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September 30, 2005
Gliding adventure
A day at the airport. Not the greatest way to spend half of your weekend, right?
I'd say, a pretty good one. Especially if your airport is a huge grass field and you get to drive the truck across the runway (watch for planes before, while, after). I went gliding with a bunch of folks from university, and it was great.
Granted: most of the "flying" was actually about pushing glider planes into position and towing them around the airfield with cars. And I even watched/helped certify a re-painted glider's airworthiness, which turned out to be a little surreal: have you ever even thought about how to weigh an airplane?...
Actually flying the glider was great too. My somewhat irrational skepticism about flying in something that has no engine is almost gone. And, opposite to what's one of the golden rules of flying (stay away from mountains), those rocks are actually a good thing for gliders - they give you lift (sometimes). Gliders fly happily at only around 45 knots (that's 83 kph, or 52 mph) -- slower than a Cessna, and close to stall speed. To explain, that's when you're pitch is too high, you're going up too steep and too slow so the airflow on your wings breaks suddenly, dropping you from the sky. We didn't drop much. Maybe next time. Next time will hopefully be soon!
Posted by dr at 12:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 28, 2005
Today's Priceless
Returned recalled book too late: £5
Car towed to city council car pound: £135
Someone ate my Pasta Arrabiata from the office fridge: priceless.
Posted by dr at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 26, 2005
Coherent Multimodal Output
Just spent £40 on a hard-bound copy of the thesis I submitted in Dublin last fall. The deed is done. What deed? This one:
The thesis is concerned with the output of multimodal human-computer interfaces. Rather than hard-coding graphical and spoken representations, methods are introduced that plan and realize coherent output, appropriate to the situation and the device. The generation system expects a mode- and language-independent representation, as it can be supplied by the dialogue management component of a dialogue system. The generator then assembles mode-specific rendering instructions simultaneously for each mode with the aid of a unification-based functional grammar.
The approach proposed in this thesis abandons the canonical structure of pipelined planning and realization in natural language generation, in favor of hard constraints formulated in a grammar, and soft constraints that allow for the gradual adaptivity of the output. The grammar is constructed to ensure the coherence of output in different modalities, whose output is generated in a synchronized fashion rather than by separate, mode-specific generators. The soft constraints follow some of the Gricean maxims by incorporating two counteracting communicative goals: efficacy and efficiency. A fitness function encoding these goals takes into account situation- and user-specific factors, such as distractions in a single mode or the user's sensory impairments. The function leads to the selection of an appropriate output from the variety of potential outputs generated by the grammar. It is evaluated in a study with human subjects.
The thesis presents a unification based, hybrid grammar formalism which can combine pre-fabricated phrases and linguistically motivated grammar fragments, and an associated algorithm which integrates the formulation of grammars that lead to cross-modally coherent output. Methods are compared to efficiently implement a control strategy, combining hard and soft constraints as a constraint optimization problem.
The cross-modal coherence implemented by the grammar formalism is motivated by known phenomena, such as cross-modal priming, or alignment between interlocutors. To optimize discourse coherence, central ideas of Centering Theory are implemented using the grammar formalism.
Finally, novel methods and a ready-to-use implementation are introduced which allow user interface developers to inspect, maintain and extend grammars. The formalism and generation implementation is demonstrated with a grammar for a mobile, multimodal application, the Virtual Personal Assistant.
Full version here: David Reitter, publications
Posted by dr at 9:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 20, 2005
German elections - democracy rocks :)
My ballot has travelled from Berlin to Edinburgh, to Lisbon, to Tavira (Algarve, Portgual) and back to Berlin. Quite an effort, and only so I could vote for this guy. He is my local representative from Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin where I used to live. He was one of the very few who stayed calm, reasonable yet passionate when I saw German politicians on TV earlier this year. Wolfgang Thierse, less beardy now, has been the president of the German parliament and would make a fine German president in a while.
Posted by dr at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 15, 2005
Tent equipment in Portugal.
Two weeks off in Portgual: some conferences in Lisbon (about computers and their still-in-its-infancy use of human language) and a week of Algarve, Costa Antjeho etc. etc..
Tried most available forms of accomodation, from a **** in Lisbon to a tent-like "Bungalow" on a camping site at one of the more beautiful places on earth. I can report that Portuguese four stars mean that you get Port wine on the house, but not yet a nice suite. And I was intrigued by the size of trailers and tents. The Dutch even have satellite TV in their tents!
Posted by dr at 10:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 6, 2005
News, Lullabies and tears in anchor-men's eyes.
I like these lines from Elliot Smith's The News...
Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes?
... but are the TV news just lullabies, as the song says?
If you believe in a Chomskian "conspiration of the system", then yes, perhaps they are - because they're shielding us the full truth. If the news are lullabies, then life's a dream.
The weird thing is: people in Iraq and New Orleans were and are dying. For real. That doesn't put me to sleep.
Posted by dr at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack