Me

This picture was taken after Aikido practise. I am the secretary or maybe the vice-president. The offices are required by the school and there are few enough students in the dojo that they all have to be officers.

Here I am learning to make tea.

Programming Languages

Perl—a Swiss Army Chainsaw
Python—Slim, sleek, and almost European
Common Lisp—Good for hacking your way through impenetrable jungle. This is a South American machete, the kind I have used. African machetes look different.
Java—When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Scheme—Light, fast and flexible. Excellent for training and stylised fighting.
Ocaml—it's a heavy version of Scheme. Its heaviness instils a certain amount of discipline...using it too much is tiring. ???—This is just a cool picture of a katana. I haven't found a language like it yet.

Vienna

I went to Vienna to present my work on dialect distance, applied to pediatric cochIear implant users. My family ridiculed me until I bought a cheap disposable camera, so I got a few pictures. Of buildings. I realise these are really too small to get much detail. Mail me if you want full size pictures, or read the fascinating travel commentary.

This is the only picture of me. Jon Ting, another IU representative, took a picture of me outside Belvedere, the lavish palace built by Prince Eugene Savoy. It's now an art museum that is rentable by extremely large parties. Behind me are the palace grounds. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH and DENNIS.

As you turn around, you see the front of the Belvedere palace. You are surrounded by hundreds of chatting doctors, all drunk. OK, not all.

>GO SOUTH

You enter the front room of the Belvedere in search of hors d'oeuvres. You are ravenous, having missed the mythical free lunch at the conference. Unfortunately, there are no hors d'oeuvres here. In desparation you take picture of the equally tortured columns supporting the ornate palace.

Hours later, after finding some hors d'oeuvres, I emerged on the other front side of the palace. Maybe it was the back side, but it looked like another front. I met up with some other IU people, who were sporting cool digital cameras. Not to be outdone, I took a picture too. It came out kind of dark.

This is the back (?) side of the imperial winter palace. Most of the statues in Vienna were of men writhing and beating on each other with clubs. It's kind of hard to see, but I think the statue at the top was of Empress Maria Theresa. Maybe I should touch these pictures up in iPhoto. If I had it installed. In the second picture you can just see somebody going through the palace wall in a horse-drawn carriage. They were all over. The whole front of the palace smelled of manure when we left the conference at night. You can also see in the bottom-right some novelty paddle-ball hawkers. Downtown Vienna is nothing if not a tourist trap.

After following the carriage through the first wall, you come to a courtyard with a Holy Roman Emperor statue. It was replete with the usual lies about how the people loved him and he loved the people. Come on, people, it SNOWS in Vienna. Vienna is not Rome, and the Emperor shouldn't have been called a Holy Roman one.

Turn around, and you see a door way leading somewhere. I didn't have time to go through it, but I took a picture because of the cool Latin over it. Too bad this picture is too fuzzy for you to read it. You'll have to watch the old-lady tourists instead. OK, I'll relent. It says something about how Ferdinand was the Roman leader of Hungary, Germany, Spain and Austria in some year. Which he was, save the Roman part.

Leave through the other end of the courtyard (dodging more carriages) ... and what do you see? The 9th annual cochlear implant conference! Hooray. You can see a conference attendee carrying his swanky red bag that they gave to everybody there. You can also see the seven character classes available to Austrians in the 1800s: Peasant, Soldatus, Berserker, Sage, Healer, Warrior and Gunner.

Here's a picture of a guy on a horse. This is the front of the Imperial Winter Palace again, with the conference entrace and Seven Classes statues in the background.

On the way out towards the Ring Strasse, there's another building that apparently is the Austrian National Library. So I took a picture of it. (Hi, Mom!)

Out on the Ring Strasse itself, there's a big statue of Goethe. My parents took pictures of philosophers when they were in Germany, so I figured I'd do the same. The other picture is of the Austrian Burger King. Ha, no actually Burger King is named the same thing in Austria (and, for all I know, looks the same too). Burg Kino I think means something like "City Cinema". They were playing the same stupid stuff as here in the US.

I left the Ring Strasse and aimed for Karlskirche (Charles' Church). The park in front now has a significant skateboarding community. There was also a guy swimming in the pool in front, but I didn't take a picture lest he be offended.

Here is the Karlskirche outside. It's a weird melange of styles: the side entrances are pagoda-like, the columns out front are arabesque and the central columns and dome are grecian. Pretty cool looking. The closeup is intended to let you read a little of the inscription. I think it says "You heeded my prayer", but I could be wrong. I can't remember what 'reddam' means. The church was built because of a vow Emperor Charles (VI ?) made when the second round of the Plague hit Vienna.

This is a side chapel inside. This church is where I remembered that students get everything cheaper in Europe. They did hassle me at the art museum about my age. Apparently I look suspiciously 27 and thus ineligible.

This is looking up toward the dome interior.

After the restoration five years ago, they strengthened the scaffolding and made it permanent. This picture is taken from the scaffolding. On the left is Charles VI being supported by Mary as he brings his request before God the Father and God the Son (top center). It's a little iffy theologically, but I guess it's a lot easier to draw Mary than the Holy Spirit. (A lot of the old religious art contradicted what I think about the Bible (like, for instance, the incredible incidence of chubby cherubim).)

From the scaffolding, you can climb right up to the top of the dome. In retrospect, this made a terrible picture. Also, the sign at the bottom said "only 10 people due to weight", with no way to tell how many people were up there at once, so it was a little scary.

These last three pictures are just off the Ring Strasse. Across from the art museum is a big garden with a huge statue of Maria Theresa in the middle.

Whoa

Russians get a head start on the end of the world. Artist's rendition of the coming fashion apocalypse (predicted 2012-2014 by the Mayans).