Happy Thanksgiving (Two Days Late)

My mommy wasn't here to feed me this Thanksgiving, so I was lucky that she managed to teach me some basic cooking skills over the years. I was a little too lazy to make a turkey. Instead my friends and I celebrated with the second most American meal ever - pizza. Melis had the brilliant idea to make one of them Thanksgiving-inspired. It was a great meal with good friends, plus I now have leftovers.

Sweet Potato Pizza

Todd's Normal Pizza

Finished Products

Today the Marshall Scholars are meeting in Oxford to celebrate Thanksgiving. Part of their celebration includes their annual American football defeat at the hands of the more physically vigorous scholars. I'm looking forward to doing my part.

A Visitor From That Other Institute

A newly minted Marhsall Scholar from MIT, David Reshef, arrived yesterday for a visit. Even though he happens to date my friend Clara, I'm thoroughly convinced that he came to visit me, not her. We had a blast talking science and generally reveling in nerdiness. David was lucky to attend last year's TED conference. These conferences are supposed to be on "ideas worth spreading" by "the world's greatest thinkers and doers." One of the coolest aspects of the conferences (at least for a schmuck like me who doesn't get invited) is that many of the best presentations are posted online. David reminded me of one of my favorite presentations I'd watched. In it, a guy named Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows how millions of publicly shared photos online can be combined in order to reconstruct three dimensional models of major landmarks. He takes the example of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. By collecting what are essentially touristy photographs taken from different views, in different lighting conditions, and with different obstructing faces blocking out parts of the cathedral, Blaise constructs a single model of the building. It's a pretty impressive demonstration.

Annotated Panorama!

Panorama!

Oxford can be pretty

aka Hey look, it's not raining today.

High Table

I had my first High Table experience last night. For those who don't know, the class system is alive and well in the UK. I suspect that one of the favourite pastimes of Oxford fellows is to sit around dreaming up new ways to symbolically demonstrate their superiority. Luckily, Mason Porter (Lloyd House '98) has risen the ranks and was able to invite me to join the fellows for dinner at Somerville College. For full disclosure, I must admit that we were actually seated at "Lower High," which is physically on the same level as the commoners. Of course the true High Table is physically elevated, but it was a crowded guest night and even Mason has a few more social rungs to climb.

Catching up with Mason was good fun. Mason was back at Tech as a postdoc during my tenure there. He is an aficionado of Caltech pranks and also was research mentor to several of my best friends, so we had plenty of nerdy topics to discuss while eating chocolate in the Senior Common Room (SCR) after dinner.

My blog has become a battleground

It seems that one of my friends, Andrea DenHoed, has decided that an effective way to force me into making a website for her is to direct the other Rhodes Scholars to my blog. Of course, my Caltech readers will recognize this as a stupid strategy since they know I was a pathetic excuse for a Techer. I am hardly able to make a simple html page, much less the sort of JavaScript she desires. A normal person might be slightly upset by her feeble attempts to embarrass me, but it's hard to be upset with someone who looks as goofy as this.

Saturday Fun

I finally went out cycling with the Oxford Club. It was fun and felt good to go on a decent ride again. Cycling certainly was a good way to see some of the English countryside, even though I managed to get a flat.

After the ride Clara and I went to Port Meadow (a giant meadow of common land for grazing). Note the difference between how some people treat animals.

Miss Blättler is mean.

Mr Gingrich is nice.

The Folks Come To Visit

My parents came to visit Sunday night through Wednesday morning, which was a lot of fun. We managed to make it to wander around Oxford seeing the sights and reveling in the old buildings. I also managed to bribe some friends into joining us for formal dinners at Magdalen, Univ, and Oriel. Special thanks go to Jason Bello, Clara Blättler, Andrew Hammond, Scott Thompson, Melis Anahtar, Deep Shah, and Nadine Levin for providing the company and dispelling the nasty rumour that I'm completely antisocial.

Tuesday night gave me another chance to prove that the skeptics were wrong when they told me I was stupid for buying such a hideous tie.

Texas is blue (until they started counting the votes outside of Austin)

It's not yet clear if my promised science funding will materialize, but at least Mr Obama ushered in one instantaneous change - it's now socially acceptable for me to wear my awesome tie over here. Well perhaps not socially acceptable, but I'm not quite as scared about being thrown into a gutter now.

Finally, it seems that my metal oxide paper from Nate Lewis's group has been published. Don't everyone rush to read it at the same time, but for the sake of my most devout followers it can be found here.

Photos

New photos from London are posted on my facebook site. Even people without a facebook account can view them by clicking here.

Weekend in London

I just returned from a Weekend in London. In brief: google party, Les Mis, Michael Faraday's lab, Techers at UCL, British Museum. Photos will hopefully follow, but my parents are in town visiting. Unfortunately for my faithful blog followers (ie Ben Eidelson and his fan club) I'm going to spend some extra time with my parents at the expense of the blog.