Caliornia Odyssey Day 5 & IJCAI Day 3

Interesting sessions on Description Logics, which I didn’t have enough background to really get a lot out of but I am hearing a lot about these logics at the moment and think that it might be useful to learn about. I bought the second edition of the Description Logic handbook with my conference discount form the Cambridge publishing table. The rest of the sessions today were a little ho-hum for me. One of the problems with IJCAI is that it brings into sharp relief just how limited an individuals understanding of A.I. is as a discipline, especially at the cutting edge which is what a conference is about.

I managed to get away for a couple of hours in the afternoon and visited the Huntington Library and Gardens because I needed a change of scenery. This is nearly two weeks of pretty much solid work in a different environment to usual so a little bit of a break was on the cards. I didn’t investigate the library or art collection because my aim was to see the gardens which were on Monty Don’s recent BBC series “Around the World in 80 Gardens”. As the Huntington was only about 5 minutes drive from my hotel I got the hotel shuttle service to drop me off there. The first thing that I did was to investigate the desert garden before seeing the jungle garden then having tea and scones in the “English” tea room. After that I had time to make a quick visit to the Japanese and Chinese gardens before rounding off my visit with a trip to the hot house to see the Orchids.