Kevin is the founder and CEO of RunRev, overseeing a global team and development of the Rev programming language.
This seminar has been postponed due to Kevin’s work commitments. A new date will be announced in due course.
Monty Widenius delivered the Semester 1 Distinguished Lecture Series on Monday 15th October 2012, from 10am to 3.30pm, in Upper College Hall.
Monty is CEO & CTO at Monty Program Ab, and is perhaps best known as founder of MySQL, the world’s most used open source.
Monty delivered three lectures on MySQL and Open Source Business. He has kindly made the slides available – linked to from the titles.
The lectures were introduced by the Dean of Science, Prof Al Dearle, and refreshments were provided at 11am.
These lectures were open to all.
The detailed programme is available as a pdf: Monty Widenius DLS Programme
Professor Aaron Quigley will be giving his Inaugural Lecture in School III on Wednesday 31st October at 5:15 p.m.
Billions of people are using interconnected computers and have come to rely on the computational power they afford us, to support their lives, or advance our global economy and society. However, how we interact with this computation is often limited to little “windows of interaction” with mobile and desktop devices which aren’t fully suited to their contexts of use. Consider the surgeon operating, the child learning to write or the pedestrian navigating a city and ask are the current devices and forms of human computer interaction as fluent as they might be? I contend there is a division between the physical world in which we live our lives and the digital space where the power of computation currently resides. Many day to day tasks or even forms of work are poorly supported by access to appropriate digital information. In this talk I will provide an overview of research I’ve been pursuing to bridge this digital-physical divide and my future research plans. This talk will be framed around three interrelated topics. Ubiquitous Computing, Novel Interfaces and Visualisation. Ubiquitous Computing is a model of computing in which computation is everywhere and computer functions are integrated into everything. Everyday objects are sites for sensing, input, processing along with user output. Novel Interfaces, which draw the user interface closer to the physical world, both in terms of input to the system and output from the system. Finally, the use of computer-supported interactive visual representations of data to amplify cognition with visualisation. In this talk I will demonstrate that advances in human computer interaction require insights and research from across the sciences and humanities if we are to bridge this digital-physical divide.
Reverend Bayes, meet Countess Lovelace: Probabilistic Programming for Machine Learning
Andrew D. Gordon, Microsoft Research and University of Edinburgh
Abstract: We propose a marriage of probabilistic functional programming with Bayesian reasoning. Infer.NET Fun turns the simple succinct syntax of F# into an executable modeling language – you can code up the conditional probability distributions of Bayes’ rule using F# array comprehensions with constraints. Write your model in F#. Run it directly to synthesize test datasets and to debug models. Or compile it with Infer.NET for efficient statistical inference. Hence, efficient algorithms for a range of regression, classification, and specialist learning tasks derive by probabilistic functional programming.
Bio: Andy Gordon is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Andy wrote his PhD on input/output in lazy functional programming, and is the proud inventor of Haskell’s “>>=” notation for monads. He’s worked on a range of topics in concurrency, verification, and security, never straying too far from his roots in functional programming. His current passion is deriving machine learning algorithms from F# programs.
Exciting update on two pieces of software from the Open Virtual Worlds research group.
The first is NuiLib
(available at NuiLib.org), a utility library for facilitating
development with NUI (Natural User Input) devices (such as the Microsoft
Kinect).
It puts an abstraction layer over the top of the NUI device to
hide the gory details of the original API and allows the developer to
focus on what they are trying to use the device for. It aims to ease
cross platform support, support for different devices, development and
experimentation with new NUI input parsing algorithms, integration of
new algirithms and code clarity.
The second is Armadillo.
This is a Virtual World client modified to support Kinect input. Users
can perform gestures to move their avatar through the world without having to interact with the computer itself. Helpful in museum or school installation
projects.
A video of Armadillo in action is available on the Open Virtual Worlds’ facebook timeline.
Kinect integration in Armadillo was achieved solely using NuiLib.
NuiLib has been featured on Microsoft’s Channel9 Coding for Fun blog
and by the DevelopKinect
community.
Talks are underway to include Armadillo in an
educational pilot program across 38 schools in Ireland and as part of a
Virtual World performance art project.
Both projects were developed by John McCaffery. You can find him in Room 0.09 (Jack Cole Building).
If you are starting on a Kinect project and want
to look at NuiLib or would like to superman your way through the Open
Virtual Worlds group’s reconstruction
of St Andrews Cathedral send him an email or pop in for a chat.
A new Gateway to Computer Science programme has been launched to provide new entry opportunities for applicants who cannot meet our standard asking rates due to social or educational disadvantage. If you are interested in this programme, then please contact our Admissions Officers.
Mobility in vivo
Barry Brown, Co-director Mobile Life, University of Stockholm
barbro.tumblr.com
The Mobile VINN Excellence Centre
Abstract
Despite the widespread use of mobile devices, details of mobile technology use ‘in the wild’ have proven difficult to collect. For this study we uses video data to gain new insight into the use of mobile computing devices. Screen-captures of smartphone use, combined with video recordings from wearable cameras, allow for the analysis of the detail of device use in a variety of activity and settings. We use this data to describe how mobile device use is threaded into other co-present activities, focusing on the use of maps and internet searches to support users on a day-trip. Close analysis of the video data reveals novel aspects of how gestures are used on touch screens, in that they form a resource for the ongoing coordination of joint action. We go on to describe how the local environment and information in the environment are combined to guide and support action. In conclusion, we argue for the mobility of mobile devices being as much about this interweaving of activity and device use, as it is about physical portability.
After a busy week of welcome talks and induction, orientation week drew to a close with the postgraduate BBQ.
MSc and PhD students had an opportunity to meet each other, discuss their diverse backgrounds, previous studies, eat burgers, twiglets and consume the local delicacy Irn Bru.
Images Courtesy of Anne Campbell
It was great to see so many undergraduate computer science students at the Orientation Barbecue yesterday. New and returning students had the opportunity to discuss the merits of studying computer science, eat burgers and consume the traditional Irn Bru in a friendly setting.
The Gaming/Programming Competition winners also received their prize in the form of Amazon vouchers. Congratulations to Maclej, Simon and Daniel.
The PhD Reading Party was held at the Burn House, just outside Edzell in the
North East of Scotland.
It was an opportunity for the research students to
give a talk in a relaxed atmosphere, about their research interests.
It also allowed for some socialising while wandering through the nearby
woods and rivers.
Each student gave a 20 minute talk including time for questions and discussions.
In the free time some went off to explore the nearby forest and salmon
rich river while others decided to take a trip to Montrose and test the
North Sea.
Text and Images Courtesy of Ruth Hoffmann
