So, college is over...

Well, my readers, its been awhile. My apologies for not updating this blog for awhile; MQP work became rather intense. But now it is all over, and t'was so very worth it. Allow me to briefly summarize the high points:
-We got an A
-I got thesis recommendation
-I got a letter of recommendation for a TA position
-I'm going to do Ph.D work in London, courtesy of our lab director!!!

Now, as you can imagine I'm rather thrilled about all of this. Last night was devoted to a somewhat serendipitous celebration (yay alliteration!). You see, we ended up on a boat party of college students who had just finished a semester at their university. Sure, they all spoke Hungarian, but when you have common cause and open bars language barriers don't mean much. Sailing down the Danube on a floating party boat (complete with dance halls, bars, and lounge areas) is an experience I highly recommend to anyone who has the good fortune of finding one. Imagine dancing and drinking with about two hundred others on three decks, passing under brightly-lit bridges with city lights on both sides and a breeze off of the river. The music was a rather eclectic assortment of 90s rock, pop, and hip hop (hot, new, mainstream tunes here). The people were equally mixed, with a surprisingly large number of Germans and Americans milling about. All told the trip lasted about four hours, and was well worth the 1300 forint (about $7.00) or so cover charge.

Today shall be spent wandering around, with a game of laser tag later on between our group and some SZTAKI researchers. Assuming anything interesting or hilarious happens, you shall be informed some time tonight. After all, I believe I owe you readers two or three entries by now. In terms of the overall trip, seven weeks are rapidly drawing to a close. I fly back to the 'States on May 2nd, about five days hence. I plan to go on a least one more excursion in Hungary, possibly either a riverboat ride or some sort of hike. Possibly both. If any of you readers have a suggestion or want something in particular covered, now would be the time to say so ;)

Of colds and grids and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings...well the first two at least

So, it’s been awhile. Surely, you think, I come bearing some wonderful story of our times here. A trip to the country? How we spent Easter? Maybe a treatise on the language? Well I am sorry to report that I have little to report. A rather nasty head cold laid me low for a bit of the break, and the remainder was spent discovering that no matter how big of a holiday Easter may be in the smaller towns, it is merely an inconvenience in the city. The stores and commercial establishments (excepting restaurants, bars, and clubs) are closed Sunday and Monday. Other than this, any festivities that went on must have happened in residential areas or some such. Most of my weekend was spent wandering the streets and parks of the city, occasionally stopping to write a bit or read some such. Margit Island remains a wonderful place, but since I’ve already devoted an entry to that I shall refrain from repeating myself.

Instead, I shall explain what our bloody project is about. Since it is currently consuming far too many waking moments I suppose it has earned a place in this blog anyway. Now you’ll first have to know a bit about grid systems. In a nutshell, a grid is a heterogeneous (i.e. made of different types, say a PC, a Mac, and a supercomputer for example) network devoted to distributed processing. Many very long, hard problems in the scientific world can be broken into smaller, more manageable problems. These can then be solved on their own, and recombined to find the solution much faster than would otherwise be possible. The trick, you see, is to take all these fragments and solve them at the same time. Grids make this, theoretically, easy. You submit the problem, a software agent called the resource broker allocates some computers to work on it, and off it goes. Then they churn merrily away, and some time later your answer pops out.

Our specific problem is to analyze the performance of an economic marketplace model on a grid, versus on a single computer. Since one algorithm processes many sets of data, it should be easy to parallelize the system and dramatically speed things up. Unfortunately, there are a great deal of pratfalls and unexpected delays in the real world. So extensive testing is needed to see if it is practical, as opposed to theoretically nice. At this point I’d rather not get into how the project goes…suffice to say that the ideal world of perfect grid systems will happen around the same time that world peace is achieved and Dick Cheney stops eating babies.

More Zany Adventures

The day began with a trip to a Hungarian folk festival. While somewhat small the place certainly had a distinctive character, in addition to a wide variety of both food and souvenirs. Cuisine included goulash, kielbasa, other forms of meat in a tube, and hollow cylinders of fried dough dusted with cinnamon, sugar, or coconut. Your truly had the latter for breakfast, and found it most delicious. Music was provided by live folk singers. Most of these wore old-fashioned Hungarian clothes and sang what I assume were old-fashioned Hungarian songs. However, the festivities were interrupted at one point by an old Irishman approaching the mic and providing about 30 minutes of drinking songs at the top of his lungs. Where this aged leprechaun came from and why he sang at a Hungarian folk festival is beyond me, and may be nothing less than a mystery for the ages.

After eating and music came souvenirs. All manner of curious things were for sale, from jewelry and ornaments to hand-made toys, wooden and stone furniture, and various alcohol-related sundries. Several of you readers will be receiving gifts courtesy of these merchants’ stocks, I might add. The crowning delight of this festival was my discovery of a flask among the wares of a metalworker. Soon I shall have the money to fill it with Palinka, and life will truly be delightful. (If a bit hazy.)

Once were had toured the festival our group set out to Margit Island. This two-kilometer ovoid sits in the middle of the Danube, in central Budapest. The whole thing is one huge park, barred from vehicular traffic and open all year. When we arrived hundreds of people lounged on its beaches, played at soccer in its fields, and generally had a good time. After wandering about on foot, we discovered several rentable motor vehicles resembling golf carts. *A metaphorical pillar of light descends from the heavens, while an angelic chorus sings Hallelujah.*

Now, you may not think anyone can go joyriding on something whose top speed is less than that of elderly joggers. If so, you clearly need to exercise your imagination. Two people could fit inside, and two people on a seat in the back. The driver’s objective at all times was to throw the passengers riding outside the vehicle onto the ground, preferably amid loud shouts and the laughter of nearby Hungarians. Yours truly had two rather interesting accidents. First, Montana hit the breaks so hard that my hand went through the hole masquerading as a back window, colliding rather forcefully with the back of Candice’s head. Secondly, the same bloody driver managed to turn so hard that I was flung off the buggy. Since I was holding on to an edge, however, the net effect was me being swung from the back of the vehicle to a spot directly in front of it. For a couple seconds I was faced with a most ignomius death, roughly akin to being run down by a blind grandmother in a motorized wheelchair. Thankfully the battery powered car came to a halt, and I merely died a little inside amidst peals of laughter from both friends and passerby.

Regrettably, our 60 minutes of rented buggy time ran out shortly after. We decided to rent bikes for another hour, and explore the island that way. Of course I lost the main group within 45 seconds of our departure. Unable to turn around and not collide with a person or tree, I neglected to note that everyone but me had turned off the main path. So I spent the next hour on my own dodging old people, children, joggers, and the Danube while pedaling a bright red bike with a shiny bell fit for the coolest of seven-year old children. Since most of the island had already laughed at us during the buggy incident, however, I didn’t mind terribly.

Once we re-convened outside the bike racks our group sought dinner, and broke up for the night. Tomorrow’s entry will not recount further adventures, but will instead explain why precisely we’re here to begin with. If words like distributed computing, grid system, and economic modeling sound less than thrilling, you may want to skip the next blog. I won’t be able to tell anyway. (Or will I??? *ominous reverb*)