Out of the Loo

Made this picture for the b3ta.com compo but can't post till next tuesday (due to being a newbie twont) so by then it won't be worth it.

Get your own x-mas present you geek

I bought my own present in interweb-shop-land, a stonking guitar effectsprocessor with so many bells and whistles (literally) that it should keep my rampant mid-life crisis stoked for some time to come.

I will post later to give my own review, but for now check this.

Pistakee

From the b3ta.com website (bookmark it now, fool)

>> Bald Knob Marina <<   According to the website Bald Knob Marina is
  situated on 'Pistakee Lake'. Surely to
  goodness no; this cannot be real?
http://www.baldknobmarina.com/

This of course should not be mistaken for Bald Knob Mariniere

WikiWikiWildWildWest

Put up my very first wiki on Tuesday. I am quite inspired by how great these little gems of internet magic are. It is not sophisticated in any way - a simple low concurrent user documentation wiki (DokuWiki) that has a flat file back-end and is written in PHP.

What made me do it was to turn that static web page of guitar collaborations into a collaborative one. That page is now here.

What is a little anoying is that I had just started to use asciidoc to make rapid website additions (see here), and now that is a little redundant as I can do everything a lot easier in the wiki. Mind you the advantage that has is that it does not need a server that allows php.

Anyway, I may end up using my wiki more than a) my website, b) my blog or c) doing my PhD.

Killer Axe, man

Attlia came over with his killer Axe. I mean close to a grands worth of shining maple semi-ac, jazz god, guitar splendor. He also brought his fiddle and considerable musical expertise.

3 hours went by in a flash and we said we must do it again.

To this end I compiled what we played in an attempt to devise a repertoire. It is here.

Travel notes

For prosperity ::

http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comrnam/webnotes/travelhistory.html

:)

EDIT: updated 8/12

Reverse temporization of critial tasks

procrastinate
dilly-dally, delay, defer, postpone drag-out, day-dream, hesitate, hold-off, shilly-shally, temporize, tarry, suspend, stooge-around, protract, let-slide, dawdle, fanny-around, linger, piss-about, ...

... something I'm good at.

International Robotics Jet-Set

I have decided to try and write a record of my trips around the world in the past two years. Only because my memory is so bad I have already forgotten half of the places I've been. In a few years, I'll have fogotten it all. That would be a real pity because those trips are real high points of my PhD.

You can't run through treacle

Amazing news: I have my article accepted for publication in Adaptive Behaviour. I should have been over the moon, but I found myself getting quite anxious. I can tell this because last night I had a classic anxiety dream. I was due to give a presentation and it was being built up more and more, but I had forgotten to put the presentation on my laptop, so I had to rush back to get it, being way-laid and held-up at every turn. Like running through treacle. I don't get this kind of thing a lot so it must have been down to the news.

The reason I am so negative about it is something those in the media spotlight might know something about: bad reviews. 2 negative reviews out of 4. Which would not be bad except that the points they made were the ones that have been troubling me anyway.

Worse, I need to send a final version, answering all reviewers comments, by January 1st. That is going to wreck my family's christmas. Not mine because I am miserable at Xmas anyway, but theirs because I'll end up making it a misery for them too.

Everybody loves Raymond

Next trip has come along very fast - Nervi, Genoa, Italy on Tuesday. Review meeting so I expect it will be quite tense. Paris was great really relaxed - met up with a lot of peole I know. I will have to leave telling about my all-night drinking thing to another post - and I mean all night, we were back at the hotel at 6:30
Still I expect this will pale next to my next planned trip ... Next Feb, Warsaw, 6 lads and a pack of cards. Can't wait, my polish friend says the food and booze are fabulous, but he did say the girls are better looking in Krakow.

As far as takling my demons - 11 days, slightly fell of the wagon tonight, but in these circumstances you just have to get up, brush yourself off and re-double your resolve. It will be worth it. I am already seeing the difference, my focus on my research work is much better.

3rd Year

It is official, I have now embarked on my final year of my PhD.
One more year of not-enough-money-to-live-on, not really seeing my kids much, stress from my parents who keep asking "when are you going to make some money out of this robot thing?", stress from my wife who says "if you are not going to help with the kids AND you aren't going to earn any money the at least be HAPPY!", and stress from me who wants to do something significant and not to look back on this and say "what a waste of time!".

Do I sound depressed - well probably no more than any other nearly-40 year old with 3 kids wondering where his life is going. But, yes maybe I am a bit - the sudden losses of temper for no reason are the real indicator. There are probably three reasons - and I am tackling each.
1. my -ism. For the first time, I am really taking this one on. Old cliche, but: Total removal of all temptation, and will power. One week so far, and counting. My hope is that I did this before with another addiction, and I can do it with this one.
2. my phd going no where. I have to believe that I can do something great here, and start listening to the people who tell me that this stuff is good.
3. my lack of money. well so what. (denial??)

there is probably more, but I don't want to delve any deeper just yet.

my next post will be more up-beat: promise.

8)

Gentoo is dead, long live Ubuntu

It's like being let down by a really good friend that you really trusted, but, betrayal cuts deep, and following the gentoo meltdown on my laptop in italy (see below), I have now replaced gentoo on both my laptop and on my main work machine with Ubuntu. And it rocks.

My laptop is a Dell Latitude X300, and Ubuntu (6.06 LTS Dapper Drake) was installed in practically no time at all (20 mins) and everything worked: acpi, suspend to ram, suspend to disk, cpu throttling, wireless, volume keys, usb - everything. This contrasts with the days and weeks I spent (admitedly 2 years ago) getting these things (well most of them anyway) working under Gentoo.

My work machine (RM something or other) has Kubuntu on it, although, having been a long time KDE fan, and now having tried Gnome a little more under the Ubuntu guise, I may revert to Gnome there too - even if I do keep some of the nice KDE apps around such as amarok:)

At the summer school

 
The summer school is going well. We have been filmed by Italian TV. We got motor control and object tracking going. Now, a day off (going to visit Monaco) and then back for three more intense days!

:) 

Gentoo meltdown

At the most critical time - at the beginning of a 10 day programming summer school - gentoo let me down big time. I found that multicast wasn't working properly on my Dell X300 laptop, so I was going through a number of steps to try to resolve it, including udating my baselayout. This included an update to devfs which basically left my system unbootable. version 1.3.25-r8 of devfs has a bug leaving out the 2 crucial scripts that start and stop devfs. fixed in r9 of course, but the emerge --sync left me with r8. Nasty.

Of course this is resolvable by booting a liveCD, but I don't have a CD drive on my laptop - its at home. So, I have been - in the background while trying to keep up with a fast-moving school - been trying to get a USB stick bootable linux working. No luck so far.

To keep up with the school, I have been using cygwin on windows, which has many problems, but ironically, multicast is working.

anyway, more pictures here.
(PS - I love Piccassa !)

Summer school

Day one at the summer school was great. The location is unbelievable, cote d'azure, villa set in botanical gardens, view of Monaco over the bay. Some pics.

Have a look at the school website.

Day 1 was: just get everyone setup with ACE/CMake/YARP and get example code running. All very successful.

Day 2: disaster
I have managed to completely screw my linux installation.
long story - requires its own post. Later.

Why so long ...

OK, way too long since my last post. Nevermind, I don't think anyone actually reads this (Hi Lars).

So, to tell: I've been to Austria for a really nice seminar on complex systems which included talks on semiotics and how ostocytes work as sensors in the bone and help reconstruction happen. There was also my talk on interaction histories in robots, which while totally left-field for the audience, went down quite well. It was orgainised by Prof Sawaragi-San from Kyoto Uni, and was a really excellent little jaunt.

I've also submitted a final CR for the Epirob conf comming up. I am looking forward to that one.

My sis had a 40th B-day party which was just wild. Its funny, when you get everyone to dress as school children, they behave as school children. With booze. I had a 2-day solid hangover.

I read a really nice book (How Babies Think by Gopnik/Meltzoff/Kuhl). Would recommend it as an easy way to get into the some of the new ways of thinking in developmental psychology.

And, on sunday I fly to Ventigmilia in Italy (near Monaco on the Itialian/French border on the Cote d'Azur) for 10 days of robot programming. FUN IN THE SUN!! (Actually a geek version - I'll be programming on my laptop instead of hanging out in bars/beaches)

So, till later
Ciao

Howdy from ICDL, Bloomington, IN

It is just after 4:30ESST, and I have now delivered my talk at the ICDL conference so the pressure is off. The standard of talks has been extremely high and I was SO nervous before my talk, I was shivering and having to clench lest I let rip !! In fact I was up at 4 this morning working on my presentation so I am knackered now! (and we dont finish till 10pm - 18 hours of intellectual overload!!)

In the end the talk went really well. I have had a lot of really positive comments about it (from Jun Tani, Max Lungarella, Koh Hosada, Shimon Edelman, Giorgio Metta to name just a few) and I think, somehow, I pulled it off. It was really strange because this was the first time that I've given a talk to such a large audience. Its a single strand conference and I think all the participants of ICDL were present - this is due, I think , to the timing of my talk just before one of the main Keynote speeches, not to them coming along to our talk as such!

In any case, it is done now and I can relax and enjoy the rest of the conference.

I will try to post my talk on my website soon, maybe without the video. This reminds me that I really need to revamp my website. Manyana!

The man in black

I am sat watching the man in black - no not the inimitable Mr J. Cash, but the venerable Japanese roboticist Professor Ishiguro-San.

I love Japanese robotics, its always so technically competent but rarely tells us much about human cognition and human social interaction. However, Ishiguro-san appears to be talking about social interaction, but I am not sure of his point - it is all so pre-programmed and designed. The intelligence is in the designer, not the builder. Mind you the robot is hot! ;)

There are exceptions though - two talks before a truely original Japanese robotics research gave us his view. Heideki Kozima-san showed Keepon. Not complicated, just a couple of squashy balls with eyes and nose. And yet, it really coerces true emotive and empathic responses from children (bot normally developing and autistic) and adults (the whole auditorium laughed and cooed at the right time).

more from ICDL, Bloomington IN soon

Ohh Vienna

OK, not lynched by my supervisor (yet). Instead (incredibly) asked to be a guest speaker at a symposium in Vienna organised by a group of robotics researchers from Kyoto University to improve their networking with European research.

This is great, but I now have to think of something to say. Also, I will probably miss England in the quarter-finals of the world-cup.

This now adds to my growing list of destinations for this year:

January - Genoa, Italy
February - Nice, France
April - Nijmegen, Netherlands
May - Bloomington, Indiana, USA
June - Vienna, Austria
July - Monte Verita, Switzerland
- Ventigmilia, Italian Riviera
September - Paris, France
October - Genoa, Italy

and I haven't included holidays. (Oxford, Rome and possibly Cornwall)

Guitar God

It's been 2 weeks and I think I've written four paragraphs (short ones at that) of my progression report. 2 of them were today while listening to wailing guitar from the master. An album called simply "Guitar" by Zappa. Chose it because there are no words (which usually just puts me off if I am trying to think of words of my own). Last week was "Coming Home To the Blues" - remembered how great Etta James is, and the genius of Muddy Waters.

Anyway I digress, I was going to tell you about my lack of any useful work.

This whole thing is made worse because a lot of the rest of the time I am looking at the product of other peoples work (e.g. this and her) who clearly have no such problem with procrastination. Or maybe they do - possibly their designated work is lying unfinished while they spout fountains in their non-paid on-line thing - but I doubt it.

Lets examine the evidence:
1. My Sky+ is always full of stuff, so the evenings are easily whiled away (I am watching at least 6 or 7 series at the moment (Dr Who, Green Wing, My Name Is Earl Top Gear, No Angels etc.) most of which are fairly rubbish and I could really do without. On top of that I have all 3 Matrix films recorded waiting for me to watch. (Amazingly I have only ever watched the 1st one))
2. I love my job, as I've mentioned before, but this does not stop me not doing it.
3. I have been doing Killer Sudoku - god that stuff is hard - but that does me zero good at all.
4. If I try to work in the evening at all, my one-track-mind is easily put on it's one-track.
5. The garden needs doing.
6. The box-room decorating needs to be finished, so that my eldest has a bedroom and not a place where paint and ladders are stored.
7. I could be updating my blog, but that hasn't even been done in a week.
8. In fact, look below. Groo = reading comics, Orsinal = playing games ...
9. I have about 8 cups of tea a day - each one can be accompanied by 15 mins of conversation about (insert any one of "football", "what did you do this weekend", "why is there never any milk left in the fridge", "congrats on completing your 800 page thesis, how do you find the time?")
10. It takes me about an hour in front of the 'puter to get ready to do something. And then it's time for tea.

I think I have to come to the conclusion that I am lazy.

I wonder if there is anything I can do about it.

Will let you know soon. If my supervisor hasn't lynched me of course.

Groo the Wanderer returns

I came across a few old comics during a clear-out and found good old Groo the Wanderer!

If you aren't familiar with Groo, well, he is a very stupid, very likeable barbarian/swordsman/protector created by the brilliant Sergio Aragones.

I only have a handful of the comics from issue 48 to 54, so I can't be considered a major fan or anthing, but the comics are great and worth checking out. My favourite character in the issues I have has to be Chakaal - there is just something about her ....

There is usually a moral and a poem somewhere in each comic too - just to give you a flavour:

"Once again, we have a fable-
Of a hero, most unstable-
Who's as smart as any table-
In the place.
He has truly found his calling-
Doing deeds that are appalling-
Always tripping, always falling-
On his face.
So sit back as we revile-
With a fable of his style-
This may take a little while-
'Till it's done.
There's no use in any pleading-
You've been warned, there's no misleading-
For you just have started reading-
Chapter One."


(PS these pics are copyright Sergio Aragones!)

Orsinal

Utterly awsome game design, totally original and very beautiful.
here

Epigenetic Robotics

Well, I finally managed to get my paper submitted to Epigenetic Robotics in Paris this year. I really hope it is accepted, I certainly put a lot of work into this one.

Last year was in the wonderfull location of Nara, the ancient capital of Japan, in one of the most gorgeous settings you can imagine. Here are some pics.

(BTW: go to Lars' home page to see some more (including a video of me doing Karaoke)

Gimeimages - dropped

Well, they let me down again - have decided to use my uni resources to host pics.
Also, am trying out a new look - that white background was way too bright for this time at night ;)

[EDIT] - I note that gimeimages' website has gone completely AWOL, so I don't think I am the only one with issues. A real pity as they were proposing a really good service. If anyone knows what's happened to them, let me know :)

Fear and loathing in Schipol Airport

Just back from an overnight in Holland (old-school me). Occasion was a RobotCub meeting in Nijmegen, but it was a great opportunity to visit Amsterdam for the fourth time. Each time has been different:

Purple Haze: Hippy days - 3 of us in a VW camper made Amsterdam our major stop over on the way to the newly freed East Berlin and to grab a bit of the wall. Main theme was of course the coffeshops. Many high-points and a massive low - the only time I've ever been mugged at knife-point (or indeed at all).
Stag Weekend: of one of the most crazed lunatics I have ever had the fortune to spend time with. His drug of choice was amphetamine sulphate, but that never stopped him sampling anything and anything on offer. The journey back through Schipol still wakes me up in a cold-sweat. Main theme - red lights at break-kneck speed.
Ooh, Amsterdams quite nice really: Museums, canal boat rides, flower markets - all with my lovely wife (pre-kids). Funniest moment - the wife collapsing in a heap outside a coffee shop and me not being able to stop laughing - "what was in that cake?"
Sensible business traveller: looking in disgust at the drunken lunatics at the back of the plane - not me, I'm here on business you know (speaking to my laptop). Whistle-stop tour in 2 hours, reminded me of all that I love and hate about one of the greatest cities in the world. Oh, and don't the ladies in the window look a hell of a lot uglier when you are stone cold sober.

Post-it Chickens

Savage Chickens

They are chickens, they are savage, they are drawn on post-its and they are extremely amusing.

WARNING: This site contains American Humour and refers to "football" as something played by big guys in armour over about 4 hours with long breaks for hot-dogs and gawping at cheerleaders.

Elwood Mirza

Silly pics time.

25% extra free

Thought I'd let you know where the name of the blog came from before I forget myself.

It was my wife saying that she had bought a pack of (rather nice) croissant's the other weekend and that it had 25% extra free (10 instead of 8 in a pack) and she remarked, that it was just like our family - there were 4 of us (for about 16 minutes) and then all of a sudden another popped out - our 25% extra free.

It may also be to do with the fact that I do tend to ramble ... you make your mind up.

Indiana Wants Me

(No not R. Dean Taylor's hit - although, I just can't get the damn tune out of my head now)

amazingly - I am going to Bloomington, Indiana in June.

My paper for the International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL2006) was accepted for publication!

At the time I didn't think that the paper was complete enough for a publication, but it turns out I was being over critical - I should have more confidence. Makes the hard work over Christmas seem worthwhile.

When I get around to sorting my downed homepage out, there will be a link to the paper there.

Focus, focus, focus

Noticed this article on the bbc website. Suggests that focusing on the muscle while exercising it can result in it becoming stronger ... wonder if that works on the muscle I think most about ...

gimeimages - please

Man, what's with gimeimages.com - only just joined, everything OK for a day, and then nothing: Loose them.

Great beer, shared saliva and some ska

One of the best things of living in St. Albans, and in England generally, is availability of some great pubs - a fact supported by the choice of St. Albans as the headquarters of CAMRA - the campaign for real ale.

Last night I joined a few friends in the Lower Red Lion for their mini beer festival celebrating the local Alehouse and Church End breweries. So many great beers, so little time ... we made sure we got through as many as possible by choosing 2 beers each getting a half of each, tasting and passing to the left. This resulted in us sampling many beers, along with, I suspect, a fair amount of communal saliva. Never mind - later we got jugs of our favourites

So, a quick summary of the best and worst. Definitely near the top was "Head Full of Cascade" (4.4% pale and hoppy) - evidenced by the barrel running out very early, "Ivor's Premature Swallow" (4.5% Copper coloured smooth hop flavour), "Willpower of a Moth" (4.6% pale with a sharp bitter after-taste) and "Sensation Ale" (4.9% pale with a big hop nose [their words, not mine!] and light finish).

The worst was definitely the "Robust Porter" (4.3% black with big dark roast flavours and a bitter hop edge) which just tasted of burnt nuts liberally sprinkled in dark soy sauce. Ugghh!

Other interesting facts about the night were: the second pump from the left in the small bar is reputed to be the second oldest in Hertforsdhire (the guy who told me this was pissed and probably is not to be taken too seriously) and Lars managed to wear his Japanese purchased bling - mock diamond encrusted silver pendant in a dollar motif - not really a good look with dark checked shirt and suede loafers.

Anyway, if you are in St. Albans, I'd highly recommend the Lower Red Lion.

So, having thoroughly enjoyed the evening some of us finished up in my shed drinking Bishops Finger, Spitfire and Whiskey to the sounds of some classic Ska (Skalites particularly notable - thanks Moritz!). The highlight though has to be two grown (and supposedly intelligent) guys wrestling on a damp lawn - the only rules being the first who cries "Mamma" looses. Priceless entertainment!

Bright Zig-zag lines in my eyes

(now I know why people have blogs - where else would you say this ...)

I have just had a wierd episode (that I have experienced before, but never did anything about) where I had very bright neon-like zig-zag lines appearing in my vision. These are very distracting and usually go after a while, leaving me a little nauseous.

Now, I thought I'd try and find out what it was, and it appears that it is a form of Migrane, but without the headache, called Opthalmic Migrane.

Let me know if you have the same thing, or have a better explanation ...

Aibo

My Aibo, being extremely cute and playing Peek-a-boo with me. This may look like I am messing around with robots when I should be working, but amazingly this is my job. Well, I say "job", but the minuscule salary barely qualifies it as such.
Regardless, it is fun, intellectually challenging and above all not boring - more than can be said for my previous employment.
More to say on Aibos, interaction games and learning from experience on later posts.

Being 2

If you want a purple house, all you have to do is draw: On the sofa, on the kitchen cupboards, on the dining table, on the walls, on your brother ....

This blog is dedicated to our 25% extra free.