Busy Times

Not much action on the book recently. My excuses are:

• had to mark exams and process results (for 4 courses) for the semester end
• been reviewing conference papers and 2 chapters of a new AI text book
• been reading a PhD thesis for an oral exam tomorrow, and
• finally generally clearing my desk for a 2 week trip to Atlanta and Italy

See, that doesn't sound so bad when I write it all down. The conference in Atlanta is AAAI-2010, this is the main AI conference this year. At the conference we'll learn the results of my PhD student's poker bot that is competing in the 2010 international computer poker competition. The conference in Italy is much smaller and just about case-based reasoning, my main research speciality (ICCBR 2010).
This trip I'm going to be totally reliant on my iPhone as I'm not taking a laptop. I'll have access to many of my files via Apple's MobileMe and will be able of course to get my email and follow Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and LinkedIn all from the phone. Fortunately the conferences will have free WiFi access and hopefully my hotels will as well so I wont be needing to use any/much 3G data - the roaming charges are very expensive.
I'm planning to use Ping! to txt message with my wife and Skype to talk via WiFi.
I can also post to this blog via email and send photos from my iPhone so there will be some activity whilst I'm away.