Memories of a visit to Pisa in June 2010, for a PhD summer school.

It is hard to dislike a place where you’ve been laughing every five minutes. And eating good food. And having great conversations with random strangers. And making new friends. Where good natured ribbing, flamboyance, art, tradition and culture blend smoothly into the potpourri of life. In short, it is hard to dislike...

The last few days in Italy were a blur of activity.

To begin with, the summer school activities became more and more exciting. Two teachers from Barcelona delivered a crash course on control and realtime scheduling. They were young, funny and I wished I had them as my first control teachers. The day brought a very...


Here is a video of the Amazing Ball I worked on at the ARTIST summer school in Pisa. We modified the existing setup so that the setpoint in dynamically generated. This enabled moving the ball along a desired trajectory.

This one is dedicated to all those people who believe that I had nothing but fun in Pisa....

4 hours of sleep is not the specification I was designed for. Consequently, when the dual alarms from my mobile phones started a clamour around my head, the only thought was a faint “whhaaatt?” Half an hour later, it pierced through my foggy brain that I needed to wake up, wake up fast, and wake up now. Grumpily I fell out of bed, and silently congratulated myself for setting the alarms half an hour before I needed them.

Greetings from Pisa, Italy. I am back in the country I love so much and nothing has changed. It is still as crazy as ever and it took me all of 2 minutes to realize it.

I landed at the Galileo Galilei International Airport half an hour before midnight, walked past the baggage carousel and was out! Did I mention the airport was small? At the exit, I looked for the information service, which I found so quickly that I was pleasantly surprised. It was closed. I was not surprised.