One of least known, but most important, aspects of the ActiveMemory is its support for indexes. The first, but actually less important, reason to use indexes is performance: As in conventional databases, indexes are essential for good performance. Due to the simple nature of the XPath expressions used in AM queries, performance is still OK without them, particularly when the Memory has only a few entries -- as is usually the case when people test their components, so this often goes unnoticed.

For a couple of years now, general-purpose computation on the gpu (GPGPU) has been all the rage to get the last bit of performance for many data-intensive algorithms, including computer vision on the gpu. Claims of 100-fold speed-ups are not unheard of and 10-fold is pretty common.

Most current mobile robots use a laser scanner for building maps and these things cost serious money. Therefore, when Neato built a laser scanner into a vacuum for <400$ and claimed the scanner cost less than <30$ many people became interested very fast.

Am Wochenende endlich mal wieder raus — auch wenn’s nur eine kleine Runde war: Von Brilon-Wald aus zugestiegen, dann den Rothaarsteig vom Ginsterkopf bis zum Richtplatz, nach Willingen abgestiegen und von dort mit dem Zug zurück. Etwas über 20km Strecke, 860 Höhenmeter, 6 Stunden unterwegs, davon 4:30 gelaufen.

I just had my concluding talk at Willow Garage, later on we’ll discuss follow-ups and then that’s been it for this time. Its been a lot of fun, but I’m also happy to go home and decompress a little ;-)

Meine Güte, da denkt man, man kann mal gerade ein paar Wochen weg bleiben — ist ja eh Sommerlochzeit — und dann überschlägt sich’s geradezu:

• 750 Milliarden Euro-Bailout — auch ganz passend die “nuclear option” genannt und das Wall Street Journal hat einen interessanten Kommentar zu der ganzen Situation
• CDU und FDP werden bei der NRW-Landtagswahl abgesägt, mit Grünen und Linken als klaren Gewinnern — aber das erste was die mach

Yesterday, Willow Garage officially celebrated the start of their PR2 beta program, where they lend PR2 robots to eleven (11) institutions, ten of which are universities, with the eleventh going to Bosch. After the usual speechs, the PR2s made their entrance, where they were being led by the hand (i.e. physical HRI) by the Willow Garage team.

b6n (Benjman Black) just mentioned a paper on the history of virtual synchrony. This is a protocol for replication, but at the end, the paper makes a few more general observations:

On Saturday (the 22nd), Jon (a fellow intern at Willow) and I went to the "Maker Faire", a big DIY exhibition. There are multiple such events, and we went to the San Mateo one, which caters to the Bay Area. The fair is organized by Make Magazine and features a lot of electrical and mechanical experiments and tools.

Ganz amüsant: Heute in einer Thesis-Defense in der Soziologie in Stanford gesessen und der Chair war Clifford Nass. Erst heute Abend ist mir dann aufgefallen, dass das der von "Reeves & Nass" (The Media Equation) war, der die "Computers as Social Actors" Theorie geprägt hat.

Hat auch keiner was gesagt, dass ich da einfach reingelatscht bin und zugehört habe. Das Free Food habe ich aber ausgelassen ;-)