This year the 3rd conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining was held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Kaohsiung is the 2nd largest city in Taiwan with around 2.9 million inhabitants. During my short stay there I couldn't help but notice that Taiwan (or at least Kaohsiung) is a blend of Japanese efficiency and cleanliness, with Chinese culture and influences.

The organisation of the conference was impeccable. Everything functioned perfectly, the internet always worked, the guests were well looked after and the presentations all went smoothly. Lunch boxes were provided everyday and the two dinners provided, particularly the banquet served on the 41 floor of Kaohsiung's highest building, the Tuntex Sky Tower (an 85 story skyscraper), was exquisite. The real motor behind the organisation were the student helpers directed by I-Hsien Ting. The students were omnipresent, ever smiling and always ready to help. A truly good job.

These are some noteworthy papers that I came across during the conference (mainly through the sessions I sat through). This is not an exhaustive list by any means. For more information and a summary of each paper consult the conference program on the ASONAM 2011 website.

Matteo Magnani and Luca Rossi. The ML-model for multi-layer social networks. - In one of the best papers in the conference, the authors propose a model to combine the various heterogeneous online personas in a unified network perspective. I believe that the topic of multi layer networks will receive a lot of attention in the near future, making this paper particularly relevant at this point in time.

Chien-Tung Ho, et al. Modeling and Visualizing Information Propagation in a Micro-blogging Platform. - This is another best paper award winner exploring information propagation in micro-blogging systems (using Plurk). The three research questions explored are:- (1) How to quantify a person’s capability to disseminate ideas via a micro-blog. (2) How to measure the extent of propagation of a concept in a micro-blog. (3) How to demonstrate and visualize information propagation in a microblog.

Iraklis Varlamis and George Tsatsaronis. Visualizing Bibliographic Databases as Graphs and Mining Potential Research Synergies - In this paper the authors use power graphs, a graph lossless compression technique developed for biological networks, to visualise bibliographic networks. I see a lot of potential for power graph visualisation in social networks. This paper is a good idea generator in the visualisation field.

Tomoyuki Yuasa and Susumu Shirayama. - A New Analysis Method for Simulations Using Node Categorizations - This is another interesting paper using visualisation that explores Self Organising Maps to cluster and then visualise similar actors in a network.

Juan Lang and Felix Wu. Social Network User Lifetime. - The key question explored in this research is 'what keeps users engaged and active in social networking sites'.

Michael Farrugia, Neil Hurley and Aaron Quigley. SNAP: Towards a validation of the Social Network Assembly Pipeline. - Some shameless self-promotion here. The main theme of this work is how can we collect a ground truth dataset to validate our social network inference method from electronic data.

Marina Danilevsky et al. SCENE: Structural Conversation Evolution NEtwork - Can you identify someone based on the change in his communication pattern while chatting to someone else? A very interesting question studied using IM data, with initial promising results.

Fergal Reid, Aaron McDaid, Neil Hurley. Partitioning Breaks Communities. - Is a non-overlapping or an overlapping community detection approach for clustering a graph? In this paper the authors use the measure of 'breaking cliques' to evaluate different community detection algorithms on various datasets.

Charles Perez et al SPOT 1.0: Scoring Suspicious Profiles On Twitter - Beyond the great title this paper analyses tweet content to identify suspicious profiles. Interesting analysis.

The conference had also 6 interesting keynote speakers. Two of the keynotes by Arno Reuser and Johnny Engell-Hansen were related to open source intelligence and how social networks can help intelligence services. Philippa Pattison presented research on statistical models (ERGMs). Yutaka Matsuo discussed web mining to develop personal search engines. The prolific author Jiawei Han gave a summary of work from his research group in Illinois on data mining algorithms. The last keynote was by Ming-Syan Chen on information processing in social networks.

Some pictures of the conference are already uploaded on the conference Facebook page

Next year the conference is in Istanbul, Turkey

January: Started the year skiing then Lisbon, NY and got the blackberry!
February: Winter Olympics & Started Dancing Classes
March: Journal paper accepted with revisions. Saw swallow the sun. Played in Czechoslovak badminton tournament. Travelled to Slovakia by car.
April: Easter wedding planning. Avoided the ash cloud.
May: Went to China. Luxembourg backgammon open :) Saw Bolt Thrower with Olli
June: World Cup & Wedding Planning
July: Got Married!!!
August: Pretty relaxed month. Went to Malta for b'day week.
September: Honeymoon & Nice Conference
October: Won 1st live backgammon tournament. Panama.
November: Book chapter, dark days and work
December: It's December. Typically eventful Christmas lunch and Christmas at home after 3 days stuck at airports

Project of the Year: Wedding (and honeymoon)
Best Holiday: Honeymoon in French Polynesia & California
Best Concert: Bolt Thrower in Luxembourg
Best Book: Stieg Larsson's Trilogy & Under the Dome (Stephen King)
Best Film: Avatar & Inception (Tie)
Best Album / Music Video: Shit music year by maybe Finntroll or Dimmu
Purchases: Blackberry / Kindle (Present) / Canon 550D
New Places Visited: Lisbon, Panama, China, French Polynesia, Nice
2010 Game: Some new boardgames (Citadels, Settlers, Dominion, Tichu) - BSW
New thing tried in 2010: Dancing
Favourite Pub: Twelfth Lock (again)
Band discovery of the year: Bolt Thrower

The blog called for attention a few weeks ago when Seth reminded me that I had to pay the yearly maintenance fee. To feel that I’m not wasting money (I really am but I don’t feel like killing it yet) I decided to write an update post while stuck in a long traffic jam on the 1200km journey back home from Slovakia.

Well, the most important thing that's going on at the moment is the wedding planning. Back in the time when I used to scout for new and interesting blogs, the first mention of the word wedding (or kids) used to be enough to skip the blog. Blogs of this kind usually meant either a post for each invite sent and each flower chosen, or detailed accounts of each nappy change for the kid. In turn I promised myself to keep my wedding prelude as quite as possible. I'm allowing myself one tiny outlet for the record, just to prove that I this thing actually happened.

In a simple sentence I can sum up my wedding planning experience like this:- it's not half as complicated or troublesome as most people make it out to be. Perhaps I'm saying this because I'm lucky enough to be with a sane and most practical woman, or perhaps it’s also because I'm not having the wedding in a wedding crazy country where the wedding has to be planned more than 2 years in advance. Another thing that definitely helps is treating the whole thing as a project for two, biting into it a bit by bit, together. Cooperation from parents on both sides, with the right level of interest and without being too intrusive doesn’t hurt either.

In effect, planning a wedding is like throwing a big party. All you have to do is find a place, get some food and drink (sampling both before and playing God with dish decisions - perhaps one of the most satisfying parts of the planning), get some cool clothes (= shopping for the ladies), get some music and outsource your pictures while throwing in a couple of decorations and an exclusive afterparty - a cracking honeymoon. I’m happy to say that I helped in almost everything from the wedding hall to choosing the bride dress (and yes I saw the dress cause we’re practical). We planned and organized this in 3 intensive weeks over a period of six months, with remote administration in between. With one month to go I think we've covered most of the ground that we needed. I still need to get a pair of shoes, decide on the suit and send off the last couple of invites (to those lazy buggers who haven't sent their home addresses yet) but everything is under control.

It's not all wedding bouquets and wedding cakes though. Last week I was in Beijing for a business trip. Luckily I had some free time to see a couple of main sights and buy half of the tea in china. The most impressive was the forbidden city. To think that the emperor build this magnificent playground (with 9999 rooms and 100,000 eunuchs) for his wives is mind blowing in itself. Even more mind blowing is the mind behind the great wall, another must see which I managed to slot in between meetings. I was surprised at the cleanliness of the place, or rather the lack of dirtiness, although smog was a real killer on some days. The traffic is crazy both in the amount of cars and the rackless driving (people in Beijing seem to drive with their hands fixed on the horn). Anyone who cycles in Beijing must be a stuntman. One surprising thing were the body temperature machines, that scan your body temperature as you pass by (I think this was introduced after SARS).

Surely someone is going to want to know about food. Yes, the food is different from "European" Chinese food, although it’s mainly because of the ingredients more than the style. The style and idea is similar but the diversity of ingredients is considerable. From my limited experience the Beijing cuisine was quite dry i.e. not soaked in soup like sauces like some takeaways. Also, I never found typical Chinese takeout dishes like sweet and sour pork or lemon chicken. Peking Duck (a must in Peking) is served identically to restaurants here and the taste is also very close. My culinary regret was that I didn’t try the sea cucumber (expensive). I found a few turtle dishes but due to moral reasons I didn’t order any. I had no problem having shark fin and shark lip soup, and intestines with chilli, but I didn’t find any dogs that I could eat (no moral objection as long as it’s not a pug). The Chinese beer that we tasted was quite watery, but the green tea is wayyyyyy better than the tea-bagged green tea you can get here. The difference is huge.

January: Usual quiet January period spiced up by getting a wii for myself. We played a classic prank on Germany with the bean smoothie.
February: Brother came to Dublin amist a lot of snow. Attended the Loyalty 09 conference in Vienna and went for the first of 3 business trips to Denver.
March: Pushing on with the Masters' thesis work - finalising entity resolution.
April: Went to Sardinia for Easter for the memorable Sardinia '09 summit.
May: Enjoyed some time in Luxembourg in the beginning of the month. M came over to Dublin for her birthday.
June: Working hard on cutover. Decided to switch Masters into a Phd. Went to Tuska.
July: System cut over. Slovakia long weekend break Dobsinka ice cave + wedding date set, U2 concert date.
August: Denver Business - Paris Oyster pleasure - Malta family 30th wedding anniversary, and the month is over.
September: Vancouver SocialCom conference and short holiday.
October: Moved to Luxembourg, Denver business, backgammon Irish open, started 2 NHL fantasy leagues and Slovakia make the world cup.
November: Prague weekend break, working on AVI Paper, started ice skating classes.
December: AVI Paper and Christmas period.

Project of the Year: F9 cut over
Forsaken Project: Blog (you can still see the 2008 list on the main page)
Best Holiday: Vancouver
Best Concert: Amon Amarth & Entombed in Dublin
Best Book: The pillars of the earth - Ken Follett
Best Film: The hangover
Best Album: Candlemass - Death, Magic, Doom
Best Music Video: Behemoth - Ov Fire and Void
Purchases: Wii, Diablik (Netbook), Bose Headphones, Switched from meteor to vodafone
New Places Visited: Denver, Paris, Vancouver, Prague, Barcelona
New Fad: NHL Fantasy league
2009 Game: Backgammon
New thing tried in 2009: Playing in a backgammon tournament, (proper) ice skating
Favourite Pub: Talbot Downs
Band discovery of the year: Spiritus mortis / Gojira

The winter TV season has just started. The TV Remote has a good reference schedule complete with Google calendars not to miss any episodes. This year I'm watching:-

1. Family Guy
2. How I met your mother
3. Big bang theory
4. It's always Sunny in Philadelphia
5. The Office
6. Desperate Housewives (compromise with the Miss)
7. Cleveland Show (still trying it out)

While mentioning Google Calendars: Google have added a great feature for sport enthusiasts called Sport Calendars. You can pick your favourite team from the major sports and major competitions and import the whole season calendar. The nifty thing is that after the game the scores get updated in your calendar automatically. Cool!

I've kept my promise and haven't updated the blog before the end of September. In the event of the life changing event of the year, I've decided to blog from the bus on the way to Luxembourg which will become my new home for the next couple of years. This is also a test and proof of the new ultra mobile, paperless, high tech lifestyle that I'm planning to adopt throughout permanence in Luxembourg.

Since the last real personal update there have been some major developments. In order of importance:-

• I'm getting married next on the 10th of July next year in Slovakia.
• I'm to luxembourg permanently
• I've come to an agreement with my current employer to continue working for the same company from home with monthly visits to Dublin.
• I've switched my masters into a Phd which means I will continue researching for at least the next two years.

I've had some serious considerations of mercy killing the blog but I haven't had the courage to do it yet. I think I'd rather let it die a slow painful death in the off chance I get an urge to broadcast my madness to the world. I was hoping to write a bit more on the academic aspect of my research but until now I haven't had enough motivation to do so. The paper writing schedule is quite relentless and it seems that writing papers dries up all my writing mana.

On my interests side, things haven't changed much and I'm glad that I kept a very consistent backgammon playing routine. The average playing time per day is quite scary but it's enjoyable especially since JD became more obsessed with the game than I am. Last Sunday we went to our first South Dublin Backgammon Tournament and got badly thrashed. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the friendly atmosphere and the welcoming members of the Dublin club. I'm planning to schedule my visits to Dublin to coincide with the club meetings apart and metal concerts. Now that I've separated form my two live backgammon partners I'll probably spend more time on FIBS (email me for username to play on FIBS) along with trying to convince the misses to take the game seriously.

My latest fad is fantasy NHL leagues. I got the NHL yearbook on my trip to Vancouver and got sucked into ice hockey once again. I've drafted two teams in the yahoo fantasy leagues and am looking forward for the season to start. This year is the Olympic games year, so following the NHL should give a good indication of things to expect at the Olympics. Slovakia's chances of getting anywhere are pretty grim at the moment though. I also got a NHL2K9 on the Wii, which I almost mastered before having to abandon the console for the lack of space in my suitcase.

I gave up hope that I'll be updating the blog before the end of summer and/or before I move to Luxembourg. I'm posting interesting links every once in a while on twitter, so if you want you can follow me there.