Julien's fuzzy blog

This bank holiday week-end, I went to the North Wales to walk around the Ogwen Valley in Snowdonia.

The last train line to get there (Llandudno Junction to Betws-Y-Coed) is really nice. It's a single track, with stops in the middle of nowhere. You may have to make a sign to the driver to request the stop . It reminds me my favourite French train line in the Vosges mountains Colmar-Munster-Metzeral (more modern coaches have been introduced around 10 years ago). And it's so nice to stop in a station where you don't have a "Warning: CCTV in operation" sign even in the toilets ...

First afternoon was really windy. I sometimes even couldn't step forward, and fell a couple of time on the side. I scrambled up to Tryfan anyway (in the second gully from the left in this picture). It's a bit steep, but the rock is really good, it's a nice scramble. As the summit was terribly windy, I just climbed on Adam but couldn't even stand up on it so I didn't jump on Eve. I'm not that brave...

I slept my first night in the Cwm (cirque) Bochlwyd, near the Llyn (lake) of the same name. It was a really good spot ! I first tried my new tent The North Face - Mountain Marathon in windy conditions. It's an ultra-light (1.67kg), ultra-compact tent, sleeping one. It seems to be quite good quality, well-finished with even fluorescent zippers so you can find them in the middle of the night . It resisted quite well even to stray winds. Unfortunately, I couldn't test it in heavy rain conditions...

Second day was long and hard (I kinda expect some comments on that...). With long steep downhill parts especially from Glyder Fawr (my knees formally acknowledge my walking poles). And a nice ascent with easy scambles to Carnedd Dafydd and Llewelyn. Weather was rather nice, I got tanned (some would say sun-burned). Scenic ridges were great.

I slept the second night in Cwm Bychan, got woken up by a sheep, and then everything went (too) fast (*): I was back in London, enjoying the sun in Hyde Park...

Thanks to Rachel for the bibliography regarding to this trip

(*) fast is a nice word, as in fact I took 6h (1 bus + 3 trains + 2 tubes) to get back home ...

When I started my blog, I intented to write mostly about my research. This is actually not the case. As you may have noticed, I've then slightly changed the title of the blog from "Julien's PhD blog" to "Julien's fuzzy blog". Reference to the PhD is now in the subtitle. Title changes but blog remains the same ...

Pictures and video of the Belfast trip are available on Charlee's web site. I particularly like the following:

• The off (11MB)
• Andy finishing (22MB)
• Peepshow

I let you discover the other. Nice stuff ...

Last weekend I went for a quick break to Norway to visit some friends, Kristian, Olav and Nan (not the fab Indian bread, but the gorgeous singer (see previous)). It took a total of 13 hours to get to Bergen from London due to the bus breaking down in a tunnel hundreds of meters down under a fjord. The guy sitting next to me blamed it on my presence, personally I think it was because it was Friday the 13th and there needed to be a cosmic balance in the day... Finally got there and went out to enjoy the night life. Was so good to see Kristian and Olav again as has been a year, and quite a while since I saw Olav too. Will get some pics of them.

Bergen is my dream town, peaceful, beautiful and has a great social life (although alcohol is really expensive!). It is nested in between 7 mountains so the views are great and is really close to some seriously good hiking... perfect. I hope to move there one day and build a wooden boat (a nice sized one...)!

Was a quite weekend filled with chilling, drinking, eating and relaxing. On the way home I got chatting to the taxi driver. He said I should come back to Haugesund in August because then they have a herring festival and I can stay with him! People are very open and friendly there!

The next trip there will be in July for the Island festival, can't wait!

It's maybe a bit early to draw a firm conclusion, but I reckon enabling blog comments has not been really successfull so far ... After 10 days, the total number of comment is only 8 (including 3 of mine and 2 bug reports...), and the post frequency falls down more than exponentially. I'll let the comments anyway, see what's going on next.

I've tried without success to persuade some friends to open their own blog. I then thought that other people could post entries on mine. Something more or less related to running, hiking or life in UK, or anything else you think appropriate. Outrageous gossips on me are NOT allowed . As you can see, the author can be specified at the bottom of the article. So from now, if you feel like writing something, just send me an article (text/html) and its title. I keep the right not to publish offensive attacks on my weak person

Yesterday I spent the day at the Nextwave Interface Annual Seminar. It was nice - I had too many coffees I was "wearing" a wireless electro-cardiogram (ECG) sensor the whole day: 3 electodes and a small box stuck on my chest. To show on a PDA how my heart was going to people wandering around ...

This week-end I went to Manchester to visit Venetia and Bertrand. The journeys went ok, no delays in tube or train (in which case they keep on repeating "this train is on time" during the travel). The weather was quite nice too.
We cooked nice food: bacon and cheese soufflé, gratin Dauphinois ... Desserts served with a Tokay Pinot Gris vendanges tardives 2000.

I couldn't get a digital picture of Venetia and Bertrand to show you. I eventually found one. It's a bit old now, it was the last day in Hull for Thibault and me, we went to the bowling.


Camera: Abdullah - Author: unknown

left to right (back): Venetia, Bertrand, Julien, Farad, Thibault, Hussein
left to right (front): Anne, Yan, Abdullah, Luli

An official waiting list has been set up for the runners that couldn't enter the trail (limited to 2000 participants). Today, they're already 112 runners in this list. If some runners withdraw their subscription, organisers will take people in the waiting list.
I wanted to enter this list yesterday, but I need a medical certificate. And at the Imperial health center, an appointment is required for that. Two weeks to wait ! Hopefully, the position in the waiting list can apparently be set according to the date of 1st request for a bib on the forum (on the ultra-trail TMB web site). This was quite early in my case. So if organisers don't close the waiting list till then, I may have my chance...

The album I've listened the most this month: Incubus - Make Yourself.

enjoyincubus.com incubusonline.com

Yesterday Rachel dragged us to the Spitz to see (and listen ) a gig by Me and Bobby. Actually she knows the Norwegian singer - Nan - that you can see on the picture. She has an amazing voice. The concert was really lovely. We all had a very good time. You can download a couple of their songs on their blog, but honestly it's completly different in live !

I've refined a bit my selection of marathons for this autumn. Athens has been rejected because of a strange organisation and registration process. It's all done by a US company that does its best to sell a 1-week trip with the marathon. New selection is the following:

My mark	Date	Country	Marathon	Runners (approx.)	Price	Deadline	Comments
9.5/10	16/10	NL	Amsterdam	5,400	55EUR	22/09	Seems to be appreciated by runners we met
9/10	31/10	IR	Dublin	10,000	50EUR	01/08	Seems to be appreciated by runners we met
8/10	25/09	D	Berlin	36,000	70EUR up to 30th June, then 90EUR +6EUR for the chip	05/08 (mind runners limit)	Could be nice to go 1 week to visit the city
6/10	10/09	F	Médoc	8,000	80EUR	limit 8000 runners	wine, oysters, cheese tasting along the race - costume is needed - the first gets his weight in wine

Please let me know if you consider to enter one of these races. Note that if I can eventually register for the ultra-trail TMB, I won't probably run a marathon.

This was the title of many e-mails I've received last months (special thanks to Tbo). Now you can directly post your comments on the blog !
I've enabled the comments for a while to see if the experience is enjoyable. Please let me know if you experience any trouble.

I've started to implement a "shape by space carving" algorithm. Nothing new for the moment, I'm just "playing" to see roughly what can be done. This algorithm takes a couple of camera images of a 3D object as input. The basic principle is to start with a cube and to carve every voxel that is not consistent with the set of images. This should converge to the "best" 3D modeling of the object regarding to the amount of information given by the set of images.
The application is still fully bugged, but I can't resist to show a first screen shot ! This modeling has been done with only 4 synthetic images as input, carving in a bloc of approx. 3,500,000 voxels

Some pictures from the sportcam website (official photographer).

   

Yes ! 2 days after Belfast, I already think about the next one. We'll have to subscribe earlier to be able to choose. My first selection:

Date	Country	Marathon	Runners (approx.)
10/09	F	Médoc	8,000
25/09	D	Berlin	36,000
16/10	NL	Amsterdam	4,500
31/10	IR	Dublin	10,000
06/11	GR	Athens	8,000

I also though about the following ones: Robin Hood, Loch Ness & Munchen. Any other idea ?

If you're interested, subscriptions must be done ASAP (eg. already 20,000 runners in Berlin).

For those who still don't believe I enjoy swimming in the North Sea in mid-April ...

 

Thank you Luli !

The official results of the marathon have just been released. You can find them here. I'm 165th (out of 1418 arriving) with a time of 03:34:24. Pictures should be available soon.

That's it ! After 3 months of training, we finally run the Belfast Marathon yesterday !

The weather was rather nice, even a bit too warm at the end - I got a bit tanned. I got serious problems with my stomac. I don't know if it's the power gels (*) or the water served in cups instead of bottles (very difficult to avoid swallowing air), but I threw up twice (miles 8 and 20). It was rather embarassing, even though I didn't feel so bad: I kept running at the same time . But it's a huge loss of water and sugar. The last 6 miles were a bit difficult, laking water, starting to have cramps (fortunately not as much as last year) and a nice wind in the face, but I achieved to finish in approx. 3h34.
At the same time was organized a marathon in relay, run by teams of 5. Lots of people were running this relay, so the start was really crowded, massively dominated by these teams. Unfortunately, most of them started probably too fast, and through the end I sometimes felt a bit lonely...
I'm quite ok today, I won't run but at least I don't walk like a penguin

Regarding to the Belfast city itself ... well there's nothing really amazing there, apart from the city hall and the clock.

(*) kind of food full of carbohydrates, to be eaten during the race