travelling to Kyoto

I caught a Japanese Airlines flight from Heathrow early Saturday morning, to arrive in Tokyo early this Sunday morning.  The view as we were arriving had an interesting cloud.

We landed at Haneda airport after a 14 hour flight just a little late (due to a slightly delayed takeoff), to profuse apologies from the flight crew.  The next two hours shuffling slowly back and forth in the immigration queue with about 1000 other people were not fun.  But at least my luggage was ready for me after that.  

I next figured out how to buy a ticket for the monorail (I needed to pay cash for this, although every other type of ticket could be bought with a card).  I travelled to Hamamatsucho station, changed line, then on to Tokyo station.  I found a locker to hold my luggage, and had a coffee while I waited for a colleague who I had arranged to meet up with in Tokyo and travel with to Kyoto.  We explored a bit around the station, had lunch, then went and caught the Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto.

The train was roomy, clean, busy, quiet, and on time.  It was also fast, but that was difficult to tell, as it was all so smooth.  

It is supposed to be possible to see Mount Fuji from the train, but it was too cloudy.

Not Mount Fuji, in the clouds.  Look at that blur in the foreground!

We arrived in Kyoto early evening, checked in to our hotel, then went out for a meal.  Sunday evening, many places were full.  But my colleague, who had been to Kyoto before, and knew some Japanese, found a lovely little place in a backstreet, where we ordered a set menu.  They kept bringing us lots of little plates of wonderful food, and I discovered I like wasabi, in small quantities. (I seem to have missed this staple on previous trips.)  The meal ended with a lovely desert of a variety of not-too-sweet ices.

Yes, I photographed my desert.

Back to the hotel, to recover from the journey, and prepare for the conference starting tomorrow.  Only an eight hour time difference, the "wrong" way; I'm sure that won't be a problem!

no view from a lack of hotel window

I travelled down to Heathrow last night, to the hotel at T3, ready for my early flight to Japan today for the ALife conference.  I went to take a photo from the window, as usual.  No window!  I looked at the emergency exit floor map. No outside wall!  Okay.  Perfectly comfortable room, nonetheless.

That wall covering over the bed is not a blind: there is no window.

Towards Origins of Virtual Artificial Life

I have a new paper, "Towards Origins of Virtual Artificial Life: an overview".  This is in a special issue of PhilTransRoySocB, on Origins of Life.  I am also one of the three editors of that SI (but this paper was still properly peer reviewed, handled by one of the other editors, I hasten to add!)  

abstract:

The field of artificial life (ALife) studies ‘life as it could be’, in contrast to biology’s study of ‘life as we know it to be’. This includes a wide range of potential physical substrates, from synthetic biology (new genes), through xenobiology (new amino acids and DNA bases), inorganic chemistry (different structural elements), soft and hard robotics (new kinds of bodies) and also virtual life (existing inside a computer). Since any such life forms are artificial, the originating mechanisms can be similarly artificial, or can attempt to emulate natural mechanisms. Given the wide range of possible substrates and origins, it is crucial to have good definitions, and well-defined ways to detect and measure life, if and when it originates. This overview examines the current state of the art in ALife in defining, detecting and originating its subject matter, with its main focus on virtual life. After discussing common properties of several definitions of life, the overview synthesizes an engineering-focussed definition, in terms of abstract requirements, generic designs and specific implementation mechanisms, and then reviews the current state of the art through this lens. Although virtual ALife that satisfies all these requirements is yet to be exhibited, significant progress has been made on engineering individual mechanisms and, arguably, partially alive systems.

I had fun writing it, thinking about ALife in the context of origins of life.  Given it is artificial life, that implies an artificer, so it has to be an engineering origin rather than a natural origin.  So I get to exercise my Requirements Engineering knowledge.

It's open access, and can be found at doi:10.1098/rstb.2024.0298

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

I am off to the Artificial Life conference in Kyoto soon; I am filling in some online forms to save time in person later.  As is often the case, such forms want date of birth.  I am bemused by the day-of-month dropdown menu.