Nearly done

Home stretch...

Updated my website recently to add my publications (two accepted... phew) and I'm a few corrections away from finishing—which is surreal. I think as a treat I'll start writing out my acknowledgements; something I'm taking quite seriously. Acknowledgements sections can be an absolute joy when they're not generic "Ooh I'm ever so grateful to ___ for being nice/reliable/trustworthy/there for me" statements in unending lists. I'd like something more personal than that.

More like this

Well here goes nothing. Oh and if anyone has any advice on how to make this image below more clear, do write in on a postcard.

Three Minute Thesis

First, quick thank you to everyone who gave me supportive and thoughtful comments on my last post.

Second, a few months ago I competed in the Faculty of Physical Science and Engineering "Three Minute Thesis" competition, where I had only 3 minutes to outline what I do and what my research represents. I managed to come away with £50 and a second place position, and now (no thanks to the people who uploaded the video without telling me) my little talk is available online. Enjoy!

Quick NY update

Haven't had much to say recently, but I doubt there are that many readers out there desperate to hear about my every move. Short summary time, then.

Basically I've spent the last few weeks trying to get my head around ROS, a software package for coding operating protocols, algorithms, navigation, message passing etc for robot hardware. It's good for simulations too, which is what I'd like to have done in a week or so. I suffered a big-ish setback when I found out the version I was using was obsolete and had to start again with the new build environment called "catkin". I'm guessing the changes are mostly under the hood because it seems somewhat less intuitive than the first version.

So now I'm spending my time trying to work out how to get Max Sum into a form suitable for simulation, which is quite daunting given that I have no experience in software engineering before now and with multiple interacting parts to consider, that's very much what I'm faced with. The sums and functions themselves aren't all that complex, although translating my understanding of Max Sum from a simple graph-colouring exercise into task allocation is proving trickier than first imagined. Let's see how it goes.

-Chris