (4 years today!). It used to be a cosy little place with nice and sometimes a little bit fancy food and expensive wines (people tell me that back in the old days it used to be BYO, but I’ve not been here *that* long yet), the place to go to celebrate small achievements, birthdays, and for general treats. Unfortunately, it has now turned into a place that tends to get incredibly noisy, even midweek, with rushed service, and actually bad tables (the one near the kitchen / bar is just… awful.). This is a real shame, since the food is still great (even though it’s a little cheese heavy for my taste), with one of my favourite dishes ev-ah being veggie bangers and mash with a chutney-like gravy, which have been residing on the menu since my first visit.

Fuel, Wilmslow Road, Withington

Oh yes, I love Fuel. Like, super mega love it. Conveniently, it’s also my local. The food is exclusively vegetarian with some vegan options, covers everything from a proper fry-up, a giant cheesy spinachy breakfast omelette which is incredibly tasty and unhealthy in equal amounts, burgers, the best potato & sweet potato wedges combo, delicious homemade hummus, as well as stews and daily specials. The prices are okay (the most expensive item on the menu is around £7 or £8), they’ve got a huge selection of fancy beers, the Tuesday quiz is fun, and there’s always free gigs on.

Earth Cafe, Turner Street, Northern Quarter

Well. Earth Cafe in the basement of the buddhist centre is… okay. I kind of understand why you pay extra for sides like veggies and gravy (fair for those who don’t want it), but at the same time, this makes the meals rather expensive. The food is quite nice, home cooked stews, dhals, bean burgers, lots of rice, and mostly vegan, but it’s also a little bit… boring. There, I said it. I’m also not a massive fan of basements, and the atmosphere at Earth Cafe is not exactly cosy.

8th Day, Oxford Road

8th Day is not too different from Earth Cafe (cafeteria style, queue for food with a tray, basement), but somehow they managed to make the place slightly more appealing and comfortable. The food is nice and filling, with a daily selection of soups, stews and a couple of specials (hmm veggie lasagne!), and reasonably priced – and hey, they even do student discount. While they have a rather generous selection of cakes in the cafe downstairs, the highlight of every visit is a chocolate cherry slice from the shop upstairs: dark chocolate, gooey sticky cherry jam, and an incredibly sweet crumbly flapjack-like base guarantees a sugar rush and happy faces for the next two hours.

1847 Vegetarian Bistro, off Mosley Street, City Centre

The new kid on the veggie block. I went when it was still “DetoxRetox”, which was quickly changed into a slightly less juice bar-y name. The restaurant looks very, very nice both from the outside and the inside, and the staff are super friendly. Things might have changed since I’ve last been, but the food was a bit hit and miss. My starter of blue cheese stuffed mushrooms was, well, exactly that: 4 hardly grilled mushrooms, stuffed with a bit of blue cheese, neatly arranged in a square. My cheese binge continued with a cheesy souffle, with was in fact delicious, and went really well with the piece of fake fish & chips (battered and fried haloumi aka heart attack on a place) I stole from my dining companion. The pudding, again, was a nice idea (sticky toffee pudding with, I believe, lavender custard… or was it rosemary?), but ended up being a bit of a gloopy disappointment. Having said that – 1847 has so far been the cosiest and prettiest veggie place I have been to in Manchester, so I’m more than looking forward to coming back and giving it another chance.

I suppose that’s enough food for now. I’ve not covered all the places I usually frequent, so check back for the 2nd part of SAM EATS MANCHESTARRR.

* Constantly.

[Pictures by Ian Koh, Rain Rabbit, Binary Ape]

Cherub Rock: A trip to Kinder Scout

Sam Bail

Just like every year around this time, the past few weeks have been pretty effing glorious up here. Sun sun sun, blue skies, and almost no clouds; a rare sight in Manchester. Newcomers, don’t be fooled – this was not the beginning of spring or summer, it *was* spring and summer combined into two fantastically warm and summery weeks. It’s only going downhill from now on, trust me.

Given the weather conditions, it would have been foolish not to get out of the city for a spot of walking and heat strokes. I’ve been hearing a lot about The Globe pub in Glossop lately, and I’m quite fond of veggie food stuffs as you might have noticed, so it didn’t take us long to plot a little round trip from Glossop to, uhm, Glossop, via Kinder Downfall and the Kinder reservoir.

Having been walking around Kinder Scout before (on a pretty ridiculous 9 hour march from Glossop to Edale with huge rucksacks through the wet snow a few years* ago – I never felt so much hate and love for nature at the same time), I was curious to see what was underneath the snow and ice covered fields of mud I experienced the last time.

The walk up to Mill Hill which leads to Kinder Scout was… bleak. Brownish grass. Heather. A few rocks. Sheep. Streams. The usual. But as soon we had climbed up the rocky path of doom up to Sandy Heys I couldn’t stop talking about THE ROCKS. Rocks. Everywhere. Wind, rain, and thousands of years of the earth moving had shaped the gritstone into magnificent marshmallow-like layers and fascinating rock formations, some silently sitting on top of the hills in solitude, others gathering in large groups like crowds around the buskers on Market Street. I was stunned and amazed. Imagine Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks pointing out the impressive trees at his arrival to the town… but with rocks.

After a quick lunch near Kinder Downfall (speaking of which, you might know that “Kinder” means “children” in German, which always leads me to think of “Kinder Downfall” as a place where children were tossed down the rocks in ancient times… I know, I know.), we took the route down the hill towards the reservoir and over the moors back into Glossop. Thanks to my unsurpassed navigational skills (“yeah this only like, an inch on the map, I’m sure it’s really close”) the walk back along the main road wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it led us in a straight line to our final destination: The Globe. Just in time for dinner we fell into the pub and found it absolutely crammed. I was a little surprised that vegan food would be so popular, but as soon as my walking companion returned from the bar with a broad smile I found out what may contribute to the Globe’s popularity: pints of ale for £1.80.

The next pleasant surprise was the food menu – the meals were only marginally more expensive than the drinks. This encouraged us to assemble a balanced meal based on all the major food groups (rice, curly fries, chips, bread), including some delicious parsnip chips and the much talked about chick pea curry, which managed to live up to its reputation. Several pints, lemonades, and starchy foods later, we returned to Manchester with full bellies and bright red faces. Hey, Peak District – we’ll be back in you soon!

Rocks
Rocks
Rocks
Rocks
Rocks

* Bloody ‘ell. A few years ago. Come May I will celebrate my 4 year anniversary in Manchester. Bit of a detour from my original “I’ll just do my MSc here and then go back to Germany” plans.

Videolectures from ISWC 2011 online

Sam Bail

The video lectures from ISWC 2011 have been online for a while, so if you’re interested in checking out our talks, you can do this here: http://videolectures.net/iswc2011_research/

The Manchester talks are:

Try and sit through the first 5 minutes of my talk, I *will* slow down eventually.

In other news: Das Rabbit is a pin-up bunny.

Sam Bail

The rabbit has joined his famous fellow lagomorphs Captain Bunny, Watermelon Bunny, and about a million Christmas bunnies at the heart-attack inducing Daily Bunny with a gorgeous (but tasteful!) picture of his well-shaped backside. I have no idea how he managed to submit his picture to that website.

You’ve all seen the picture already because I keep posting it, so I’ve included a photo of him doing a semi-creepy shrunken head impression.

The Coast is Always Changing: A trip to Somerset & Devon

Sam Bail

HUuuuauaaaaaaaahhhhRRrrrrrrrggggghhzzzzz.

That’s the sound of me stretching my hands, positioning my chair, neatly arranging that cup of tea in front of me, stretching again, trying to remember the URL of my blog, checking Twitter first, having another biscuit, and finally logging in to WordPress to write… a blog post! It’s been a while, bah bah bah, the usual. But hey, I’ve brought something back from the many trips I made in the past couple of months: Stories. And piktchas. That’s what you’re here for, right?

Now, let’s start in non-chronological order with my short visit darn sarf. We went to the wonderful Butlin’s holiday park in Minehead for the Nightmare Before Christmas ATP (curated by Les Savy Fav, which I ended up missing twice in one day, Battles, and Caribou, just in case you’re wondering) at the beginning of December, and, being the ueber nerds we are, somehow did not spend the  whole weekend getting drunk and chasing seagulls (and by that I mean making out with Dutch girls) like my German friends. In fact, we got up early every morning and went on excursions around Somerset and Devon to see some more of the South than just the inside of the chain restaurant and arcade games lined Butlins pavilion.

On the first day, we tried to explore the rather magnificent looking Dunster Castle near Minehead, only to find that it is closed to the public over the winter months (it’s okay, I only cried a little). A short walk around the ‘medieval’ (for some meaning of medieval) village did not bring up any more interesting sights and so we returned just in time to watch the first set of Battles.

The next day, we stretched a little further and simply drove as far west as we could, finally landing in Lynton/Lynmouth on the north coast of Devon. As expected, the town had already gone into winter hibernation – except for the big and cold Arts & Craft centre, where we interrupted the reading pleasures of a lady in a thick winter coat. Back outside in the pouring rain, we followed signs to the Cliff Railway, just out of curiosity. Much to our surprise* the cafe at the top of the cliff was open for business, and we did our best to support the local economy by purchasing coffee and stale apricot cake.

And this was my breathtaking account of a spectacular holiday. The highlight of the weekend was when I got a text of my ex-housemate, who kindly agreed to look after the rabbit: I had dropped the wrong set of keys into his letterbox, leaving the rabbit locked into our flat for the entire weekend with quickly dwindling supplies of hay and water in his cage. Images of the rabbit doing this while trying to survive on a diet of newspaper cropped up in my head. Thanks to our landlord however, the situation was quickly resolved, the ex-housemate got into the flat to feed the rabbit, and all three of them (including the rabbit) just sigh and roll their eyes a little bit whenever my name is mentioned.

* I must apologise for the number of clichés I’ve used in this blog post. This is what happens when you only write scientific papers for months. You lose all ability to communicate and default to clichéd language. Just like all those scientists that write for the Daily Mail. Q.E.D.

Slow, Slowly, Sloes*: Sloe picking in Chorlton

Sam Bail

First things first: You want sloes? Go and get sloes! Check out my carefully drawn map of Chorlton Water Park (jelly-bean-shaped area marks the spot) and go sloe picking while they’re still there.

We’ve been wondering for a while where to find sloes from in and around Manchester. Due to lack of a vehicle, the tip-off about the sloe bushes at junction 19 of the M60 wasn’t exactly helpful. We were just about to head down to Stockport and wander around the parks there, looking for prickly bushes, as the mighty @robotswanking received a Twitter message from sloe expert Cormac. Plans were changed quickly and mission: sloes headed south-west instead, to Chorlton Water Park.

Just by accident (we did actually get lost on the way to the orchard, taking a right turn after the bridge rather than just heading straight on) we wandered down a small path in a field that seemed completely overlooked by the many visitors. And there it was: a sloe bush. Not very big, not many fruit, but it was what we were looking for. As we had picked what would have been enough for at least a glass full of sloe gin, we moved on further down the path – and discovered what can only be described as (drum roll) sloe valley (ta-dah!). Dozens of sloe bushes, easily accessible by the side of the path, just waiting to be picked. As we got closer to the gate that was leading back to the main path, the sloes got bigger and bigger, until we finally found one bush that kept us busy for almost an hour.

We returned home with scratched hands, muddy boots, black dirt under our nails and a small blue Ikea bag filled to the brim with big round sloes. Several hours of pricking and several bottles of booze later, we had these beauties in our kitchen:

So – if you fancy picking some sloes around South Manchester, Chorlton Water Park is the place to go! Don’t worry, there’s enough for everyone. Just make sure you’re careful and don’t trample down everything, yes?

* And I do apologize to Liam Frost for the sloe-pun in the title.

Something About Airplanes: A day out at the airport

Sam Bail

Back in June, when the weather was all nice and sunny… haha, just kidding, of course it wasn’t. Anyway. Back in June, I spent a day out at the airport. As you do.

There are many British stereotypes lingering in the minds of Germans, ready to surface and be proved true whenever you do something that could be considered slightly odd. A penchant for weird hobbies is one of those stereotypes, and, no offense, but you Brits do like to confirm them on a regular basis. Rolling cheese down a hill and chasing after it in a potentially fatal race? Check. Playing a game that lasts over several days, incorporates lunch and tea, with inexplicable rules, where half of the team on the pitch don’t actually seem to participate? Check. Check. Check. Check. A drinking game that has actual rules and standard-sized equipment you can purchase from the shop? (Okay I know, beer pong is an American invention, but popular enough here in the UK). Check. And finally, spending hours in a crowded car park watching planes take off and landing, while you’re equipped with a radio, expensive binoculars and even more expensive cameras? Ch-omg-eck.

Back in the olden days, plane spotting made some kind of sense: those flying things were miracles of modern engineering, flights were hardly affordable, tons of metal defying gravity was something unusual and unbelievably exciting. And while the latter certainly is still the case, I cannot imagine how anyone could get a thrill out of watching planes driving around the runway and noting the different types of planes while taking photos.

The Airport Hotel is a pub popular with plane spotters, as it is conveniently located right next to the runway, with its spacious beer garden only separated from the huge machines by a wire fence. As we went there on a Sunday afternoon it was completely packed out with spotters and families alike. The beer garden had a rather bizarre fun fair meets playground meets military training feel to it, as children were playing on the bouncy castle and the swings, waving the toy machine guns their loving parents had bought them at the nearby stall, while plane spotters with giant binoculars and radios were gathering at the fence. Probably the only place in the world where parents are happy to let their children run around in close proximity to men with binoculars.

Unfortunately the food ordering process (order on the kitchen door, then wait for the cook to come out and shout your number) was a little confusing and the food leaving the kitchen didn’t look particularly appealing (ok, it looked awful), so we only had a quick drink while watching the plane spotters. Every takeoff was preluded by the approaching of the plane, then turning to have the turbines point right at the beer garden while causing storm-like hot wind – this, and the deafening noises, made me wonder why on earth anyone would want to spend more than a few minutes in that place, let alone a family day out. I have yet to understand the appeal of planes.