Kampkoder

Today at around 15.00 danish time, I finished the defense of my master thesis. The result was above average, way above my initial expectations, but who am I to complain about a high grade. The Defense was conducted as any typical project defense (presentation) at Aalborg University. At the exam was, Kim G. Larsen (our supervisor) and Jens Chr. Godskesen and Uffe Sørensen and My self. Uffe and I gave a presentation based on the following slides. defence-master.pdf

Finally, the day has come where I have handed in my master thesis. Now the only thing left to do is pray that I got most of it right. My defense is to be held on the 28th this month which gives me 14 days to plan and produce whatever extra material i can come up with to impress. If you by any chance is interested in this stuff, have a look at the UTASA website, since I will probably only be maintaining updates on the work there.

- remember to keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck on the 28th.

Update I have just updated my official AAU website, with information about UTASA (which the library has been named since). Here you may find further information about our work, and even take the slicer for a spin!

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A few minutes ago. (approx midnight) we (Uffe and I) finished implementing a prototype slicing preprocessor for the UPPAAL verification tool. The implementation is based on the theory developed in what is to be our master thesis, which is due on the 15th this month.

The purpose of such a preprocessor is to reduce the work of the verification engine in UPPAAL, which as may other verification tools, suffers under the statespace explosion problem. Using a preprocessor as the one we have just finished, will employ static analysis on the structure of the input model to reduce the size of the model, drastically reducing the statespace.

The very informal motivation
Imagine if you can, that you are a blind expert (of some sorts) given the task of finding out whether or not a vehicle (with out any assumptions ) has wheels. Everybody, ofcause know the shape of wheels, but only you with your expert knowledge know exactly what is a wheel and what is not. Without any knowledge of the vehicle, you would need to go through any and all parts of the thing feeling your way to determine if it is a wheel you have in your hands. Having an assistant (dumb as a door even) which could see, could help you dismiss things like windows and the seats etc. This way would would have an easier time going through the reminder of things which might be wheels.
Getting a bit more technical
The prototype is based on static analysis and a notion of a System Dependency Graph consisting of Function Dependency Graphs. An FDG is (overly simplified) a graph modeling the control flow, control dependencies and data flow of a function or automata. One is computed for each auxillery function (written in “C”) of the system and a special FDG is computed for the automata given in a graphical form. Each Function Dependency Graph may be initially be computed without concern of the context in which it is used. Having computed the FDSs the SDG is connected such that all possible contexts for each FDG is taking into account. Finally the SDG can be traversed using graph analysis in-order to achieve a list of nodes (ie. statement occurrences ) which are not to be deleted ( the stuff we done know is a wheel or not ). Finally the sliced model is reassembled ready for verification.

I will be writing more on the project after the evaluation.

I bought a Samsung U600 today, now there is a wrong move! Well let me rephrase that, the only thing I’m impressed with so far is the design.

First thing i discovered, which might not be Samsung fault alone, is that the U600 isn’t supported by my MacBooks isync. Ok, I managed to copy all my contacts to my sim (which ofcause cannot hold multiple ph. numbers pr contact) and then transfer the card from my Nokia to the new Samsung beauty. I then discovered that the thing actually contains an FM radio, which is quite cool. But again I was disappointed, because the guys at Samsung decided to add a multipurpose port for charging and connecting other stuff – which means that i can’t hear radio while charing the thing, since the radio uses the headphones as an antenna (atleast I hope that is why the software does not allow me to turn it on). Hmm, off to a bad start here.

It gets worse though, I decided that I would try out sending an SMS to a friend of mine, so i flipped open the keypad and opened the message window, which nicely opens from the “main menu button”. The first thing I noticed was that it then started out using up a great deal of display real estate with a textbox in which it expected input on the receiver of the message. Thinking that It might go away if I gave it a phone number, I pressed the menu button expecting my contact list – wrong. I was presented with a small menu from which I could choose to my contacts, Ok I’ll buy into that – allready skeptical I went for the list an pressed “m” crossing my fingers that I would at least find the entries staring with the letter “m”, it did, and I could breath relieved for a second, I used the navigation buttons to find the right entry and pressed select. NOTHING happened, well not quite nothing, because there was not an indicator – indicating! – that i had indeed selected my contact. What now? – it turned out it was waiting for me to select yet another receiver or press the equivalent of “done” Arg!! how many people sends messages to multiple receivers – I have surly never missed it before. Having overcome the initial chock, I started typing my message, and immediately the T9 dictionary sprung into action – nice! only problem was that it was in English and my friend is danish so I changes the dictionary to Danish and continued my message. As usual when you get a new mobile phone, the spacing of the buttons needs a bit of getting use to so of cause i missed a letter while typing and once I realized this I moved the cursor back to corrupted word expecting the T9 to let me correct my error with a simple push on the navigator button – once again I was baffled since nothing happened. I tried deleting the last letter of the word – still nothing, and I ended up rewriting the word. Finally, I got the message typed, now how to send the masterpiece ? well once again there was no direct way to do what I wanted so I went though a menu to find the send button. It turned out that two successive presses to the menu button would enter the menu and send the message, which redeemed the situation somewhat.

Now to wait for the reply, which came swiftly. I then pressed the on-front button to read the message but the keylock came in my way once I had moved my fingers to the power button – which unlocks the thing, i had also positioned my fingers on the call button immediately dialing my friend and locking the keypad again such that I would accidentally hangup the phone! well since the call was a mistake in the first place, I now couldn’t hang up the call quick enough and the call went through, still fumbling with the phone i managed to hangup the phone just when the call was answered on the other end. I immediately got a text message, containing the words “what are you dooing?!” This time I successfully managed find the reply button, and I started typing – in English again! hmm. It seams that (to my humble knowledge) that the fact that I have chosen the language of the phone to be English (which comes from the fact that gadget menus are often better phrased in Englished than Danish) the default T9 dictionary is also English
Well thats my experiences for now. I’ll try to update this, whenever I find new “features” of the phone! Oh yehr, the problems I’m experiencing could of cause be a result of me being dirt stupid. But the manual didn’t seem to be of much help either .. go figure!

update:

Ok, I admit it, my initial verdict might have been a bit hard, although the phone spent a few days back in the box, I have now decided to show mercy and taken it in use, I’m hoping its just a matter of getting use to the new feel.