Theory and Practice combined

In the morning of day 6 we had George Kornaros from the Technological Educational Institute of Crete
giving a talk on Special Topics in Embedded Systems, which I’m sad to say I missed most of due to being very sleepy.

In the afternoon, we had Paul Jarvis, from our own University (Glamorgan) who did a talk on the artificial intelligence used in Pacman, and used game-maker as a base piece of software to allow us to play with the AI ourselves.

The game maker software package, is not something I feel would ever be used in a real game development environment, it’s a hobbyist kit, plain and simple. So I was a little concerned that this may lead to the others feeling that our course is too easy.

However for the most part it simply generated interest. I think the hands on lecturing style is very different to what most people here are used too, and adding a practical aspect to the lecture kept the interest up very well. So on the whole, well done Paul!

With regards to my future, I’ve received an offer from Glamorgan to continue there taking on the teaching hours I would have been doing as part of my PhD for fairly low pay and wait in hope of a project opening up.

This is taking a chance, and I’m still a little unsure about it. Waiting to discuss it with Ian hopefully.

Tags: Germany, Travel, University
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Well, day 1 didn’t get a blog entry, because I figured I’d combine them. There’s not much to say about day 1 except we flew and it was quite cool – my first time flying anywhere. Not scary at all, surprisingly.

Day 2 started off with a basic introduction to the event and a discussion of what “ambient intelligence” means. It’s a term to describe the idea of having thousands of artificially intelligent devices all attached in some way to one person – and the devices can interact.

After lunch, we had a lecture on Knowledge engineering, but it was covering things that myself and Alex Marshman have already covered in the final year of our degree. The second year students who are also here with me seemed to catch some of it though and maybe it will act as a good “taster” for the Modelling Intelligence module.

To get to and from the University I have to catch a ferry. It feels quite strange to casually catch a ferry every morning like a bus, but it’s a more entertaining way to travel than on the bus that’s for sure.

After catching the ferry home (well, back to Deutsch-Nordische Burse, which is where I’m staying) I caught the bus and went into town to get some food and stuff to wash with. The german bus system is very efficient (in Kiel at least), you don’t have to show anybody your ticket (same as the ferry) if you have one, you can just get on and ride. There are random bus checks and a large fine if you’re caught without a ticket instead. They also have maps of the entire bus route at every stop, along with a timetable, a display box of the predicted arrival times for the next few buses, and a “next stop” screen on the bus, with the name, plus a voice announcer for the next stop.

So anyway I succesfully found where I’m staying, attended the first days lectures, and travelled to town and back, so far. Hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly too.

Tags: Germany, Travel, University
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