09.30.05

Subsumption Architectures

Posted in Uncategorized at 7:18 am by Administrator

So, I was thinking a bit about various cognitive architectures and there are a few things that really appeal to me about subsumption networks. I won’t get into it too much, but it really seems like it shouldn’t be too hard to add basic learning strategies and memory systems to a subsumption architecture. It doesn’t seem like the big names like Brooks are really that interested in it, though. He seems more interested in just engineering more complex behavior, but eventually you hit a wall unless you can develop learning mechanisms. All you really need, though is some storage system for experiences and actions, some sort of reinforcement mechanism, and a simple pattern recognition system. From there, you could fairly easily link common sequences of events (to mimic classical association conditioning) and from there reinforce actions based on their outcomes, so increase or decrease the likelihood of the immediately preceeding behavior based on the current state of the agent (to mimic operant conditioning). Then, to take advantage of this knowledge, you could use a pattern recognition system to match the current input/output sequence with previous input/output sequences. I don’t know, maybe it’s not so simple, but it seems doable.

The Market

Posted in Uncategorized at 7:10 am by Administrator

The market is AWESOME!! Today, after our oral exam (whoo hoo, got another 5), I went to the market and wandered around and then decided I was hungry. Hungarian food == Soooo gooood! I had a kind of chicken stew thing on dumplings and some kolbasz. It was tasty. I really like the way they spice their sausages here. They pretty much just use a huge amount of paprika and it is excellent. Then I went to the park and had some gellato. I really like the fact that you can get a genuinely small amount of gellato or ice cream here. A small cone in the US is often still verging on lots. I know, I know how much I eat, but I blame Sodexho for putting so dang much food in front of me. Last night was cool, too, though. We went to an art exhibit thing. It was the start of the new season and Yuri’s sister was showcased, so that was pretty nifty. Afterwards we hung out with Yuri, Mano, & co. for a while, got some wine, ate a lot of pizza, smoked a little and then watched 2001: a space oddyssey. It was great, because you could tell that Andras, one of Yuri’s friends was really into cinema and artsy kinds of things. I was talking to Kate and I think everyone in the world has got to have a friend like that, just really into the artistry of things. So that was fun.

09.29.05

Munich

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:12 am by Administrator

I’m a goin’ to Munich tomorrow for Octoberfest. It’s going to be awesome!!

Last Weekend

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:11 am by Administrator

Last weekend was INCREDIBLE!! It’s taken me a while to get around to writing about it because I had to rewrite our abstract from this summer. Apparently SIGCSE no longer accepts joint submissions for student research, so Erica and I had to each write our own version of the extended abstract and submit them seperately. I don’t think Erica did it, though. It was a pain in the butt, though, because the internet in our dorm connects through a proxy that doesn’t allow ssh connections, so I had to get George to bring his laptop to class so I could use the wireless there. Anyways, it was just a long and complicated and frustrating experience and I’m DONE. Anyhow, though, last weekend was awesome. We met some Hungarian students who invited us to go on a trip with them. We ended up staying at this guy’s grandpa’s house. It was incredible. They had grapes, plums, apples, homemade honey, paprikas, etc. They even had some decent white wine they made from the grapes. That was the incredible thing about this place. EVERYbody has a some grape vines out back and makes their own wine. People were absurdly nice to us, though. Yuri’s mom baked us all sorts of amazing pastries and such. Oh, and the sausage was incredible, just fabulous. I don’t think I could handle it all on a regular basis, though. Saturday morning we woke up and went to the neighbors at 9:30 to see how they make the wine and they fed us wine and palinka, which they say is brandy, but it’s not. Palinka is good, but 9 am is a bit early for hard licour. That, combined with the palinka Yuri had us drink before eating mashed garlic mixed with wine. After that, we walked around, went a really old well that was cool, watched some german tourists. Then we went over to somebody else’s wine cellar. They had some pretty good wine and they stood around and drank with us for a while. We bought some wine from them and then wandered around until we got to where the wine festival parade thing passed. There were lots of old people riding carriages and then a bunch of girls and boys doing some sort of traditional dance. That seems to be a pretty universal thing, the adults making young kids do something traditional that just totally embarrasses the crap out of the kids. Then, there were the “wine police” who pretty much went around to everyone’s house and drank some of their wine. They looked like they were having a grand old time. After the parade we went over to Yuri’s uncle’s house, where they were trying to feed us even more alcohol. We managed to get across that we wanted some food rather than wine or palinka and Yuri’s aunt brought out fresh bread still warm from the oven and some pastries. It was incredible! Then, we stole their neighbor’s dog and carried it all over town and went to our neighbor’s, who had invited us to eat some of their goat with them. It was incredible! All of these older hungarians, sitting around drinking, singing folk songs, trying to communicate with us. It was a lot of fun. Sunday, we didn’t start drinking untill 11 when we went over to some other relative’s house and had some of their wine. Then they took us over to this other guy’s house, who every year digs more and more of his cellar so he can fit more wine down there. That was pretty cool, there was also a really old cellar that he had found when digging his cellar. Then we went back, cooked a really pretty delicious soup/stew and went back to Budapest.

09.21.05

Escalators

Posted in Uncategorized at 4:44 pm by Administrator

So, the escalator ate my shoe. No, seriously, it ate my shoe. I always thought that was something my mom just told me to scare me, but it really does happen. I was stepping off of the escalator and part of the back of the heel of my shoe must have gotten caught and the heel of my shoe got pulled into the escalator. It pulled the shoe half off of my foot. It was madness. So now there are big grooves in the back of my shoe.

09.18.05

Smoking

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:16 am by Administrator

Smoking is not cool and way too much of it happens here. I’m not at all used to being in the minority as far as smoking goes, but of the 11 people in our group, only 4 of us don’t smoke at all. That wouldn’t be so bad except that you can pretty much smoke anywhere here, and people do. People smoke in bars, in clubs, in the dorm, everywhere. It just gets really annoying after a while, to always smell smoke and always have your clothes smell like smoke. That’s probably my biggest complaint so far, actually. Other than that, this place is awesome. Just looking around you can see an incredible city recovering from a century of abuse. Budapest is just a happenin’ place.

09.17.05

Aquincum

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:04 pm by Administrator

Today we went to Aquincum, which is the remains of the old Roman city that was here long before the Magyars settled here. It was pretty neat, not spectacular, I mean it’s mostly just a bunch of foundations. It is cool to read about the structure and the organization of the city though. Everything was so particular and organized, much more so than most modern cities. They also had some pretty neat artifacts that had been recovered. I’m really tired, though, so I’m going to go to sleep and try to recover.

Last Night

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:51 pm by Administrator

So last night we went out to a pretty cool bar. There was a dance room downstairs and we danced for a while, but more importantly, they had an amazing czech beer called Krusevice. It was quite tasty. It’s certainly the best beer I’ve had here yet. It may be better than any beer I’ve ever had, too. Most of the other beers here are german, which is okay, but they’re pretty light, although I do like HB. That’s about it for that, but I think I’m getting a bit sick. I’m finally starting to figure out the public transportation system. Things get tricky at night, though, because after about 11 pm there are night buses, which are totally different from the buses during the day. Also last night we all had a kind of Polish cinnamin (sic) licouer. That was pretty tasty, too. They have some good licouers here. Unicum is good, pretty spicy though, not for everyone.

09.16.05

Varosliget

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:13 pm by Administrator

Varosliget is the majorly AWESOME park in the middle of the city. It was created in the millenial celebrations in 1896. I went there today. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in Budapest so far. It very much epitomizes the mishmash of cultures and civilizations that Hungary is. I love it. Except the topless old ladies. Fortunately for Laura they should be gone by the time she gets here. But it’s a large park with museums and an almost palace in the middle. It’s super cool. I plan to be there a lot.

Gyros

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:54 am by Administrator

I have eaten a lot of gyros! They’re everywhere, it’s crazy! So cheap and tasty!

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