No giant leaps, but progress is being made

I haven't blogged in a while and that might have made you think nothing new happened or even, dare I say it, that we have given up on our project. The truth is that the last couple of weeks have been a bit quiet. We have made progress on almost every front, but nothing really significant happened. I will try to condense all our news in this blog post and hopefully write something really interesting next week.

We are making a lot of plans for our upcoming visit of Lund. You can expect a full blog post about our plans later on, but we are looking for ideas to add to our to-do list. We are very excited about our
apartment, we can't wait to see it in person. We expect everything to be as good as it is on the pictures the kind landlord sent us!

Care to add anything to our Lund to-do list? Please let me know about all the wacky stuff there is to do!

A while ago I wrote about CouchSurfing where I wondered if the service is popular in Lund. I can now report, that I have successfully found a host for both my significant other and myself. We aren't hoping to save money by using CouchSurfing, we are in it to meet someone interesting. Ideally our hosts will turn out to be among the first friends we make in Lund. You can expect a blog post just about CouchSurfing after we return from our trip.

I have news regarding my Swedish as well. For the last 10 weeks I have been attending classes in a language school and yesterday was our last meeting and as you would expect it included a written exam. I'm proud to say I passed, but just barely with 57 %. I'd like to applaud my superb teacher Brigita for her hard work! Now it's my turn to practice and practice some more, thus putting it all to good use.

Igår jag passerade introduktion till svensk. Nu jag behöver bara träna och sedan öva lite mer!

My last grade at UNI,
with a perfect mark mind you :)

Speaking of academic achievements, just last week I have passed my last exam at University of Ljubljana. Now the only thing left to do regarding my Masters degree is the final thesis.

Everything above is important, but the most significant news of the week is probably this: We have set our wedding date! I'm not going to share it, since we are striving for a private wedding with just the two of us and two witnesses, but I'm happy to tell you that we will get married in Slovenia, before setting off for Sweden.

As you can see, the last couple of days have been busy with small things. But when you enumerate them all you can see it's actually a bunch of important stuff finally done for good. Hopefully I will have more significant stuff to write about, but until then: have a blast!

Making baby steps towards a finished thesis

Gotta love The PHD Comics, right?

I haven't yet finished my formal education: While I have been working at INDA for nearly 5 years I have also been studying Computer Science at University of Ljubljana. Officially I'm still a student!

With the project Sweden going on the question I hear a lot is: What about your degree? My intention was always to finish my studies and get a degree, but with the rigid bureaucracy of University of Ljubljana I can't graduate before the end of September, in spite my good intentions and time crunch. And that in combination with the fact that the lack of a degree isn't really hurting the job search process, means I'm in danger of dropping out!

Well I have decided not to let that happen! I here and now publicly announce my goal to graduate before 1st of October, 2013. With so few obligations left it shouldn't be that much of a challenge. If I make baby steps and do something about my thesis every week I should be there in no time!

I have two classes left, both of them due for completion at the end of this semester, but more importantly I still have to write the text part of my thesis. I have given my thesis some though and I have decided I'd love to do more research in one of my favourite fields of computer science: Soft Computing.

Warning: The next few paragraphs are more about computer science than they are about moving to Sweden. If that's not your cup of tea there is no shame in skipping them!

I have been fascinated by Genetics Algorithms since quite early in my academic career. Even though I didn't take a class on it since last academic year, my first attempts at solving problems with genetic algorithms date all the way back to my high school years.

I have to thank my friend and school mate Smily (who is doing some mighty impressive stuff of his own) for talking me into my very first introduction project, finding a linear equation for X using GA, that turned out to be heaps of fun. After that I used genetic algorithms for tackling the travelling salesman problem, and after that the project I'm submitting as my thesis.

A screenshot from my thesis project
NeuralCars

NeuralCars simulates a playground where agents (controlled by a artificial neural network) learn how to drive around a race track without human intervention. The process starts with a completely random weights in the feedforward neural network (10-8-8-2) but sure enough, given enough time selective breeding will create agents with impressive driving skills!

I've opensourced the project a while back, so you can check it out on Google Code. Compiled binaries are avaliable for download in case you'd like to compete against Skynet's getaway driver :)

So with the software part of the thesis nearly completed (my mentor did request a few changes) I just have to take the dive and start writing the text! Hopefully the pressure of public failure will keep my eye on the prize!

In other news I am being interviewed by Radio Sweden today! Thank you for creating enough buzz for the mainstream media to pick up on!