Here is the official announcement:

MADALGO Summer School on GEOMETRIC DATA STRUCTURES

August 16-19, 2010, Aarhus, Denmark

www.madalgo.au.dk/datastructures2010

OVERVIEW AND GOAL

Geometric data structures are methods of efficiently storing and querying data in two or more dimensions. Working with geometric data often requires the use of specialized and fundamentally geometric techniques. The goal of the summer school is to provide an in-depth introduction to some of the key techniques in geometric data structures, while highlighting a number of open problems.

LECTURES

The school will be taught by experts in the area of geometric data structures:

• Timothy Chan (University of Waterloo)
• Sariel Har-Paled (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• John Iacono (Polytechnic Institute of New York University)
• Mihai Patrascu (AT&T)

PARTICIPATION

The summer school will take place on August 16-19, 2010 at Center for Massive Data Algorithmics (MADALGO) in the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark.

The school is targeted at graduate students, as well as researchers interested in an in-depth introduction to geometric data structures.

The capacity of the summer school is limited. Prospective participants should register using the online registration form available at www.madalgo.au.dk/datastructures2010 as soon as possible. Registering graduate students must also have their supervisor send a letter confirming their graduate student status directly to madalgo@madalgo.au.dk; the subject line of the email should be ‘student_last_name/SS_2010/confirming’. Registration is on a first-come-first-serve basis and will close on July 1, 2010.

Registration is free; handouts, coffee breaks, lunches and a dinner will be provided by MADALGO and the Aarhus University.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

• Lars Arge (MADALGO)
• Gerth S. Brodal (MADALGO)
• John Iacono (Polytechnic Institute of New York University)
• Else Magård (MADALGO)
• Sara Ølholm (Aarhus University)

ABOUT MADALGO

Center for MAssive Data ALGOrithmics is a major basic research center funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. The center is located at the Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark, but also includes researchers at CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, and at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and at Frankfurt University in Germany. The center covers all areas of the design, analysis and implementation of algorithms and data structures for processing massive data (interpreted broadly to cover computations where data is large compared to the computational resources), but with a main focus on I/O-efficient, cache-oblivious and data stream algorithms.

An interdisciplinary Post Doc position is available at Aarhus
University, Denmark, starting August 2010 or later. The responsibilities
of the Post Doc will include work on geospatial problems on the boundary
between computer science and biology, more specifically between
algorithms and ecology/biodiversity. Modest teaching responsibilities
may also be required. The Post Doc will be affiliated with the Danish
National Research Foundation Center MADALGO (Center for Massive Data
Algorithmics – www.madalgo.au.dk) under the supervision of computer
science Professor Lars Arge (person.au.dk/en/large@cs), but will also
work extensively with researchers in the Ecoinfomatics & Biodiversity
group at the Department of Biological Sciences under the supervision of
Professor Jens-Christian Svenning (person.au.dk/en/svenning@biology).

The Post Doc should focus on problems in relation to computationally
efficient use of modern detailed (and thus massive) topographic data in
various global-change-relevant modeling applications. These problems
include the computation of fine-resolution topography-derived variables
on a global scale, as well as local- and global-scale flooding scenario
modeling and impact assessment.

Applications are welcomed from computer science researchers with clearly
demonstrated skills in the design, analysis and implementation of
algorithms (preferably also with I/O-efficient algorithms), as well as
from geoinformatics or biology researchers with clearly demonstrated
skills in ecoinformatics, GIS, and programming. Researchers with
interdisciplinary research experience will be preferred. Applicants
should apply by uploading a letter of interest and a CV, as well as
indicate at least two names of references for recommendations, using the
application form available at www.madalgo.au.dk. To be assured of full
consideration, applications must arrive by May 17, 2010. Applications
will be considered until the position is filled.

For further information contact Professor Lars Arge at
large@madalgo.au.dk or Professor Jens-Christian Svenning at
svenning@biology.au.dk.

The nice new Motorola DROID phone does not have a tethering ability by standard (all-though a Verizon representative told that Verizon will be coming out with something at some point) but it is still possible to tether it using the Proxoid application. Unlike other approaches, you do not have to root your phone.

A detailed installation guide is available here. To use this guide with the Motorola DROID phone you should put the following line in /etc/udev/rules.d/11-android.rules:

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="22b8", SYSFS{idProduct}=="41db", MODE="0666", OWNER="USERNAME"

If you’re on Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 you should restart udev using the following command:

sudo service udev restart

When trying to connect to the android phone you mave have to run

sudo ./adb kill-server

sudo ./adb start-server

Before you can see the device (this happens if the server was already started when you changed the udev rules). This works on Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

Be aware that tethering may not be allowed by your service provider, you should read your contract to find out.

We have about 15 people participating right now, only those who have submitted something shows up on the scoreboard.

The contest ends at 19:00 european central time.

Bardia presented our paper, I/O-Efficient Algorithms for Computing Contours on a Terrain, as the very first day of the talk. The audience raised a couple of interesting points which I’m sure we’ll think more about after the conference.

The closes thing to a conference excursion was two busses that took us to Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, DC for dinner yesterday. I went to a Korean restaurant with a couple of people and had good Korean-style steak thingy, and I liked walking in the Dupont Circle area, which hadn’t explored on foot before.

Tonight is the conference banquet, that should be fun.

It would also be cool to attach pictures to the different places as well, similar to Mihai’s picture page.

[Update]: Forgot trip to Waterloo in December, haven’t bought the tickets yet but it will probably raise the grand total to 50 flights in 18 months.

[Update 2]: Yay, Air Canada has direct flights from RDU to Toronto (YYZ).