Brasil
Man, I'd forgotten how interesting modeling could actually be. Since the critical path for the dissertation is currently the models, I've shifted from writing to modeling full bore.
The current model is able to attend to the objects in the environment, learn and rehearse their locations, rotate, verify that a target is where it should be (based on the rotation), mentally transform if necessary, and point to the targets egocentrically. JRDs are up next, but I need a break.
The real nice thing about this modeling phase is that I'm beating the crap out of jACT-R and the IDE. Hulk smash bugs! I have to say the intelligent editor really makes things move quicker. Knowing where the typos and errors are before even trying to run helps a bunch. The context help is behaving a little flaky right now - but the templates kick ass. One thing that is abundantly clear though, is that I have a significant memory leak with respect to compilation. It runs around 50M/hr. Ouch. I suspect I may be a little too aggressive in my caching somewhere.
A few interesting tidbits: multiprocessing helps a lot. Running single core I got the following average runtimes: 1:40m, 9m, 18m for no logging, debug logging (at the source level) and IDE logging (ACT-R log messages). Add the second core and those times go down to : 30s, 2:30m, 2:45m. Fortunately, the iterative run doesn't attach any listeners (unless you do) - so you can get full speed w/o any problem.
I've now got a good idea of what kind of performance hit running with embodiment provides: This model (with nearly continuous production firings with the opportunistic rehearsals) is clocking in at 40x realtime. Total bummer. I was hoping to stay in the 100s. But, then again, the visual system has some horrible redundancies that resulted from shoe-horning in the new CR implementation. When I remove that, things should improve significantly.
One thing I have noticed is that I don't have the staying power that I used to. I cannot seem to work beyond 11 hours before my brain just fizzles out. This might put a damper on the dissertation progress.. might need to push back the defense. Ugh.
thanx for the request...and dirty dancing is my fav movies also...