BioLogic is shaping up nicely.
Right now, I have a Perl program that takes all FASTA-formatted BioBricks provided by this page of the Parts Registry, scrapes additional information for each entry from the Parts Registry website, and puts it in a giant Prolog program.
When this program is loaded, you can query the knowledge base to get, say, the names of all the parts sharing the same part parameters as part with id number 9422:
?- parameters(Partname, Parameters),parameters(ThePart, Parameters),part_id(ThePart,9422).
Partname = 'BBa_I14016';
Partname = 'BBa_K0991107';
...
No.
Cool! From there it's only a small step to get additional information about the parts in question, pick the ones marked 'Group Favorite,' print out their DNA sequences, or get a link to the web page with information about obtaining the part (e.g. a page like this).
It seems to me this is already a neat tool that could help scientists interact and explore the parts database, based on their needs. Just a little work on getting it robust, opening web-pages in a browser window, and the nifty command-line tool is ready. Slap a UI on there (more work than it sounds, unfortunately), and it might actually be user-friendly.
But the real power of Logic Programming is not exploited with little steps like these. We plan on introducing rules into the program that allow it to reason about combining parts.
With just a few basic rules, it'll be possible to give the program a list of one or more parts we'd like to use, and have it return an entire ordered list of the parts and processes required to incorporate them. Several lists, in fact, leaving the final choice up to the scientist, but at least ensuring that - according to our basic rules - each entry in the list is possible.
Ok, so this step in the development of BioLogic is pretty neat - automating some of the reasoning the synthetic biologists need to do to ensure they end up with a functioning organism. Useful and handy, but not as far as we can push this technology.
By adding additional rules about the behavior of parts, the program will be able to generate a complete part sequence based on a list of desired behaviors supplied by a scientist. These rules would apply to what the program knows about each part - the semantic implications of different categories, the part parameters, etc. Specific rules applying to individual parts or part classes could also be added, providing even more detailed and subtle knowledge to the program.
Prolog provides two great benefits in addition to the core functionality described above.
One great thing about Prolog programs is that they don't simply return one "best" answer, unless you really want them to. They can generate a nearly limitless number of solutions, which in this case would give researchers ample opportunity to experiment with its answers and introduce rules to improve the program. The second great bonus is that you can ask Prolog to explain itself - that is, show its chain of reasoning. This feature can give greater insight into the program, how the parts function together, and any errors or limitations in the knowledge base. It also helps explain how Prolog comes up with surprising answers - which often happens, for better or for worse.
Most of this advanced work will have to be performed by synthetic biologists who understand the interaction between parts, chassis, DNA, and the enzymes involved. Anybody know someone who might be interested?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
It's You! (How are you, Gentlemen?)
The number of cats in this neighborhood is absolutely staggering. I believe they outnumber us humans by a factor of two or more.
What happens when cats rule the streets? Who determines which cat goes where? What rules do they follow? Are there any rules? Who would enforce them? Why?
These questions continue down paths few people dare tread: why do we have cats in the first place? Why do they insist on our company, yet consistently refuse to obey our commands or indulge in our whims? What's going on behind those big green eyes?
That glint; the winking eyebrows, cheeky grin; what on God's green Earth could they be up to?
I'm not going to pretend to have any answers, but I've been around my neighborhood enough to have gained a little glimpse of understanding of their world. It works a little like this:
At the top, Boss Cat is boss. A giant one-eyed Persian, he paid our two young female felines a visit a week after their arrival in the neighborhood. Boss Cat waited for us to let them out, moved away to a respectful position, and observed - to see if they behaved like proper young cats. It appears both Anka and Izzy passed the test; he hasn't been back since, and they've been allotted our back yard. I'm not going to pretend our dog didn't have anything to do with it, but Boss Cat calls the shots.
Boss Cat has several deputies. One of the most notable is Highway Cat. He sits by one of the main passages between downtown Groningen and Beijum - a bridge over the ringway surrounding Groningen. Highway Cat performs two functions. The first (probably his primary) function is to monitor our comings and goings. Perhaps there's a Highway Cat at every through-way to Beijum. In any case, this Highway Cat is at his post at least three of every four times I pass this point. Of course - who knows if he's hiding in the bushes - observing in secret.
Highway Cat doesn't only work for the benefit of felines. I was biking home one time, coming at high speed down the bridge, when I noticed Highway Cat at his usual place. There's an intersection with a blind corner there, and I've always taken it on faith; there's not much traffic, so the chance for misfortune is small - usually. This time, however, he sat up, stared at me, then backed away in an odd fashion. I understood this to mean there was someone coming from the other direction, so I moved to the left lane in anticipation. Sure enough, a moped came cruising at high velocity! Had I not moved in response to the cat, I don't think that avoiding a collision would be possible.
There are other cats that fulfill some sort of function within cat society, but I don't really know what those functions are...
Creepy Cat, for instance. At first I thought he played a policing role, but it's just creepy... its teeth are large, yellow, and point in all the wrong directions. It eats like a fiend, looks totally emaciated, sits on garbage cans and bike seats, and its meow is like rubbing sand paper on a chalkboard. Perhaps he works as a scavenger of sorts - he loves to ravage garbage bags.
Love Cat is one cat I don't know very well. It seems that Love Cat has his heart set on Anka. Anka is certainly very beautiful - our little princess - but is entirely uninterested, due to some surgical intervention. Love Cat hates on Izzy, too, so perhaps Love Cat's purpose is to encourage some form of cat prissiness.
I'll add more cats to this list since I'm not home during the day, when all this drama is visible to humans. I'm finally on vacation, so perhaps I can observe a few more cats first-hand and see what they are up to, such as Gimp Cat and Mean Big Furry Black Cat, among others.
What's the lesson in all this? I don't know, but that's probably only because Boss Cat doesn't want me to...
What happens when cats rule the streets? Who determines which cat goes where? What rules do they follow? Are there any rules? Who would enforce them? Why?
These questions continue down paths few people dare tread: why do we have cats in the first place? Why do they insist on our company, yet consistently refuse to obey our commands or indulge in our whims? What's going on behind those big green eyes?
That glint; the winking eyebrows, cheeky grin; what on God's green Earth could they be up to?
I'm not going to pretend to have any answers, but I've been around my neighborhood enough to have gained a little glimpse of understanding of their world. It works a little like this:
At the top, Boss Cat is boss. A giant one-eyed Persian, he paid our two young female felines a visit a week after their arrival in the neighborhood. Boss Cat waited for us to let them out, moved away to a respectful position, and observed - to see if they behaved like proper young cats. It appears both Anka and Izzy passed the test; he hasn't been back since, and they've been allotted our back yard. I'm not going to pretend our dog didn't have anything to do with it, but Boss Cat calls the shots.
Boss Cat has several deputies. One of the most notable is Highway Cat. He sits by one of the main passages between downtown Groningen and Beijum - a bridge over the ringway surrounding Groningen. Highway Cat performs two functions. The first (probably his primary) function is to monitor our comings and goings. Perhaps there's a Highway Cat at every through-way to Beijum. In any case, this Highway Cat is at his post at least three of every four times I pass this point. Of course - who knows if he's hiding in the bushes - observing in secret.
Highway Cat doesn't only work for the benefit of felines. I was biking home one time, coming at high speed down the bridge, when I noticed Highway Cat at his usual place. There's an intersection with a blind corner there, and I've always taken it on faith; there's not much traffic, so the chance for misfortune is small - usually. This time, however, he sat up, stared at me, then backed away in an odd fashion. I understood this to mean there was someone coming from the other direction, so I moved to the left lane in anticipation. Sure enough, a moped came cruising at high velocity! Had I not moved in response to the cat, I don't think that avoiding a collision would be possible.
There are other cats that fulfill some sort of function within cat society, but I don't really know what those functions are...
Creepy Cat, for instance. At first I thought he played a policing role, but it's just creepy... its teeth are large, yellow, and point in all the wrong directions. It eats like a fiend, looks totally emaciated, sits on garbage cans and bike seats, and its meow is like rubbing sand paper on a chalkboard. Perhaps he works as a scavenger of sorts - he loves to ravage garbage bags.
Love Cat is one cat I don't know very well. It seems that Love Cat has his heart set on Anka. Anka is certainly very beautiful - our little princess - but is entirely uninterested, due to some surgical intervention. Love Cat hates on Izzy, too, so perhaps Love Cat's purpose is to encourage some form of cat prissiness.
I'll add more cats to this list since I'm not home during the day, when all this drama is visible to humans. I'm finally on vacation, so perhaps I can observe a few more cats first-hand and see what they are up to, such as Gimp Cat and Mean Big Furry Black Cat, among others.
What's the lesson in all this? I don't know, but that's probably only because Boss Cat doesn't want me to...
Saturday, August 8, 2009
"My God, It's Full of Stars"
One day a couple of months ago, something wonderful happened. It was a friday; the end of a very long workweek. An arduous week - I'd been working overtime to get high-performance ALPR working in Australia (namely New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria), the trains were not cooperating, and a lot of energy was spent trying to arrange to buy our house. It had been rainy and cloudy the whole month - not exactly a good summer. By the afternoon of that friday, I was beat. Spent. A lifeless husk.
Four o'clock finally came, so I grabbed a beer with my colleagues and executed a final superhuman effort to get the software written, vetted, and out the door before the weekend so that I could rest easy for a few days. I groaned and sweated as my fingers punched the keys, and I reached the last few keystrokes. Committed the code. Executed the build/release script. Hit 'Send' on an email to the guy who delivers code to customers.
Done.
When I exited the building the clouds finally broke, and the sun spread cheer across the village. I unlocked my bike, got on, and started rolling down the street. The clouds had turned to white wisps in the broad blue sky, and the sun was a bright lance high above. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by glittering light all around. Large shining drops falling in sheets around me. I spread my arms and soared through a great galaxy of shimmering diamond rain, weaving lazy splines over the empty village streets.
The moment, like all good things, ended without fanfare or tragedy. The rain diminished to a drizzle, then stopped, and those wispy clouds passed over the sun and unsaturated the early summer blooms.
I thanked the great cosmos for granting me this experience and for allowing me to appreciate it as a reward for a hard job well done, and continued to the train station to go home.
Four o'clock finally came, so I grabbed a beer with my colleagues and executed a final superhuman effort to get the software written, vetted, and out the door before the weekend so that I could rest easy for a few days. I groaned and sweated as my fingers punched the keys, and I reached the last few keystrokes. Committed the code. Executed the build/release script. Hit 'Send' on an email to the guy who delivers code to customers.
Done.
When I exited the building the clouds finally broke, and the sun spread cheer across the village. I unlocked my bike, got on, and started rolling down the street. The clouds had turned to white wisps in the broad blue sky, and the sun was a bright lance high above. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by glittering light all around. Large shining drops falling in sheets around me. I spread my arms and soared through a great galaxy of shimmering diamond rain, weaving lazy splines over the empty village streets.
The moment, like all good things, ended without fanfare or tragedy. The rain diminished to a drizzle, then stopped, and those wispy clouds passed over the sun and unsaturated the early summer blooms.
I thanked the great cosmos for granting me this experience and for allowing me to appreciate it as a reward for a hard job well done, and continued to the train station to go home.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Flashbacks from the Great War
For some crazy reason that I won't bore you with, it became (in my mind) imperative to clean the little storage room next to the kitchen. It was around midnight, and I wanted to be done by mid-morning.
"No big deal," I thought, "I drank a lot of coffee, so I wouldn't sleep anyway. I'll just take care of it right now."
So I put Jessica to bed, piled all the cleaning supplies in our apartment in the bike trailer, and biked out to our new home. You see - it wasn't just a normal cleaning job.
The previous owners kept their cats in that room next to the kitchen. Apparently they didn't really use their litter box when they went number one all the time, so it smelled pretty bad. It had gotten worse since we got the keys, instead of getting better as it aired out, so it was best to get it cleaned out as soon as possible.
"No big deal," I thought, "the previous owners said they cleaned it up, so I'll just spray it down or whatever, and that'll be that."
0.30 Arrival. I open the front door and carry the supplies inside.
"Damn, I forgot the keys to the side door. It'll get kinda stuffy in the side room, but I should continue the mission." So I turn on the lights and enter the side room to form a plan. I study the contents...god, that stench...just some cardboard and newspapers...holy smokes, this is bad...and a couple of bins for recycling I gotta get out of here...
I estimate 5 minutes to move the stuff, 15 minutes of hard cleaning, 5 minutes of cleaning up, and 5 minutes of buffer space. I should be in and out in 30 minutes. Nice.
Ten minutes later I had already started cleaning, but I realized it was fruitless. The floor was covered with a thin linoleum-like sheet. The top was filthy, but I suspected something...worse.
I lifted the corner of the...oh my what is this? I pulled the sheet back further. It was wet. It was swimming in a pool of urine. It was horrible.
I managed to cover the floor through the house with tarp so I could pull the dripping tepid terrible mess out to the back yard without stinking down the rest of the house. It was heavy, like a corpse.
"No big deal, that must be the worst of it."
Right?
01.00 Returned to the side room, heavy-duty bleach spray in hand. Hmm? I ignore the nagging feeling, and get to work. The walls were painted white - not much of a challenge there. However, there is one ugly porous concrete floor, and 360 degrees of corner. I decide to start at the right corner of the side door and work clockwise. I'd be at the left corner of the door in gggheh? ten minutes.
"No big deal, just gonna hose it down with some bleach, clean it out, and I'll be out in 30 minutes."
So I start hosing. Spraying and spraying. Dousing the awful floor, destroying that terrible smell with pure, clean, aggghh bleach. Spritzing and pouring. My eyes felt dry and it became difficult to breathe.
I should have better ventilation for this. Bleach is kinda toxic. Listen! But I keep on going as hard as my hands can squeeze the bottle. Spraying and spraying. My eyes stung and watered, my lungs burned, and the back of my head was screaming for attention. Wake up, you fool! But I would not listen - could not stop - I had to finish the job. Spraying and spraying. Spritzing and pouring. All the way to the left edge of the side door. I can't even see anything anymore. I would scream to quell the stinging, but there's no air to carry the sound and instead I whimper pitifully. But I'm done.
01.30 I stumble out into the kitchen and lean out of the open window - try to breathe deeply. The tears instantly soothe my eyes, and my lungs ache for relief.
"What's going on? This is way beyond bleach," I think to myself, and finally listen to that little voice of reason that had been plaguing me the whole night...thank you! Finally, eh? About time. Right, so what's bleach? Sodium hypochlorite? Annnnnnd, what's that smelly stuff in your pee? I can see where I'm going with this... ammonia? Good! Put the two and two together! Hmmm, that's a little tricky... we'd get... some salts and water and... diatomic chlorine? Yup. Go take care of it.
"Shite. Chlorine gas. Fuuuck meeeee."
I go back to the room and find a spot that'll work for a test. A spot on the doorframe is a bit rotted, so I spray. I am simultaneously excited and horrified to see green wisps floating up from the doorframe when I spray it with the leftover bleach. Apparently I just experienced something minorly similar to some thousands of soldiers in the first world war.
03.00 I finally finish up and go home.
Epilogue A few days later I regained my full lung capacity. I can be a real dummy when I don't pay attention!
No kidding!
"No big deal," I thought, "I drank a lot of coffee, so I wouldn't sleep anyway. I'll just take care of it right now."
So I put Jessica to bed, piled all the cleaning supplies in our apartment in the bike trailer, and biked out to our new home. You see - it wasn't just a normal cleaning job.
The previous owners kept their cats in that room next to the kitchen. Apparently they didn't really use their litter box when they went number one all the time, so it smelled pretty bad. It had gotten worse since we got the keys, instead of getting better as it aired out, so it was best to get it cleaned out as soon as possible.
"No big deal," I thought, "the previous owners said they cleaned it up, so I'll just spray it down or whatever, and that'll be that."
0.30 Arrival. I open the front door and carry the supplies inside.
"Damn, I forgot the keys to the side door. It'll get kinda stuffy in the side room, but I should continue the mission." So I turn on the lights and enter the side room to form a plan. I study the contents...god, that stench...just some cardboard and newspapers...holy smokes, this is bad...and a couple of bins for recycling I gotta get out of here...
I estimate 5 minutes to move the stuff, 15 minutes of hard cleaning, 5 minutes of cleaning up, and 5 minutes of buffer space. I should be in and out in 30 minutes. Nice.
Ten minutes later I had already started cleaning, but I realized it was fruitless. The floor was covered with a thin linoleum-like sheet. The top was filthy, but I suspected something...worse.
I lifted the corner of the...oh my what is this? I pulled the sheet back further. It was wet. It was swimming in a pool of urine. It was horrible.
I managed to cover the floor through the house with tarp so I could pull the dripping tepid terrible mess out to the back yard without stinking down the rest of the house. It was heavy, like a corpse.
"No big deal, that must be the worst of it."
Right?
01.00 Returned to the side room, heavy-duty bleach spray in hand. Hmm? I ignore the nagging feeling, and get to work. The walls were painted white - not much of a challenge there. However, there is one ugly porous concrete floor, and 360 degrees of corner. I decide to start at the right corner of the side door and work clockwise. I'd be at the left corner of the door in gggheh? ten minutes.
"No big deal, just gonna hose it down with some bleach, clean it out, and I'll be out in 30 minutes."
So I start hosing. Spraying and spraying. Dousing the awful floor, destroying that terrible smell with pure, clean, aggghh bleach. Spritzing and pouring. My eyes felt dry and it became difficult to breathe.
I should have better ventilation for this. Bleach is kinda toxic. Listen! But I keep on going as hard as my hands can squeeze the bottle. Spraying and spraying. My eyes stung and watered, my lungs burned, and the back of my head was screaming for attention. Wake up, you fool! But I would not listen - could not stop - I had to finish the job. Spraying and spraying. Spritzing and pouring. All the way to the left edge of the side door. I can't even see anything anymore. I would scream to quell the stinging, but there's no air to carry the sound and instead I whimper pitifully. But I'm done.
01.30 I stumble out into the kitchen and lean out of the open window - try to breathe deeply. The tears instantly soothe my eyes, and my lungs ache for relief.
"What's going on? This is way beyond bleach," I think to myself, and finally listen to that little voice of reason that had been plaguing me the whole night...thank you! Finally, eh? About time. Right, so what's bleach? Sodium hypochlorite? Annnnnnd, what's that smelly stuff in your pee? I can see where I'm going with this... ammonia? Good! Put the two and two together! Hmmm, that's a little tricky... we'd get... some salts and water and... diatomic chlorine? Yup. Go take care of it.
"Shite. Chlorine gas. Fuuuck meeeee."
I go back to the room and find a spot that'll work for a test. A spot on the doorframe is a bit rotted, so I spray. I am simultaneously excited and horrified to see green wisps floating up from the doorframe when I spray it with the leftover bleach. Apparently I just experienced something minorly similar to some thousands of soldiers in the first world war.
03.00 I finally finish up and go home.
Epilogue A few days later I regained my full lung capacity. I can be a real dummy when I don't pay attention!
No kidding!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Brainstorm
Ok, update about irl stuff!
I'm in a period of change, renewal, and dynamic perspective shifts. Sweet! To me, it's all incredibly interesting, so I'll try to communicate to you not just the general facts, but hopefully also an intuitive sense of the events.
So: I'm on my last 3 days of work at my current job. Next week, I start as a software developer at Numeriek Centrum Groningen, developing some CAD software used in the ship industry. NUPAS CADMATIC, if you want to Google it; I found oodles of illegal copies of it to download, but not a single usergroup, email list, or active forum about it. Not sure what that means, but it's strange.
This doesn't quite seem an ideal time to work at a company such as this; the credit/banking pothole in the in the economy is severely affecting demand for transport ships - the lowest point of demand is expected sometime in 2010 - precisely at a time when the market is already saturated - flooded by an unprecedented boom that had been building for years. Why hire more engineers at a time when sales in the entire industry is going to crash? I'll tell you - it's a smart move when there's a giant list of new features you want to implement, when differentiating from competitors is key to making sales (new features == differentiation), and labor is cheap. Hopefully I will provide this shot of adrenaline. In the best case, the new job will boost my development skills in return, provide support in my extracurricular efforts, a richer social life, and unprecedented financial growth.
In the worst case, where the job isn't great, and the future is bleak, at least I got this: an 111% of my former salary, 150% of my former vacation time, 20% of my former commute time, and a local colleague/social network.
Increased vacation time and a reduced commute translates into lower stress and an ability to invest time and money into pet projects. <-- I need those.
It also swings me from doing automatic license plate recognition to CAD software. Great! It'll be refreshing! I received a book on "Ship Knowledge" to study up on the terminology and concepts relevant to the software (well, except for the C/C++, FORTRAN, and Python stuff, which I'm already familiar with...). A refreshed geest is more apt to spend effort on pet projects. <-- also needed!
Now I can combine all four ingredients necessary for a pet project: time! money! spirit! and... oh yea! SPACE!
Space is the fourth ingredient, which has also completely fallen into place. After years of renting and paying exorbitant sums to rich landowners and aristocrats, I connived Jessica(Bunneh) into looking at houses to purchase. In April we started looking, in May we finalized the arrangements, in June we moved in, and in July we finished getting it all nicely set up for a quality lifestyle. Still not quite done, of course - when are you ever? But I now live in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Groningen, where I can bike to and from work and the city. The living room is a little bit Mediterranean-themed; the bedroom a cool Zen green; and we have a giant study with a 4-meter-wide desk that spans the room, custom hardwood shelves, deep brown walls, and a green leaf pattern as a border.
And we have the internet. Well - a connection to it, at least! Reliably 10mbps down, 1.5mbps up... not bad.
So even a place to work! Quite a shift from... everything I've had before, I suppose.
Alright - but what is all this I want to work on?
Good question! I'm really clueless myself at the moment (it's very late), so I'll just continue to stream-of-consciousness it out onto the blog.
First there's BookHarmony. I'd go into it, but suffice it to say that - once it works - Amazon, EBay, and Google would be interested in licenses. The idea is to match users with books they'll like by analyzing the contents of the books themselves. There's some swell clustering and other fun math in the scoring/matching algorithms, but the core of the development work there is going to be the natural language processing algorithms necessary for analyzing the books. Jessica is getting more involved with the Informatiekunde (Information Science/NLP) degree she's working on at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, so she'll do the brunt of the NLP work, I think. Boring parts of the project are: the website front-end, procurement of books and text, securing/licensing/business-i-fying software.
I want to clarify that when I say something is boring, I mean it is uninteresting to me. That may be because it's genuinely mind-numbingly dumb, but most likely because I think it's hard and difficult to learn, and simply can't be asked.
Ok, then there's this thing I'm working on with my brother Marcus (QuantumTroll). We want to develop a system that uses AI techniques to develop a physics-based control scheme for use in simulations (or computer games). So when a bird wants to go "forward", it doesn't just "go forward" and animate the wings (possibly with inverse kinematics and other fancy techniques), but actually flap the wings, adjust the tail, and clench the little bird-feet in an effort to move itself forward through the air. By applying a generous helping of neural networks and genetic algorithms, we should be able to produce something pretty awesome. Possibly supporting dynamic models (say - the bird broke a wing), context-based learning, and other cool stuff. We'll see.
Next, there's a fairly recent idea hashed out in broad outlines with Jessica:
* Take the Registry of Standardized Parts.
* Flippin' a - toss the parts into a Prolog program. Why not? They're all nice and well-defined, and follow set rules...
* And then - who knows? - flip out and do something like:
?- creature(eat_oil,multiply,emit_raspberry_smell).
Could then buy a couple of kits and follow the instructions in the output, sell it to Shell so they can clean up their latest spill.
Another project I've considered (especially during the house-purchasing-and-moving process) is a little mapping tripod. It sweeps the room with a laser and a couple of cheap CCD cameras and stores the images on a memory card. Read the contents of the card into the software, and you'll be presented with a full three-dimensional depiction of the entire room. It sports a little GPS unit, so you can even take snapshots of several rooms, and the software will automatically stitch them together. The program provides output in various formats so you can do interior design work in Google SketchUp, for example. Now that I'm writing this, it strikes me - the CAD software I'll be working on supports transforming point clouds to NURBS or other three-dimensional digital information - perhaps it'll even be useful in industrial settings!
On the topic of side projects that might behoove a work environment, I've been working on a program that trains a geometrical model of a type of license plate on the basis of measurements from thousands of images. I have designed an algorithm that'll be able to split sets of measurements into subsets - one for each type of license plate. That would save endless amounts of time, effort, and errors for Dacolian - now we have to do it by hand! But I haven't had the time to implement it. I'd still like to... and perhaps I can get paid for it. That'd be super - some money on the side. You know - for the drugs and hookers.
Now it gets really fun. Why don't we combine the projects? Some sample mashups:
BioProlog with LearnToWalk. Who knows what would happen, but the technologies can certainly work together. For example, taking the genetic algorithms and applying them to start and goal state descriptions instead of action sequences - here we might discover new types of things that we can make out of the parts. Types of things, like The Blob (which actually came from space), or something else entirely unimaginable.
LearnToWalk with BookHarmony. Anything is possible if we combine a library of literary analysis techniques (essentially all of state-of-the-art NLP) with a system that learns complex context-sensitive behaviors... perhaps it could work as some sort of editor for news or magazine articles - which often exhibit poor writing style. Combined with an information retrieval engine, it could perhaps even do rudimentary fact-checking - flagging suspect articles for a human to check. We are still the most intelligent beings on the planet.
NOTE: None of these project names - except for BookHarmony - are permanent (or even correct). They're just temporary nothings I used to refer to them in this post.
Anyway, so now I've talked about where I am, and what I plan to do. The story of where I was is even longer, so I'll save that for my book. Hey! It'd be cool to write a book! I should add that to my project list.
What I haven't done is tell any of the crazy stories of things that happened along the way. I'm talking near-fatal toxic gases, how the cat maffia operates in this neck of the woods, floating through a glittering galaxy of shining stars on the way from work, losing 750 euros worth of bicycles in a month, the role of the grotesque in my blog entries and art, what can happen when you decide to test bicycle brakes, a mysterious house party with a movie-level hangover, attempting to get internet access with KPN, lack of sleep and associated hallucinations, and my thoughts on the universe, time, infinity, intelligence, and purpose.
Although I live to help create a form of intelligence that will transcend our current capacity for thought far beyond into the unforeseeable future, these are the stories that make the hassle of life possible; that show that the presence of a self-aware entity - observing, considering its observations, and ultimately appreciating them - is worth something.
I'm in a period of change, renewal, and dynamic perspective shifts. Sweet! To me, it's all incredibly interesting, so I'll try to communicate to you not just the general facts, but hopefully also an intuitive sense of the events.
So: I'm on my last 3 days of work at my current job. Next week, I start as a software developer at Numeriek Centrum Groningen, developing some CAD software used in the ship industry. NUPAS CADMATIC, if you want to Google it; I found oodles of illegal copies of it to download, but not a single usergroup, email list, or active forum about it. Not sure what that means, but it's strange.
This doesn't quite seem an ideal time to work at a company such as this; the credit/banking pothole in the in the economy is severely affecting demand for transport ships - the lowest point of demand is expected sometime in 2010 - precisely at a time when the market is already saturated - flooded by an unprecedented boom that had been building for years. Why hire more engineers at a time when sales in the entire industry is going to crash? I'll tell you - it's a smart move when there's a giant list of new features you want to implement, when differentiating from competitors is key to making sales (new features == differentiation), and labor is cheap. Hopefully I will provide this shot of adrenaline. In the best case, the new job will boost my development skills in return, provide support in my extracurricular efforts, a richer social life, and unprecedented financial growth.
In the worst case, where the job isn't great, and the future is bleak, at least I got this: an 111% of my former salary, 150% of my former vacation time, 20% of my former commute time, and a local colleague/social network.
Increased vacation time and a reduced commute translates into lower stress and an ability to invest time and money into pet projects. <-- I need those.
It also swings me from doing automatic license plate recognition to CAD software. Great! It'll be refreshing! I received a book on "Ship Knowledge" to study up on the terminology and concepts relevant to the software (well, except for the C/C++, FORTRAN, and Python stuff, which I'm already familiar with...). A refreshed geest is more apt to spend effort on pet projects. <-- also needed!
Now I can combine all four ingredients necessary for a pet project: time! money! spirit! and... oh yea! SPACE!
Space is the fourth ingredient, which has also completely fallen into place. After years of renting and paying exorbitant sums to rich landowners and aristocrats, I connived Jessica(Bunneh) into looking at houses to purchase. In April we started looking, in May we finalized the arrangements, in June we moved in, and in July we finished getting it all nicely set up for a quality lifestyle. Still not quite done, of course - when are you ever? But I now live in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Groningen, where I can bike to and from work and the city. The living room is a little bit Mediterranean-themed; the bedroom a cool Zen green; and we have a giant study with a 4-meter-wide desk that spans the room, custom hardwood shelves, deep brown walls, and a green leaf pattern as a border.
And we have the internet. Well - a connection to it, at least! Reliably 10mbps down, 1.5mbps up... not bad.
So even a place to work! Quite a shift from... everything I've had before, I suppose.
Alright - but what is all this I want to work on?
Good question! I'm really clueless myself at the moment (it's very late), so I'll just continue to stream-of-consciousness it out onto the blog.
First there's BookHarmony. I'd go into it, but suffice it to say that - once it works - Amazon, EBay, and Google would be interested in licenses. The idea is to match users with books they'll like by analyzing the contents of the books themselves. There's some swell clustering and other fun math in the scoring/matching algorithms, but the core of the development work there is going to be the natural language processing algorithms necessary for analyzing the books. Jessica is getting more involved with the Informatiekunde (Information Science/NLP) degree she's working on at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, so she'll do the brunt of the NLP work, I think. Boring parts of the project are: the website front-end, procurement of books and text, securing/licensing/business-i-fying software.
I want to clarify that when I say something is boring, I mean it is uninteresting to me. That may be because it's genuinely mind-numbingly dumb, but most likely because I think it's hard and difficult to learn, and simply can't be asked.
Ok, then there's this thing I'm working on with my brother Marcus (QuantumTroll). We want to develop a system that uses AI techniques to develop a physics-based control scheme for use in simulations (or computer games). So when a bird wants to go "forward", it doesn't just "go forward" and animate the wings (possibly with inverse kinematics and other fancy techniques), but actually flap the wings, adjust the tail, and clench the little bird-feet in an effort to move itself forward through the air. By applying a generous helping of neural networks and genetic algorithms, we should be able to produce something pretty awesome. Possibly supporting dynamic models (say - the bird broke a wing), context-based learning, and other cool stuff. We'll see.
Next, there's a fairly recent idea hashed out in broad outlines with Jessica:
* Take the Registry of Standardized Parts.
* Flippin' a - toss the parts into a Prolog program. Why not? They're all nice and well-defined, and follow set rules...
* And then - who knows? - flip out and do something like:
?- creature(eat_oil,multiply,emit_raspberry_smell).
Could then buy a couple of kits and follow the instructions in the output, sell it to Shell so they can clean up their latest spill.
Another project I've considered (especially during the house-purchasing-and-moving process) is a little mapping tripod. It sweeps the room with a laser and a couple of cheap CCD cameras and stores the images on a memory card. Read the contents of the card into the software, and you'll be presented with a full three-dimensional depiction of the entire room. It sports a little GPS unit, so you can even take snapshots of several rooms, and the software will automatically stitch them together. The program provides output in various formats so you can do interior design work in Google SketchUp, for example. Now that I'm writing this, it strikes me - the CAD software I'll be working on supports transforming point clouds to NURBS or other three-dimensional digital information - perhaps it'll even be useful in industrial settings!
On the topic of side projects that might behoove a work environment, I've been working on a program that trains a geometrical model of a type of license plate on the basis of measurements from thousands of images. I have designed an algorithm that'll be able to split sets of measurements into subsets - one for each type of license plate. That would save endless amounts of time, effort, and errors for Dacolian - now we have to do it by hand! But I haven't had the time to implement it. I'd still like to... and perhaps I can get paid for it. That'd be super - some money on the side. You know - for the drugs and hookers.
Now it gets really fun. Why don't we combine the projects? Some sample mashups:
BioProlog with LearnToWalk. Who knows what would happen, but the technologies can certainly work together. For example, taking the genetic algorithms and applying them to start and goal state descriptions instead of action sequences - here we might discover new types of things that we can make out of the parts. Types of things, like The Blob (which actually came from space), or something else entirely unimaginable.
LearnToWalk with BookHarmony. Anything is possible if we combine a library of literary analysis techniques (essentially all of state-of-the-art NLP) with a system that learns complex context-sensitive behaviors... perhaps it could work as some sort of editor for news or magazine articles - which often exhibit poor writing style. Combined with an information retrieval engine, it could perhaps even do rudimentary fact-checking - flagging suspect articles for a human to check. We are still the most intelligent beings on the planet.
NOTE: None of these project names - except for BookHarmony - are permanent (or even correct). They're just temporary nothings I used to refer to them in this post.
Anyway, so now I've talked about where I am, and what I plan to do. The story of where I was is even longer, so I'll save that for my book. Hey! It'd be cool to write a book! I should add that to my project list.
What I haven't done is tell any of the crazy stories of things that happened along the way. I'm talking near-fatal toxic gases, how the cat maffia operates in this neck of the woods, floating through a glittering galaxy of shining stars on the way from work, losing 750 euros worth of bicycles in a month, the role of the grotesque in my blog entries and art, what can happen when you decide to test bicycle brakes, a mysterious house party with a movie-level hangover, attempting to get internet access with KPN, lack of sleep and associated hallucinations, and my thoughts on the universe, time, infinity, intelligence, and purpose.
Although I live to help create a form of intelligence that will transcend our current capacity for thought far beyond into the unforeseeable future, these are the stories that make the hassle of life possible; that show that the presence of a self-aware entity - observing, considering its observations, and ultimately appreciating them - is worth something.
Monday, July 27, 2009
[\HIATUS]
I hereby end the hiatus!
Internet has been achieved, time has been booked... I have a lot to write about.
Internet has been achieved, time has been booked... I have a lot to write about.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
HIATUS
*HIATUS*
I hate calling a hiatus so early into a project, but the fact is that the blog has been "hiated" for a few days already. Busy moving (and painting, adding trim, acquisitioning furnishments, ..., ..., ...)
I'd fill in the blanks, but I don't have the time!
*HIATUS*
I hate calling a hiatus so early into a project, but the fact is that the blog has been "hiated" for a few days already. Busy moving (and painting, adding trim, acquisitioning furnishments, ..., ..., ...)
I'd fill in the blanks, but I don't have the time!
*HIATUS*
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