End of week 2

I've now set up my machine and got it ready for work. Didn't have too many problems, though I did need an HDMI to DVI converter for my second monitor, and also had to change the boot order to stop it trying to boot from the network.

I've attended a bunch of lectures this week from the Energy Sustainability course. I've decided to carry on with the modules 'Power Systems Analysis' and 'Sustainable Energy Systems, Resources and Usage' for now, but drop 'Conventional Generation Technology' as it's not too relevant to my topic. It appears that the remaining module, 'Introduction to Energy Technologies', was a one off lecture and will not be continued throughout the semester.

I've conducted a more thorough literature review on the existing solutions to the Appliance Load Monitoring problem. Starting from the PhD thesis' references and working backwards, I've collected as many relevant papers as I could find. The topic was introduced by Hart, in the 1980s, and is reviewed thoroughly in his 1992 paper 'Nonintrusive Appliance Load Monitoring'. Since then, many algorithmic approaches have been suggested for automatic appliance disaggregation, largely consisting of both pattern recognition and signature clustering.

I've experimented with some reference manager tools with limited success, but am gradually building up a bibtex file of any resources I've found.

I had a meeting with Mark in which we mostly discussed the topic and methods of literature search. He advised I start to take a more formalised approach, as opposed to the random path through the literature I'd been following so far. He's also lent me a book 'Persuasive Technology' by B. J. Fogg, which will be very useful when considering the HCI aspect of my topic.

I've also decided to work through the notes for Alex's Intelligent Agents module, since I didn't take this in my 4th year.

I'm still reading 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot air', and am now just over halfway through.