Archive for 2006
Trendy design, decoration, and architecture blogs
29 July 2006Here are some blogs that I usually track. Sometimes they have fascinating stuff 
- Apartment therapy: Now with NYC, LA, SF, and Chicago, also a Kitchen section! Big one!
- Tendir: A never-ending source of home decoration ideas.
- Grassroots modern: A small spinoff for affordable ideas.
- Funfurde: The first one I tracked, it opened my eyes.
- Archidose: A daily dose of architecture.
- The Design Weblog: Some interesting entry door to design.
Closed for vacation
28 July 2006Yup, it finally happen. I am back in Girona. Please allow me a slow response latency meanwhile
GECCO 2006
8 July 2006Well, it finally happened. GECCO started today at 8:30am. You can find live blogging at the IlliGAL Blogging.
Analyzing active interactive genetic algorithms using visual analytics
7 July 2006by Xavier Llorà, Kumara Sastry , Francesc Alías, David E. Goldberg, and Michael Welge (2006).
Proceedings of the ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2006), pp. 1417–1418, ACM press. Also as IlliGAL TR No 2006004. Link to the PDF.
Fast rule matching for Learning Classifier Systems via vector instructions
7 July 2006by Xavier Llorà and Kumara Sastry (2006, accepted).
Proceedings of the ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2006), pp. 1513–1520, ACM press. Also as IlliGAL TR No 2006001. Link to the PDF.
The χ-ary extended compact classifier system: Linkage learning in Pittsburgh LCS
7 July 2006by Xavier Llorà, Kumara Sastry, David E. Goldberg, and Luis de la Ossa (2006).
To appear in the Proceedings of the International Workshop on Learning Classifier Systems (IWLCS 2006). Also as IlliGAL TR No 2006015. Link to the PDF.
LCS and other GBML warming up for GECCO 2006
6 July 2006The agenda for the Ninth International Workshop on Learning Classifier Systems (IWLCS’2006) can be found here. The workshop is coming with a list of very interesting papers and topics. We are looking forward to another edition of the workshop crowded of new and exiting ideas. If you are in GECCO, do not let it pass by ;).
By the way, if you want to dig a little further into the learning classifier systems (LCS) and other genetics-based machine learning (GBML) world, check the website of the NCSA/IlliGAL Gathering on Evolutionary Learning (NIGEL’2006). It contains the slides and videos of the talks on cutting-edge LCS and GBML research. It is just fresh out of the oven!
Are you stressed out?
19 May 2006A friend sent this Flash animation link earlier today to one of the e-mail lists I am subscribed. Everybody has gone nuts trying to get farther and farther. The last thing I heard was 577.6.
GALE is back!
10 May 2006Yes, with the new update of the website GALE was unreachable for a while. Here it is the original code again. Please, take a few minutes to read this post. Hope you find it useful. Enjoy
GALE?
GALE (Genetic and Artificial Life Environment) is fine-grained parallel genetic algorithm for data mining. Its main contributions are simplicity and its knowledge-independent model. The simplicity of GALE relies in its fine-grained parallelism based on spreading the population (feasible solutions to the classification task) over a 2D grid. Thus, artificial evolution can be easily modeled in terms of neighborhood relations. These neighborhood relations define GALE as a massive parallel evolutionary model. On the other hand, GALE does not constrain the knowledge representation. It can evolve indistinctly rules, instances, partially defined instances, and decision trees (orthogonal, oblique, and multivariate based on nearest neighbor).
Where can I found more information about GALE?
GALE, as well as some results achieved using it, had been published on workshops, international conferences, and books, among others. I strongly suggest that if you are trying to use GALE for any purpose first read some of the papers that explain it. I would suggest that you check the proceeding of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) from 2001-2005, the books from the International Workshop on Learning Classifier Systems (IWLCS) from 2001-2005, and a two book chapter in Multi-Objective Machine Learning and Applications of Learning Classifier Systems.
Can I use GALE?
GALE is distributed under GNU GPL license for educational purposes. If this is not your case, please contact xllora@illigal.ge.uiuc.edu.
Download & documentation
The current release of GALE is version 0.9alpha. This release is written in Java, being some parts rewritten or removed, for educational purposes. Not all the current GALE knowledge representations and functionalities are included. As you see, it is an alpha, thus, it is possible that it still has some bugs that I have not fixed, yet. If you find some, please send them to xllora@illigal.ge.uiuc.edu. I will be happy to patch them.
The main source of documentation about GALE source code is in the reference manual. In the distribution file you will find the following stuff:
./README |
-> |
A file with a little information. |
./COPYING |
-> |
The GNU GPL license. |
./INSTALL |
-> |
Some installation issues. |
|
-> |
The source code of GALE (.java files.) |
|
-> |
The binaries of GALE (.class files.) You can run it using java -jar |
|
-> |
The reference manual. |
./data/ |
-> |
This directory contains some training data. |
./cnf/ |
-> |
Some examples of configuration files are provided here. |
Distribution files
Finally, here you can find GALE distribution files. Remember that you accept the terms of the GNU GPL license described above (you can find a copy inside the distribution file).
gale_0.9alpha.tar.bz2 (389Kb)
gale_0.9alpha.tar.gz (394Kb)
gale_0.9alpha.tar (675Kb)
Yes, this was Memphis in May
8 May 2006As Kumara blogged here, we went to the Beale Street Music Festival that takes place during Menphis in May. Yup, as the name says it happens in May in Memphis, Tennessee. This year was an unique opportunity to see in the same festival names like B. B. King, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Hubbert Sumlin, and James Brown—to mention a few. The picture above is B. B. King roaring on “How blue can you get”. Breathless.
Oh, I almost forgot, we also paid tribute to the other Memphis King. Graceland has become a fascinating monument to the Elvis icon. It has been a long time since I was this fascinated for the eclecticism of a place—maybe roaming the streets of Las Vegas is the closest feeling. I have to admit that 60’s and 70’s iconography has always amused me. To boost the surrealistic feeling during our tour in Graceland we were not aloud to leave the King’s house. We were trap inside because they were filming the American Idol show. Fascinating.