Xavier Llorà

Blogging from the Big Data Computing Study Group 2008

Xavier Llorà — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:05:25 +0000

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.

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A simple and flexible GA loop in Python

Xavier Llorà — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:34:18 +0000

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 f in func_calls for i in range(self.env.length/5)]
    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.

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Some notes on Python profiling

Xavier Llorà — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:22:40 +0000

You may find some notes about Python profiling on my DITA blog.

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GECCO 2008 Deadline Extended to January 30th

Xavier Llorà — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:27:31 +0000

I just got an email from the GECCO 2008 organizers extending the deadline till January 2008.

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GECCO 2008 Deadline

Xavier Llorà — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 15:15:54 +0000

The deadline for the next Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2008) is approaching. Januray 16, 2008 is the date. Get ready!

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Wordpress and your iPhone

Xavier Llorà — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:40:28 +0000

WordPress iPhone / Mobile Admin adapts the WordPress admin UI to be more friendly to mobile devices, specifically phones.

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Reset the MBR using Linux

Xavier Llorà — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:55:45 +0000

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.

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TechnoCrunch 40 Conference 2007

Xavier Llorà — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:23:27 +0000

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

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LCS researcher changes jobs

Xavier Llorà — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:37:49 +0000

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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Kumara Sastry Ph.D.

Xavier Llorà — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:33:13 +0000

Kumara’s PhD defense

Kumara has just defended his Ph.D. thesis “Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming for Multiscale Modeling: Applications in Materials Science and Chemistry and Advances in Scalability”. The gallery above shows snapshots of Kumara in action. If you have not taken a look at his excellent work, put it on your todo list, you will not regret it. Congratulations!

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