In the Dark

A quick post while I’m waiting in the hotel for transport back to Venice and thence to England. It’s been a short trip but a lot of fun, with a couple of interesting discussion sessions thrown in between the eating drinking and hiking.

Unfortunately I twisted my knee near the start of yesterday’s hike. The limestone rocks around here can be very slippery! Since I’ve had a lot of problems with my knees over the years I decided to return to Base Camp. The friendly owners of the bar at the trailhead gave me a bag of ice to control the swelling and I was forced to spend the morning reclining on a sundowner with my foot up rather than hiking.

This seemed to work and although I’m still getting a bit of a twinge I can get about reasonably well today.

Anyway, it’s back to Blighty this afternoon for the rest of what will be my last week at the University of Sussex.

Today I was mainly occupied with a hike to the Cinque Torri,  a group of five towering peaks about 12 km from Cortina d’Ampezzo. It wasn’t too strenuous, although the recent rains had made some of the trail a bit slippery.

The route we followed included a visit to trenches, gun emplacements and other fortifications built during the First World War. There was heavy fighting in this area, because it was the border between Austria and Italy at that time.
It must have been very grim for the soldiers dug in above the tree line, especially during the winter.

Anyway here’s a quick snap of me abour to pass through a gap in one of the rocky structures at the peak, just before we started to descend.

So here I am, then, in a small hotel just outside Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Dolomites North of Venice.

The occasion for this trip is provided by the recent 60th birthday of John Peacock and an informal workshop organised by some friends. I was up at crazy o’clock this morning to get the plane to Venice and we’ve been dodging  thunderstorms all afternoon but I’m sure it will be a nice weekend.

Until later!

So here I am, then. Sitting in my hotel room in Ghent after breakfast. About to pack my belongings and start the journey back to England. The Ghent Festival didn’t interrupt my sleep too much. Although there were people around until the early hours of the morning the noise wasn’t enough to keep me awake.

It’s been a nice meeting, not least because they gave me a gift pack for doing my invited talk:

GIFT PACK

I’m not sure what all the stuff is, but there’s definitely a bottle of a beer called Delirium Tremens which sounds promising and some chocolate which I’ll give to a good home. I don’t like chocolate. I will have to lug this back home on the train, but I’m sure I’ll cope.

So I’ll shortly be heading off to the railway station for the train to Brussels, whence to London and then Cardiff. Then I’m back in Brighton for most of next week, especially the Summer Graduation ceremony – my last official duty as Head of School.

It just remains to thank the organizers for inviting me to this meeting. It seems next year’s MaxEnt will be in Brazil!

Just a quick post to mark a nice bit of news from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Sussex. It was announced last week that Anotida Madzvamuse (pictured above) has been promoted to the position of Professor in Mathematical and Computational Biology.

Anotida’s research  lies at the interface between fundamental disciplines (mathematics, numerical analysis, physics, scientific computing) and experimental sciences (developmental biology, biochemistry, cell biology, biomedicine, plant biology) and seeks to propose, develop, analyse and simulate new mathematical and computational approaches applied to experimental sciences.

Congratulations to Anotida Professor Madzvamuse, and here’s to a future no doubt filled with even more great research achievements!

I’m still depressed and worried by the referendum vote, but it isn’t the British way to yield to despair. Let’s take the advice of a previous generation…

It seems clear that we are set to remain in the EU for the forseeable future, as the Leave campaigners are in no hurry to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty. I think there’s a real chance that we’ll end up staying in the EU after all.

In any case we are still in the European Union now. So. Chin up everyone. Business as usual!