Table Of Contents
I hope I can finish writing this before I set off on the Tour du Mont Blanc, from which I return in early August. I haven’t missed the last day of the month yet for posting, though it has been close. In June: one and a half judo tournaments, one conference submission, attended one conference, wrote two paper reviews, was in 5 countries.
Public Health
- Respiratory illness spike in NZ; poops.nz reports an increased level of COVID in wastewater but less than May 2024.
- Long COVID antiviral works in mice: haven’t heard anything about metformin for a while; maybe this is another option, but still quite far off.
Vaccine news as usual:
- Absolutely Maybe, June 2025: pancoronavirus vaccine enters trials.
Professional
I would rather submit to a different venue than SCAM, but it just lines up well with when my master’s students finish. This year it’s Vinayak with some work on detecting behavioural breaking changes. Should find out while I’m on a walk. The conference itself is in Auckland in September, which is convenient for me.
I also provided feedback and support for Karoliine’s presentation of our TOPLAS paper at PLDI. We didn’t get many questions at the presentation; it’s not really a paper that invites a lot of questions. We hope that it inspires future work, but that takes more than 20 minutes to think of (and execute).
While at PLDI, I was inspired to write a “PLDI 2014 or 2024?” quiz. It’s actually quite hard to tell which year a PLDI paper appeared in. The high scores that I’m aware of are 8/10, and the low 4/10. Perhaps that says that the community is not so fad-driven and attacks fundamental problems.
Let’s say 19 work days in June, though that doesn’t include some days where I was away on my PLDI trip but didn’t do any work. There are 21 work days in June.
Teaching
Nothing here.
Grad students/mentees/collaborators
I talked to my students, collaborators, and mentees on 12 days, including meeting up with Karoliine at PLDI, and otherwise video conferences.
Collegiality/Service
I think I was late on a TOSEM review and submitted one of my reviews for SCAM. I skipped a FAUW governance reform meeting but I did review the documents.
Trips
Brisbane for Judo Australia Nationals, and then Seoul for PLDI via Shanghai on the way there and Narita on the way back. Korea is a new country for me, and Shanghai a new city: I’d only been to Beijing in China before.
Trip: Judo Australia Nationals, Brisbane, June 4 – 9
I got invited to the Australian Nationals again and made my way to Brisbane, visiting Shin Gi Tai and then getting a ride with Sam to the Gold Coast. It’s definitely a much smaller event than Canadian nationals, with U18/U21/Senior all on Saturday (they are spread out over Friday/Saturday/Sunday in Canada). It is a well-run event, with 5 mats (like Canada). The Saturday goes pretty long, although having finals blocks makes it longer than it needs to be. They were running with 1 table referee as well as the mat supervisor, which Canada doesn’t do anymore, as well as tracking the number of attacks (for giving non-combativity penalties).
Trip: PLDI through CJK, er, CKJ, June 15 – 23
Finally, I was on a paper to be presented at PLDI, although we got it into TOPLAS this time. I still have 0 actual PLDI papers. Anyway, it is good to get visibility by presenting at PLDI.
For the conference itself, there were a couple of papers that challenged the received wisdom: actually, optimizations for undefined behaviour don’t help that much; most alias analysis results could be relaxed with no impact. In the Rust space, I got some understanding of what stacked borrows actually are (as well as tree borrows); and the modular verification dream lives on.
Thanks to the General Chair, Chung-Kil Hur (and for the tutorial on Korean writing!)
I also was in Shanghai on the way there and watched some birds and visited the Bund. Also, on my way out, I was like “hmm, have I seen pandas?” Apparently not. So I stopped by the Shanghai Zoo.
And, on the way back, I had 8 hours in Narita, so I went to the city of Narita. It’s hard to leave the airport without Japanese Yen, unless you go to Tokyo, which I didn’t want to do. Had to withdraw $100. Managed to spend most of it, and converted some of it into Euro. There is a good temple, an excellent sushi restaurant (no, really?) and a nice park.
Travel Planning
I really did pretty much zero trip planning for Mount Olympus aside from buying the plane ticket. Since Nikos was guiding the trip and picking us up the day I flew into Athens, and I was leaving the day after we returned, there was no planning to be done. Except for a hotel for the last night, which I forgot to book. That was fine.
I did have trip planning for the Tour du Mont Blanc, though. There was a refuge snafu so we had to rework our plans somewhat. Hope that works out.
I also planned a NZAC Wellington trip to Taranaki (North Ridge, Alp 1) which would have been fun under the right conditions. As often happens, the weekend we had planned it for was not the right conditions. Another canned trip. Oh well.
Movement statistics
Average amount of walking. Decent biking. Lots of driving in Gold Coast. Transit in Wellington, Brisbane, Shanghai, Seoul, Narita. Shanghai maglev! (nerfed, though).
It is really nice to have walking on 28 days. I’m writing this after 6 days in Quebec where I did minimal walking. Ugh.
Movement statistics:
- 🚶 Walking: 126km on 28 days
- 🚲 Biking: 82km on 9 days (ebike 35km)
- 🚗 Driving: 386km on 8 days (Kapiti, Gold Coast, Brisbane)
- 🚗 Taxi: 30km (Brisbane)
- 🚌 Bus: 41km on 3 days (Wellington, Seoul)
- 🚆 Maglev: 30km (Shanghai)
- 🚆 Train: 64km on 2 days (Shanghai and Narita)
- 🚆 Metro: 82km (Shanghai, Seoul)
- 🚆 LRT: 4km (Brisbane)
- ✈ Plane: 26731km (WLG-AKL-BNE, BNE-WLG, WLG-AKL-SHA, PVG-GMP, ICN-NRT, NRT-AKL-WLG)
Transit was 221km, with a lot of metro in Shanghai and Seoul.
Walks
No named walks, but everyday and tourist walking, especially in Seoul. Seoul is a very legit city (at least where I was staying in Myeongdong) and hence there is walking in Seoul.
Pictures
More work and travel in June and so a smaller number of pictures. Some of the sets were pretty small, so that the number of sets is comparable, but only half as many pictures. About 50% of the pictures I processed this month are from May, making up 7 sets, but there are still 10 more sets from May to process. And my Shanghai/Seoul/Narita trip added a lot of pictures, especially from Shanghai and Narita. I don’t take that many pictures from inside the conference hall.
Picture logs still available. As always, pictures are clickable to go to the full gallery.
- Sets of pictures posted: June=15, May=19
- Total pictures posted: June=415, May=755
- Total pictures in selection pool: June=1113, May=2339
- Accept rate: 37% (min 25%, max 56%)
- Pictures posted on this page: 82
Fauna and flora (mostly birds):
Miscellaneous
There was indeed a lot of travel in June (just wait till you see July). I don’t really have a lot of “normal” months coming up.
Acquisitions
- Belkin BoostCharge Pro 108W 4-Port GaN USB-C Charger - White: kind of heavy but might be the right thing for some situations, even travel situations.
- Sony FE 24mm f/2.8 G lens: good length for daily use, I’ve been using it a lot since I got it. The 35mm at crop sensor is too long for many pictures that I want to take, and 12mm is too short.
- A Different Kind of Power, by Jacinda Ardern: I’ve started reading this but haven’t gotten very far yet.
- Incredible Insects of Aotearoa, by Simon Pollard and Phil Sirvid: yes, lots of insects, which maybe we don’t think about so often.n
Sports
I was in town for 16 days, so judo 4× sounds quite reasonable. I tried to arrange visiting practice in Seoul, but failed. Refereed 2.5 days in June, plus the Judo Australia seminar, whch was about half a day in all. Did manage to go climbing a lot, though. Got to Faultline 6×, Son Climbing in Seoul 2×, and The Climb @ @Gangnam once, for 9 bouldering sessions.
Food
Some places in Wellington, and then on my travels.
Wellington and Brisbane/Gold Coast
- Kisa: we gave this place a second chance and it did quite well this time for some reason.
- Banh Mi Southport: I did not have the banh mi, but it was a chilly evening for the Gold Coast, and the pho was excellent.
- Love Italy Surfers Coast: not bad but not great
- FARINA & Co.: one of the few places open early on Saturday morning, but not great.
- FirePanda Malatang: tasty; my order was somewhat spicy, but others ordered something less spicy and had issues with it. I thought mine was good.
- Ruyi Dim Sum: legit
- Salut Pies: not as good as Patrick Lam’s pies, more upscale, pretty popular, I didn’t find mine to be that flavourful but that might be aftereffects of a cold
- The Old Quarter: another good Vietnamese option in Wellington
- Genghis Khan: not as efficient as the late Mongolian Grill in Waterloo (only 2 at a time), but fine.
CJK trip
- Yong Feng Mian Guan, Shanghai: noodle soup with oxtail, yum; also, the boba tea at another place was a lifesaver on that hot day.
- MUHANGAMDONG, Seoul: Korean BBQ, how can that go wrong. The staff help you with grilling sometimes.
- Isaac Toast Myeongdong, Seoul: I was advised to eat street toast. At most times there is a line. It’s probably worth the line.
- Jinju Hoegwan, Seoul: All they had was cold noodles. Which may perhaps be an acquired (non)-taste: a friend of mine loves that dish. It was vegetarian though.
- Troy Kebab, Gangnam: I made it to Gangnam and had this after bouldering. Better than iskander in NZ? Actually pretty good.
- Kaisenya Torijo Narita Ekimae-ten, Narita: not absolutely sure this is the place, but it was a sushi place in Narita which was delicious and affordable.
Volunteering
Same as always.
Conclusion
Better ship this post before I continue on my walk!