Trust me…

A change of title…

So after five and a half years, an engagement, the first house, a wedding, a first job, Libby and starting on the second I’ve finally finished my PhD so I’ve changed the title of my blog to remove the ‘almost’ part and make it the proper quote. Oh and I’m also Dr. Stacey now ;).

Good Hunting

Submission

I’ve finally done it!

I do feel that there should have been some kind of fanfare! …but alas there was not

Good Hunting

Fuzzy Rule base…

While I’m trying to avoid playing weewar I’ve been attempting to work the last two challenges of my research - agent negotitation over groups and a small fuzzy system to calculate the groupings (plus a search method to compare against).

It seems like each of these things is quite a difficult thing to master as there is lots of research pulling the methodology in both directions - particuarly the negotitation. Should it be voting based or persuasion based - I’m leaning towards persuasion.

I’ve also put up my second paper that’s been accepted in the proceedings of IE07 - it deals with another part of my research! I’m pretty sure that my brain will explode before I finish but I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere! Whoever said that doing a PhD was more an endurance task than a quest for knowledge was 100% correct! And to Vicky I say - be ready for the long slog…

Good Hunting

End of an era… well the flat

Well today is the day that we give the keys back for the flat. Can’t say that I’m that sorry to see them go now, it’s been quite a dragged out process so I’ve not really got any attachments any more.

I suppose the one thing I will miss is the convenience of uni being so close 2mins has now become 25mins and having to go in today just to take my library books back is a complete arse. Why they remove the ability to renew online is beyond me!

The university is really getting on my nerves at the moment though as I can’t seem to get the Health and Saftey guy to approve anything for my experimentation and the timescales are getting close now. Apparently I am unqualified to operate and bench sander, it seems that being 25 and having two degrees does not qualify you as being responsible enough to use these machines safely. I would like to see the training course… It’s a real shame because the University is losing itself funding in the future as I now have no inclination to do any futher research with them when I’m at work - that’s probably a PhD student - at least a Masters that they’ve lost out on unless they buck their ideas up. I’ve managed to get the ok to build my test-bed at work where it will remain as it’s never going to be approved at uni.

Oh well enough uni rant, back to today and my 1000 words (I’ve written about 50).

Good Hunting

Teaching (Again)

Each year I put myself through the same experience, teaching at Uni. It’s good money but normally it’s quite dull and the undergraduates seem less engaging each year, more and more willing to just sit there and stare at the screen not really caring if the robot moves or not. This year marks a notable improvement however and they are actually interested in the module, to the point where several of them have been into the labs before their classes and started work to ensure that they know what they are doing!

For those of you who’ve been through the Essex Computer Science degree scheme I’m talking about 161. I’ve been teaching in the labs for the last three years now and this is the first time that the students have been looking forward to the assignments. Now this may be because Martin (The lecturer) has made the last assignment way more involved and exciting than before - you now get to drive the robots around by tilting a remote control made from a SunSPOT board and program the robots in a proper language, Java.

They are some obvious exception to this but I think that here is not the correct forum to discuss those in my labs who are annoying! Although I’ve never had to tell the students not to make a wooden ramp with which to launch a ROVa into the air before.

Hopefully this means that the results will be up, everyone will enjoy it more and… I’ll get paid more? I don’t think so! All of this does mean that I’ve got to learn a whole new assignment, but then it’s only the code as I’m already using the SPOTs in my PhD project.

Good Hunting