Danscape 2009

Jazzart produce some exceptional dancers every year and this year is no different. I attended Danscape 2009, a student exhibition from the first year trainees and school outreach programs. The program was varied and displayed some interesting blends of African, Spanish and Asian influences. It is well worth the effort to see this performance every year and at R20 (for a block booking of 20 or more ticket are reduced from R50) its cheaper than a movie!

UCT Symphony Concert

The UCT Symphony Orchestra performed tonight in the Baxter Concert Hall. I love the Baxter with its bizarre ceilings and the acoustics in the Concert Hall are phenomenal. The pieces performed included:
L van Beethoven : Fidelio Overture Op. 72
Hendrik Hofmeyr Concerto for Flute
A Dvorák : Symphony No. 9 in E Minor Op. 95 "From the New World"

Attending tonight's concert with an out-of-towner reminded me just how lucky we are to live in Cape Town and are able to attend so many cultural activities. I wish more people supported arts and music events.

IPL ends with a bang

I have had a fantastic 6 weeks while the IPL has played out in South Africa. I loved the final and the nail biting ending that could have gone either way to the last ball. The Deccan Chargers won and it is very interesting to note that they were at the bottom of the log in 2008. Hats off to Adam Gilchrist (even if he is Australian) for captaining the winning side.

The closing ceremony was an amazing fireworks display and getting Eddie Grant and Akon to perform topped the night off nicely. This tournament shows the rest of the world that South Africa can pull off a major sports tournament with little notice and without any apparent hitches (forget the guy driving into the spotlights). I look forward to the Soccer World Cup and Confederation Cup now. And the Franch Open which started yesterday.

JPlag

I find it fascinating the number of cases of plagiarism the university sees very semester in computer science. JPlag is a tool to compare students code for similarity and reported 45 cases for the first tutorial alone. Its rather worrying that these are meant to be the "creme" of society that make it into university.

This brings me to my next point, practical tests. I despair at the new students and their attempt to make their lives more difficult. When you have a limited amount of time to complete a test and have access to your notes and past assignments, surely one would think of reusing old code or copying the basics straight the notes instead of trying to remember the basic syntax and wading through compile errors. Surely it is a logical option?

Medal Test woes

As many have discovered in the past, UCT Venue bookings are very disorganised, so much so that they triple booked halls on campus today. We worked so hard to clean the floor last night and prepare for the medal tests this morning only to arrive to another group in the hall and a completed ruined floor. So much for preparation. It seems the various administrations do not communicate, surprise, surprise!

My medal test went well, though I forgot how much energy it takes to be "on" all the time on the floor. Its frankly exhausting. Everyone seemed to have a good time overall and I hope they transfer that enthusiasm to Intervarsity.

IT Challenge Final

This last week has been rather stressful. The IT challenge at the head offices of Standard Bank in Johannesburg on Thursday was a six hour adrenaline rush as each team of 4 had 7 problems to complete and a curve ball to deal with.

Last year the curve ball was an extra problem with increased time penalties, this year was a half an hour computer shutdown for "emergency maintenance". When you only have one computer, this eats into your time and productivity quite substantially.

UCT came second overall and as prizes we received Dell 22inch flatscreens. Nice consoaltion prize :)

Ballroom is hotting up

For those who watch the UCT Ballroom calendar Medal Tests are just around the corner. Extra lessons start on Sunday and we are set to have a truly awesome time this year. We're going Greek! The committee are also gearing up for Intervarsity and all it entails (the bane of my existence at the moment).

My thesis is slowly progressing with a multitude of stops and starts as problems arise. I am currently investigating the SMILE library for Bayesian Inference. I am not completely sold on the library and the API yet and am wondering if I should have stuck it out with PNL. I seem to have more problems than solutions currently. The nightmare continues.

Python for Nonprogrammers

The EGS Honours class at UCT has requested a course on programming and the research they are attached to (CSAG) has decided Python is the best introductory language for them. I have never taught Python to people who have never programmed before and especially ones who have already done an entire degree. How quickly can you move through the basic programming concepts? Do you assign it as homework before your first lecture? Any suggestions?

I have read through a Byte of Python but I am not convinced it covers the topics in enough depth. I as a programmer can breeze through the whole book without a qualm but I do not remember a time when I didn't know what a variable is or what an IO stream is.

We will see how well things go next week. I might be designing the lecture material yet again. Sigh. If nothing else, it is a challenge to see how well I can still teach the basics.

IPL is here

I am super excited to attend the Indian Pro20 League games happening at Newlands next week. Due to election violence in India the entire tournament has been moved to South Africa. Something South Africans are ecstatic about. The games are sold out, space is going to be at a premium. Bring on the boundaries!

Chocolate trails in Montague

The Easter weekend was chocolate filled and not in the normal way. Ever been rock climbing for your Easter eggs? No? I can officially cross that off my I Never list. It is the most bizarre experience. The first climber leads the climb with Easter eggs and hides them on the way down. The next finds his/her eggs on the way up and eats them and hides new eggs on the way down.

This weekend was the first time I have ever climbed, be it on a climbing wall or crag. I came away with more bruises that I would have liked and a healthier knowledge of the sport in general. I'm not sure it is quite my thing, I think it might be one of those things that could grow on me.

While away I bumped into a fair number of my research group, which begs the question, are most environmental scientists outdoor freaks or just this lot? Another weird fact, ask a climber if they dance, you will be surprised at the number that say yes. It seems there is a correlation between social ballroom/salsa and climbing. Both are social, both have a grading system of sorts. Ballroom however has smaller startup costs.

In a Goldfish bowl

I had the privilege of attending the last Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concert of the season. Goldfish played to a sell-out crowd while the sun set over the mountains. I managed to miss all previous concerts in CT due to other commitments or still being in Michigan. While I enjoy their albums, I loved their live performance. They manage to get the crowd going and keep up the energy for the entire performance. I will definitely go to another of their concerts on their return to CT later in the year (They are playing in Ibiza for a month). This experience taught me not to write off a band just because their album sounds offay.

You're only as old as you feel

Table Mountain is a truly beautiful venue to hold a champagne breakfast. I love going up the cable car every year on my birthday (for free) for either breakfast or sundowners. This year friends hiked up India Venster to meet me at the top. The view from above never gets hold, no matter how many years I have lived in Cape Town. I think we managed to freak out the tourists up there though. If you ever find yourself on top of Table Mountain near the compass, look for the manhole covers and jump on them. The compass is directly above the water drum. The hollow sound it makes when you jump on them is awesome.

My day continued with lunch with my grandparents and then drinks at Fat Cactus with friends. Frozen Margaritas are wonderful, as are cheesy nachos to soak up the alcohol afterwards. We finished the night with a UCT Ballroom social themed Grease. Big skirts with poodles, bows and slicked back hair was the order of the evening.

Celebrations continued the next day when I hosted my first ever dinner party. I think it was a great success (No one is allowed to comment otherwise). The menu included:

• Butternut Soup with french bread
• Deboned stuffed chicken with mixed vegetables and potato bake
• Dark Orange Chocolate Mousse or Meringues with Ice Cream
• Coffee and Biscotti

There weren't many leftovers...

Sushi anyone?

Any sushi lover in Cape Town has to try Minato's off Long Street. This sushi restaurant tantalises the tastebuds and offers some of the most reasonably priced sushi around. The portion sizes are huge (I'm being serious when I say a dragon roll and a California roll will fill an adult male). The service however is quirky. You cannot arrive without a booking (Well you could try, you might be lucky), you may only order once at the beginning of the meal (One chef who closes the kitchen when he feels like it) and do not even suggest paying on separate cards. Once you have navigated the trials and tribulations of the ordering rules on the menu, page to the special rolls, they are out of this world (I have a friend who refers to them as sushigasms).

UCT RAG Floats 09

UCT RAG Floats Parade 2009 was themed "Where in the world". The general idea behind the floats parade is to collect change for SHAWCO but also allows residences to work in teams to create the floats with varying degrees of success. Some floats were slightly unstable but the EBESC float had a alien spacecraft with flashing lights which was quite impressive.

UCT Ballroom participates annually by dancing in the procession between the floats doing Samba line dance, a travelling version of Samba that is done individually. We ended up dancing behind the EBESC float this year as the float we were meant to dance for had generator issues.

The stop start nature of the parade made for some interesting reworks of the line dance but overall I think it was rather fun. My legs and feet were killing me later though. An hour of Samba on tar in takkies is not the best way to treat your feet. The impact alone is killer on the knees.

Ada Lovelace Day 09

Ada Lovelace Day is an opportunity to write about women in technology. I decided I would write about one of my old lecturers who is using her computer background to help advance the field of visualisation of molecules.

Michelle Kuttel obtained her degreee in Computer Science and went on to study computational chemistry for her PhD. Her PhD thesis focused on Simulations of Carbohydrate Conformational Dynamics and Thermodynamics. While working towards her doctorate Michelle was the sysadmin for the chemistry group at UCT.

Following her doctorate Michelle has been lecturing students in Computer Science at UCT while working on visualising algorithms for carbohydrates and the simulation of carbohydrates. She also supervises students who are testing new docking techniques for molecules, visualisation of carbohydrates and high performance algorithms for computational chemistry.

Michelle is well-known in South African circles for high performance computing and was one of the original team to push for the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) that is now operational in Cape Town.

For me, Michelle and other female researchers at UCT were proof that females could survive the world of computing and still do the work they love.

A Dash of culture

Mixit was an interesting experience. Put together to literally show a mix of dances, the pieces didn't gel or flow into a seamless show. I was intrigued by the music choices and how the dancers expressed what was essentially electronic music with a slight melody. Definitely not my favourite show.

Standard Bank IT Challenge

The Standard Bank IT Challenge is a four hour programming competition where each university enters four teams to compete for one place per university for the final. The teams are supplied with 1 PC and allowed to program in C++, Java and Pascal. In past years there has been support for Python but not this year. The problems this year varied from a string manipulation to a brute force solution for tiling a grid. The final ranking put Stellenbosch in first place solving all five problems with [censored] from UCT, in second place solving four of the five problems. The finals will take place in May in Johannesburg. I have never competed in the final before and it will be an interesting experience. Finals report to come in May :)

Probabilistic Network Library

The Intel Probabilistic Network Library was a project originally developed by Kevin Murphy and then translated from Matlab into C++ by the Information Technologies Laboratory. This library has not really been supported since 2004 but has an interesting high level wrapper library to its underlying functionality. For those looking to use a Bayesian network library, maybe look at SMILE.

Dark Orange Choc Mousse

This recipe originally states it serves 4, I happen to disagree, after splitting it into 4 you would go into a sugar coma. A better estimate would be 8-10 servings (I'm assuming its being served after a meal).

300g dark chocolate
30g butter
2 eggs, separated
30ml sugar
45ml orange liqueur (or Van der Hum or Grand Marnier)
250ml cream

• Break up the slab of chocolate and melt it in the liqueur in a bowl over hot water
• Add butter in small blocks, stirring until it has melted
• Beat the sugar and egg yolks until pale and light. Reserve egg whites
• Beat in the melted chocolate and butter, then leave to cool
• Whip the egg whites to stiff peak stage. Be careful not to overbeat
• Whip the cream until stiff
• Fold the egg whites and cream into the chocolate mixture
• Pour into an attractive bowl and chill for several hours before serving

Garnish with crystalised orange / candied orange peel / orange segments. For the super indulgent, drizzle with orange liqueur (or ginger/orange liqueur mix)

Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concert: Jonny Cooper Orchestra

The Jonny Cooper Orchestra entertained audiences at Kirstenbosch with a mixture of the old favourites from Glen Miller and Frank Sinatra and added a few Proudly South African compositions to the list. I looove big band music and was pleasantly surprised to see so many other people under the age of 40. I even spotted a couple jiving to one song.