Behind this complicated title lies the thesis for my Master of Advanced Studies, or DEA as we call it here in Spain. Apart from evaluating the research done in a specific field, it includes the proposal for a thesis in order to get the PhD. I had to defend this document last February, which means that now I have an approved topic for the next couple of years to write my dissertation and finish the PhD. That means, more work incoming!
The document presents a proposal for a distributed architecture that will allow for:
Definition of high-level contracts readable and understandable by services,
Proper monitorization of the service states and interactions relevant for the fulfillment of these contracts, and
The implementation of third parties responsible for analyzing these observations and enforcing the norms.
The main idea behind all this stuff is, on one side, to create implicit service institutions, and on the other side, to complement and implement SOA Governance methodologies from a norm enforcement perspective.
In case anybody is curious about all this (I’d be really glad :P) I include here the final version of the document and the slides I used for the defense.
Found at the comments of a blog post about REST and SOAP:
Hey y’all, youse using you a big bunch of words that the average fella don’t understand. REST, SOAP, PUT, GET, POST, COUCH? WHAT?
The only time I use these words is when I come home from work, I do stuff like
Tell ma wife to GET me a beer, fall on the COUCH, PUT my legs on the table, check if I got any new POST, switch to channel RPC to see what game is on. And when it’s time to sleep, go put on some SOAP, before I go to the bed and REST.
The future of quality university education in informatics is a keynote and panel discussion that will be held tomorrow at UPC. It’s quite a short notice and the space is presumably limited, but I’m just forwarding this for those who might think it could be interesting.
The main topic of the debate is the need to preserve a high quality university education system with special focus on informatics.
Location, date/time: Aula Màster (UPC Campus Nord), March 17th, 9am
It’s 4.30 in the night - morning and we’re still making tests and calibrations for the Blink performance that will be held today in a small theater of the Raval. And the results, at least by now, are really promising.
Blink is the master thesis project of Joao and consists on having a dancer moving around the scenario, with some sensors attached to her. The inputs of these sensors will be used to generate in real time video and audio. I know it’s some hours left only, but don’t hesitate to come: the entrance is free!
The bridge between the Phidgets sensors and the video and audio composers is a software that we have been developing during the last weeks. We’re planning to fill it with functionalities and release a more “decent” version in the future. If you are interested in playing with sensors and multimedia, check our Sourceforge page, although the code is very adhoc and inmature at the moment.
Let’s see how it goes in the end. Whatever happens, this project has been really interesting and it will probably have more appearances.
There are lots of must-have Mac applications and plugins out there, but a good thing of each one of them is that, in the end, they are quite subjective: the software we use depend on what our work and leisure is about. So there goes my personal list:
Open Source - Freeware - Shareware:
Adium: the best instant messaging application for Mac. Integrates most of the protocols available out there: MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, GTalk, Facebook and many more. There is even a Skype plugin. Largely customizable.
Celtx: filmmaking and media pre-production tool, with collaborative support. Quite complete and versatile.
Disk Inventory X: graphical disk usage viewer. Useful to see at a glance what the hell is going on with the hard disk free space.
ffmpegX: graphical wrapper for mencoder. Really useful for converting videos.
Growl: notification system that can be used by many other programs, like Adium, Skype, Safari, iTunes and so on. Many configuration options.
Inquisitor: Safari plugin that overrides and greatly improves the Google search box.
i-Installer: LaTeX installation manager. Already out of support, but still very useful.
Plex (OSXBMC): great replacement for Front Row. It’s a port of the Xbox Media Center.
Quicksilver: if I were to choose only one of the list, this would be it. Some people think that it’s only an application launcher, but it’s so much more than that. Optimizes the launching of applications and the execution of scripts (lots of them) using only the keyboard.
Transmission: a really nice, simple and lightweight BitTorrent client.
VirtualBox: x86 virtualization software. Lacks of 3D acceleration support, but it’s a great choice among others like Parallels.
Non-free:
ComicBookLover: a catalog manager for electronic comic formats (CBR, CBZ), and an excellent viewer as well.
OmniFocus: a GTD task manager. Well used, it’s a great tool to organize oneself.
Papers: this is a great application for researchers. Organizes papers and articles by a wide criteria, and integrates a lot of search engines like Google Scholar or ACM, and is able to export a collection of papers in some formats, like BibTeX.
TextMate: the ultimate text editor. For anything that is not writing Java code, this is what I use. Has lots of scripts for a huge amount of programming languages and text formats that really help in, for example, writing a large document in LaTeX or coding a Ruby on Rails application. Also incorporates a fair amount of keyboard shortcuts for those vi or Emacs addicts.
viPlugin: it’s a plugin for Eclipse that allows for using almost all of the vi commands, therefore fixing one of the main drawbacks of this excellent IDE
Ahora que últimamente ando liado, aparte de con el Proyecto de Tesis y con Contract y Alive, con algunos proyectos audiovisuales como Psique, un videoclip y leyendo guiones que se podrían producir, me ha entrado la nostalgia con aquel pequeño corto que hicimos hace un par de años para el concurso L’Endemà de la EMAV.
La idea era sencilla: un objeto y una frase tenían que aparecer en un corto a entregar 72 horas más tarde. Un fin de semana, vamos. No era mucho tiempo, pero lo intentamos. El corto que nos salió no es nada del otro mundo, técnicamente. El sonido es horrible, el espacio que teníamos no nos ayudaba con los planos, y el diálogo se hizo tan deprisa por los mismos actores que no quedó ni improvisado ni trabajado.
Pero con todo y con las prisas, montando primero en un McDonalds y luego durante toda la noche del domingo, nos quedó algo que no es gran cosa, pero a la que cogimos aprecio y la gente que lo ha visto nos ha dado más buenas impresiones que malas.
En AVED, los proyectos son cada vez más interesantes y ambiciosos desde el punto de vista técnico. Precisamente por eso es divertido ver, con perspectiva, cómo salían las cosas cuando los medios escaseaban y la experiencia era menor. Como cuando nos dejamos la salud rodando Vacío… entre otras cosas, usando focos de jardín del Carrefour.
However, after the migration finished, I still couldn’t commit the huge amount of changes I had done through the day. In fact, it was giving me the same error as during the whole day:
I even checked with a different SVN client and I could perfectly commit with no problem. Looking for a solution in Google didn’t help very much and I started panicking over the idea of having to check everything out in a separate project (or workspace) and remake all the changes. My sources in Eclipse didn’t even get updated with the changes I had made with the SVN client.
But then, the miracle. After checking out in a blank workspace, I switched back to the faulty one to start checking which files were changed. I don’t know exactly why, but I tried updating a project… and it worked!!!
Don’t ask me how and why these things happen, or if it’s even something only related to Subclipse. I am too tired right now to think on a logical conclusion. Probably it has to do with the host certificate or something like that but, in any case, these things can really spoil a mood in case of bad luck or a solution misleading. Anyway, software developing wouldn’t be so interesting without this kind of nonsense problems, would it?
In the same office we work at, we have the SHARE-it guys. The main purpose of this project is to design and implement AI systems that help people with disabilities, as the acronym indicates: Supported Human Autonomy for Recovery and Enhancement of cognitive and motor abilities using Information Technologies.
This definition, as always, seems quite abstract, but they are already showing stuff that will be really useful. The underlying IA system will allow for the creation of intelligent software and hardware to assist disabled people, specially elders.
One of these devices is the i-Walker, an intelligent walker that is location-aware, and assists the patient in moving, for example, through a house or a hospital. The user can interact with an interface plugged into the walker using verbal commands, and its levels of autonomy can be adjusted for a better experience. The same concepts will be applied to a wheelchair.
Other devices that will be built on top of the IA system include an RFID bracelet which collects information about the movements made and the objects around the user. With this information, a PDA will be able to act as a personal agenda, predicting the needs of the user and the recommended actions to take (e.g. it’s time to take the pills).
This running project not only looks good from the research perspective but also seems to have real useful application. In fact, along with one of its leaders, Ulisés Cortés, SHARE-it has started to have a deserved media exposure.
Last week some of the KEMLg guys (Roberto, João, Javier, Guiem and I) spent some days in Estoril, attending the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) conference. It’s been the first time I go to such a big conference, with around ~450 participants.
One could think that an event of this sort can be quite boring. Well, at some specific sessions I got really bored, but attending the whole conference has really paid off. Many papers and specially the invited speakers have been quite interesting. In fact, the research field is very very broad at the moment and there are many topics that are worth checking. If I manage to get some time, I will try to post a review of the advances that seemed more interesting to me.
Concerning our participation, we all presented our papers on the Monday workshops (AHC and SOCASE). It was a funny experience, once we have gone through it. However, we have set ourselves the objective of getting papers accepted for the main conference
Also, all the Contract presentations in the SOCASE workshop and the Industrial Track had a good attendance and a lot of feedback, and even opened the chance of collaborating with other business process and service contract related projects. It seems that the results of the project will have a fair amount of impact.
Anyway, the best part came after the conference finished, when I went to Porto and spent some days of relax thanks to the priceless hospitality of João. But that’s a different topic :) I have opened a Flickr set of the trip.
