As a small project for my Inventive Thinking class, I worked on a simulation of creatures avoiding each other or performing tasks like crossing a street or forming a swarm. The creatures navigate by choosing simple actions (like turning right or left) based on the "Looming" principle of obstacle avoidance studied by my thesis advisor, among others. The simulation runs in your web browser (Firefox or recent IE have been tested, but probably others as well). You can view it (fun to watch) and play with the parameters to your heart's content at this link: Looming Simulation

Not long ago I began writing my Master's thesis, and fortunately took a moment to consider what might be formatting 'best practice' before I got too deep into what will probably be the longest text I've ever written. Of course, most students these days write reports, theses, dissertations, and everything else in Microsoft Word, or (if the student is poor or motivated by hatred toward Microsoft) one of the free clones of the same. But I decided instead to try something I've long been meaning to try: the TeX typesetting system, or to be more precise, the LaTeX language built on top of TeX. I learned some important lessons from this.

To use (tongue only somewhat in cheek) my new favorite metaphor, Microsoft Word is like the Persian Empire: decadent, soft, corrupt, encouraging of mysticism and lazy thinking. Whereas LaTeX is like Sparta: cold, clean, hard, disciplined, rational. And outnumbered 2000 to 1.

Our desalination project was profiled in FAU's engineering recruitment newsletter, The Pinnacle. Many thanks to them for the recognition.

Also, two conference papers were submitted and accepted, one in Portugal and one by the Conference on Desalination and the Environment in Greece. Should be fun.

As for my desalination thesis, it crawls inexorably toward completion. Call it done by this summer.

Another newspaper generously and quite unexpectedly weighed in on our desalination project. The City Link, one of South Florida's A&E weeklies, gave us this Resounding Endorsement:

Say it with me, readers: there ain't no such thing as bad publicity.

Two new items made it into my geek resume lately:

My own page on freshpatents.com, due to a recently published patent application on the desalination device I've been working on for nearly two years.

Fellow student Brandon Moore and I have been announced as finalists in this year's Collegiate Inventor's Competition, one of the fine programs offered by the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, for the same invention. Many thanks to the NIHF!

Check this space to see how I do—I'll update in a week after the competition.

UPDATE—October 27: Unfortunately, we didn't win the CIC, although simply being one of the eleven was victory enough. Many congratulations and good luck to the winners and other finalists, especially to dedicated inventor and all-around nice guy Dr. Haugland for his grand prize winning nighttime temperature prediction model.

And thanks again to the NIHF and the USPTO for so generously hosting this event, and for treating all of us humble students in a manner we are definitely NOT accustomed to—I've never been met at the airport by my own limo before!

UPDATE—November 20: Thanks are due also to the Palm Beach Post, for running a story about this project in their Monday edition today.

UPDATE—November 23: Last update—I swear I'll start a new post if anything else happens. Another one of our local newspapers, The Boca Raton News, picked up the story: "FAU grad students team up to develop low-cost desalination process".