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Random observations

A mathematical model and pictures from Europe

I wrote a little program today that "implements" the mathematical model of my local-area protocol. It just gives me an idea of how the network becomes covered by a particular resource. So things are generally going well with my work at the moment. However, I’ll probably take to working from home again as I attempt to get my thesis completely written.

My friend, Ernie, sent me some really cool pictures from Europe via e-mail. Check them out!

K leaves for England tomorrow. I’m so envious!

Categories
Random observations

Maths and Moving House

The weekend was tiring but fulfilling. Muscles (what pass for muscles, at least) sore. K’s move is now complete. Had dinner at the Blue Fin club in Inala with K’s parents to celebrate the culmination of weeks of hard work.

The coming weeks and months ahead will be dedicated to thesis writing. But first I have to help RGW write (or modify) one last paper. I’ve also been roped into doing three hours of coms3200 pracs per week, but that’s nothing. Thesis progress is looking up, as I’ve recently made significant inroads into formulating a mathematical description of the ant-foraging part of my protocol. I had kind of left this bit for last because, well, it involves maths. But it’s looking good now. The mathematical model enables me to calculate expected results against which I can compare the results from my experiments. This worked beautifully for the wide-area part of protocol. The results agreed perfectly with the mathematical model. There would have been something very wrong with either the maths or the implementation if this wasn’t the case, since the wide-area protocol is deterministic, and should therefore be directly calculable. If nothing else, the comparison shows that the wide-area implementation has been implemented properly. The local-area ant-foraging protocol is a completely different kettle of fish. The way in which resource descriptions propagate through the network is non-linear and stochastic. The mathematical model, therefore, is probabilistic and far more complicated than the wide-area model. But I’m pretty sure I’ve reduced this to a mathematical expression that adequately describes the behaviour of the protocol. So, for the last week, I’ve been writing up the analysis chapter of my thesis. It’s going well, I think.

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Random observations

Long time no post

On Monday and Tuesday this week I attended the 2004 DSTC Symposium. In fact I gave a presentation entitled "Context-Sensitive Resource Discovery for Mobile Computing Environments". It outlined the work that I’ve been doing recently. I’ve also submitted a paper with a similar title to the Mobile Computing and Communications Review.

A couple of weekends ago, I went and saw Fahrenheit 9/11. I didn’t think that much of it, to be completely honest. I felt strangely dissatisfied when I walked out of the cinema. Over and above the general point that the film made (that George W is an idiot), I thought the documentary hung together very loosely. First it pointed out that Bush was never democratically elected. Fair enough. Then it highlights his links with the bin Laden family. Okay. Then it goes off on another tangent questioning the invasion of Iraq and the seemingly pointless loss of lives. Granted, these things are all related to President Bush, but they didn’t tie together in the film very well at all. I’m quite surprised that top film critics like Pomeranz, Stratton and Ebert found the documentary to be an impressive piece of film-making.

It seems I haven’t documented the Sydney trip yet. Here’s a short overview, we stayed at a cheap motel in Surry Hills. We visited the Maritime Museum with Nigel’s friend Max, and ate dinner at Max’s place too. I spent Saturday with MM. We saw The Chronicles of Riddick (quality entertainment, not) at Bondi Junction. After that we headed out to Bondi Beach. Stayed there for dinner. On the Sunday, Nigel and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon at Taronga Zoo. The baby chimps were cute. In the evening we took the train to Hurstville to visit our cousins, aunt and uncle. On Monday we went to the botanical gardens and the War Memorial. Then we flew back to Brisbane. I’ll have photos up soon. Anyway, it was a nice weekend.

Nigel has since commenced his employment with THQ. He’s really enjoying it. It makes a big difference to your state of mind when you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing.

K is going to England for a conference. Actually, she and JI are running a workshop at UbiComp. She leaves in just over a week, and stops off in Singapore for another conference on the way back. Fun. She also received notice today that the school has accepted her thesis and recommended she be awarded a Ph.D. Cool! Now she just has to get a few copies bound, but I suspect she might make some changes to her thesis first…

Bed time.