As an on-going multilevel pun (started with my misreading a famous outdoor brand logo as a Viking helmet!), and following popular request (at least from a few participants to our Bayesian school at CIRM two years ago!), I took advantage of one of the numerous make-your-own-tee websites to create a norse farce shop(pe) for afficionadas and afficionados..!
Archive for William the Conqueror
þe norse farce shoppe
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags black Friday, brands, CIRM, logo, Luminy, Normandy, North, outdoor, pun, summer school, tee-shirt, Teespring, The Norse Farce, Université Aix Marseille, Viking helmet, Viking longship, William the Conqueror, workshop on November 27, 2020 by xi'aninside Bayeux cathedral [jatp]
Posted in pictures, Travel with tags Bayeux, crypt, France, Gothic cathedral, Normandy, Odon de Conteville, Roman cathderal, Roman conquest, tp, William the Conqueror on July 24, 2020 by xi'an
Hastings at 50, from a Metropolis
Posted in Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags 50 miles, 50 years, Bayesian computation, Biometrika, Channel, East Sussex, H.G. Wells, Hastings, Hauts de France, importance sampling, jatp, Le Touquet Paris-Plage, Markov chain Monte Carlo, Metropolis-Hastings, P.G. Wodehouse, Picardy, posterior sampling, rejection sampling, Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, sea, tempest, William the Conqueror, winter light on January 4, 2020 by xi'an
A weekend trip to the quaint seaside city of Le Touquet Paris-Plage, facing the city of Hastings on the other side of the Channel, 50 miles away (and invisible on the pictures!), during and after a storm that made for a fantastic watch from our beach-side rental, if less for running! The town is far from being a metropolis, actually, but it got its added surname “Paris-Plage” from British investors who wanted to attract their countrymen in the late 1800s. The writers H.G. Wells and P.G. Wodehouse lived there for a while. (Another type of tourist, William the Conqueror, left for Hastings in 1066 from a wee farther south, near Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme.)
And the coincidental on-line publication in Biometrika of a 50 year anniversary paper, The Hastings algorithm at fifty by David Dunson and James Johndrow. More of a celebration than a comprehensive review, with focus on scalable MCMC, gradient based algorithms, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, nonreversible Markov chains, and interesting forays into approximate Bayes. Which makes for a great read for graduate students and seasoned researchers alike!
from William’s castle [jatp]
Posted in pictures, Travel with tags Caen, castle, jatp, Normandy, Normans, remparts, William the Conqueror on May 16, 2017 by xi'an
Initial, Caen [*]
Posted in Statistics with tags Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen, French food, Initial, MIchelin starred restaurant, Normandy, restaurant review, William the Conqueror on January 22, 2017 by xi'an
In what may now become a family tradition, we sampled for the new year another Michelin starred restaurant in Caen, Normandy, called Initial, which is a small and unpretentious restaurant in one back-street, not far from my collège, Lycée Malherbes. And from Guillaume’s Abbaye aux Hommes.
The food itself was both elaborate and light, with fantastic presentations, like the millimetre thick crepe above. Absolutely stunning! Now, the lunch menu has very few degrees of freedom as the chef cooks according to the local products currently available. Which means the menu changes all the time. And also presumably to cater for local clients having only a lunch break from work: we stayed there for less than one and a half and most of the other customers did not stay that long. The service is very efficient and friendly, advising about (cheap) wines that fit the dishes. (Hence, I tasted an unknown Austrian wine!) And bringing plenty of side pre- and post-dishes as nibbles… This is all quite enjoyable, if not the ultimate culinary experience, and very affordable, since lunch at Initial cost much less than in a mediocre Paris restaurant!
Xi'an's Og 