Note: This post is long over-due. Part of the reason it’s taken so long is that fact that there’s so much to tell about the trip. However, in the spirit of expediency, I am opting for a condensed version of my intended posting. If you want to know more, let me know and I can add more later.
Today we were treated to a couple interesting presentations at the conference. In particular, “Automatic Consistency Assessment for Query Results in Dynamic Environments” was intriguing (caveat: My adviser is one of the authors). Unsurprisingly, there were even more web-services papers, but I had sorta resigned myself to the presence of these papers everywhere, so I wasn’t nearly as annoyed by them.
One paper which I really enjoyed was “From Representations to Computations…” which was arguing that we should return to REST style server interactions, even in the presence of AJAX style user interactions. While it seems that the model they are providing needs a little more work, the basic premise is wonderful. I truly hope that they succeed, for the web would be a much better place without the ridiculous SOAP interactions that we are all forced to use now.
At the end of the day, the conference treated us to a trip to the old town of Dubrovnik. The winds were a bit high, so we ended up taking the bus instead of the boat, but this also included a bit of a history lesson on the way. We arrived just as the sun was going down, so I snapped off a couple quick photos while there was still some lingering light:
The clock tower at the end of the main street in Dubrovnik
An open 4th floor window from below
The trip included a bunch of light appetizer type treats with music and dancing put on by a local group.
Group of musicians used renaissance-era instruments
A child in the arms of her father who inspects a friends photo on his camera’s LCD screen
The next night was the conference banquet. Some drinks before dinner helped set the stage for a good (but not great) meal. The banquet hall’s patio overlooked Cavtat’s harbor which was actually quite pleasant this night.
Jamie enjoys her pretty green drink
Tim enjoys his pretty (small) ouzo
A view of Cavtat’s harbor at night
Tim with the spoils of his victory on the race course
Now we jump ahead to the end of the conference. Since I had been focusing on the conference so much, I took the afternoon of the last day to go for a bit of a hike around the peninsula that Hotel Cavtat sat on. It started out well, but the trail I was on slowly starting fading away. About 200 yards into my hike, I found myself crawling under fallen trees just to make progress. Unfortunately, I miss-counted the number of trees and stood up right into a branch, opening a nice long gash in my scalp…
A view of the Aegean from Hotel Cavtat
A view of the Aegean from Hotel Cavtat, including an example of the beaches near Dubrovnik
A view of the Aegean from Hotel Cavtat, including an example of the ladders leading out of the sea
A view of the “Ocean View” rooms at the Hotel Cavtat
Cool plants around Hotel Cavtat
A view of Dubrovnik from the shores just outside of Hotel Cavtat
Head Wound
I got back to my room without incident and cleaned myself up. Being a head-wound, it was a bit hard to determine how bad it was. Since I had made plans to catch dinner with Jamie, so on the way to the restaurant, I picked up a tube of antibiotic gel from the pharmacy. This seemed to do the trick since the wound has all healed up now, and I can’t even feel it anymore.
Click the photos above or visit http://dstovall.org/albums/croatia-2007 for more photos.
Editor’s Note: Image and link URLs updated on 2008.05.26