All a bit mad, having been on the road for a while, so just a quick review here. When he started, I thought he was well past his best; probably because he was singing in a strangulated falsetto when we got in.

Anyway, this turned out to be wrong; he was just warming up. The singing got better and the guitar was wonderfully rhythmic. Afterwards we squeezed into the little hall for Monica Vasconcelos, who played mellow jazz, and samba tinged music. Good voice, excellent band.

And all for 7 quid, in the cheap seats which I quite like. No complaints there.

Back in Copenhagen. Turns out I was wrong about the couched area — it's still there, just hidden behind the smoking room.

Trondheim was a lot of fun. I was there for a thesis defense. It's a lot more formal than in the UK; the candidate has to do two lectures (one on the thesis, one on a related topic that they find out two weeks before) and then they get a public examination. We were in a very impressive room, with two lecturns, like a court. The whole experience was a bit strange—there's a large degree of theatricality to it. On the whole, I think it's better than the UK one which consists of three people sitting in a room for 3 hours; it's rather anti-climatic, while the Norweigian version has a sense of occasion about it.

I have a theory, though, about feedback in science. It's well known that once you start to do well in science, then success breeds success; you get better known, more opportunities come your way and so on. I've been starting to wonder whether this is, in part, due to airports. The more successful scientists travel a lot (much more than I). The truth is, in this day and age, airports are great places to work. There is nothing else to do, laptop batteries last long enough. Travelling gives you intermittent access to the internet, so you can get what you need, but can't spend hours reading BBC News as a work-avoidance strategy. In the last few weeks, I've got lots of stuff done, as well as writing blog posts of course.

I am going to test this theory next week, by spending the entire time in the airport. Newcastle is only a 15 minutes from my house, so I plan to go up at 9 and sit on the concourse till 5. But will the magic still work if I don't have a valid ticket? I will report back.

Right, boarding...

I'm sitting in Copenhagen airport, next to the inevitable statue of the Little Mermaid, which resides between a lift shaft and a coffee shop. I'm travelling to Norway to do a thesis examination; I'm quite looking forward to it, to be honest, although I wish it wasn't in public to be honest.

I haven't been to Copenhagen since 2001, I think, when I was here for ISMB. The flight in was pretty bad: small plane, big bumps. My memories of the place are confirmed; it's a nice airport, airy and light. I have a veggie noodles which was actually pretty good. The nice balcony that I remember, on the first floor—low seats, lie down couches, free from children—now mostly houses the smoking and kiddies area (separate of course) and, so, has transformed from the most to least desirable part of the entire airport.

I would have loved to pop into Copenhagen itself—I seem to remember it's not far—but I have to re-read a thesis. What with the trip to Japan, I haven't had time to do it before, hence it's become an airport job.

I'm not doing my carbon quota any good here, about another 200kgs up in, well, whatever the combustion products of a plane are.

11:30

Now in Trondheim. I've never been so far North (well, not while on the ground). It disappointingly warm at -3C and there's not that much snow around either. Trondheim, from a drive through and brief wander, is cool (sorry). There's an amazing number of pubs (half of them are "British" — I've walked past "The three lions", "Little London" and "Macbeth" already; I'll leave you to work out which is the Scottish one. The street I am on, also has a curry house, a vietnamese and a chinese resturant. I could almost be at home, except for the unfeasibly steep angle on the roofs.

I'm also a new person from before. I've seen the Northern Lights. Not seen them well, I admit, through the window of the plane, with the reflection of a reading light in my eyes. But, I have always wanted to see them, I always knew that some day I would, and now I have.

Went to the biscuit factory yesterday for the first time. On the whole, it was pretty good, and I enjoyed it. Most of the stuff in there was wildly too expensive; they had a lovely mirror, for instance, with a carved wooden frame, but 700 quid is just too much for something that has a reasonable chance of getting broken.

One of the things that amused me, though, was the artists' statements. They seem to be required these days; people appear to judge art by what the artist is thinking rather than what they can see. I guess that they are teaching the writing of these personal statements in the art colleges nowadays; one thing that it is clear they are not teaching is grammar—in some cases it was terrible (okay, I hear you saying, maybe the pot is calling the kettle here, but blogs are quick written not studied).

These statements varied from the pretentious to the prosaic—with more of the former. A selection of my favourites (or paraphrases from memory) with my translations were:

• the individual instintively views the piece from many different angles and viewpoints (translation: it's a shiny mirror and looks pretty in the lights).
• the latest series explorers the artists emotional response to the weather on the bleak moorlands of Northumberia (translation: hell, it's windy up here).
• "I dislike personal statements as they force the artist to move from the abstract and ambiguous realm of the medium, to the concrete realm of writing" (translation: I'm a painter! I like painting; I hate writing).

My favourite statement, though, was short and simple. It went

"Emma (I think this was her name) generally paints from the local environment. She paints from what she sees. She likes to work on location wherever possible as she enjoys the interaction with passers-by".

Wonderful; if she had replaced "enjoys the interaction" with "likes to natter" it would have been perfect; frank and to the point. The paintings were good as well.

We've had a series of good meetings, I got lots of chance to talk about metadata. It's clear to me that there is plenty of work to be done, but that it's starting to happen. It's not clear to me who will play what role, nor whether we will just repeat the history of bioinformatics. I guess neuroinformatics has the opportunity to do something new, ignore the legacy, that it could even avoid the pitfalls; having said that, one of the biggest pitfalls of bioinformatics was doing everything afresh without looking into the rest of the world.

Yesterday, I got a proper chance to do the tourism thing; we ended up in the electric district, partly by chance — Paul had a guide book, but the hotel wouldn't let us back into our rooms to retrieve it, so we have no above ground map. The electric district is, like the rest of Tokyo, an information overload but more so. At any time, you can here four or five recorded voices, there are flashing lights and music, and signs in Japanese and English everywhere. After that we went down to the palace gardens but they were shut by the time we got there. Evening was food with our ever gracious hosts; lovely again.

Back on the plane now, we are suspended above a Siberian wasteland. Perhaps 2km below, highlighted against the curve of the world there's another plane running parallel to our course. Another ton of carbon released into the air.

Lions and Lambs — three interlocking stories, over the theme of war and the media. Well done, entertaining, and a light touch. Rather too earnest too eager for me. Lacking a bit in humour

We own the night — a cops and robbers flick, with added family drama. Not a bad film, although felt rather like Cagney and Lacey on steroids. Good performances all around, lots of brooding silences and a fortune spent on blood bags.

Beowulf — finished it off. Looked great, some wonderful hacking and slaying. Story was a variation of the original with (as noted previously) added masturbation gags. Turns out that the story was adapted by Neil Gaiman; explains a lot.

L'auberge rouge — a black, murder farce. Big ensemble cast, lots of fast dialogue, and pretty well done. Not nearly as good as Juno, but the best of the lot.

Juno — missed the first five minutes of this, so watched them as well, and then let it run on a bit. Strangely, it's been Japanese filtered on the way back; that is no swearing, no sexual references or, indeed, to any bodily functions; head-lopping and guns are okay, but sadly Juno is short on the latter.

Four and a bit films in one flight — well, I am tired and all the of the padding in my cushion has gone, and everything from my knees to sacrum is aching. And my shoulders and neck come to that.

So, this is my second time in Japan. It's slightly less confusing than the first; so far, we have been banging against one cliche after the other. It took us a little over an hour to get to the hotel from the airport; we got there at 11, to be told that the rooms would be available at 4pm. Exactly 4pm. So, we went into Tokyo and had lunch sitting on the floor — not good after a flight, I thought my knees were going to seize up. It was good, though, even managed to get something that was mostly veggie. We got back to the hotel at 3:40pm; we were directed to seats till 4pm, where upon the receptionist was prepared to give us the room keys which had been in the pidgeon holes behind her for the last 4 hours.

The hotel is basic but okay. The toilet has, disappointingly, only three controls: shower on, shower off and level. The latter controls the pressure of the cleaning jet which varies from gentle tinkle to colonic irrigation.

Evening was another meal. My eyes rolled when I saw another low table, but it was one which you could put your legs under. The meal was great and involved several varieties of sake.

Got back to the hotel at 9, and after many hours of being awake slept like a log.

Just given a talk at Riken about metadata. People seemed very positive, there is clearly a desire to do this and to get more data types out there. I got the question about requiring too much metadata to understand an experiment; most of the rest were people saying "have you thought about using...?".

The one that I hadn't thought about is provide metadata for gold standard, generated (non-experimental) data. My initial response is to say that we should be storing the service for producing the data, rather than the data, although there are purposes for standard generated data — enabling deterministic behaviour of tools over "random" data.

Well, depressing though it has been, I'm pleased to say that I managed to get the forth hit on google, when searching with "Adrian Wolfson", alongside all the poor tabloid journalism.

In the end, I turned out to write quite a lot about his death. As well as the blog piece, I wrote some short words—I think that the plan is to put these into a book of remembrance. Depressingly, I am not going to be able to get to the funeral, as I am in Japan (actually I am over China now, on the way). I would have enjoyed meeting my friends again; truth be told, the chances that I will see most of them again are now very small. Ade was my main point of contact.

I don't think my remembrance is particularly good. I think the blog is far better, but I stick it up here anyway. Perhaps, it will help with the google hits.

Watched Enchanted, some of Beowulf and almost all of Juno.

Enchanted — a reverse fairy-tale, like a live action Shrek. Not bad, actually, kept me going for a while.

Beowulf — blood, guts and some serious beef swilling. Definately aimed at the adult market, containing at least one mastubration gag. Would probably have watched it, but the it was a bit dark and I couldn't hear the dialogue over the plane noise, so I stopped half way through.

Juno — a comedy about a teenage pregnancy. This was by far the best of the bunch. Quirky, funny, and beautifully acted. The whole thing is done without sentimentality (just like Enchanted, er...), but the characters were still wonderfully endearing.

I spent too much of the film trying to identify two of the actors (from the daredevil and spiderman films as it happens). Yeah, well, I'm on a plane and ache all over.

Not been to the Northern Stage, at least not for a show. I used to get food there sometimes, but it's expensive and the portions have got smaller.

Went to see Static last night. Strange thing — it was a cross between a music commercial, a mystery story and a tragedy. It's mostly about a woman coming to terms with the death of her husband. The side-plot is that he is deaf and the story of how he looses his hearing.

It was pretty good actually. I was dubious at the beginning; they used a lot of short sentances to the audience to set the scene which I found rather disjointed. But the story started to run after that. The "innovative staging" failed to detract from the story, the music was quite fun and the twist at the end worked pretty well. Worth going to see.

Sometimes I feel that new technology is designed by perverse people, strictly for the purpose of raising negative emotions from the rest of us mortals. For example, I have a cordless phone in my house. My parents bought it for me a few years ago. It has worked flawlessly since, if I exclude losing the handset when the battery was already low; next time I needed it, the battery had totally gone so I couldn't use the "make it ring" function. Was 2 weeks before I found it—the laundry bin if you are interested.

The address book, however, seems designed for mockery. There's only space for 15 contacts. So this is what the designers think of me, that my social life is so miniscule that I only phone up 15 people? Worse, is the reality of the situation that I only have 11 numbers in it and, of these, one is phone banking (I'm scared of the internet) and the other is for recovering my mobile when I throw it in the laundry bin.

Now, though, it's got worse. The first entry is for Ade Wolfson, whose death I am still coming to terms with. I change the addressbook rarely enough (i.e. never), so that I've no idea how to remove the entry. It sits there, poking me everytime I make a call. This little thing seem cruel.

Perhaps, though, it cuts both ways. I remember my grandfather's funeral. It was summer, and a warm day. Inside the church was cool and pleasant. During the service, a butterfly fluttered around the pews, flying up to the ceiling. It was a beautiful moment. In an incredible act of irrationality, I couldn't help but think that this was my grandfather, flying away and it was comforting to me. Later, my brother talked about the butterfly; he'd been thinking the same thing.

My last attempt to get a pair of shoe laces were met with some difficulties. It was, therefore, a source of distress to find that both of them broke, one after the other, in the same shoe, in a little more than a week; Timpson's have fallen of my Christmas card list as a result. So I then tried a second set. Four shoe shops before I finally found a set. These have now broken also.

So, today, I went out again. Schuh had only one pair for boots (thick as a phone cable, long enough to garotte an elephant) and one pair for formal wear (2 individual strands of polyester, topped with a bit of plastic). Clarks had only brown laces. The guy in John Lewis' shoe department said "well, I'd expect them to be around here". An older and wiser member of staff directed me downstairs, where a third pointed out the laces — "on the right, in the last fixture, just after the ironing boards".

I am now a proud owner of two pairs of black shoe laces, cost £1.20. Apparently, the manufacturers have been "in shoe care since 1911". I will report back; if this pair fails, I have decided, despite being a veggie, to go onto the town moor, slaughter one of the cattle and tan it's hide, from which I will fashion leather laces. I've now spent five quid on shoes laces for one shoe which is pretty old anyway. I realise this is taking the disposable society a little far, but perhaps they sell shoes for less than this.

I've known Ade Wolfson for about 16 years now. In that time, he has been a good friend, a good colleague and a source of endless humour. Last week, he died. The facts of his death are a matter of public record: he killed himself, shortly after being charged with committing a sex act in front of a child. As I think about these facts again, that I have turned over in my mind many times, they still seem as strange and bizarre as the first time.

I met Ade while at University (or just shortly after). We worked together for a small charity, looking after children, providing them with a holiday, when they were unlikely to get another. Neither of us did this work out a sense of do-gooderism. For myself, I never really liked children that much, but I enjoyed the domesticity of running a holiday, as well as the sense of commonality of a bunch of young adults, struggling well outside of their experience to provide these holidays. Ade was much the same, except for the bit about not liking the children. He was a natural: he could settle the homesick, enthuse the recalcitrant, calm a pyscho-nutter. His story-telling was legendary within a year. It was no surprise when he became a school-teacher; anything else would have been a crime against his talents.

As we moved further away from University, we kept in touch, initially through the charity, and later for ourselves. We spoke infrequently but regularly. We both started to display a touch of Homer Simpsonness in our appearance, but other than that we had little in common. Being a school-teacher provided Ade with a gold-lined rut; he loved what he was doing, but worried that it would speed him toward middle age in his twenties. For myself, the insecurity and lack of responsibility of a contract research scientist threatened to keep me as an eighteen year old in my thirties. We spoke about this at times; other favorite topics were the state of his plumbing and Harry Potter; Ade had introduced me to Harry around book 3, while I was living in London. Over the next few years, we completed a post-modern analysis of the plot ahead of publication — for the record, he guessed about Dumbledore, while I got Sirius.

We saw each other rarely. I think the last time was nearly 5 years ago. He lived in south London; I consider the capital to be less habitable than Mars. We tried to hook up a few other times, but it didn't happen. I am left with a memory of him, a kind, wonderful man, with a great laugh and an overgrown beard which he had, in reality, long shaved-off.

His death is a tragedy and distressing to many of us who knew him. That such a straight-forward man should die in such melodrama is unfitting to say the least. That he chose not to defend himself, as I am sure that he could, that he could not find the support from all those who loved him, is painful to us all. But since I heard of his death on Saturday, I have also thought much of the time in his presence, of the stories we were part of, and the friends that we were. I've enjoyed re-living these memories more than I can say.

Adrian Wolfson, RIP.

Never seen him live, so thought, why not. Basically, he was okay. He has a substantial back catalogue, and is a powerful songwriter. But ultimately, he's not a great performer. He's witty and engaging, but neither his singing or guitar-playing is particularly fantastic. I found myself waiting for one of the big hits, and then being slightly disappointed by it; Golden Brown is needs more than a strummed acoustic.