Strange Aeons

sesquipedalia verba
Simon Wells
Simon Wells

Simon Wells is an academic researching Argumentation Theory, Automated Reasoning, Intelligent Agents (IA) and MultiAgent Systems (MAS) all approached through a ludic lens.

He is particularly interested in how these tools can be usefully applied to critical literacy, security, gamification, and complex systems.

Twitter

My Other Sites

Affiliates

Tags

Archive

2012 (1)
2011 (12)
2010 (27)
2009 (3)
« Back to blog
 

California Odyssey Day 1

Media_httpwwwstrangea_amymr
So this is my first day in Pasadena, California. To be honest I am very surprised. Pasadena isn't the high-rise super flash city that you expect if your image of California is more Los Angeles or Hollywood. It is actually more low-rise buildings with a strong spanish mission influence in many of the public buildings. If it wasn't for the tits and tans (and English language) then I could have imagined myself as being in a southern Spanish city, possibly. After talking to Sabine on the phone I went for a wander around. First off I registered for IJCAI and picked up my schwag bag. One drawback of IJCAI is that there are no printed proceedings included in the conference fee, just a CD-ROM for each of IJCAI and AAAI. This means that you cannot refer to the paper during a presentation or use the printed copy to make notes. Many attendees therefore use their laptops to read the paper and make notes which means that there is a constant keyboard click-track during presentations. After registration the first thing to do was get breakfast and I found a small Italian bistro that had a nice breakfast menu which included their own Italian twist on the Eggs Benedict with Polenta in place of the muffin, Parma ham in place of bacon, and with a scattering of sun dried Tomatoes. After breakfast I found a tea shop in the Paseo Colorado, an open air shopping mall directly across the road from the conference center. Here I went through the conference schwag whilst drinking a pot of black tea. The upshot of this was that I discovered the best bit of conference schwag yet, a JPL fabric patch. It is brilliant but I think that I am a little too old to have fabric patches on my clothes so I have to find something to attach it to.
Media_httpwwwstrangea_dbtfz
In the evening, dinner was a burger at Johnny Rockets, a fifties diner style fast-food joint. Johnny Rockets is straight out of happy days, all chrome and rounded edges, with little individual jukeboxes in the booths. After that I stopped for a pint in a local bar where there was a band playing. The band was just two guys with guitars singing but they reminded me a great deal of the barenaked ladies and sounded great whilst I enjoyed my drink.
Posted
Views
Filed under: academia blogging opinion personal research travel
Posterous theme by Cory Watilo.
​