Consolidating all my blogs
May 18th, 2008
I have started consolidating all my blogs. I won’t be blogging in this blog any longer (although I will still be blogging at the lab blog). The new blog can be found here: http://www.xavierllora.net/
Blogging from the Big Data Computing Study Group 2008
March 26th, 2008
I was lucky to attend the Big Data Computing Study Group 2008. The line of speaker is impressive. The event was held at Yahoo! Sunnyvale, and Thomas Kwan (UIUC alumni know at Yahoo!) helped organize it. I blogged about it on my DITA blog where you can find links to all the related posts.
A simple and flexible GA loop in Python
January 16th, 2008
Yes, yes, I know, Python. I just been playing around to see how much you can squeeze out of it and I am very surprise of how elegant it can be. Just and example. I am pretty sure you have written way to many customize GA loops that you need to tweak every now and then, if so take a look at the Python version below.
def evolve(self): """Implements a simple evolution loop""" func_calls = [] func_calls.append(self.evaluate) if ( self.env.selection!=None ) : func_calls.append(self.selection) if ( self.env.crossover!=None ) : func_calls.append(self.crossover) if ( self.env.mutation!=None ) : func_calls.append(self.mutate) if ( self.env.replacement!=None ) : func_calls.append(self.replace) [f() for i in range(self.env.length/5) for f in func_calls ]
self.evaluate() return (self.best_fitness,self.best_individual)
Where the self.env object just contains references to the methods implementing each of the functionalities generically implemented in self.evaluate, etc.. Pretty sleek.
Some notes on Python profiling
January 10th, 2008
You may find some notes about Python profiling on my DITA blog.
GECCO 2008 Deadline Extended to January 30th
January 9th, 2008
I just got an email from the GECCO 2008 organizers extending the deadline till January 2008.
GECCO 2008 Deadline
December 4th, 2007
The deadline for the next Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2008) is approaching. Januray 16, 2008 is the date. Get ready!
Wordpress and your iPhone
October 11th, 2007
WordPress iPhone / Mobile Admin adapts the WordPress admin UI to be more friendly to mobile devices, specifically phones.
Reset the MBR using Linux
September 21st, 2007
Here is a simple trick if you need to clean it. Recently I needed to clean some Rocks Clusters node’s HD to allow it to reinstall
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/HD count=1 bs=512
This avoid the computer to try to boot from the hard drive. However, if the node was already on the cluster, you need to run
# insert-ethers --remove="compute-0-1"
To remove it from the cluster, where “compute-0-1″ is the name of the node in cluster. Then, you can start insert-ethers, and boot the node and it will start reinstalling itself.
TechnoCrunch 40 Conference 2007
September 19th, 2007
TechCrunch40 Conference 2007 present 40 startups. If you want to procrastinate a bit, check the ideas they are proposing. Maybe they will get you inspired 
LCS researcher changes jobs
September 19th, 2007
This is an excerpt from Alwyn Barry’s web page (Thanks Pier Luca for pointing it out)
Most people who know me will be aware that I am changing job shortly. I will be leaving the University of Bath from 30th September 2007, and will no longer be an academic. I am moving to Street in Somerset to become the Pastor of Street Baptist Church. I am still happy to answer any questions relating to my previous research, so do feel free to contact me via my new email address, which is linked from this site.
Alwyn, it has been a pleasure to be able to interact with you. I would like to wish you the best in your new endeavor, knowing that you will give your 100% as usual.
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