Yesterday I gave up after three hours of hammering and screwing. When I woke up this morning, with only half a “BESTÅ VARA” mounted, and the rest of the pieces scattered around the house, Wikipedia proved, once again, to be an indispensable tool.

Graduate students regulate their circadian clock, blood sugar level, and mating periods according to conferences deadlines. For robotics people, the revered date is not September 21 (solstice), but September 15, the deadline for ICRA. For control people, the date is September 15… or 22… or 29, the ever-slipping deadline for ACC.

The peaks of my productivity for the summer were:

• Getting a driving license. It took 2 tries and too much good money spent on driving lessons.
• Understanding what’s the use of all the buttons on my camera, including the elusive “AEL”.
• Finishing reading the last two books of the Hyperion Cantos. (I’m actually disappointed because Simmons doesn’t explain the origin of the Shrike.)

My good propositions for the next academic year are the same as ever:

• I will buy a car,
• I will read all the papers in my giant “INBOX” folder,
• I will go swimming every other day,
• I will take at least two classes,
• I will write more often on this blog,

and on, and on, and on: I consider myself lucky to be in harmony with my procrastination.

(The stats are from the JPL weather station)

The competition is not particularly exciting but, as usual, there are camera crews from the local TV stations; Caltech’s PR people are good at hyping this kind of events.

Joel Burdick was commenting the event — I’ve been told, multiple times, that he has a sexy voice.

Of course, some professors are so busy that they have to watch the competition and read a paper at the same time:

He is the very first ordained Buddhist monk that I see with a business suit:

In Japan, I was struck by the contrast between a Buddhist monk and the salarymen in a train station (click for video):

Well, clothes don’t make the man, which in Italian we translate as: l’abito non fa il monaco, the robe doesn’t make the monk.

The premise of his presentation is that the study of the mind is currently in the same state as physics was before Galileo invented the scientific method. Psychology is to a rigorous study of the mind very much like what alchemy was to chemistry. What Buddhism can offer are the techniques for rigorous introspection in one’s mind. Self-introspection might be a rigorous endeavor, if there is a way to make objective this intrinsically subjective experience.

At this point, I recall the anecdote of the young Newton puncturing his own eyes with a needle to study the diffraction of light (source: Neal Stephenson, probably in Quicksilver, so it might be slightly apocryphal). The novel Newton must find a way to put needles inside in his mind’s eye.

The presentation is interesting overall, but by the end he starts talking about “luminosity” and other similar metaphysical notions, so I pack up my stuff and leave, happy to have avoided another hour of work.

Anyway, two different women tell me that it’s a stupid thing to celebrate, so I abstain from any reference.

Thanks to the jet-lag, for the first time, I saw the dawn in Rome:

I spent my few days (re)reading my Dylan Dog and Rat Man collections:

and playing my piano:

and generally messing up my room, that, having been cleaned daily for months without being used, had reached negative levels of entropy:

By the way, with a strange twists of events, I discovered that while I was busy converting the department to espresso, my parents had converted to American coffee (note on the left):

Roma! the perfect occasion to test my new camera (Sony A300). I found out that I need a larger macro lens:

and I need a longer zoom:

Then I headed to Nice, France for IROS. The conference was okay, with a good program, but the rooms were too small, especially for the bigger sessions.

During 5 days of conference, there’s plenty of time to go around the city. So I saw the sea,

I breathed the old-Europe air,

and visited the museums:

The most inspiring moment I had was in front of this citation of John Cage:

“the situation being desperate, everything is now possible” which will be added to my list of inspirational mantra.

And then, 26 hours of travel later, I was suddenly back in sunny California, wondering where my baggage was instead.

and exactly after one year that I’m here, I’m going back home for a week.

The week after that, I’ll be at IROS.

And then I’ll get back and be ready to start the new academic year, with strange ideas about courses to take.