Urban Sim

So the grid communications talk was kind of a disappointment. Pretty much every one of these always seems to turn out the same way. There's a definite interesting pattern in this kind of large scale grid computing. Non programmers who are just trying to get their jobs done - in this case, the modeling of cell phone communication (or lack thereof, as any cell phone user knows) within a city using CDMA. It's a huge computational problem, the details of which are only interesting to electrical engineers and the companies - in this case Motorola - they work for. I can find interesting things in pretty much anything so I was amused, but most of my compatriots were rather bored.

The interesting gem of the first day of the conference turned out to be a rather fascinating little bit of urban planning software called UrbanSim. It's SimCity on steroids. And it's actually used in real life. Take a look at it. It's open source and written completely in Java so you can run it anywhere. Comes with data for Eugene/Springfield Oregon, so you can simulate the Simpsons - well, if that really IS the real Springfield...

Anyways, I have to go to a reception so I have to get going. Damn Hilton doesn't have wireless. But they do have blistering fast broadband access in the hotel rooms. Price sucks, but what the hey. It's a hotel.

Had a couple of great conversations regarding my theories of "Process Psychosis" in software organizations and I may have a good paper for next years OOPSLA - the "pattern" guys love this kind of stuff. James Coplien (Bell Labs) isn't here this year or I'd be bending his ear on what data he has on this stuff - he's really big into organizational patterns.

Thanks for dropping by, despite the lack of posting...