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I've just arrived in College Station, Texas for Strings 2010 at Texas A&M. I've been to this conference once before (Strings 2002, in Cambridge, England), and it's a fantastic chance to get a broad overview of what's going on in the field. That's particularly useful to me at the moment since I've been a bit out of touch for the past two or three years (apart from attending a few weekly seminars at Caltech). Given that the conference was in the US for once I figured this was a good chance to attend.

I've got to admit that a part of me is a bit self-conscious about not having been particularly active in the field for the past few years. "What are you working on?" is a standard question, and while I do have an answer (I swear it's going to be done soon!), I've allowed the day after day grind of teaching to make my research progress frustratingly slow. That just compounds my natural shyness in large groups of people. So I'm not sure how much luck I'll have with the networking side of things while I'm here. Still, getting up to speed on the physics (and building some internal excitement and momentum) is my main goal, and I think it'll be hard to go wrong on that. I'm looking forward to it! (And honestly, I'm perfectly willing to tell people that I'm here to get back in the swing of things: maybe my concerns about meekness are overblown.)

Houston airport = magical labyrinth

If you transfer to a Continental puddle-jumper at the Houston airport anytime soon, be prepared to undertake an epic quest! (Here's a map of the airport for reference.) My flight from Detroit arrived at gate C-43, and my next flight departed from A-7. Now, C-43 is pretty near the center of the airport (in the lower-middle on that map). Following banners with directions through construction in the center of the airport, I was eventually led to the TerminaLink shuttle train station next to the north concourse. The trains there ran to Terminals B, D, and E, but a sign said that I should go to Terminal B on my way to A.

The train dropped me off near the center of Terminal B, from which I proceeded to take a couple of not-obvious turns to reach a long hallway on my way to Gate B-84T. It turns out that "B-84" is actually a whole big set of gates: once you finally reach the B-80's area, you go around another corner and down another hallway and a flight of stairs to an independent spur jutting off to the side. In the middle of all the other Gate B-84's you find B-84T, which turns out to be a door that takes you to a shuttle bus stop on the runway. The bus winds its way around the roads and runways of the secure area (occasionally waiting for planes to pass) until it finally drops you off at gate A-2. From there, it's a relatively easy shot over to A-7 (though I was momentarily worried when A-7 stopped being listed on the overhead signs as I got close).

I fully expected that before being allowed to board I would have to correctly answer three subtle riddles and then prove my purity of heart to the magical dwarf who guarded the only key to the jetway. Fortunately, they were content to simply tear the corner off my boarding pass instead.

Conference: Great idea

Unbeknownst to me, at some point in the last few years I leveled up my Conference Socialization skill. I'm not sure how: actually getting my PhD might have helped, or having a "real" physics job, or just having lived for a few years interacting with people as a professor rather than as a student. It also helps that the people I knew in grad school (and elsewhere) have scattered off to other institutions, so that's helped me bridge a bit to other social circles. In any case, I've been having a great time, not just in (most of ) the talks but also the socialization during breaks.


Fun moment of the day: during the introduction of one talk, someone used my pretty D-brane figure to illustrate one step in a chain of reasoning. (Just the picture at right, not the whole slide). It made me grin to see that people in the actual field are aware of it. (They didn't credit me for it, sadly, though doing so without disrupting the point of the slide would have been tricky. I asked the speaker a question in the next break and mentioned the picture, and he said, "Oh, I probably should have credited you...," so at least he sounded a bit apologetic. I'm not too troubled by it.)