Here are some of the pictures from AAAI 2008 in Chicago.
This is off the end of Navy Pier:

Here's looking at the North end of Chicago from Navy Pier:

This is another picture of the same area as the sun was setting:

These are some of the flags that stand on the end of Navy Pier, the moon is rising in the background:

This is a building near McCormick Place (where the conference was) that was under construction:

This one is simply for the nerd factor. Anyone that knows why a picture of the street signs on the corner of Wabash and Lake has any meaning gets an extra point. (I'll put the answer in the comments for those that don't know.)

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Tonight is our last night in Chicago. We fly out around 1 or so tomorrow afternoon. The conference ended today.

I'm tired, so I'll try to hit the highlights of the last two days.

Yesterday was dominated by the poster session in the evening. My volunteer time was from 1 to 6 to help setup for it, so I didn't get to go to many of the sessions. We got the poster session all setup and there was food and drinks and lots of people milling about. I talked to a handful of people about their work. Some of the work I discussed was: a girl doing classification of background noises for environmental localization; a girl using sketch recognition software to better understand user interaction with tablet PCs; a guy from Harvard was showing off some changes to the standard Q-Learning algorithm. Dan had a poster there from some work that was done at BYU. We also saw two posters from University of Utah. That event covered dinner so there wasn't any other exciting trip out yesterday. After the session we ended up just sitting in the hotel room watching Hostage (we think that was the name of it), which is a rather lame Bruce Willis movie.

Today we ate lunch at Baba's again, and this time I got a picture of the store front and the bullet-proof glass counter space. Once the conference ended we headed uptown to find an Argentinian restaurant we had looked up. It was in a much nicer part of town than the Ethiopian one was. It was a rather happening spot with lots of people. It took awhile to get our food, but it was pretty good. My meal came with more than twice as much food as I needed, so by the time I finished eating it still looked like I hadn't touched it.

On the way back from dinner we made sure to stop into our favorite ice-cream shop again on Michigan Avenue. This time I had cheesecake ice-cream mixed with strawberry ice-cream with real strawberry pieces mixed in. It was quite tasty. Now we're just down at the convention center grabbing our internet before heading to bed.

Once I get back to Provo I'll post some of the pictures from the trip.

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So it's the end of day 3 in Chicago. I didn't write anything yesterday because in order to use the internet I have to come down from the 11th floor to the 2nd floor and then walk across the bridge to the conference center, because the hotel does not provide in-room internet. So when we got back from dinner at about 11:30 (I'll explain) I was tired and didn't want to make the laptop walk of bitterness.

So, here's the synopsis of day 2:

I got up bright and early on Monday to get down to my workshop session on time. Luckily for me the morning session focused on Game Theory work which is more interesting to me than some of the stuff the workshop was covering on Sunday. So I enjoyed those talks. Then we had the first coffee break and I set up my poster for the poster session. The poster session started out kind of slow, but eventually people drifted to the posters they were interested in and I had a good discussion with 4 or 5 people about my work. I was happy to find that no one brought up any issues with the work that I hadn't already considered and dealt with, so I was able to clearly and helpfully answer their questions.

One person did mention an application of the work that I hadn't thought of at all. Using the audio query system as an identification system in aural diagnostics. So you could train the system using information about things like car problems, or heart murmurs, or anything having distinct audio signals, then take input and return a suggested result. Could be interesting. So I was glad to discuss my work and also to not have someone totally lambaste me about it.

After the poster session it was time for lunch. Dan, Dave, and I headed out because Rob had to work the registration desk for his volunteer hours. We found a little sandwich shop not too far away that was pretty good. We also determined a safest route to get from the hotel to Michigan Ave which is a main drag kind of area (without going through the seedier south-end section of Michigan as you approach where the hotel is). We also decided it would be kind of fun to put together a little Google Maps like path planner for "Safest Walking Path" that uses things like crime rates, property values, and property vacancies to determine what a safe walking path might be.

After lunch we came back for some more sessions, including Dave's presentation. Rob had presented his work at the same time as my poster session so I didn't get to see his.

Once the sessions wrapped up for the day it was time to head out for some dinner. Dan was set on getting Ethiopian which required going way up town to the other side of the city. So we took the free shuttle into downtown and hopped on the subway. We took the red line up to Thorndale and found the Ethiopian Diamond we were looking for. It is very traditional Ethiopian cuisine which is served around a woven table-thingy (which lacks any appreciable leg room). Food is served communal style and you eat with your hands by picking up the food with pieces of the injera (an item kind of similar in consistency to crepes, but thicker, and the taste is completely different, somewhat bitter.... not very good by itself). It was definitely interesting food. I don't think I'd eat it very often given the choice, but it was unique.

Then we stopped at a grocery store on the way back to the subway to buy some breakfast foods to eat so we could avoid paying $6 for yogurt. As has become our nightly tradition we stopped at the Marble Slab Creamery for ice-cream. Monday happened to be $0.99 scoop day, so we couldn't pass up. The banana was pretty good. Using our newly decided upon "Safest Route" we walked back to the hotel without worrying that we might get cut.

Day 3:
Tuesday started out with some quality sleeping in. We weren't too interested in the main talk going on first thing in the morning so we didn't head down to the conference center until 10:20 for the talk by the head of the Carnegie Mellon Darpa Urban Challenge team (they won). Their work was really interesting and cool stuff.

During that talk I got a voicemail from Mangia requesting that some changes get made to the website ASAP, so I got those done during the next session on Integrated Intelligence. The changes only took me about 15 minutes to get done, however it took about an hour to upload the changes to the server due to the internet being dial-up-speed slow, probably has something to do with the hundreds of people trying to use it at once.

For lunch we decided to ask a bellhop rather than the concierge about where to eat locally since the concierges kept telling us not to go anywhere around here (conveniently the hotel itself has 3 or 4 restaurants in it). He sent us up to a grill 4 blocks into Chinatown called Baba's. The most interesting part of this restaurant was that the entire employee space from register across the grill to the pickup was separated with what looked to be bullet-proof glass (about 1.5 inches thick of a composite material). Which suggests that the area probably isn't so great once the sun goes down. However, the food was actually really good. I had a very good double-cheeseburger with an Orange Lemonade.

After lunch I attended a panel discussion about teaching CS and AI and ways to do it and what can be done to help bolster enrollment rates.

After the sessions wrapped up we went up to Navy Pier on the free shuttle. The pier isn't terribly exciting, but worth walking up and down. As we were heading back inland from the end of the pier I was able to get some amazing sunset shots of the city. Sadly I don't have my USB cable for my camera here, so we'll have to wait until I get back to show those pictures.

We took the free Navy Pier trolley up to Michigan Avenue from the pier and walked up the Magnificent Mile to Water Tower Plaza. From there we wandered around looking for Thai food for dinner. After two unsuccessful hits from Google text message searching Rob tried calling Google 411 while I called Megan to ask for further help. Megan and Google 411 both ended up with the Star of Siam as the recommended closest option, and it happened to still be open. So we headed back to there which turned out to be about 2 blocks from where we had gotten off the Navy Pier Trolley. The food was quite good though so it was worth it.

We realized that the city in The Matrix was based partly off of Chicago (as is Gotham City in Batman), because there was the roads of Wabash and Lake where there is an exit from the Matrix in the first movie. We decided we needed to find the intersection and take our pictures for the super nerdy movie location shot.

After dinner we hopped in a cab and headed back to the Marble Slab Creamery for some more ice-cream. This time we remembered to ask about the College Student discount (10% off, sweet). I had banana again because the choices were getting slim, and had it in a waffle cone with chocolate sprinkles mixed in. We ate our ice-cream as we used our "Safest Route" to get back to the hotel again.

Now it's after midnight and I need to go to sleep because I'm tired.

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This week is AAAI in Chicago. AAAI is the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, which after having thought about for a bit sounds kind of strange when compared to things like NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). However, the goal is to promote the research and development of AI, rather than equal rights, etc. So my Advisor, Dr. Ventura (Dan), and three of us from the lab (Rob, Dave, and myself) headed out here. Adam from our lab also came out, but he had to leave at a different time and brought his family along, so we haven't seen him yet.

Anyways, we arrived here this afternoon after leaving Salt Lake around 11. The flight was unexpectedly uneventful. Upon arrival we hopped in a cab and rode into town to the Hyatt Regency hotel where the conference is located. It's a nice hotel with a large conference center attached, but the location leaves something to be desired. It's kind of not in the greatest section of town, and it's far away from downtown proper where all the food/attractions are.

We checked in for the conference and picked up our little bags of assorted stuff and name tags, etc. Then we headed out on the town for some food. We took the hotel's complimentary shuttle into downtown to find Lou Malnati's pizza, which we had received two recommendations for as the best pizza in Chicago. We were pretty hungry by this point so we were ready to eat some good food. We found the place before the dinner rush really set in and were able to be seated immediately. We ordered their recommended Deluxe pizza (thankfully with half without the mushrooms), as well as an appetizer. The appetizer was an assortment tray which was pretty good.

The pizza came and was pretty good. A very different pizza than I would normally eat since it ended up being more like a giant open faced calzone because of all the stuff crammed on top of it. There were 8 slices, making two per person, but I only barely made it through one, and Dan finished off most of the extra one. Then we headed off again to explore the city some. We wandered into Millenium Park where there was a free concert by the local Orchestra, it was packed with at least ~10,000 people on the lawn and surrounding areas. Then we walked by the Buckingham Fountain. I, sadly, have no pictures due to leaving my camera in the hotel. Most of this walking was on a quest to find some local ice-cream or gelato place for dessert. For most of the way back we were thwarted in our designs however.

When we were leaving we had asked the concierge about walking to downtown and he advised to avoid public transportation south of Roosevelt drive after dark. Dark was approaching, but from what we were seeing we figured it couldn't be that bad. Just south of Roosevelt we found an ice cream shop and grabbed dessert for the walk back. Most of the walk was fine, until about 4 blocks from the hotel things started to get a little seedier. So, apparently the whole area is fine except for right around the hotel and conference center, great location Hyatt Regency.

We've also reaffirmed to ourselves that the nicer the hotel is the more they'll try to rip you off. The Days Inn in Rexburg has free wireless internet access, and mini-fridge in the room. The Hyatt Regency has no wireless internet and will charge $10 per day for a wired connection, and no mini fridge, but the room overall looks nicer. Luckily AAAI has free wireless set up on the Conference center, so there's a group of people down here for the internet access, and I imagine this evening ritual will draw larger crowds as the Conference progresses and more people showup when the main sessions begin on Tuesday.

My poster presentation is tomorrow, so that's exciting. I guess I'll need to get up bright and early so that I can be there for the first session of the workshop tomorrow morning at 8. The schedule shows some really neat looking talks throughout the week that should be really interesting to listen to. My volunteer hours are on Wednesday afternoon from 1-6, so that's what I'll have planned then.

That's about all the news I have for now from Chicago.

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So, I'll start off with this: I've been fighting a cold for about 7 days now. It started with a sore throat, then moved on to general muscle aches and pain plus nasal congestion. The nasal congestion remained while the muscle aches progressed to sinus headaches that became more intense as each afternoon progressed. I had a bunch of OTC cold medicine that has the new phenylephrine drug since places can't sell pseudoephedrine without you signing the Meth Log Book. That was minorly effective, and allowed me to at least function on a basic level. I used the last of it last night, and rummaged through my shaving kit to see if I had anything else. I found a good old fashioned Cold and Sinus pill with pseudoephedrine, and wow that worked so much better than the phenylephrine. So I went to Smith's and signed my name in the government druggie book and got me some good pseudoephedrine and have felt pretty good all day long.

Anyways, back to the topic of the post. Megan and Chad came over today after work to have some 4th of July steak, Guitar Hero, then to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks, and then to hone are wizardry skills.

Here we are waiting for the fireworks to start. We sat up on the mountain side above the Lookout Point apartment complex.


As I said, then we came back and practiced our magic skills. We started out with basic magical shapes like stars:

Megan's Star:


Josh's Star:


Then we moved on to spirals:

Josh's Spiral:


Kyle's Spiral:



Things started to get more advanced as Megan tried to open some kind of portal:


We all felt Chad was doing fairly well with his work considering he clearly has no right arm:





Josh started branching out with attempts to create electron clouds:


and then he worked on his Astral Projection:



The portal Megan previously opened apparently gave her the ability to write letters with both hands, specifically her new initials:




All in all it was a fun evening.

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