#RHoKSoton is going to rock!

In 30 minutes we have the #RHoKSoton pre-RHoK Event social gathering in a nearby pub. Tomorrow morning we will join 30 worldwide locations and 3000+ participants to work on a number of challenging problems for the good of humanity and the environment. This is the first time RHoK is organized in this part of the UK and we are the only event in the UK this round!

Its been a lot of work getting this organized and not everything will be perfect, but all I can say is….

You can watch everything live on our ustream channel.  Many thanks to our sponsors for helping to make this happen:
 

 

 

–Dirk

Random Hacks of Kindness in Southampton!

The gist: RHoK is great, come present your problem, or come learn something new or come sponsor a prize. But above all, come have fun! (June 2-3).

Twitter hashtag: #RHoKSoton

In one of my previous posts I talked about bringing engineers and computer scientists  together who were interested in helping to solve problems related to humanity and international development.

Well, we haven’t even had our first meeting yet (its this Thursday, 3pm @ UoS, Highfield campus, staffclub, if you want to come along) but Im already very happy and proud to say that we will be having our first event in 3 weeks time: During the weekend of 2-3 June 2012, Southampton University will be one of the satellite cities as part of the global Random Hacks of Kindness Event!

Wallpaper and thoughts on higher education

Note: this post is a bit of a ramble and was stuck in my drafts folder for a month before I decided to just post it. So bear with me but I still welcome any comments or ideas.

A tweet from a few days ago alerted me of Sal Khan‘s appearance on the CBS show 60 minutes to talk about Khan Academy.  I first heard of Khan Academy almost two years ago and remember watching a few movies and being quite impressed.  I have a great respect for people who are able to explain a complex topic in a lucid manner, breaking it up into logical pieces and linking it to things the learner already knows about.  Its the challenge I enjoy most when teaching.

I also believe that education and critical thinking (or rather the lack thereof) lies at the root of many of the world’s perils. Just imagine a well educated mass with a good background in history and science (to name just two disciplines). The politicians, televangilists, and those selling homeopathic ailments would be shaking in their boots! Of course thats not to say knowing a few textbooks will solve all problems, motivation, social status, and other environmental factors all have major roles to play.  But I doubt many would argue with my belief that education is the most sustainable way to escape the poverty cycle and it would give authors of books such as How we know what isn’t so and Why people believe weird things less to write about.

A Wordle

Out of curiosity I created a Wordle from my blog RSS feed.

So its all about people working on research software  

–Dirk

Engineering and Hacking for Humanity at UoS

In my day job Im lucky and happy to be working on cool UAV technology for civilian applications, in particular our research focus is on search and rescue.  While Im still not totally clear about what I want to do beyond my current contract I have always had an interest in helping to tackle humanitarian problems through engineering and technology (e.g., my recent RHOK event attendances).  I was born in Burundi and grew up in various countries around East Africa.  Experiences that have definitely left their mark and part of the reason I am writing this post.

Another successful UAV flight test

One of the greatest things about this job is that a couple times every year we head out to the airfield and test if the aircraft (a UAV) we have been working on will fly.  Below two videos shot a couple of days ago. The civilian mission it will be used for is still hush-hush but it flew beautifully

Note the gimbal camera under the nose (orange dome) which can automatically lock onto a given object while flying.

–Dirk

The researcher programmer, a new species?

Update: There has been some good discussion on this post at the LinkedIn group on Scientific Software Development and Management.

Update 2: See also the papers by Victoria Stodden and the great complmentary article by Ilian Todorov.

Last week I attended the 2012 Collaborations Workshop at Queen’s College in Oxford. Organized by the Software Sustainability Institute its goal was to bring together software developers and researchers and relect upon how both groups interact and if anything needs to be changed.

I only found out about the two day workshop and the existence of the SSI a few weeks before but immediately signed up. It was the first time I attended a conference so relevant to my own position and work. There were about 50 attendees, all in a similar position: PhD degree, working in academia or research lab, strong computational/software skills and working closely with researchers from at least one other scientific field (with a strong representation from biology/chemistry).

The conference went very smoothly, expertly managed and organized by Simon Hettrick and Neil Chue Hong. There were hardly any conventional talks, rather lightning talks and a whole series of break-out sessions which resulted in a lot of interesting discussions. One of the fundamental problems that kept coming up was the problem of defining ourselves as a group. What kind of species were we?