Advogato blog for superant

10 Apr 2009

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:41:20 GMT

My paper "Process Algebra Modeling of Human Communication" has been accepted to 2009 World Congress in Computer Science in July in Las Vegas

My paper has the idea of using process algebra and mathematical tools to model human communication for research http://www.worldacademyofscience.org/

WORLDCOMP'09 - The 2009 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing

If you are interested a draft is at: http://superant.livejournal.com/

15 Oct 2008

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:30:59 GMT

Working on rwdtinker. This Ruby web gui framework has lots of applets now. music playing, text editing, gif showing, etc. http://rubyforge.org/projects/rwdapplications/

Need to get more translating done. Would like to have Japanese translation.

3 Sep 2008

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 16:12:19 GMT

Have been using Compendium for the last few weeks. http://compendium.open.ac.uk/

I find it, for me, the best concept mapper, mind mapper. But, I hesitate to fire it up each day. It seems like such a big app. It is like launching the space shuttle. And I kind of lose my place in the different nodes of the maps I have going. I have a daily node, for my daily diary and notes. I have a ToDo node for the things I want to remember to get to. I have several Ruby programming nodes. I have an ebook node, local harddisk file node, contact phone and email node, and a book writing node.

I love the way it works and the reports it can generate. But perhaps its beatiful graphical layout is a drawback also? So it occured to me to take the limited text forms of rwdtinker to make a concept mapper. I will call it a Dialog Mapper. I am not sure of the exact program logic, But the idea is simple, I think. Record links and connections between ideas and information. Be able to find the ideas and trace forward and backward between links. Be able to output the information in useful ways.

This is a mashup between wikis, outliners, mind mapping and harddisk directories.

Look for the rwddialogmapper coming soon at http://rubyforge.org/projects/rwdapplications/

2 Sep 2008

Tue, 2 Sep 2008 15:42:54 GMT

working on rwdtinker.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/rwdapplications

The idea of this ruby project is to build simple web forms to communicate with programs.

I have always had concerns about gui code interspersed with program logic. It is difficult to read someone elses program. And it is hard to port. With so much attention to MVC now, I think program construction is moving in the right direction.

I first worked on rwdtinker when ruby on rails was first being developed. It is a small simple gui system for those quick projects you need to get working in a few minutes. RwdTinker is meant for personal use on your own computer. Say you want to write a quick program to track movies you watched. It should only take a few minutes to handle gui portion.

Tinker was my wife's idea for the name. It is useful for tinkering together programs.

I have been so busy with ruby tinker coding I haven't read the book I picked up from the library. Null-A Continuum by John C. Wright. This is a modern update of the old World of Null-A books by A.E. Van Vogt based on General Semantics.

7 Jun 2008

Sat, 7 Jun 2008 10:16:07 GMT

Poster presentation in Hamilton Island at the end of July.

ISBA 2008 (9th World Conference of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis) (ISBA) http://www.isba2008.sci.qut.edu.au/

my poster title is:
"Rule Tables for Animal Response"

Flying from Los Angeles on July 18

In this presentation I propose a model for calculating animal choices using rule tables that includes high levels of uncertainty.

17 Jun 2006

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:13:00 GMT

Giving poster presentation at science conference today: http://www.wolframscience.com/conference/2006/program.html

My presentation is that 1-dimensional cellular automata can be used for modeling the correspondence between the real world and features of the arithmetic number line.

I will post a version of it at: http://superant.livejournal.com/

Flying back from DC on Sunday.

24 Sep 2005

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 15:12:01 GMT

Used avidemux to create a trailer for the movie Serenity, based on Firefly that is coming out this month. SciFi action movie.

I edited down a Small Damn Trailer from Eric Olsen's Big Damn Trailer

A Trailer by fans for fans. 3.48 minutes, 56 megs.

http://www.superant.com/serenity/sdt2005.avi

Found it easy to use, but I was not able to be as precise on the timecuts that I should have been.

9 May 2005

Mon, 9 May 2005 19:06:12 GMT

Am working on AI with work on RwdEliza. This little coded frontend using rwdtinker will give simple responses to simple dialog like the old Eliza program

http://rwdapplications.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?RwdEliza

The program now uses the Link Parser that was rubyfied:

http://advogato.org/proj/Ruby-LinkParser/

The long term plan is to parse input sentences and generate responses that are learned over time.

There are more than 3700 downloads of rwdtinker applications in the last 6 months. I need to improve the documentation and write articles to explain the framework.

My wife's mother died on Thursday. Why do I post when bad things happen? It was so sudden, we are not adjusted.

7 Mar 2005

Mon, 7 Mar 2005 23:09:17 GMT

Have been modifying rwdaddresses. This little contact book uses Ruby, RubyWebDialogs and the Tinker framework. The newest version has added rconftool use to update configuration files and changed applets removal and installation to not use external programs. So it should "just work"TM on Windows.

Have made unofficial Debian packages. http://rubyforge.org/projects/rwdapplications/

I am finding that typos are the big problem with programming. I do alot of cutting and pasting, and that leads to programs that don't run correctly. Typing or cutting and pasting lead to errors in spelling or referring to wrong variables. The plus side is rapid development. I am almost always able to use a pre-written code module, but making the correct changes in the correct places is difficult.

I guess we need a tool that checks that our variables and function calls are consistent for the block of code we are using.

27 Dec 2004

Mon, 27 Dec 2004 09:14:53 GMT

Pretty exciting time with my Zaurus 5500. Just got Tinker working with RubyWebDialogs on it.

That was a long project today. Installed and uninstalled about five different versions of Ruby for ARM. Mostly versions of 1.8.1, but also a 1.8.2 preview. They all had library dependency problems. Libraries are a good computer feature, but they can take you to dependency hell. I installed from ipkg and zips and tars. Finally got a 1.8.1 version working.

rwdaddresses are working in my PDA. Yeah. Now to get my schedule, movie database and other applets installed.

Have added features to rwdtinker so that multiple applets can be installed at the same time without stealing screen real estate.