Andy Turner's xhtml2.0 Blog 2006-08 Page @ School of Geography, University of Leeds

Andy Turner's Blog
2006-09-01
2006-08-31
- Edited Tok's acknowledgements for her PhD thesis. I am touched that in this draft I get a special mention :)
- A journalist called asking for an interview on climate change and weather. Given it was the last day in August and bad weather they were wishing to interview an expert for a news item today. I suggested she contact someone at CRU @ UEA, but she wanted someone local, so I reckoned somone in School of Earth & Environment @ UoL and based on a quick internet search I suggested she try to contact Bruce Yardley.
- MoSeS portal meeting with Paul
  - MoSeS Development Portal is looking good :)
  - I have emailed myself my username and password and put it in my usual file.
  - Next steps are to add a map and implement cacheing
- MoSeS documentation
  - Updated MoSeS 2001 UK Demographic Initialisation Page
2006-08-30
- MoSeS data cooking - Processing died again due to ClassCastException ...
- MoSeS documentation
  - Updated MoSeS 2001 UK Demographic Initialisation Page
2006-08-29
- Supposed to be a holiday, but I am working half a day so I can leave early on Friday. Not cleared it with the boss yet, but I'm sure it'll be OK :-)
- Of interest to RBPAM
- MoSeS data cooking - Processing died over the weekend... My fault... Should work now...
- Paul's encountered a difficulty developing the MoSeS portal, but found the problem in the end (to do with compiling with wrong JDK). Apparantly this was not documented well enough! What would help is better documentation! (That reminds me ;)
2006-08-25
- MoSeS data cooking
2006-08-24
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
- Email from Angie Grain about SoG communications... They are about to Blog in sorts... All meeting agendas and minutes to be stored on the N: and hyperlinked... :)
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
2006-08-23
- Received and accepted invite to jointly edit DSOnline: Simulation & Gaming
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
- Updated Andy Turner's PhD Project Page
2006-08-22
- Helped Bogdan Cristescu, an MSc Biodiversity & Conservation student with some ArcInfo. The crux was shapefile conversion of lines using "layer define" and "layer export" commands to maintain attribute information. An attribute for the height of contours (renamed HT) was then used to generate a tin which was used in ArcScene to render the contours in 3D. Thanks Steve for pointing Bogdan to me for help. Thanks Bogdan I enjoyed helping you :)
- Emailed MASS in reply to Dan's economics email. It bounced back from SOCSIM :( Maybe i'm not on the list afterall...
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
- MoSeS Meeting with Haibo and Belinda
  - Thanks Haibo for motivating me to continue Road Accident Research :)
2006-08-21
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
2006-08-16
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
2006-08-15
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
2006-08-14
- MoSeS code refactoring of process package
2006-08-13
- Working Sunday :( ... maybe I will take a half day in the week :)
- MoSeS code refactoring of io package
2006-08-12
- Working Saturday :( ... maybe I will take a half day in the week :)
- MoSeS code refactoring of io package
2006-08-11
- Meeting with Paul
  - IEEE Distributed Systems Online
    - Niek Wijngaards and others are keen to set up a Gaming and Simulation community/topic area... Paul asked if I would be willing to be on an editorial board... I have confirmed that I would and look forward to an invite...
  - AHM2006 Sino-UK Workshop
    - Nick is chairing
    - OMIIO
    - CROWN
    - Positive presentation on collaboration with China
    - Outline what we are doing with MoSeS and the relevant problems and potential benefits of collaboration
  - Introduced Nanlin
- MoSeS code javadocs
- MoSeS code refactoring of IO
2006-08-10
- MoSeS code javadocs
- MoSeS code refactoring of IO
2006-08-09
- Tidying MoSeS population intialisation code
- Supplied Andy with some SRTM data for Great Britain
- Helping Manuel with some GIS data on Fires
  - Alaska data
    - The dataset of interest is the last one 'AKFIREHIST'
    - What is wanted is:
      1. an ascii list with entries lat/lon/time of burning event, area burned (calculated from polygon)
      2. If possible the same information on a 1x1 gridded burned area for each year (it would be better for each month, but it seems that the time information is limited to the year).
- MoSeS IRC with Belinda
- MASS Validation email
  - Thanks for starting the thread Alison and the first references :)
  - Oreskes N. (1998) Evaluation (Not Validation) of Quantitative Models, Environmental Health Perspectives Supplements Volume 106, Number S6, December 1998.
  - Oreskes N., Shrader-Frechette K., Belitz K. (1994) Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences, Science, New Series, Vol. 263, No. 5147. (Feb. 4, 1994), pp. 641-646.
  - van Dijkum C., DeTombe D., van Kuijk E. (Editors), 1999, Validation of Simulation Models
  - Risan L.C. (1997) Artificial Life: A Technoscience Leaving Modernity? An Anthropology of Subjects and Objects, With a foreword by Inman Harvey, TMV-senteret.
  - Andrey D., Giordano P., Vancheri A.Reflections on the concepts of model's calibration and validation
  - Kleijnen J.P.C. (1998) Validation of Simulation, With and Without Real Data
  - http://www.answers.com/topic/validation
  - http://www.answers.com/topic/evaluation
  - http://www.answers.com/topic/model-abstract
  - http://www.answers.com/topic/simulation
  - Pirsig R.M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
  - Objectivism Without Platonism: Hao Wang on Kurt G�del
2006-08-08
- Wouter Buytaert, Rolando C�lleri, Bert De Bi�vre, Felipe Cisneros, Guido Wyseure, Jozef Deckers and Robert Hofstede (2006) Human impact on the hydrology of the Andean p�ramos
- So, steps are being taken to produce a European Placenames Gazetteer :)
  - I think this should be a very useful resource... I'll try to keep track of progress and think about how to collaborate on this...
  - eurogeographic EuroGeoNames Project Page
  - Survey/inventory on the state of the art of European geographical names data sources and assessment of a future European geographical names data infrastructure (SI-EGN)
- Paul has suggested me as person to consider inviting to join the IEEE Editorial Board on Distributed Systems - specifically a new Gaming and Simulation section. I understand that this will involve updating a webpage once a month and attending a board meeting... This is exciting !) Thanks Paul :)
- Been on holiday and trying to catch up on email
2006-07-27