thesis handed in; music quilt

[metawidget]

I finished my thesis yesterday and today I'm in Montreal handing it in and wandering a bit: lunch with an old high school friend, then wandering, then meeting denkizero at DemoCamp.

Here's the abstract of the thing that's eaten my summer:

A SYMMETRY-GROUP SEMANTICS FOR SHAPE GRAMMARS

Lattice Methods for the Classification of Strand-based Patterns

In ascribing information to designs, two of the purposes a researcher could have in mind are to classify designs, grouping them with similar designs and highlighting specific characteristics, and to store information for reproducing them. The notations and methods for these two tasks are likely to be different.

In the Generative Design Project, researchers have undertaken classification of two-dimensional repeating patterns using symmetry groups, and storage for reproduction using a restricted form of shape grammars. This thesis demonstrates an approach to ascribing symmetry groups to shape grammars, allowing a researcher to concentrate their efforts on representing an artefact or collection, while retaining the benefits of a standard classification.

This work defines a class of strand-based repeating patterns to which this approach is suited, outlines shape grammars in general and in a restricted context-free form, It also defines the symmetry information which is the output of the process starting with broad categories of isometric groups and working down to the information required to fully describe the symmetries of interest. The thesis also provides set, scalar and vector lattices used in the approach, and provides a novel, consistent method for carrying out the assignment of groups to grammars using those lattices and additional tests to bound the symmetries possible in the language of a given grammar conforming to the restrictions discussed. By establishing a symmetry-group semantics for shape grammars, this thesis allows a pattern or family of patterns to be more fully described by its shape grammar without requiring separate rendering and classification work.

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I signed up for last.fm yesterday, I'll keep the scrobbler on unless it degrades performance when I'm listening to music and online. It gave me a nifty quilt thing:

Comments

[taxlady.livejournal.com]

You should have a look at HTML and LJ code in your post. It's borked and showing its underwear.

[jdhorner.livejournal.com]

doncha just hate how it's <lj-cut> but, mysteriously, <lj user="sillyHTML">?

'cause i do.

[jdhorner.livejournal.com]

*hunts for the logic behind dashes and no dashes*

[metawidget]

Gotcha.

Bork.

[ramou.livejournal.com]

I found the scrobbler to impact my system performance. Particularly when I'm developing and have eclipse and tomcat in the background (with winamp playing music). Dunno why, it's not like it's doing much.

[metawidget]

Hmm… I'll keep that in mind: LaTeX is so stupidly efficient that it doesn't seem to care, but as I do different things maybe I'll switch it off.

[senhor.livejournal.com]

Wow, we linguists use the exact same concepts in our approach to generative grammar, though natural language tends to be much more limited in its possible relations.

I don't know why I'm surprised by this similarity. All these scientific, especially mathematical, disciplines tend to overlap. Although, I make no claim to be well-versed in this type of formal grammar, and don't really understand what it is your thesis is about, except it looks like you're saying that symmetry groups and shape grammars don't have to be modular, but rather that one can be derived from the other. Whatever it is, it sounds impressive. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

it is because of one thing: Flash.

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

Even is you use Emacs. This is nothing compared to Eclipse.


apt-get install nuclear-powerplant

[metawidget]

We (and by that I mean the giants like Stiny and Gips whose shoulders I'm borrowing) stole grammars from linguists, so it's not too surprising :)