Second Aussiversary musings

Wednesday this week was our second Aussiversary, having stepped off the plane to start our new adventure two years ago.

To celebrate, here are some of things I have learnt over the past two years (in no particular order):

• Aussies are very serious about their coffee, and it’s fantastic. (Even if Melbournites think that Sydney coffee is crap!)
• The chips are disappointing but the fish is great.
• The Aussie ideal of mateship is aspirational and inspirational, even if not always realised.
• Not all of the animals are trying to kill you - including the dragons.
• Your average store chocolate is rubbish but they do have people who know what they’re doing.
• Jacaranda trees are awesome.
• If thongs are banned at a club, the bouncer will stare at your feet, not perform an intimate search. And you can buy thongs in vending machines.
• Aussie rules football is possibly the best spectator sport ever. (Based on one game!)
• Thanks to craft breweries, Aussie beer is not all bad, and some of it is very good.
• Brunch is a serious(ly good) meal of the day.
• Musically, Australia is trapped in the era of hair rock power ballads. And it’s awesome.
• The coins have animals on them
• For long haul, always fly an A380 if you can.
• The Socceroos may struggle but Aussies rule at robot soccer.
• They do a good line in sunsets.
• Australia is a great place to do bioinformatics.

Comment below if you think I’ve forgotten anything important - I’m sure there’s lots!

Love chocolate? Love ice cream? Love coffee? You'll love a Magnum Espresso!

I do like good chocolate, ice cream and coffee. What could be better, then, than something tasty that combined all three‽ Behold! The Magnum espresso

Magnum vanilla ice cream is not spectacular but it is good - and surrounded by really good dark chocolate. (It makes me wonder whether you can just buy bars of the stuff.) Stick in some swirls of coffee syrup and you’ve got a winner. It’s chocolate with a splash of coffee, rather than coffee with a splash of chocolate - so don’t be too disappointed if you are after COFFEE!

According to their Facebook page, it’s a limited edition. I hope its not too limited!

Every conference should be like ABiC 2014 (#ABiC14)

Last weekend, I attended the inaugural Australian Bioinformatics Conference (ABiC 2014) in Melbourne. (Twitter tag #ABiC14 so as not to be confused with the ABIC Foundation conference in California.) I’ve been to quite a few conferences in my time, including a fair few bioinformatics conferences. The latter (in my experience) are often quite dull affairs - good for meeting people and “networking” but not so good for interesting science beyond the invited keynote speakers.

Happily, ABiC14 went far beyond expectations. I signed up because it is important for me as a relative newbie to meet more Australian bioinformaticians. This was accomplished but was only the start of the positive experience of this conference. In fact, the conference was so good that I thought it worth posting its successful attributes/decisions as a model for future conferences (and reminder to myself should I organise one).

Here then, in approximate chronological order, are my top take-home quality attributes of ABiC 2014:

Organisation. The conference website was well organised and clear prior to the meeting. The program outline was available in good time, enabling planning, with abstracts etc. available in a single PDF. The only real improvement I can think of would be to have a printed program (just the outline, not full abstracts) provided upon arrival. However, because there were no last minute changes to the program, this turned out to be a moot point.

Coffee. Science in general, and bioinformatics specifically, is fuelled by coffee. The Aussies do coffee well and ABiC 2014 had the genius idea of a sponsored barista who made a decent cup of fresh coffee to order. I took advantage of this on arrival, which really set me up for the morning session and got the whole thing off to a great start.

Venue. The Royal Children’s Hospital was a great venue. Access by public transport was easy. The lecture theatre was comfortable and a good size. Eduroam provided free WiFi access (even if HTTP sites were unavailable for some reason). Coffee breaks, lunch, and poster sessions were near to the lecture theatre and promoted mingling.

Size. I’m not sure what the final number of delegates at ABiC 2014 was but for me it was the perfect number. (I would guess around 180+/-.) There were enough people for some interesting diversity, presentations and posters but not too many to actually get to chat to people and visit all the interesting posters.

Interesting Science! This is clearly one of the most important aspects of a good conference but sadly one that is often not achieved by a bioinformatics meeting (beyond the keynotes). I think there were several contributing factors to this. First, there were not too many talks and no parallel sessions. There were twenty talks in total, in six sessions of 3-4 talks of 10-50 mins each. Each session kicked off with an invited speaker. By keeping the quantity down, the quality of the talks - and stamina of the audience - was maintained at a very high level. I was expecting to “zone out” and struggle to maintain concentration a few times but I found my attention captured by each speaker. Talk quality was further enhanced by…

No published conference proceedings. Because of the large computer science community within bioinformatics, a lot of bioinformatics conferences have the submitted work published as papers in conference proceedings or a journal special issue. Even when the journal is a good one, this massively decreases the likelihood of getting interesting science, which will normally be either (a) published in a higher impact biology or general science journal, or (b) not yet be ready for publication. As a result, talks tend to be more technical and specialist… and boring. ABiC 2104 avoided this trap.

Food. You don’t go to a conference for the food but having tasty snacks at the breaks and at lunch does add to a general vibe of happiness and satisfaction.

Beer. Scientists and computer geeks are not always the most extrovert of individuals, and a little something to grease the wheels of social interaction never goes amiss. The ABiC committee went as far as to establish the beverage categories of choice with a pre-conference questionnaire. They gained extra brownie points from me for the presence of Fat Yak among the offerings.

Posters. This is largely a composite of the above points but the poster session was one of the better ones I have attended. For a start, the posters were up for the entire conference. It really bugs me when conferences do not do this and it all comes down to choice of venue - so well done ABiC for selecting a venue with this capacity. Furthermore, the poster location had great access - being a wide corridor - and was between the auditorium and the morning/afternoon drinks and snacks, maximising quality exposure. Furthermore, restricting the number of talks saved lots of interesting science for the posters!

Conference Dinner. If you are lucky, the conference dinner will be one of the best networking points of a conference, as your table represents a fairly captive audience with whom you have to interact. Nevertheless, conferences are generally charged to grants and researchers are on a budget, so it is frustrating to be forced to spend a load of cash on a meal that rarely lives up to the expectation of the price tag. ABiC 2014 took a pragmatic solution of booking out a restaurant and bar, and everyone paying for their own meal and drinks ordered off a standard single course menu. It worked really well. The food was good (but not excessive) as was the company. There was only one course but you never need more than that when there are morning and afternoon snacks in the breaks.

Timing. As far as I could tell, the talks generally seemed to stick to time, so coffee/lunch breaks were not truncated. Again, by keeping the number of talks (and talks per sessions) low, this was easier to achieve. Nonetheless, it's still something that is not achieved by all conferences. (I remember one conference in which my talk started 5 minutes after it was supposed to finish!)

Twitter. I’m a bit sporadic on Twitter at the best of times and not entirely convinced that live tweeting in a conference is not generally more of a distraction than a benefit - for those present, at least. However, I did enjoy having the #ABiC14 twitter feed open during the meeting and felt that it added to the sense of community. Of course, the aforementioned interest of the talks (and the smallish size of the meeting) limited the distraction.

As of the end of ABiC 2014, there was no plan for an ABiC 2015. I, for one, really hope that there is one - and that the organisers are able to stick to the same model.

Two good eggs (and some mighty fine pork belly)

Today we went for Sunday brunch at Two Good Eggs cafe in Surry Hills, central Sydney.

A good Sunday brunch is probably my favourite meal of the week - not that we have brunch every week - and so it was exciting to go to a cafe that specialised in breakfast and brunch. Starting with a very good flat white, complete with little wafer, we were not disappointed.

The Two Good Eggs menu is pretty diverse and manages to hit both the usual favourites, such as pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, or Eggs Benedict, plus a whole bunch of creative dishes too.

I opted for something that I would never make myself at home: Roast pork belly with poached eggs, caramelised onion and sourdough toast. Delicious! The two eggs were indeed good, cooked to perfection and served atop tasty, crispy pork belly and sweet, sticky caramelised onions. The photo did not do it justice but an attempt seemed obligatory for something so good.

I was lucky enough to sample a couple of other dishes too: Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon and avocado, and “Goats on toast”, a vegetarian dish of “Warm Trinity Cellars French goats cheese with drizzled honey and smashed walnuts on sour cherry fruit toast”. Both were very good, although I’m glad I went for the pork belly.

Not quite as cheap or close as the amazing sandwiches at One Six Nine cafe in Randwick, but I am already looking for excuses to go back! Top notch nosh.

22 grams of coffee heaven and the brilliant Cafe Brioso

One of the noticeable things about Sydney is the quality of coffee. Unlike the UK, which is dominated by several big chains (Costa, Starbucks, Nero etc.) and has quite variable coffee outside of these chains, the Sydney cafe scene is still ruled by small independents and they are all good! One cafe worth a particular mention is 22 grams on High Street in Randwick, which is just down the road from where we spent our first month in Sydney. Their coffee rates as some of the best that I have ever had - and they do a mean cinnamon bun too!

It would be wrong to mention good coffee, however, without a shout-out for Cafe Brioso, which is more commonly known as the “Library lawn coffee cart” (above). Situated next to the Library Lawn (below), this is my favoured spot for a flat white on campus. Although quiet in the photo above (as I try to avoid taking and posting pictures of strangers), the coffee cart gets pretty busy at peak times but the crew of baristas are awesome and churn through the orders like a well-oiled machine. It’s good coffee, too! My only regret is that, as it’s takeaway only, I alway have a lid, which covers up the pretty “barista art” in the crema/foam. Somehow, it’s nice knowing it’s there, though - a sign, I think, that the barista cares!

Starbucks versus Costa iced latte - the key is not to blend it

This summer has been a scorcher and my coffee habits have been appropriately adjusted to increase the number of cold coffee drinks. I had dabbled in the odd frappuccino in the past but this year I really discovered the joys of the iced latte. The problem with blended drinks is that they get very watery at the end, whereas a lovely latte on ice retains all its coffee goodness. For that reason, a Starbucks iced latte is (for me) cold coffee perfection!

Costa, on the other hand, do something very weird. It all starts out like it’s going to be a regular iced latte, albeit with a artistic flourish of letting the coffee seep down into the milk rather than mixing it. (Why?) But then they do something really weird, and blend some of it up somehow. I’m not exactly sure what they do but you end up with a load of foamy stuff floating on top of your latte that (a) somehow seems to contain a lot of the coffee, and (b) is really hard to suck up the straw. (It just seems to float on top.)

I recommend sticking to Starbucks!

Using an iPhone for real world shopping

It’s official - I have become an Apple fanboy. Despite my irritation at their policy of charging seemingly excessive amounts for cable/adaptors to connect their devices to the rest of the world - I nearly wrote “unashamed fanboy” but I am slightly ashamed - they keep finding new ways to blow my mind. (And make me feel old at the level of excitement and amazement it stirs in me.)

Shopping on a mobile device is pretty old school and Apps for online stores abound. What got me really excited recently, though, was the ability to shop in the real world using my phone. The first step on my journey was at Starbucks. I’ve had a Starbucks card and the Starbucks App for some time and finally took the plunge a couple of weeks ago to try and pay with the App - simply tap Touch to Pay and a barcode pops up that can be scanned at the till (if you have credit on your card). No messing about with cash and wallets - indeed, no need to carry my Starbucks card in said wallet. (Not sure why I still do!)

Today, however, I experienced something beyond that, which really took things to the next level. At the iPad training day on Tuesday, the instructor had an Incase Origami Workstation, which I rather liked the look of. (I have posted before that “When it comes to writing, it’s more of an oPad than an iPad” and this could be a solution - a future post will report!)

A quick browse found it cheaper in the online Apple store that at Amazon, so I thought I’d pay the physical Apple Store in West Quay a visit and see if they had it too. They did, so I grabbed one. I wanted to ask about the pros and cons of having an iMac versus Mac mini plus external monitor, so I loitered and ogled/coveted all the beautiful things in the shop for a while. Unfortunately, all the iStaff were busy, so I gave up and brought my potential purpose up to the desk to pay.

Big mistake, really showing my ignorance, that one! You don’t pay for stuff at the desk in an Apple store - it’s just for repairs, as I was informed. I could take it to any of the roaming staff instead. I actually felt a bit annoyed at this and my face might have fallen at that point, for I had been waiting for one of the roamers to become available for a while. But then:

“Or… you could just do it yourself on your iPhone…”

What‽

But yes, it’s true. For fellow ignorami in the futuristic ways of the Apple store: you can buy things in the shop by using the Apple Store App on your phone. No need to even speak to any of the staff unless you want a bag. You just log on to the store WiFi, go to Stores in the App and pick EasyPay, then scan the barcode of your purchase. Confirm with your Apple ID password and you’re away! Your receipt appears on your phone (and gets emailed to you) and the staff get a notification of the purchase, whilst you go on your merry way. Modern technology! Mind blown.

Blogging at sea - the ferry versus flying for Southampton to Dublin

Southampton is a pretty good place to live when you have relatives in Dublin because there are direct flights. This trip, we decided to drive over and take the ferry from Holyhead instead. Apart from the long(ish) drive on the UK side, which is not so bad (especially if you splash out for the M6 toll road), there are some definite benefits to getting ferry.

For one thing, having a car in Dublin is really useful. I say this having lived in the city quite happily for six years without one. It is only going over and visiting friends and relatives with the car that I realise quite how much more you can do with a car - one of the great things about Dublin is all the great stuff on its doorstep.

The journey itself, although longer, is also more comfortable. (In a weather-dependent fashion, I suspect - we had good weather each way.) Although we made a poor coffee decision last time, the discovery of (proper barista) Costa coffee and onboard WiFi makes the whole experience much more pleasant than the short hop in a small plane - particularly for the period between boarding and departure.

It is easy to become complacent about technology but I think the modern age is pretty amazing when you can have internet access in the middle of the Irish Sea. As a result, I felt the need to give it a proper road (or sea?) test and see if it could cope with a blog post. Initial signs were good - it uploaded the screenshot OK - but as I have been typing this I have seen Blogger struggling to save the draft despite still being connected. I guess one disadvantage of the modern age is that when free WiFi is available, everyone logs on! (It took a few attempts to load up the link to my previous Irish ferries coffee post.)

Time to hit “Publish” and see if anything happens…

Chic and cheerful at Urbun cafe, Cabinteely village

Continuing the good coffee theme, earlier this week we had lunch at Urbun cafe in Cabinteely, south Dublin. As befitting a cafe that started life as a market stall, the interior is simple but comfortable and, for want of a better word, wholesome. The knives and forks, for example, were brought to the table in a reused jam jar. (I think the decor might "urban chic" but I'm not really sure - I won't let that uncertainty interfere with a blog post title, though!)

The food was very good. I had the special - a tasty sweet potato and bacon frittata - and also got to sample some of my wife's club sandwich. The frittata was good but the sandwiches at Urbun are pretty special, served on thick slices of lovely fresh bread - highly recommended.

After lunch we had a coffee and that was also excellent. Their barista, Vini, had won third prize in the Irish Barista Championship and did not disappoint. Good stuff!

Impressed with Cafe2u Coffee at the Southampton Kite Festival

I thought I should balance out my last post giving out about coffee on the Jonathan Swift by endorsing some surprisingly good coffee on the go. Last Saturday was the Southampton Kite Festival. Our friends, the Flying Fish Kiting Team, were performing so we went down to lend some support. (And a good performance it was too! Sadly, the weather was not quite so good, so no pictures this year.)

As well as the kite skills of Flying Fish (and their four-man team, L-Katz,) one of the impressive highlights of the day was the coffee from the Cafe2u mobile coffee van that was there. (Last year's culinary stand-out, Biggles Donuts, were not there, sadly.) Proper, freshly made coffee, and not ridiculously overpriced. (I also like the smiling running coffee bean on their logo!)

Irish Ferries coffee disaster!

We recently made a trip from Holyhead to Dublin on the Irish Ferries Dublin Swift. We had a couple of breaks on the drive from Southampton but were feeling in need of a good coffee pick-me-up by the time we had embarked. Having settled down in seats near the onboard "Cafe Lafayette", I unthinkingly assumed that (a) all the places serving hot drinks on board would essentially serve the same, and (b) if anywhere had more/better hot drinks, it would be the cafe. Big mistake on both counts!

If you travel on the Jonathan Swift and like your coffee, avoid Cafe Lafayette at all costs. The coffee tasted like burnt dirt. (It actually reminded me a of the odd occasion at work when I have made myself a cup of Senseo coffee and forgotten to put in a new pod!) Not good.

To rub salt into the wound, when disembarking the ferry we noticed that the "Temple Bar" on board was serving Costa coffee. Duly noted for future trips!

Diep Noodle - worth getting to the airport early for

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about Dublin Airport: Dublin Terminal 2 food court - great for food but poor for hot drinks. Well, this week I was travelling through the airport again and, though travelling from T1, was there early enough to get some dinner there. Having only had a coffee there the previous time, I am happy to report that my earlier assessment was both right and wrong: it is great for food but is not necessarily poor for hot drinks!

When I lived in Dublin, Diep Noodle in Ranelagh (now takeaway/delivery only it seems) was one of my favourite restaurants (although I only went a handful of times), so I was keen to have my dinner at the Diep Noodle Bar.
The Menu is quite simple (and a bit more expensive than the current one on the web shows) but it's still hard to choose when everything is so nice. I remembered the yellow curry with particular fondness - it is still the one to which I compare all Thai yellow curries (and usually find them wanting) so I opted for the beef variant of:

Gaeng Karee
Yellow Curry with Potato, Onion & Crispy Shallots.

It was so delicious that I forgot to put my iPhone to its proper use of taking food pictures. Every bit as good as I remember. If you are travelling through Dublin Airport around time for dinner (or lunch) then I recommend planning your inward/onward journey around leaving time for a visit to Diep Noodle Bar in Terminal 2. (The meal arrived really quickly, so you probably don't need to leave too much time!)

One of dinner companions had a cappuccino and reported that it was very nice - made behind the counter at Diep rather than just coming from an automated machine. It might have been less than €3 too. This begs the question as to why they make the coffee machine so prominent but perhaps my poor awareness last time was more to blame than the setup.

Bella Lucca

I spent the past few days in Lucca, Italy, for a(n Irish) family wedding. I've never been to Lucca before but it was great and well worth a visit. It's a medieval walled city that is still completely surrounded by a city wall and, beyond, surrounded by the hills and mountains of Tuscany. Compared to the remains of Southampton's medieval walls, the walls of Lucca were surprisingly wide and flat - very easy for strolling, jogging or even cycling round.Of course, nothing quite sets off a stroll around some ancient city walls like some gelati and Lucca (as expected in Italy) has some great Gelaterias. I particularly recommend the pistachio gelati from the Gelateria L'Angolo Tondo in the Piazza Anfiteatro. (Another triumph was the chocolate gelati from the Caffetteria Colombano, located on the wall itself at Baluardo San Colombano.)

The other thing I love about Italy is the coffee. Italians really know how to make a good espresso! In fact, all the food and drink was pretty good. (They have some very pretty cats too!)

No stars for NOM bigots thanks to Marriage #EquaLatte campaign

The issue of same-sex marriage has been getting a lot of attention recently, both sides of the Atlantic. Highlights have included a Scottish Cardinal who is so out of touch with reality that he believes legalising gay marriage would “shame the UK in the eyes of the world” (not the part whose opinion I would care about) and, in a mind-boggling statement of inverted intelligence, declared it to be a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”. (What?!) Of course, this was followed up by the greatest quote of all by Chief Executive of Stonewall, Ben Summerskill:

“If Roman Catholics don’t approve of same-sex marriage, they should make sure they don’t get married to someone of the same sex.”

It seems that things are a little more sinister across The Pond, and the (unfortunately not-ironically-named) "National Organization for Marriage" (for marriage, are you sure?) has called for a nationwide boycott of Starbucks for supporting Gay Marriage. Happily, we don't live in a world where conservatives get to enforce their narrow-minded bigotry on everyone else unchallenged, and Sum Of Us have started a counter-campaign to thank Starbucks for standing up for equal human rights, in their #EquaLatte campaign. (Who can resist a good pun, eh?) So far, over 640,000 people have signed up versus 29,000 on NOM's "Dump Starbucks" pledge site. Job done, I think. Well done, Sum of Us! (You can sign up here.)

Cracking coffee (and cakes!) at the Santo Lounge

Today, we got up at silly o'clock to watch the rugby. What a great decision that turned out to be! Both my adopted (Ireland) and actual (England) teams lost - and deservedly so. It's a shame that France chose this particular game to start trying but what can you do?

To commiserate ourselves, and reward our subsequent efforts in the home cleaning department, we took off to the local cafe bar for coffee and cakes.I love coffee. More precisely, I love good coffee! (There's a bit of a tautology here as I basically define good coffee as that which I love!) The Santo Lounge in Shirley does good coffee. It also does a tasty range of cakes, which work well in the commiseration/reward stakes!

The Santo Lounge is part of the Loungers chain on cafe bars. The first one we went to was The Trago Lounge in Portswood, which is in a former Pizza Hut - a great trade for Portswood in my opinion. This was a brunch visit, which made it a doubly good discovery as we had been looking for a decent brunch place in Southampton for a while. The Trago Lounge nailed it, as did the Santo lounge in subsequent visits. Having such a place so close is as dangerous as it is convenient!

The Trago Lounge also did fantastic coffee (and cakes), like the Santo Lounge. This bodes well for rest of the chain, so if you have a Loungers cafe bar nearby, I thoroughly recommend checking it out. I know some people have problems with chains - especially chains of cafes or bars - but when they're good, it doesn't bother me at all!