total respect

(truly) gory details

As several friends and readers sent me best recovery wishes as well as queries about my health, here are a few details that you do not have to read as they are only details and mostly gory:

• the accident took place in the climbing gym where my daughter and I usually practice, when I fell when holding the rope to set it through a quickdraw (carabiner);
• the rope severed my right thumb when it stretched at the end of the fall, as the rope got into a loop around the thumb;
• I was quickly and efficiently evacuated to the “hand hospital” in Paris, Saint Antoine, by the local firemen, and got my thumb grafted back by two surgeons in the following (4) hours;
• the chances of success for the graft are evaluated at 50-50 by the surgeon, even now, a week after the accident, because the tissues got crushed;
• this is why I am (or rather my thumb is) still and rather closely monitored in a postsurgery department, under heating lamps, and I cannot move around (although I feel fine if restless…);
• I am also unable to draw plans on the near future, as I do not know when I will be realeased from the hospital and how operational my right hand will be (typing on a computer with my left hand is not that hard!);
• I alas had to cancel my talk next week at AISTAT in Phoenix but still hope to be able to take part in the coming i-like workshop in Warwick, next  month…

un peu d’amour dans un monde de brutes

indoor rock climbing on…arXiv!

It is a rare occurrence to see a paper on rock climbing on the arXiv depository, but Caleb Phillips, Lee Becker, and Elizabeth Bradley posted their “Strange Beta: An Assistance System for Indoor Rock Climbing Route Setting Using Chaotic Variations and Machine Learning” recently there. Those researchers from Boulder (of course!, where else?!) have designed a route generator called Strange Beta [strange being related with strange attractors] to help with the creation of new routes of specific style and difficulty. Cool!

    

Knowing the algorithm would probably not help the climber… This morning we had a nice indoor session with my daughter in an empty gym. Including new routes with lead climbing.