This week I attended (along with many others from ANU including Peter Höfner, Ali Nosherwan Hamed, Xin Lu, Kai Phan and Carlo Zancanaro) the yearly meeting of Formal Methods researchers in Australia at the University of Queensland. It was good to hear from colleagues again, and I was very impressed by the size of the group.
Peter Höfner also presented some of the initial thoughts and work around Yi Yao's PhD topic, and it was good to help clarify our thinking there. I think I will encourage all of my students not just to attend, but also to speak next year.
The fearless kookaburra of St. Lucia campus.We encountered a kookaburra at breakfast that seemed determined to steal people's sausages (swooping right in front of them). This kookaburra seems to have absolutely no fear of humans, so I was able to get very close to take a picture. Eventually we saw it smashing a piece of bread against the table to "kill" it, as they do to lizards and snakes in more natural contexts.