Entries for September 2005
ECAL 2005
2 weeks ago I was in Canterbury for ECAL 2005. I've taken a while to write about it because I wasn't quite sure how to structure a conference review. I'm still not, but behind the cut I'll rehash the report I sent to the rest of my lab so as to at least say something about it.
What I'm doing
I need to get back into the habit of updating here regularly. I'll start with a very brief catch-up of the past month.
I spent last week at ECAL - the European Conference on Artificial Life, which was very productive and I'll write a review of a little later. It was also a bit of a prod to me to be more focussed, because I feel like this year I've done quite a lot of work with nothing really to show for it. I need to get on with turning at least one of the open projects I'm tinkering with into publishable work; preferably publishable work that makes a good basis for a thesis.
At this point I can see only too clearly why it's possible to spend a decade working on a PhD. At the same time, I know it isn't necessary, but it's entirely down to me to take care of this.
To that end, I'm working on a new set of simulations in the same general area as before. It's taken me a month to get around to posting a link here, for no good reason, but here are my most recent musings on the subject. I am working on the simulator for the one set of ideas that is actually fleshed out in any depth there. Meanwhile I've been reading a lot, but I need to cut down on that and produce some tangible results. It's not that there isn't a whole forest of papers worth me reading; but the whole activity becomes pointless if I never do anything with the information.