So, college is over...

Well, my readers, its been awhile. My apologies for not updating this blog for awhile; MQP work became rather intense. But now it is all over, and t'was so very worth it. Allow me to briefly summarize the high points:
-We got an A
-I got thesis recommendation
-I got a letter of recommendation for a TA position
-I'm going to do Ph.D work in London, courtesy of our lab director!!!

Now, as you can imagine I'm rather thrilled about all of this. Last night was devoted to a somewhat serendipitous celebration (yay alliteration!). You see, we ended up on a boat party of college students who had just finished a semester at their university. Sure, they all spoke Hungarian, but when you have common cause and open bars language barriers don't mean much. Sailing down the Danube on a floating party boat (complete with dance halls, bars, and lounge areas) is an experience I highly recommend to anyone who has the good fortune of finding one. Imagine dancing and drinking with about two hundred others on three decks, passing under brightly-lit bridges with city lights on both sides and a breeze off of the river. The music was a rather eclectic assortment of 90s rock, pop, and hip hop (hot, new, mainstream tunes here). The people were equally mixed, with a surprisingly large number of Germans and Americans milling about. All told the trip lasted about four hours, and was well worth the 1300 forint (about $7.00) or so cover charge.

Today shall be spent wandering around, with a game of laser tag later on between our group and some SZTAKI researchers. Assuming anything interesting or hilarious happens, you shall be informed some time tonight. After all, I believe I owe you readers two or three entries by now. In terms of the overall trip, seven weeks are rapidly drawing to a close. I fly back to the 'States on May 2nd, about five days hence. I plan to go on a least one more excursion in Hungary, possibly either a riverboat ride or some sort of hike. Possibly both. If any of you readers have a suggestion or want something in particular covered, now would be the time to say so ;)

Of colds and grids and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings...well the first two at least

So, it’s been awhile. Surely, you think, I come bearing some wonderful story of our times here. A trip to the country? How we spent Easter? Maybe a treatise on the language? Well I am sorry to report that I have little to report. A rather nasty head cold laid me low for a bit of the break, and the remainder was spent discovering that no matter how big of a holiday Easter may be in the smaller towns, it is merely an inconvenience in the city. The stores and commercial establishments (excepting restaurants, bars, and clubs) are closed Sunday and Monday. Other than this, any festivities that went on must have happened in residential areas or some such. Most of my weekend was spent wandering the streets and parks of the city, occasionally stopping to write a bit or read some such. Margit Island remains a wonderful place, but since I’ve already devoted an entry to that I shall refrain from repeating myself.

Instead, I shall explain what our bloody project is about. Since it is currently consuming far too many waking moments I suppose it has earned a place in this blog anyway. Now you’ll first have to know a bit about grid systems. In a nutshell, a grid is a heterogeneous (i.e. made of different types, say a PC, a Mac, and a supercomputer for example) network devoted to distributed processing. Many very long, hard problems in the scientific world can be broken into smaller, more manageable problems. These can then be solved on their own, and recombined to find the solution much faster than would otherwise be possible. The trick, you see, is to take all these fragments and solve them at the same time. Grids make this, theoretically, easy. You submit the problem, a software agent called the resource broker allocates some computers to work on it, and off it goes. Then they churn merrily away, and some time later your answer pops out.

Our specific problem is to analyze the performance of an economic marketplace model on a grid, versus on a single computer. Since one algorithm processes many sets of data, it should be easy to parallelize the system and dramatically speed things up. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of pratfalls and unexpected delays in the real world. So extensive testing is needed to see if it is practical, as opposed to theoretically nice. At this point I’d rather not get into how the project goes…suffice to say that the ideal world of perfect grid systems will happen around the same time that world peace is achieved and Dick Cheney stops eating babies.

More Zany Adventures

The day began with a trip to a Hungarian folk festival. While somewhat small the place certainly had a distinctive character, in addition to a wide variety of both food and souvenirs. Cuisine included goulash, kielbasa, other forms of meat in a tube, and hollow cylinders of fried dough dusted with cinnamon, sugar, or coconut. Your truly had the latter for breakfast, and found it most delicious. Music was provided by live folk singers. Most of these wore old-fashioned Hungarian clothes and sang what I assume were old-fashioned Hungarian songs. However, the festivities were interrupted at one point by an old Irishman approaching the mic and providing about 30 minutes of drinking songs at the top of his lungs. Where this aged leprechaun came from and why he sang at a Hungarian folk festival is beyond me, and may be nothing less than a mystery for the ages.

After eating and music came souvenirs. All manner of curious things were for sale, from jewelry and ornaments to hand-made toys, wooden and stone furniture, and various alcohol-related sundries. Several of you readers will be receiving gifts courtesy of these merchants’ stocks, I might add. The crowning delight of this festival was my discovery of a flask among the wares of a metalworker. Soon I shall have the money to fill it with Palinka, and life will truly be delightful. (If a bit hazy.)

Once were had toured the festival our group set out to Margit Island. This two-kilometer ovoid sits in the middle of the Danube, in central Budapest. The whole thing is one huge park, barred from vehicular traffic and open all year. When we arrived hundreds of people lounged on its beaches, played at soccer in its fields, and generally had a good time. After wandering about on foot, we discovered several rentable motor vehicles resembling golf carts. *A metaphorical pillar of light descends from the heavens, while an angelic chorus sings Hallelujah.*

Now, you may not think anyone can go joyriding on something whose top speed is less than that of elderly joggers. If so, you clearly need to exercise your imagination. Two people could fit inside, and two people on a seat in the back. The driver’s objective at all times was to throw the passengers riding outside the vehicle onto the ground, preferably amid loud shouts and the laughter of nearby Hungarians. Yours truly had two rather interesting accidents. First, Montana hit the breaks so hard that my hand went through the hole masquerading as a back window, colliding rather forcefully with the back of Candice’s head. Secondly, the same bloody driver managed to turn so hard that I was flung off the buggy. Since I was holding on to an edge, however, the net effect was me being swung from the back of the vehicle to a spot directly in front of it. For a couple seconds I was faced with a most ignomius death, roughly akin to being run down by a blind grandmother in a motorized wheelchair. Thankfully the battery powered car came to a halt, and I merely died a little inside amidst peals of laughter from both friends and passerby.

Regrettably, our 60 minutes of rented buggy time ran out shortly after. We decided to rent bikes for another hour, and explore the island that way. Of course I lost the main group within 45 seconds of our departure. Unable to turn around and not collide with a person or tree, I neglected to note that everyone but me had turned off the main path. So I spent the next hour on my own dodging old people, children, joggers, and the Danube while pedaling a bright red bike with a shiny bell fit for the coolest of seven-year old children. Since most of the island had already laughed at us during the buggy incident, however, I didn’t mind terribly.

Once we re-convened outside the bike racks our group sought dinner, and broke up for the night. Tomorrow’s entry will not recount further adventures, but will instead explain why precisely we’re here to begin with. If words like distributed computing, grid system, and economic modeling sound less than thrilling, you may want to skip the next blog. I won’t be able to tell anyway. (Or will I??? *ominous reverb*)

Wilderness Adventures

This mood continued for the first 40 minutes or so, which were spent walking down a highway and then through an admittedly quaint village. As we passed into farmlands I grudgingly began to enjoy myself, and appreciate the fact that we seemed to have stepped into a past world. Without any motor vehicles in sight, and with farmers working their fields in the distance, one need not struggle to imagine themselves a century previous. We soon came to the foot of a small mountain crowned by white rock outcroppings. Climbing it took surprisingly little time; our guide new the area well and led us around the rock face and up its wooded back. The view from the top was breathtaking. Farmlands and tiny villages dotted a landscape split by streams and the occasional road. On the horizon the Danube glinted with morning light.

We rested there for a time before moving on to seemingly endless birch and oak forests. The solitude of such woods is an almost tangible presence. Silence was broken only by a light wind rushing through, and the occasional birdcall or rustling foliage. I must say, it had been a long time since I experienced anything half so peaceful. After two hours we reached another small mountain, and climbed it gradually through a series of wooded slopes and switchback trails. Once the summit was attained, our view was strikingly different (but no less impressive) than the first slope. On one side tree-covered mountains stretched into the misty distance. Between our mountain and the Danube, villages out of a history book dotted the floors of shallow valleys and riverbanks. The other side was apparently Slovakia, and was dominated by small wooded hills.

At this point our trip was nearly at its end. We hiked back down the mountain, and followed hiking trails until we reached the village of Dobrova (except with accent marks, and slightly different spelling). Since it was roughly 4PM and I hadn’t yet had breakfast, the restraint we stopped at seemed to have the best food in the world. I believe I had wine, bread, and French onion soup. Regardless, it was delicious. While we waited for a bus back to Budapest our guide showed us a popular scenic view: the aforesaid turn of the Danube. From here we could see another mountain, which we will be hiking in three weeks time. So stay tuned for more from the wilderness of Hungary, and eventually some description of what I’m working on here.

On Planning Ahead, and Why it Always Fails

Before I begin the substance of this next experience, let me recount to you the havoc that daylight savings time and poor translations can wreak on the best laid plans. Several days ago we were informed that an ‘excursion’ was planned for last Sunday, to a place called the ‘turn of the Danube,’ and that if we felt like going, to be at a bus depot (whose name I can’t remember) at 8:30AM. Initially I planned not to go, since I do not relish waking at the crack of dawn. Besides, by the phrasing I assumed we were taking a bus to some scenic lookout, snapping a few photos, and coming back; potentially nice, but not worth losing my one good night’s sleep per week. On the off chance that both Montana and Candice went I told them to wake me. After all, there’s no sense hanging around the apartment by myself. Well. Come 8:00AM (or so I believed), I woke up from the sound of Mike entering the flat. Assuming that my roommates were here, since nobody woke me, I lazily got out of bed and figured I say hello. I shortly discovered that both had departed, and Mike wanted to go on the trip. So suddenly we had 15 minutes to get halfway across the city. Breakfast and a shower were skipped, and we were off.

Upon arrival at the rendezvous point, we met Felix and Peter. They informed us that some time last night, daylight savings time came to Hungary. So it was, in fact, 9:30AM. Thankfully our hosts had realized what might happen, and waited for us. Unfortunately, about 9 other American students apparently woke up, decided they missed it, and went back to sleep. Furthermore, Candice and Montana had actually just woken up early and gone out to breakfast. And as a final caveat, the bus actually took us to the beginning of a 4-hour hike. So tired, hungry, and sorely ill-equipped for a day of climbing mountains and plodding through muddy trails, I disembarked from the bus in a rather foul and still somewhat addled mood.

Pictures

A good number of my pictures are now uploaded, and available at :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7437879@N04/

A Venetian interlude, Part 4

Murano

Sorry for the delayed post, my Internet access has been somewhat fickle as of late. The final Venetian Interlude concerns our trip to the nearby island of Murano, which is world-famous for its high-quality and beautiful glassware. While awaiting the ferry to take us over the water Mike and I encountered a fellow American traveler. I don’t recall learning her name, although this should be taken with a grain of salt given that I also don’t remember if I had breakfast today. Regardless, she turned out to be an opera singer living in Florence for a time. This was her last day in Venice and she had decided to see the glass factories before leaving for an audition elsewhere in Italy. A life of traveling and performing seems like a wonderful way to see the world (although she said it wasn’t a particularly easy one). Eight years of voice school, and barely enough money to get by and slowly pay off loans. Still, if one is happy, that is enough.

After arriving in Murano we parted ways, with Mike and I going to a glass factory while she found breakfast. Calling the place a factory seems a bit of a misnomer, as in reality the building held nothing but a furnace and an elderly glassblower. (To me at least, ‘factory’ evokes images of assembly lines and towering smokestacks.) Somewhat surprised but curious, we sat down to watch him work. In only a couple minutes the artisan had produced a beautiful clear glass vase. Despite having scalloped edges, an ornate handle, and a tapered form this work of art paled before his next creation. To this day I have no idea how the artist did what he did, and watching it felt like being in the audience of a stage magician. From a reddish-orange lump of molten glass he pulled three projections with a crude pair of pliers. Next, he poked a little at the piece with a metal rod. All of a sudden, a horse happened. It didn’t form, or take shape. It happened. Without going through any intermediate stages I could see, the amorphous lump of molten silica became an exquisitely detailed glass hose. After this the show ended, and I walked baffled and impressed back into the streets of Murano.

The shops here are filled with glassware, from utilitarian cups, glasses and prisms to chandeliers, fine china, and multi-colored sculptures that belong in a museum. The price tags are similarly distributed, from affordable and cheap souvenirs to shops catering to collectors of beautiful glassware. Since I’m rather attracted to shiny, colorful objects, my wallet was a great deal thinner by the time we left than it was at the start of the day.

We concluded the day with a night trip to Lido, another of Venice’s notable islands and home apparently to a world-famous resort. I can now technically say that I’ve walked the beaches of Lido, although the night was overcast and I only knew we had reached the sea when my feet were suddenly underwater. The view is probably wonderful when everything isn’t inky black. One surprising feature of this island was the presence of cars. After spending two days in Venice I had forgotten about these loud, polluting beasts that race up and down city streets at top speed. Considering that this place catered to the wealthy bourgeoisie I had expected that cars would be even less welcome here than on the mainland. Lacking canals, however, I suppose that automobiles are an unfortunate necessity.