I wish everyone a great 2008!

Version 0.6 of the OAR Information Retrieval library has been uploaded. This new version offers only a small amount of changes including a new WeightingScheme which includes some implementations of TFIDF and OKAPI BM25. Download it here.

Conference Date: October 12th -15th, 2008
Location: Singapore
Site: http://www.smc2008.org/
Important Dates
Deadline: March 16th, 2008
Decision: May 15th, 2008
Camera Ready: June 30th, 2008

Conference Date: March 30th - April 3rd, 2008
Location: Glasgow, UK
Site: http://ecir2008.dcs.gla.ac.uk/i
Important Dates
Deadline: February 4th, 2008
Decision: February 20th, 2008
Camera Ready: March 3rd, 2008

Conference Date: June 24th - 27th, 2008
Location: London, UK
Site: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/page-14784
Important Dates
Deadline: January 31st, 2008
Decision: March 31st, 2008
Camera Ready: April 15th, 2008

Here is a video showing some of the Awa Odori festival in Tokushima. It is their biggest festival each year and brings in people from all over Japan.

This was the top children’s song at the time I left Japan.

Sometimes I like to look back at some of the strange things I was able to see while living in Japan. This is one type of thing that typifies that experience.

Conference Date: June 15th - 20th, 2008
Location: Ohio, USA
Site: http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/acl08/cfp.html
Important Dates
Deadline: January 10th, 2008
Decision: February 28th, 2008
Camera Ready: April 21st, 2008

Yesterday we had about 9″ of snow fall resulting in Schenectady issuing a snow emergency. It was my first and probably not my last!