Projects

So what’s going on at the Security Laboratory I’m working for? A major project is summarized below, another one is currently too sensitive for publication.

Search engines: The problem of lexical ambiguity

This summary is based on [1].

Problems may occur, when search queries consist of words, which have more than one meaning. For example, Gavin the gardener tries to find pictures or information about apples (fruit) using the search term ‘apple’. Google will deliver two result pages exclusively with information about the company Apple (computers). Gavin never heard of a company called Apple before. That was not he was looking for. When looking for pictures, it gets a bit better, although there’re still more than half of the pictures related to the company.

To understand those results, one should understand the PageRank algorithm. Google works with the opinion of the mass. Someone puts a link to a certain website S on his own website. Now, the more people put a link to S on their own website, the higher Google rates the relevance and importance of S in a certain search context.

So obviously, a lot of people are linking to Apples (company) or related sites. (In fact, the ranking might also depend on some marketing aspects. Are companies paying for higher rankings?). One couldn’t say the delivered search results are wrong. They just don’t match with what Gavin had in mind when he searched ‘apple’. Moreover, Gavin never heard of the company Apple before, gives up crawling through the result pages after the third one.

How to deal with that problem? As we figured out, to humans ‘apple’ has at least two meanings. Therefore, some sort of classification should be applied. And why don’t we use the opinion of the mass again? A ‘Co-active intelligence’ system, as PageRank is, tries to address this issue. They rely on user-generated information. So why don’t we collect user-information concerning different meanings of certain search terms? Assuming every search session addresses only a certain meaning of a word or combination of words, based upon the collected user interaction information we can build up a collection of classes that are logically connected to specific search terms.

For example, Gavin searches for ‘apple’ with the fruit in mind. The search engine delivers certain result pages. Gavin chooses several pages, pictures, … The search engine now internally connects the search query with the selected pages, assuming that Gavin knows, which pages, images, … fit best for the query. The more people participate, the more accurate results will get. Users then can choose, which meaning actually fits best in that specific search context.

Co-active intelligence systems are able to reveal associations that may not have been discovered yet, known as ‘emergent semantics’. For example, ‘big apple’ could also be associated with New York. In general, emergent semantics can also be used in another context like scientific cooperation or service discovery [2].

[1] Truran, M., Goulding, J., and Ashman, H. 2005. Co-active intelligence for image retrieval. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual ACM international Conference on Multimedia (Hilton, Singapore, November 06 – 11, 2005). MULTIMEDIA ‘05. ACM, New York, NY, 547-550. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1101149.1101273

[2] K. Aberer, P. Cudre-Mauroux, A. M. Ouksel, T. Catarci, M.-S. Hacid, A. Il-
larramendi, V. Kashyap, M. Mecella, E. Mena, E. J. Neuhold, O. D. Troyer,
T. Risse, M. Scannapieco, F. Saltor, L. de Santis, S. Spaccapietra, S. Staab, and
R. Studer. 2004. Emergent Semantics Principles and Issues. In Procceedings of the 9th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA 2004).

First days at UniSA

Monday: 10:30 am. First meeting with Helen who’s my supervisor and responsible for the Security Laboratory at the University of South Australia (UniSA). Got some formal stuff done. Afterwards, Helen introduced me to some other students, working with me in the same lab. Then, a basic introduction to current projects followed. Rest of the day I spent with reading papers to get into the projects and surrounding topics. Also got my Health and Safety instructions. UniSA is very serious about that. Lunch at Subway, the sandwich bar. Left office at about 08:00 pm. Bought some stuff at Woolworths (open til 09:00 pm). Meat with mushrooms, tomatos, rice and salad for dinner.

Tuesday: 10:00 am. At the staff room. Instant coffee. Made with filtered water. Not as bad as it sounds. Rest of the day: paper reading. Trying to summarize a bit what I read. Lunch at Subway. Left office at about 06:30 pm. Pasta with fresh olives for dinner. 09:00 pm: Griffins pub in Adelaide city, going out with Gavin (one of Helens PhD students) and some exchange students. It’s 3 $ day! Spoke a bit German with John, an Austrian. There’re night buses on Saturdays only. Therefore: last bus at 11:00 pm.

Today: 10:00 am. Woke up feeling a bit ill. Aspirin. Sidenote: I should reintroduce to have breakfast. At the lab: Read papers again and did my online Health and Safety course, which took me about an hour. And still more to come. UniSA’s really serious about that. I even got instructions what to do, if someone planning a bomb attack calls me. Lunch at Darshana’s Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant. Good and cheaper than Subway. And the waitress is a beauty. In the evening, Jan-Felix, a third year undergraduate genius helping out in the lab, introduced me to a new project. We’re going to get together next Tuesday for details. Got home at 08:30 pm. Pasta with salad for dinner.

Time’s running. The first week is almost over. Two days left. Looking forward to the weekend. At the house nothing’s going on. Housemates are all really quiet. Jamies’s girlfriend is going to visit him on weekend. I’m going to be the kitty manager for September, responsible for trashbins, cleaning stuff,…

Got mobile!

Although it’s Sunday, most stores are open. So I went to Kmart for the first time in my life and purchased a pre-paid SIM for 4 $, my number is

+61 40 181 76 55

Send me a message! At least, you don’t have to pay for incoming calls, as you have to in Canada. Beside that, the first minute costs about 1 $, then 80 c/min (about 0,6 €/0,5 €). Every time I reload with 30 $, I get 120 $ for standard calls (reloading with 100 $ would get me extra 900 $). I can use that credit to call in any network here. But: credit expires after 30 days.

Also bought: a sleeping bag (to keep me warm @ night), 32 rolls of toilet paper, three pair of socks, a towel, post its, college block and house shoes for 60 $ (36 €). Wanted to check my credit card balance afterwards, but when I try to get my SecureCode (which is necessary to check balance online), Paylife always tells me, there’s a temporary problem (which lasts for hours now).

Had that house meeting today (instead of next Friday). Landlord communicated some things regarding kitchen cleaning: everything should be cleaned up right after use, “use-it-clean-it”, etc. We’re all fine with that.

Tomorrow’s my first day at University. Gonna meet with my supervisor Helen @ 10:30 @ “her” building, D3-13. She’ll show me around and stuff. This is the campus map. It’s compareable to the Hagenberg Campus. They also got a lake (like Hagenberg does under the Ellipse). But everything is way bigger. Took me 20 minutes to run around that lake today. Next to the lake there’re living houses everywhere. And across the street opposite to the lake there’s the campus.

Looking forward to meet up with Helen tomorrow and get some idea of my upcoming projects.

Catch ya later.

Finally Adelaide

Current local time: 09:45 am, sunny, 8 ° C. It’s Winter, and it can get pretty cold here, compared to other parts of Australia like Darwin, where todays high forecast is 32 ° C. Darwin is close to the Equator. Here in Adelaide min. today was 3 ° C. Woke up frozen last two nights. Somebody in here always turns the thermostat down to 13 ° C, which is imho way too low. I’d like to have it comfortable, with around 18 ° C I’m fine. In fact, I only got one thin blanket. Before my arrival, my landlord wrote that he’d provide pillow and blanket. Therefore I expected a “usual” blanket, like we’re used to in Europe, filled with feathers or similar. But I was wrong. So I’ll keep on asking my housemates not to turn down the thermostat to 13 ° C. Because it sucks to wake up and be cold.

Somehow I expected my housemates to be more “partyish”, but in fact they’re all quite quiet. I’m fine with that, nevertheless some kind of “Weekend-Welcome-Celebration” would had been neat. As far as I could figure it out, there’re three Australians (Jamie, Denzel, Daniel), one Malaysian (forgot the name), one Taiwanese (Jason) and me. I just recognized, that I’ve already met all of them. Well, they’re all enrolled in courses at the UniSA (University of South Australia). First I met Denzel, who’s doing some kind of mobile networking stuff. Then Daniel showed up for a few seconds. After that short introduction, I entered my 16 m² room with everything a student need: comfy chair, desk, cabinet, book rack, commode and bed. Call me gay, but personally I like the pink carpet floor. It’s nice to walk on.

So after exploring my room, my landlord Lionel showed up, to do some formal paper work and show me around. First impression was: nice guy. We’re about to do some kind of house meeting once in a while. Next is supposed to be on Friday. Lionel wants to know everything when it comes to things that are broken, so if anything breaks, he’d like to know that directly. Daniel’s cooling system broke sometime ago, but somehow Lionel hasn’t repaired it yet. Daniel feels like Lionel expects him to admit that it was his (Daniel’s) fault. So maybe it’s better not to break anything, even if it’s not my fault…

Next I met Jamie and the Malaysian guy. Jamie does his Bachelor in Education and works on Saturdays at a camping store. The other guy is doing a Bachelor in Civil Aviation. He’s going to tell pilots where to fly and land. He’s looking for part time work, just arrived six weeks ago from Singapore, where he worked for two and half a year as a school assistant, planning students plans and stuff. Last one I met was Jason. He did nighshift from Friday to Saturday, beside that I don’t know anything about him yet.

In short, to me it seems like we’re going to come along. After meeting everybody I went to that foodstore around the corner, about 10 minutes walk, and bought some stuff for meal: meat, sausage, cheese, rice, bread and stuff. There’s also a video store, a bakery, a camping store, an ATM (bankomat) and some other stores, a kindergarden and a community centre. The area I live is called Montague Farm, where all streets are named after Australians who died in the Vietnam war. It’s a pretty nice neighbourhood, and as Kathi already mentioned, the area looks like an American suburb. In fact it is a suburb in the North of Adelaide, about 20 minutes by bus to Adelaide City. The day trip ticket is 4 $ for students when purchased on the bus.

Yesterday, after brekky I walked around Montague Farm and finally got on the bus to Adelaide City at Mawson Lakes. Tried to find a nice pre-paid mobile deal and some additional blankets. Finally got back home with a tasty 7$-200g-Haigh’s chocolate bar, some drugstore articles, food and a pack of Tooheys beer. Spent the evening watching TV, talking to some housmates and watching Helge Schneiders Praxis Dr. Hasenbein, a funny weird German movie.

"My" house

Montague Farm - Nice area around

Black swans near the Adelaide Festival Centre

Sunset pictured next to the Adelaide Festival Centre

Last days in Sydney

Visited the Sydney Fish Market on Wednesday early in the morning. Got up at 6, which was even too late to watch the fish auction, which takes place every morning. Right after the auction, the fish is sold in the surrounding areas.

Store around Sydney Fish Market

“If our fish would be fresher, it would sill swim” some signs around that area teach me. Overall, the market wasn’t that interesting. I couldn’t find any motivation to eat fish at 07:30 in the morning, so I left for Coogee Beach to make my walk up to the famous Bondi Beach.

On that five hours walk, I came along a couple of beaches: Coogee Beach, Gordons Beach, Clovelly Beach, Nelson Beach, Tamarama and Mackenzies Beach and finally Bondi (“Bondhaih”) Beach. In fact, they all looked quite similar. On Coogee beach were a lot of mothers with their children, Nelson had some quite big waves and in Bondi surfers crowded the sea.

Coogee Beach

Amazing cliffs all the way

Don't look down, don't look down...

Look back

Surfers in the sea at Bondi

At Bondi I met with Daisy. We were room mates during my stay at the Chilli Blue hostel. Daisy is currently on a RTW (round the world) trip, and looking for a job in Sydney, but it’s hard to find anything without working/student visa. We spent a couple of nice hours in Bondi and enjoyed each other (that sounds nasty, in fact it wasn’t). In the evening we went out, which wasn’t that fun as Friday before, nevertheless we had some beers and a good time.

Then on Thursday, I didn’t made it to the Harbour Bridge for a climb. Instead I visited the National Maritime Museum, which I got a voucher for. That takes me to another point: If you’re planning to stay in Sydney for a few days, buy a Monorail day trip first. If you do so, you’ll get a nice ride with the Monorailand beside that, some nice vouchers, for example 20 % for the museum mentioned, 15 % for the Sydney Tower and some others.

National Maritime Museum, "HMAS Vampire" and a submarine

Me shooting the Sydney skyline

"HMAS Vampire" radar

Submarine torpedo loading room

Submarine machine room

Where I'd like to marry on sometime

Rest of the day I spent on Pitt Street again, watching people and listening to some musicians. Bought an album from Santos, a Melbourne based guitarist, fusing Flamenco, Latin and Jazz. Sounds like the Gypsy Kings. On my way home, the Chinese Massage Mafia (please don’t be offended, I’m just kidding) caught me. They’re just everywhere, both Asians and those tiny massage places. An Asian woman suddenly appeared and invited me:”come on, sit down, one minute for free…” Of course I did. “”Ooh you are tired, you are soo tired… what about neck massage, only 15 $”. Yeah, why not? It’s my last day. After that awsome massage I bought an extra back massage, both for 20 $ and half an hour, a pretty good deal.

The next day, Friday, I got up at 07:30 in the morning, went for breakfast at 08:00, bought my daily coffee-to-go next to the hostel at 09:00 and was picked up by the airport shuttle at 09:15. Two and half an hour later, the flight to Adelaide departured. Arrived at 2 pm local time, an hour later than expected. Bought another coffee, hopped on a taxi and finally arrived at 7 Paterson Road, Pooraka, South Australia 5095. So if anybody would like to send anything: that’s my new address for the next six months, hurray!

Sydney Update

So what’s going on in Sydney? Got into my new Hostel called Chili Blue. It’s quite cheap, maybe because I’m sharing room with six others. They’re all fine, two of them left today, people are coming and going. Most important: I slept well every up to now. Couldn’t manage to get breakfast last days, because I just woke up too early and couldn’t wait to get out.

On Sunday I went to Manly Beach. It’s pretty easy to get there. Just go to Circular Quay and take a ferry over to Manly. Then walk The Corso all the way down to the beach. I hung out there quite a long time, so that trip took me the whole day. Quite neat!

Ferry to Manly

Manly Beach

The other end of Manly Beach

Return ferry

Everybody just goes to Bondi Beach, so if you’re in Sydney, go to Manly too.

Next day I did a nice trip all the way into the Blue Mountains. For some reason, I got out far too early and had to wait for the next train, so the trip into the West took me about three hours, return about two hours. In short (’cause time’s running out on this workstation, just paid 5 bucks for 100 minutes): Great views, great walks, and the Hop-on-Hop-off Explorer bus is quite neat. You should bring plenty of time to see as much things as possible. For sure, if you arrive at Katoomba railway station, buy your Explorer ticket (about 50 $), hop off at point 9 and walk all the way down the Great Steps back to the Scenic View, where you get a lift 300 metres back up to another bus station.

Blue Mountains

The famous Three Sisters

Blue Mountain Rainforest

Today I climbed the Sydney Tower (OK, there’s a lift up for about 20 $). Can you figure out the Coca Cola sign somewhat in the middle of the picture? That’s Kings Cross, where I stay. Then saw that Monorail running through the city. So, back down to earth, bought a 10 $ ticket for a unlimited day ride, and that one really paid off. Hopped on about 10 times. It’s like a little rollercoaster. Did some people watching again on my favourite Pitt Street boulevard. Also walked through Darling Harbour. Lot’s of stores and restaurants.

Sydney Tower

Pitt Street

Sydney Skyline via Darling Harbour in the evening

Tomorrow: Bondi Beach!

Weekend pic:

Having fun with Conan and Miles

Arrived in Sydney

So here I am! After travelling about 40 hours (timeshift included), I finally arrived in Sydney and hey, I love it! I’m great, and here’s the whole story.

In general, I really do like flying around with airplanes. My first longer flight I was on took me to New York a few years ago. That was a nice shorttrip compared to going to Sydney. The plane took me from Vienna to London, where Helene, a friend of mine, and me were planning to meet each other, BUT: we didn’t realize that London Heathrow is that huge! My plane arrived at Terminal 5 at about 5 pm, and I had to go to Terminal 4 for my transfer flight to Singapore. Unfortunately we didn’t know where Helene’s plane was going to arrive, so it was like playing the lottery for me to go to the right Terminal and meet her. So instead of missing my transfer flight to Singapore because of not knowing exactly where she’ll be, I decided to directly go to Terminal 4, I’m sorry Lene

The transfer flight to Singapore was quite nice, I sat right to an Australian couple. The told me some nice places to visit and things to do. For example, they highly recommended to climb the harbour bridge, which is about 130 m high. It’ll cost me about 150 $ and your not allowed to take anything with you, including camera and mobile. Another thing they recommended was the fish market and the blue mountains.

In Singapore I had to get off the plane for a few hours. Singapore also has got a huge airport. You can walk half an hour straight forward and there are still new gates appearing. Somewhere I found an Internet place, just a hour before my transfer flight to Syndey departured. So I took the chance and did a reservation for the Chili Blue hostel in Kings Cross. I’m going to pay about 60 $ for five nights, that’s cheap. In fact I wasn’t able to do a reservation for Friday and yesterday, so I had to find another hostel for two nights on after my arrival.

Then on Friday morning, 0500 am, I finally arrived at Sydney airport. Watching Sydney city from high above sea level was great. Watching Singapore harbour from plane was even more interesting. There were literally hundreds of huge boats, and every boat looked like a candle with all the lights on. But back to Sydney. After my arrival I took the train to Sydney Central train station. It’s called Central, but in fact it’s not. But instead of taking a bus to the centre, I decided to walk all the way. The sun was rising, the air was fresh (it’s kind of Winter here), and it just felt good to explore that beautiful city which I’ve been loving now since I got off the train at Central. So I went down the road for about three hours, watching this building, buying that coffee and already saw a lot of things like the St Marys Cathedral and of course the Opera house. The weather was great, so I kept on walking through the Royal Botanic Gardens watching Cacadoos and Bats hanging off the trees. With going to my hostel in mind, I underestimated the walking distance through the Gardens, so it took me another two hours until I finally got to Victoria Street, Kings Cross. I found a nice hostel just right to Chili Blue Hostel, and checked in for two nights and 48 $.

Although my rooms mates were both kind of strange, I liked them. With one of them, Christian, a guy originally from Hamburg, I went out on Friday night and we both had so much fun. We met some Aussies, Conan and Miles, and we really enjoyed drinking and laughing with them. They were real fun, we exchanged phone numbers and will maybe meet again for a drink on the airport when I get home in February. Conan got married a few months ago, but now he really dislikes his wife and they’re already planning to divorce. On the other hand, Miles is not married yet, but he’s already got some children. Then I met this guy who’s name I can’t recall. He’s a window cleaner, and planning to do the great buildings some time. Until then, he’s planting Marihuana and would like to do big business with that. Nice and strange guy.

I really got hammered, and don’t know when I finally got home Saturday morning. Miles was really nice and showed me all the way back to Victoria Street. Then I slept until three in the afternoon. Yesterday I didn’t really do much, just hanging around in the city, eating really, really tasty burgers at Burgerfuel and doing some people watching. Went to bed at 9 pm, and got up today at seven for a minimalistic breakfast, which is included with my stay.

Right now, I’m about to check out in a few minutes, and head for the Chili Blue hostel a few metres down the road. Afterwards, I’lll go to Manly Beach by ferry and enjoy a great Sunday afternoon. Pictures will follow.

Love you all!

Almost gone

Heading for the train to Vienna at half past eight. Flight departs at quarter past two. Next stop: London. Managed to fill my big case with only 20 kg. Hope to get trough security check with my big notebook-rucksack. See you soon!

Inter Rail is great

I can recommend it to everyone. Try to do Inter Rail at least once in your lifetime. It is cheap (159 € student price). The ticket is accepted in every train accross Europe. For some trains (for example TGV in France or X2000 in Stockholm) you have to pay small additional fees. Overall, we paid about 240 € for the travelling stuff, and about the same to cover our cost of living. With that, we enjoyed ten days in Stockholm, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris.

Sweden/Stockholm

• 24 hours by train
• visited Mario and Dominik (doing their internships in Stockholm), stayed at their place
• most beautiful girls ever seen
• most expensive beer ever drunk (about 6 €!)
• most disgusting beer ever drunk
• Sweden has beautiful landscapes
• in summer sun starts shining at two or three in the morning
• this is when most pubs close their doors (3 a.m.), even on weekends
• 4 a.m.: McDonalds still open
• public transportation is expensive (20 € for three days)
• Tunnelbana is their Underground
• missed our first train to Berlin

Germany/Berlin

• bigger than supposed
• stayed at a parents friends place
• prices compareable to Austria (although I got 3 portions of normal icecream for 6,5 € at the Central Station)
• unfortunately we didn’t have the opportunity to go out for party
• it’s hard to find a normal super market
• can’t imagine to live there, would have problems to adapt my talk

Netherlands/Amsterdam

• lost my orientation a few times
• coffe shops close at 1 a.m.
• stayed at a CouchSurfers place 20 minutes with tram outside of Amsterdam; Jacqueline gave us a lift to a beach near Haarlem
• met a guy at the beach who took us back to our place afterwards
• beautiful train station from the outside
• a lot of people everywhere
• you can buy every imaginable drug in the redlight district possibly
• yes, there are women standing behind glass windows, wanting you to get “private” with them
• city of the bikes

France/Paris

• big and beautiful buildings
• way too expensive (restaurant: 5,5 € for bottle of water, 11 € for lasagne, 12 € for pizza)
• you must be crazy to stand in line for the Eiffel Tower
• it’s great to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower, just too impressive
• had only half a day there
• stayed at a hostel for 28 €/night/person

Next time

• I’d try to do a bit more planning, like what to see and do and how to get there.
• I would try to get in contact with CouchSurfers earlier, because it’s just the best way to explore a city. Inhabitants can show you around and advice you what to do and see.
• Moreover, I’d stay longer in each city and overall, maybe a month overall.
• It was great to wash our clothes at Jacquelines place, otherwise I would have ran out of shirts and shorts.
• Finding a super market is the cheapest way to live.

Just before Stockholm

Mario, me, Dominik in Stockholm

On the way to the old town, travellers and interns.

On the ferry between Sweden and Denmark.

Brandenburger Tor

Breakfast in Berlin at Dunkin' Donuts

View from the Berlin Cathedral, TV Tower, Alexanderplatz

Lots of tourists in Amsterdam.

Beach in Haarlem.

In Amsterdam there's water everywhere.

Seine

Huge buildings in Paris.

Impressive.