Thursday, November 16th

SC06' Brilliant


..not really. I just signed off from booth duty so I can finally attend some lectures and workshops. This was not the best conference experience I have had. I spent most of the time on the eScience booth (didnt even know i was on duty until i got there) which for the obvious reasons did not attract large audiences. Most attendees were pre-occupied with the large computing players such as Intel, Microsoft, Sun etc. I felt early on that this was not a venue to try to sell one's research so it finally became a tedious exercise. Although I did had some entertaining moments with my colleagues, I doubt I will be coming back to Sc07' next year. On the plus sign, I spent tuesday evening at the Microsoft party and caught up with old friends and colleagues. Savas (who I hadn't seen for almost a year) and Jason were there and we spent some time talking about work and enjoying the free drinks. I have some great pics which i will be posting soon. My meeting with MS as well as my effort to impress them went very well and although my colleagues called it shamelless :-) I felt I did a lot of progress. ;-)
Sadly I I cannot disclose any details.

I haven't had time to do any tourism yet but I am off to st Petersburgh, Fl to visit the infamous Dali museum, rumoured to hold the largest collection of his work and then probably the Kennedy Space Centre (assuming i find someone to drive me there). Anyway I am off to burn my SC06' badge now...speak soon.
panos on 11.16.06 @ 08:47 PM gmt [link]

Monday, November 6th

Long weekend in Edinburgh


I am back today from a long weekend in Edinburgh which I spent with friends from back home. We had a blast pub crawling around the main arteries of the city namely Princess Street, Royal mile and George Street. The weather was surprisingly good; that is to say it did not rain; so walking around was rather pleasant. I also caught up with an old friend who I had not seen for a very long time (since my college years). It was nice talking about our time at the Uni, the fun we had and the friends we shared. Time flew quickly; as it usually does on such occassions and the whole affair made me feel nostalgic of a different phase of my life.

Anyway coming back to reality, I have just booked my flight to Tampa Florida. I am actually off to Orlando on Sunday morning with Virgin Atlantic. I failed to find a direct flight and I prefer the 2 hour drive to Tampa rather than indirect flights. I am going to attend as I previously said the Supercomputing conference 2006. Don't know what to expect as I have not visited this particular conference before but I am hoping our research work will be well received. It will also a good opportunity to catch up with several colleagues and friends from NCL who will also be attending.

I am working hard to get some of the reviews of the book chapters returned to the authors this week. This is hopefully my last trip before the Christmas hols so I should get things going. I do have some teaching commitments when i get back but I am confident the book will be finished on time. I have some pics from Edinburgh which I will be putting on my photos pages soon. For the time being here is another of me and Takis
panos on 11.06.06 @ 03:23 PM gmt [link]

Thursday, November 2nd

Ph.D. studentship


After a few months of contract negotiations I managed to secure some fudning for a new Ph.D. student to work in Grid Security within the eScience centre. I had informally offered the position to Pierre de Leuse a couple of weeks ago and yesterday we signed the contracts to make the collaboration formal. This also signifies my first job as a P.I. Pierre will be working with myself, Paul W. and our colleagues at BT on a security broker for web services. The project will build on the expertise of our centre in Grid security and its practical significance will be demonstrated via a prototype system that Pierre will develop. I am confident that with his experience in S.D. he is the ideal candidate for this post, hence I look forward to working with him. The first thing on the agenda will be to arrange a trip down south soon to visit our BT colleagues....probably after my return from the States. I will post about that soon...

panos on 11.02.06 @ 02:49 PM gmt [link]