Wednesday, September 12

 

 

I woke up on time and noticed that my time in a spa seemed to have cleared my ears, nose and throat. I could hear without coughing.

Yesterday’s rain had disappeared and the ground had dried. Adding a scarf to my ensemble, to protect my throat, I cycled to Puotilla and got to Arcada about 8:50, to begin working my way through the emails that had piled up while I chaired supercharged meetings in Pärnu.

I spent the morning writing up some of the notes that I made in Pärnu, and planning some future projects that arose in part during the last few days. I also had a meeting with Nathalie about the Norwegian-organised project that we should hear about in a few weeks. “Hearing about”, in this context, means finding out if the project will actually happen or not.

I then turned my attention to a potential thesis exploring agent-modelling as a method of predicting behaviour in social networks. I have received two papers of relevance to this, so I read them and made comments. In principle, this could prove the most interesting thesis I have supervised at Arcada. To achieve this, however, it will first have to get somewhere; or at least get started.

I spoke with Magnus and Micke about this last week, and they had never really heard of Netlogo, Ascape, or any other agent-modelling software, so we will receive no help, but we will also get a lot of interest once the thesis gets going.

At about 13:00 Jutta decides that she needs to go to Lidl for some lunch, and then walks into a tutorial. I wait and eventually we go. As we walk into the shop she tells me a convoluted story about her complaints about the newly revised Posti smart boxes. As I wait for her to pay for her shopping I photograph them. As we leave I realise that I still don’t fully understand the story.

At 14:00 we will meet with Fred to discuss a large project that will turn into two large projects as the discussion proceeds. Both of them will sound interesting.

At 15:00 I will get ready to leave because Irma will work late this evening and I will look after Sunshine. Tiina will sit sighing at the desk next to me while I sit eating a peach that I bought in Lidl earlier.

At about 15:30 I will actually leave.

In the evening we will have sudden and energetic thunderstorms that will light up the darkness and almost flood the garden.