September 30, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

The day my brain exploded: Justin came over this morning and we found hundreds of software defect detectors that were mostly stable across different NASA projects. This is the first general conclusion to be generated from the IV&V facility, ever. Spend the afternoon telling everyone about Justin's findings.

So, that got the idea hamster jumping around. Later in the afternoon, me and Dave Owen and Mats Heimdahl were talking on the phone about LURCH and adding preferences into random search. We realized that not only would it easy skew the search through the transitions in some sort of priority ordering, but also, we could use a meta-machine to pick the search parameters. And the transition priorities in that meta-machine would control the rest of the processing.

Sounded all well and good but how to learn the priorities? Hours later, driving around after thinking about something else, it just came to me. Like there's someone sitting in the back of my brain who occasionally condescends to letting me know what is going on. He pointed out the obvious: if TAR3 was compiled into LURCH then we could pick weights at random, then use TAR3 to find the preferred weights. Realized the world expert in optimizing TAR3 was Andres, two cubicles down from Dave. An alliance made in heaven. Rushed home to phone, rang up Dave to tell him about it.

That LURCH/TAR3 idea is a natural extension to years of work. So simple, in retrospect. Why is it, usually, that I make things so complicated?

September 27, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

Was last weekend really a week ago? I feel like I blinked and it flashed by.

Health: Allergies acting up- so tired. Bad me- not taking allergy medicine. There's the first of the Winter flus going around and I can feel my sinuses incubating all manner of horrors. A quiet weekend? I think so.

Had a high-fat blow out. Key-lime pie and ice cream and two margaritas. I'd just finished a kick-ass set of lectures and felt like I deserved it all. Well, once the high-fat/sugar kicked in and got me dizzy and kept me up all night, this reward felt more like punishment. I used to eat this sort of stuff all the time? Madness.

Anyway, life goes on. People (and dogs) rushing round. Sometimes pausing in their day-to-day business to do their business.

As for me, I did some more reading- well, looking actually. I compared the products of minimalism to the products of abstract expressionism. I found myself drawn to the passion of, say, Kline and Pollock and repelled by the sterile bland surfaces of, say, LeWitt and Flavin. I mean to say, if Monument 4 for those who have been killed in ambush was something raised to commentate me, I'd be insulted++

Important note: amoebaism has nothing at all to with ameboidism, which is a type of motility characteristic of amebae and certain other cells, occurring as a result of protrusion of pseudopods. Are we clear?

Funding: In keeping with my new found principles of amoebaism, I tried selling Ken on the most exuberant idea I could think of. I used an example near and dear to his heart: bed wetting democrats.

      %<SARCASM> <!-- note for my U.S. readers -->
      %background knowledge. Democrats are blissed
      %out tree huggers who wet the bed.
       tranquility/hi IF tree/hugging AND bed/wetting.
       bed/wetting    IF vote/democrat.
       tree/hugging:  IF vote/democrat.
      %our goal is happiness, which means different
      %things to different folks:
       happy/t IF gordon/t AND rich/t,healthy/t.
       happy/t IF bill/t AND  tranquility /hi.
       gordon/t IF vote/republican.
       bill/t   IF vote/democrat.
      %here are some details
       tranquility/hi  IF conscience/clear.
       tranquility/hi  IF satiated/t.
       satiated/t      IF diet/fatty.
       healthy/t       IF diet/light.
      %</SARCASM>

Tee hee, if you follow all the dependencies of the above knowledge base, it turns out that if your goal is happiness, then you run the risk of bed wetting (unless you are a republican). Now how could Ken dispute that?

Hacking: Hacking is clearing the quintessential amoeba-ist activity. So much messy creation and mutation and destruction. And I've been doing a lot of that- trying to set up the data mining class so they can do 10x10 cross-validations. Nearly got incremental Bayes going too but have had to shelve that- too much other stuff going on. Also, Me and Andres have nearly reduced classification, feature subset selection, and treatment learning to a simple forward select algorithm (er.. much experimentation to follow). Finally, having multiple appifinies with David Owen regarding random search (we felt like smoking cigarettes afterwards). Now LURCH is joined by LEAN (the thing that nudges LURCH towards some desired outcome). If LEAN works, then its back to my 1995 PhD, but this time with an efficient temporal inference engine. Yee hah!

More funding stuff: Meanwhile, the local DDF and UI stuff carries on. That's all one big swirling bubbling cauldron that could result in, well, anything at all. DDF/UI decisions of accepted proposals are due Oct 15. Monday, I get to tell WVU folks which projects won't get funded. Fun fun fun. SeeMoreLearnMoreTellMore could run another year (fingers crossed). And in other funding work, a big proposal with Miami and JPL is getting finished- everyone contributing good stuff, all sparking on the ideas, contributing new and revised material. Oh, and the Portland Neuroscience thing went in Monday. I love the idea but my level of modeling is kind of alien to the rest of that team. It would be interesting to see how we'd all work together.

Movies: See my blog from yesterday. A very lucky man marries Nia Vardalo. Liv Tyler is so beautiful that Bruce Willis gives her the world. And Sarah Polley is such an angel that she gives a flesh-eating monster his greatest desire (death). Also...

A Streetcar Named Desire (5/5) STELLA! you should watch this movie! Hey, STELLA! Come and watch this movie. STELLA! STELLA! The movie stars a saxophone that makes you want get really drunk and very sleazy. The movie also stars Vivien Leigh as a fallen Southern Belle who wages a vicious war to keep her illusions, Her opponent is Marlin Brando- a beautiful boozy violent barbarian. Its an all out battle using every evil weapon at their disposal. Vivien spectacularly loses the war, her grasp of reality, and then her mind.

TV (is your friend): West Wing continues to shine. This week, C.J. got to blackmail a five-star general into silence and John Goodman became President. Turns out that Rosanne's husband is one scary-ass by-gawd southern republican president with a horrid little yap-yap dog.

And as for Alias... Well. "I'll need some clothes", says Jennifer Garner, without explaining why. She needs no reason. Of course she must wear that stunning cocktail frock and glamorous hairdo as she BOOMS that big gun that turns that car into a fire ball in that dark back alley. If she will have me, I will offer myself to Jennifer Garner. Totally and humbly knowing that soon I will either drown or explode or be killed and replaced by an evil duplicate. It will be worth it

Books: Kiln People. Finished. Grew to a crescendo, then a frenzied crescendo, then something even busier and more complicated than that. A climax that spanned multiple consciousness and species and worlds. It all followed logically but I would have been happy if it'd stopped 50 pages sooner when Clara pulled his head out the waste paper basket with a matronly air of there, there, its all right now.

Helen confessed to me the other day that she is reading less too- no time with her new tenure-track lifestyle. Phew- I don't have to keep up with her inform-avore habits. Used to be we put 'em in the kitchen and got them pregnant. But that's all changed- in the 21-st century we oppress career-oriented women by giving them their career.

Wait a minute- I've got the same lifestyle (cut to scene of timm checking under the cushions, looking for his oppressor).

September 26, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

Movies: My Big Fat Greek Wedding (5/5) All the sweetest smiles in the world in one film. Nia Vardalos plays a woman from a (very) traditional Greek family. She knows she has to get married: I had to go to Greek school, where I sat in a room translating, "If Nick has one goat and Maria has nine, how soon will they marry?" But to delay the evil day, she goes all frumpy and hides inside her parent's restaurant. Which doesn't work too well: So here I am, day after day, year after year, thirty and way past my expiration date. So she steps out into the world, does things on her own terms; moves from ugly duckling to swan (damn fine swan); and takes a job where she can work alone. Sure, she gets married and instantly has kids (kind of inevitable, really) but again, that is all on her own terms. Number of kids? One only! Spouse? Not Greek! And a vegetarian to boot! Her family is horrified, but then they come around and put on the most fantastic wedding. And the moral? Well, that's in the film too: Don't let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.

Armageddon (4/5) Any world with Liv Tylor in it deserves saving. Any asteroid that can kill Bruce Willis is ok in my book. And when that asteroid goes BANG! it does this great BANG! that is the best BANG! of any BANG! in any film. Ever. Oh, and Rockhound going nuts on the asteroid was really funny.

September 21, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

A relatively quiet week. Helen seems happy to be at home all week (for a change). And she's enjoying teaching (I took care to write down the exact time and date when she said that).

Monday was so exciting- I took the next lot of WVU's University Initiatives down to NASA. $1.5M in proposals (for a $550K pot). And because of all the brainstorming stuff we did, WVU is in on at least another $1M of DDF proposals. My dream is to get $1.1M out of NASA in research funding for 2004. If successful, that would mean that in my two year term, I have doubled the amounts flowing through the WVU-NASA pipeline. Fingers crossed.

More and more hints of autumn.

Been writing a paper for ICSE with Mats and Jimin and Dave. All terribly exciting. Deadline is Monday and the paper is doing what papers should do- force us to refine and define our core ideas; showing us what is the next step; etc; etc. Of course there is more work required on this one- much more. But no work of art is ever finished, just abandoned.

Been hacking at my minimalist awk-based data mining tools. Been thinking a lot about minimalism in science. Is it safe to do what I am doing? Finding the cases that can be solved most simply? In art history, I see that minimalists often end up embellishing their latter works. Maybe audiences need some padding, just for comfort?

Speculation seems pointless. For better or worse, I seem locked into this path. This week's book title is How to Code Less (and comes from Ken McGill).

Speaking of Ken, we had a real scary conversation on Friday about 9-ll. Ned had sent round a URL to a little movie about 9-11 (it was the second anniversary last week). Ken pointed out that of all the terrorist attack scenarios, 9-11 was one of the mildest. A terrible event to be sure, but the real horror is that it ain't the worst that could happen, not by a long shot. I won't write down all we talked about- in summary: yuck! But here's one. To shut down a city, cause mass panic, widespread terror/ looting/ destruction, etc, etc, you don't even need a weapon. Just convince people that you have one and that it is going off in 50000 seconds, 49999, 49998, 49997,...

Books: Kiln People by David Brin. In progress. Everyone can generate short-lived (24 hours) copies of themselves. The copies live some separate day, then upload their memories back to the original before falling apart into dust. Told in the first person like some Raymond Chandler novel. Only the person that is the first person keeps changes as we follow different copies through out their day. Some of the copies do exciting things (track down international industrial spies) while others say "screw the housework, I'm going to the beach". Meanwhile, the original sleeps through the day and every evening gets an upload of a full days work and leisure.

September 15, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

web pages=149

This year, I've finished maybe a dozen novels which is a way low score for me- I've been reading everything all the time since I was nine. But that dropped off this year. I didn't notice at first but about mid-year, I realized how screwed my eyes are. So I got new glasses about two months ago and that was a pain. But now the eyes seem used to the new prescription and the proof was yesterday. I took time out of a Sunday to read trashy SciFi- hundreds of pages of in-your-face obvious prose (welcome to the Internet generation where every page has three lines to get you in). Such a truimph.

Books: American Gods (4/5) Leftover gods from the old world living neglected and poverty-stricken eternal lives in the new world. The plot is very clean- no loose ends. Lots of stuff dropped all the way through that gets tied up very nicely at the end.

Movies: Phone Booth (4/5) 80 perfect minutes of paranoia terror, psychological terror, and Keifer Sutherland 's ultra creepy voice oozing down the phone line.

September 13, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

web pages=148

Strange days. The wood between the worlds, kind of marking time till life begins in Portland next year.

Can't focus on things- I've been struggling for days to write an article and the product is truly tragic.

On the upside, the West Wing is still great television and new episodes of Angel start this week.

First taste of autumn. Hints of orange in the green. My guess is that the wall of leaves in front of me will disappear and my view will be all twigs in about three weeks.

The Australia trip looks good- November 15 to December 15 by a warm ocean beach. Yee hah!

Speaking of trips, the tales of Helen the wanderer continue. Last week, she had to go to Utah to collect repaired car. Or was it Pullman for a visit to the English department? (I get it all so confused.) Next week she's off to Seattle to meet with the Human Genome multi-media gang. This week, she went to Vancouver, Canada, to get some required stamp in her passport. Had a great time- she almost married and sailor and got herself a tattoo (the bit about the sailor is a lie). Vancouver is a great place- in the sunshine. Downtown has good FOOD everywhere. Lots of sharp looking well-dressed fit, trimmed, well-healed folks walking tiny dogs. Friendly to visitors (but we found it kind of clannish to live there).

My own trips are far less ambitious (historical note: change of roles- now my wife travels more than I do). Went over to Friendship Hill today.

Much fun hacking- have I written the world's simplest Bayesian Classifier? I think... maybe! I really like that work- it tells me that if I really understand something, I can code it real simple.

So I've got a new title for the book I'm writing this next year: A Little Less Software Engineering. It still shocks me how quickly my students rush off to code pages and pages of C++ when a few lines of AWK would do the trick. To be sure, some problems are inherently complex and those problems need complex tools that support robust scalability. Alan Kay was right: simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. But it seems to me that we focus too much on the complex cases, and ignore the case when simple is simple enough. So my simpler alternative is this: a)software development means writing down options in a model; b)understanding software means sampling the space of options with stochastic abduction; c)controlling software means means finding the key issues within the options using machine learning. And its all really really simple

Movies: Ed Wood (5/5) I can't believe how good this film is. Subtle, wonderfully acted, great script. Proof positive that truth is stranger than fiction.

The Long Kiss Good night (5/5) Geena Davis transforms from homecoming queen to super spy- super slick, foul mouth, and sooooo hot. When she jumped the fence, assault rifle in hand, and makes her ex-grade school student pee his pants: hell, I would have done the same and so would you.

September 9, 2003

September 30, 2003 September 27, 2003 September 26, 2003 September 21, 2003 September 15, 2003 September 13, 2003 September 9, 2003

web pages=146

Happy Days: Car has been spluttering, going dead stick with no good reason on the expressway. Scary stuff. Thought that the fuel pump is going (cha-ching!) but it was only some sensor- less than $200- yippee!.

Mirella Park dog day: So I grabbed the camera to go off and take pictures of a quaint and quirky small town tradition. At the end of summer, when the swimming pool is shutting down, they let the dogs and owners swim in council pools. Somehow I built this all up in my mind as a grand and worthy thing. Something that would brighten up my dull solo Saturdays and remind me of the salt-of-the-earth folks round these parts. Drove round there riffing on the great photos I was about to take. Great great pics, here I come. Click click click.

Cut to the next scene- Tim peering despondently through the cyclone wire fence at the totally empty swimming pool. Not a splash of glee, not a wolf of pleasure. And no quirky photos. Sigh. So much for spontaneous wild weekend wackiness in Morgantown West Virigina.

Teaching: Much manic awk hacking. Kind of an out-of-control experience- no wife to dampen enthusiasm feedback. Tuesday I got to bed at 2:30am, burnt out on brackets. Poor class next day, overwhelmed with my code.

Work: Two amazing meetings to brainstorm DDF ideas for 2004. Never seen anything like it at that site: everyone talking about what we should do and comparing that with what we can do. Real community involvement, creating ideas and synergies. I lead it all and folks followed by lead. Most gratifying.

Lots of good support from the WVU faculty folks. Currently, we are looking at $1.5M in grant proposals.

On the down side, much silliness on hiring Dave Owen. This is week two (or is it three) of this poor guy sitting round while NASA &^%# around on contract issues.

Research: I think I've discovered something- built software detectors from N datasets and tested them on other datasets. Average changes in accuracy, probability of detection, etc etc is tiny; i.e. there is generality is defect detectors.

Television: My love affair with the West Wing continues. And, stop press, Spike is going to show up on Angel. Yee hah!

Movies: Flatliners (3/5) (and add two points for seeing Julie Roberts' bra). A mega-cast: Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, Oliver Platt, even a William Baldwin. Huge hulking sets in run-down dreary hospitals, or deserted under-construction museums full of huge crying marble statues. Our anti-heroes rushing round killing and reviving each other. Kiefer Sutherland's first line as he surveys the golden day this is good day to die).