Alberto Bustamante

Introduction to AI, done!

Posted by Alberto - 03/01/12 at 02:01:12 am

Well, I did it, I passed “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence”! I really enjoyed the experience. Although I was expecting an introductory course, I think its content is very wide. I have learnt more than I expected. Next stop: the Machine Learning course starting this month.

GCC, GNU compiler collection

Posted by Alberto - 01/10/11 at 11:10:46 am

I was taking a look at some old files in my computer and I found some slides about GCC (set of compilers developed by The GNU Project and Free Software Foundation) that I presented in the University in 2006 for the Language Processing course. Although they were written some years ago, I think the content of these slides is still valid, so I have upload them to Slideshare, hoping someone will find them useful.

GCC, GNU compiler collection

View more presentations from albbus.

More free courses at Stanford!

Posted by Alberto - 19/08/11 at 01:08:22 am

My last post was dedicated to Stanford University and its initiative of offering a free online version of the course “Introduction to AI”. Well, now we have good news: “Machine learning” and “Introduction to databases” are going to share this experiment, so next Autumn there will be three free online course to choose from!

Free Stanford course: “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence”

Posted by Alberto - 07/08/11 at 05:08:43 pm

I have read in Barrapunto (the Spanish version of Slashdot) about an interesting experiencie at Stanford University. Professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig (co-autor of “Artificial Intelligence, a modern approach”, the “bible” that everyone studying IA has read) are offering a free online version of their course “Introduction to AI”.

This University have published different courses in iTunesU or Youtube (I talked about one of them before, “Machine Learning”). But in this case, they are going one step beyond: all online students will be evaluated, they will have to do the same exercices and exams than Stanford students. And if they pass the course, they will obtain a certificate. And this is for free.

I have signed up to receive more information about this course, it can be an interesting experience.

The future of mobile devices

Posted by Alberto - 27/07/11 at 06:07:52 pm

Nowadays, there are four kinds of mobile devices available at the market: smartphones, tablets, netbooks and laptops. According to number of users, laptops are the most extended. When I started my studies at the University, only a few of classmates had a laptop. But just some years later, it was strange to know someone who did not have one.

Then, smartphones appeared, after Apple lauched the first iPhone. Today, we have a wide variety of smartphones at the market. Now, people using mobile phones with no internet connection are at the same level than people using a walkman.

Netbooks were destinated to be the next mobile devices in our homes. I know a lot of people who bought one as a second computer. Asus, HP, Dell… in a short time lapse, all the main manufacturers included one or several netbooks into their catalogues. Everyone except Apple: they released the iPad. And then, tablets invaded us.

What is the future of these devices? In one word: integration. I am a technology geek, so I like tablets… but I know I do not really need them. And I think that it is enough to carry with my laptop and smartphone when I go out from home. But it would be great to integrate the functionality of laptops, tablets, smartphones and netbooks. And I really like when I read about new devices that have been designed taking this principle into account:

For example, Asus Transformer, a tablet device that can be transformed into a netbook using an external keyboard.

Or Webtop app, by Motorola. Using this system, you can transform your smartphone as a laptop or desktop computer, depending on which accesory you prefer:

If this is the future, I cant wait to see the next generation of mobile devices.

Predator: learning applied to visual tracking

Posted by Alberto - 04/05/11 at 12:05:34 am

Predator is an open source software developed by Zdenek Kalal at University of Surrey (UK), that uses learning to improve the visual object tracking process.

There are more videos availables in youtube.

Via ALT1040

April Fool´s Day and Linkedin

Posted by Alberto - 05/04/11 at 07:04:49 pm

We dont celebrate April Fool´s Day in Spain (well, we do it on 28th December), so you can imagine my face when last friday I saw these recomendations on Linkedin:

Funny

Support Free and Open Source Software Community as a candidate for the Prince of Asturias Awards

Posted by Alberto - 07/03/11 at 11:03:54 pm

Support the candidature! There are only seven days left!

Prince of Asturias Foundation has invited CENATIC to nominate a candidate for the 2011 Prince of Asturias Award. During the last weeks CENATIC Foundation has been evaluating potential candidates, intending to find the one with the biggest chances of winning the award, which would, at the same time, represent the interests of all the agents of the Free and Open Source Software sector in Spain.

Finally, CENATIC, following its Advising Board proposal and after the endorsement of its governing body, has decided to nominate and present the International Free and Open Source Software Community as candidate for Prince of Asturias Award 2011, in the International Cooperation category.

Read more

Random Sentences, your first WordPress plugin

Posted by Alberto - 16/01/11 at 12:01:00 am

I have been reading about WordPress plugin development, and I have written a dummy example. This plugin allows you to include random sentences in your blog. This is used in a lot of sites, for example, to change a phrase that appears under the main title. I felt very creative, so I called this plugin “Random Sentences” (hurray for me!).

First, we have to create a random-sentences.php file in our wp-content/plugins folder, and write the plugin info in it.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Random Sentences
Version: 0.1
Plugin URI: http://www.albertobustamante.com
Description: Basic plugin that shows a random sentence
Author: Alberto Bustamante
Author URI: http://www.albertobustamante.com
*/

?>

If you check your plugins in your WordPress installation, you will see our great brand new plugin with the information you wrote in the file:

But right now, our plugin is kind of boring, isn’t? Lets write the function that will choose a random sentence. I have called it get_random_sentence():

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Random Sentences
Version: 0.1
Plugin URI: http://www.albertobustamante.com
Description: Basic plugin that shows a random sentence
Author: Alberto Bustamante
Author URI: http://www.albertobustamante.com
*/

function get_random_sentence(){

	$all_sentences = array(
		1 => array( "sentence" => "This is the sentence 1",
					"author" => "Anonymous 1" ),
		2 => array( "sentence" => "This is the sentence 2",
					"author" => "Anonymous 2" ),
		3 => array( "sentence" => "This is the sentence 3",
					"author" => "Anonymous 3" ),
	);

	$min = 1;
	$max = 3;
	$index = rand($min,$max);

	$output =
		'<div id="RS_div">
			<p id="RS_sentence">'
				.$all_sentences[$index]["sentence"].
			'</p>
			<p id="RS_author">'
				.$all_sentences[$index]["author"].
			'</p>
		</div>';

	echo $output;
}

?>

As you can see, its a very simple function. It uses an array to store the sentences and its authors. I will try to store the sentences in the data base in the next version.
If you want to use this code, save the file, activate the plugin and include this line where you want the random sentences to appear:

<?php get_random_sentence(); />

Finally, write your own CSS code to adapt the output to your theme (I included ids in the html tags to do it).

Education and creativity

Posted by Alberto - 30/11/10 at 01:11:03 am

These days im studying a course about innovation and creativity at UOC (Open University of Catalonia). During this course, we have seen this video about education and creativity. I found it very interesting and I want to share it with all of you.

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