jastram.de Blog - Science

Good grates for ReConf Talks

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:04:46 -0400

The Organizers of ReConf 2013 just distributed the results from the feedback sheets. Participants had to rate presentations on a scale from 1 (very good) to 4 (mediocre). The best grade of all talks was 1.35, the worst was 3.43. I had two presentations.

Werkzeuggestützte Konsistenz zwischen Anforderungen und Spezifikation

Fachlichkeit	1,58
Vortragsstil	1,74
Qualität der Präsentation	1,63
Anspruch (hat der Vortrag Ihrem Anspruch genüge getan	1,95
Gesamteindruck	1,74
	*1,73*

Eclipse RMF in Action

Fachlichkeit	1,52
Vortragsstil	1,43
Qualität der Präsentation	1,59
Anspruch (hat der Vortrag Ihrem Anspruch genüge getan	1,55
Gesamteindruck	1,54
	*1,53*

I am quite happy with these results.

ARcTIC 2012

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 11:44:54 -0500

In less than a month, the conference ARcTIC 2012 takes place in Bologna. The final program has just been published on ARcTIC’s website, and is divided in the following three parts:

The
ARcTIC symposium, that will open the event, discussing about innovation
from an Academic perspective and presenting innovation possibilities
coming from research.
The
Tech-pull meeting in which important industry representatives will
share their vision about the innovation challenges that could enable new
rewarding opportunities, as well as new funding channels for applied
research and technology transfer initiatives, in the next future.
The
InnoTech session in which two round tables will be held in order to
discuss good practices and intellectual property management in
innovation projects and experiences and challenges of making innovation.

I am part of the the Program Committee.

Dijkstra - The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:52:10 -0500

For personal reference posted here:

"Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved forward."

"We all like our work to be socially relevant and scientifically sound. If we can find a topic satisfying both desires, we are lucky; if the two targets are in conflict with each other, let the requirement of scientific soundness prevail."

"Never tackle a problem of which you can be pretty sure that (now or in the near future) it will be tackled by others who are, in relation to that problem, at least as competent and well-equipped as you."

Source: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD637.html

Google Apps Status Page

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:23:47 -0400

Just found a really useful link. The Google Apps Status Page shows whether there are problems with any Google app (Calendar, Mail, Docs, etc.

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:54:35 -0400

Not exactly new (the Challenge has been running since 1964), but still interesting: The James Randi Educational Foundation challenges people with paranormal capabilities to present them in laboratory conditions. So far, never claimed the money. Next time somebody claims to get a headache from cell phone radiation, recommend that person to apply.

Black hole at the center of the milky way

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:37:08 -0500

Not surprising, but very cool.

Stunning pictures of the sun

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:58:15 -0400

Enjoy!

Continue reading "Stunning pictures of the sun"

Synaptics Touchpad & USB Mouse at the same time

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:57:42 -0400

While Touchpad and USB Mouse worked out of the box on my T61 running Ubuntu 8.04, I prefer the synaptics touchpad driver. Installing it was a breeze, but it stopped my USB Mouse from working.

While there are a lot of fixes are on the internet, it took me a while to get it to work, mainly because my Kernel was too new. Most fixes suggest to use the "AlwaysCore" Option in the "ServerLayout" section. Eventually I found this link which suggests to use "SendCoreEvents" instead. Now my xorg.conf looks like this:

Section "ServerLayout"
    ...
    InputDevice    "Touchpad0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
    ...
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier      "Touchpad0"
    Driver          "synaptics"
    Option          "CorePointer"
    Option          "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    ...
EndSection

Deploy Industry Interest Group now available

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:14:15 -0400

I am currently performing research for the 4-year Deploy EU Project that focuses on formal methods in systems engineering. Any commercial entities may participate in various ways.

Under construction...

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:56:52 -0400

Ich bin am umstrukturieren, daher sind in Moment ein paar Links kaputt. Das wird in den nächsten Tagen in Ordnung gebracht.

Generate your own QR-Code

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:09:43 -0500

When I was in Japan, I loved the fact that there were QR-Codes all over the place - QR-Codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be "scanned" (i.e. photographed) with any cell phone with camera. The camera would then decode the QR-Code and visit a URL, call a phone number, etc.

There are QR-Generators online, and the code shown here is for jastram.de. I found this on PDA Geek.

Citizendium as an alternative to Wikipedia?

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:32:31 -0400

Are you worried about rogue content in Wikipedia? Citizendium will try to be an alternative. Or will it just be an elite Wikipedia...?

Ubuntu: Problem with international Keyboard Layouts

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Fri, 26 May 2006 15:53:25 -0400

I was very close to dumping Ubuntu. This has so far been the best Desktop Linux distribution I ever worked with, and I really liked the ease of use. But one day, something broke. It didn't allow me to switch between keyboard layouts any more! As I often have to compose texts in German, this is a big deal, and quite a problem. I was exploring the various forums for months! I found quite a few people who had the same problem, but nobody with a solution that actually worked for me.

Continue reading "Ubuntu: Problem with international Keyboard Layouts"

Installing X.org on Ubuntu

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:42:21 -0500

Time for checking out a new distribution - there has been a lot of noise about Ubuntu, so I gave it a try. So far I like it a lot - it is Gnome-based (vs. my KDE-based Suse 9.2 system), and Gnome definitely got much better! Many of my favorite tools (Gimp, Eclipse, Firefox) are Gnome-based, so I like the idea of running them in their native environment.

As I use the system on my IBM Thinkpad R52, I ran into the same problem I ran with Suse: The 1400x1050 screen could not be driven out of the box, and in order to fix this (as I already found out for Suse), I had to recompile X. Here are my notes on doing that.
Continue reading "Installing X.org on Ubuntu"

Bushido - the Soul of Japan (Book Review)

micky@alum.mit.edu (Michael Jastram) — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:07:51 -0400

Almost two weeks ago, I suddenly ran out of reading material in Japan, and I knew that I had long train and bus rides ahead of me. What better reason to pick up one of the many famous books that cover the cultural background of Japan? I picked Bushido, written by Inazo Nitobe in 1905 (originally published in English, not a translation). Having already read another book from the same time (The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura in 1906), I had high hopes and wasn't disappointed.

Bushido is sometimes translated as "chivalry", but it's much more than that, it's an ethical system that transcents Japan to this day. Nitobe covers the Samurai code, the role of women, Suicide and many other fascinating topics.
Continue reading "Bushido - the Soul of Japan (Book Review)"