Google indexes magazines and newspapers on Book Search

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/search-and-find-magazines-on-google.html

Optimal 3D Triangulation Code

The source code (in C) for a recently published optimal 3D triangulation / reconstruction algorithm can be found at:

http://www.iim.ics.tut.ac.jp/~sugaya/public-e.html

The method supposedly does not have the singularities of the widely-used Hartley-Sturm algorithm, and was developed by K. Kanatani, Y. Sugaya, and H. Niitsuma.

Tangorian Giraffes

VxL code browsing in ViM

When working with a huge codebase, its nice to be able to browse
through the code lying in different directories.
Most other sites about ctags only deal with files in the same
directory, though.
I use vxl.sf.net, which consists of a huge source tree of C++
libraries, headers, and templates.
Here is my solution:

I installed exuberant-ctags (make sure this is the one in your system),

then I issued the following command:

ctags -R vxl lemsvxlsrc

from the directory containing the vxl source tree 'vxl' and the
internal Brown 'lemsvxlsrc' tree.
This generates a tags file. Now, tell VIM to always use that by
setting a tags search path:

" Set the tag file search order
set tags=./tags,tags,~/tags,/home/rfabbri/cprg/vxlprg/tags

You can add the above line to your ~/.vimrc or, even better, to a file
in ~/.vim/ftplugins/cpp_xxx.vim, where xxx is a custom extension you
choose.

Windows partition deleted.

Never used it, never needed it, never respected it. Now let me pump up my Linux environment with the Windows carcass left in my harddrive :-)

Pós-doc e Pós-grad na USP

Altamente recomendado!
Sem duvida o melhor grupo cientifico em que ja estive :)

==========================
OPORTUNIDADES PARA PÓS-GRADUÇÃO E PÓS-DOUTORADO
GRUPO DE COMPUTAÇÃO INTERDISCIPLINAR, IFSC-USP
Outubro de 2008 a Maio de 2009

Comunicamos diversas possibilidades para pesquisa, a nível de
pós-graduação e pós-doutorado, no Grupo de Computação Interdisciplinar (GCI)
do IFSC-USP. As principais áreas de pesquisa incluem mas não se limitam a:
1. VISÃO E IMAGENS
2. INTELIGÊNCIA ARTIFICIAL
3. REDES COMPLEXAS
3. BIOINFORMÁTICA E BIOLOGIA DE SISTEMAS
4. COMPUTAÇÃO DE ALTO DESEMPENHO
5. SISTEMAS DISTRIBUÍDOS E GRIDS
6. REDES DE COMPUTADORES
Os candidatos poderão ter formação anterior em computação, informática,
física, matemática, engenharia, estatística, química ou bioinformática.
Os trabalhos de pesquisa serão desenvolvidos nas respectivas áreas de formação
dos candidatos. As possibilidades de pós-graduação incluem o IFSC (nível 7
CAPES) e Bioinformática da USP (nível 5 CAPES).

PARA INFORMAÇÕES ADICIONAIS, visite a página
http://cyvision.if.sc.usp.br/~francisco/comp_inter/index.html

John Maeda talk at Brown

The new RISD president, and former MIT Media-Labber John Maeda spoke
today at Brown.

It was an interesting experience, more of a light sequence of simple
facts that did the job of kepping people entertained; I feel nobody
was profoundly illuminated.
But maybe that's exactly the message - life simple facts and tidbits
can be more important than they seem. But at the same time it does
bring a sense of unfulfilment and apathy towards getting
anything explained, nailed down, or thoroughly illuminated. I had a
simple mild positive reaction to it. Simplicity and mediocrity
inevitably must have something in common. Its much like short Tao
wisdom.

One of his little ideas that really shook me was the fact that
technology is kind of saturating in the 21st century, and that what we
really need is more human reality, sensibility, and creativity into
our lives.
That's pretty much true. As a computer vision scientist, I think we
already threw hardware at problems a lot, and although it does bring
insights and immediate results, what we really feel the need for is
some human spark, human care, and human design to actually get
algorithms to be smarter, faster, and solve the innumerous problems
that fundamentally weren't solved before. Yes, like the vision
problem.

A Modern Shiny Execution of 3D Computer Vision

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.

Pics of my dog, Eve.

She's a Beagle mix, but a very beautiful one probably a Beagador.

Congrats to my Angie

Angie just told me she scored straight A's this semester. A great feat!

Augmented Virtual Reality in your Phone

Another awesome application of computer vision being materialized - point your cellphone's camera into the environment, and have it augment the video stream by tagging the buildings, restaurants, and attactions for you:
Enkin on Vimeo.

[linux] CVS server issue + solution

I was trying to use my computer to serve a CVS repository. Should be
simple as connecting through SSH,
but I was getting the error "unknown command server" whenever I typed
"cvs up -d"

The solution in Gentoo Linux was to re-emerge CVS with the server flag
enabled, which can be done by adding the line "dev-util/cvs server" to
/etc/portage/package.use

The Rise of Computer Vision

Computer vision, automatic image analysis applications, panoramic and
3D reconstructions, face recognition...
all this has attracted more and more attention in the press. Its is
always good to remind readers that this area remains largely unsolved,
and that it is very easy to claim something can be done and to talk
about it, but actually get it working is really really hard.

Some recent major news articles (on basic stuff without details)

A Google Prototype for a Precision Image Search
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/technology/28google.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Next-Generation CAPTCHA Exploits the Semantic Gap
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/23/0044223&from=rss

Lyrics of the day

Operation Ivy - Healthy Body Sick Mind

Expensive vitamin pills and wheat germ on your windowsill
Your schedule's hectic and you've got no time to kill
Earning money and you're spending it the right way
Just in such a rush you don't know if it's night or day
5:30 get up, run, run, run
Then you work eight hours slaving under the gun
Your little world's based on lies lies lies
Always rushing but you're never ever satisfied
Healthy body, Sick mind (working overtime)
Healthy body, Sick mind (Too hectic too hectic)
Healthy body, Sick mind (why don't you just survive)
Its just a matter of time sick body sick mind
The money you spend on running shoes could feed me for a week
Your plans are laid so well you can't even sleep
Pursuit of happiness got your life locked up under martial law
You got everything to lose so you're paranoid about some fatal flaw
5:30 get up and you run, run, run
Then you work eight hours slaving underneath the gun
Your little world's based on lies lies lies lies lies lies lies
Always rushing but you're never ever satisfied
Healthy body, Sick mind (working overtime)
Healthy body, Sick mind (Too hectic too hectic)
Healthy body, Sick mind (why don't you just survive)
Its just a matter of time Sick body Sick mind

True Happiness

This is a really inspiring video. It is pretty much the way I like to intuitively think about deep things in life, but hearing such a reasonable person speaking about it really made an impact on me. You should really watch the whole thing!

Just a funny pic

This is my niece Sara

Panoramic video used in google maps

The demo videos in this website is really cool - drag the mouse and you can look
around while the video is playing:

http://demos.immersivemedia.com

The images are acquired using an 11 lens camera. I'll put some more
cool info here if I get some more time, but it is all in that website.

Face reconstruction

I decided to make a series of posts about computer vision demos and software related to my research in 3D reconstruction and camera calibration. The following is a video I had seen about a year ago and and I thought it was a hoax: It turns out that it is really a true working system. In fact this group from Germany have published in major conferences and journals in my area. They use techniques that I work with in my PhD. Yes -- they have to be restricted to a face model, thats how they get away with making this work. But they also recover everything from a single image. Another one of their video: And there even seems to be an end-product based on this idea: www.gizmoz.com. Brown is teaching a course where they will try to implement this face reconstruction system as a class project: www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs296-4

Structure from Motion

Angela found this interesting video showing how you don't need two eyes to have a very good impression of 3D: Original article: www.geekologie.com/2008/01/johnny_lee_is_my_hero_headtrac.php

Brazilian Cheese Bread Recipe

Here is my mom's cheese bread recipe:

Ingredients 2 Cups of milk 3/4 cup of corn oil (or any light tasting oil) 1 table spoon of salt 1-3 cups of cheese, either parmesan or romano (you can try other hard cheeses) 2 big eggs or 3 small ones 1 package of "povilho doce" flour, Yoki brand (or any other brand)

Instructions Mix milk, oil, and salt into a pan and bring to a boil, mixing the bottom once in a while. Be careful as the milk will suddenly boil and you don't want it to spill. Now empty the flour into a deep bowl. Pour the milk mixture over the flour, while mixing well avoiding the formation of clumps. Leave the dough sitting until it cools down (about 15 min, but they say the longer, the better). Now alternate between adding the eggs and the cheese, while working the dough with your hands in order to mix everything together as well as possible. The longer you squeeze the dough, the better. You can now wash your hands, then butter-up a cookie sheet or similar container, then add a little bit of oil to your hands, spreading it out. Make little balls of the desired size, adding oil to your hands whenever the dough starts getting sticky. Pre-heat the oven to 356F, and bake your Brazilian cheese bread.

The cheese bread takes around 15min to bake, sometimes longer. After those 15min, if the cheese bread is not light-gold, then continue baking and monitor the oven every 5min to see if it has reached the desired coloration. Usually you don't want it to get too brown, but tastes vary.

Computer vision and partial solutions

In computer vision, no problem has been completely solved. People tend to move to more complex problems in an anxiety to do something new, but the fact is that this fatally builds upon a very wobbly foundation of partial solutions. My fear is that there is a high risk that nothing really gets done in this process. Here is an excerpt from a researcher in my field:

Monkey Collects Corn Cobs.
Before an old and more basic problem is completely solved, one would accept a partial, suboptimal solution and use it in a solution to a new or supposedly more challenging problem. When a partial solution or result is found, one moves on again. Such a constant shift of focus is very counterproductive. When others try to revisit some of the problems, one would claim that the problems have already been addressed and there would be no need for any improvement. It is impossible to measure progress or compare different solutions if they are all to some extent partial. From a pedagogical perspective, from partial results like that, it is impossible to develop a systematic body of knowledge that can be effectively transferred to future students and researchers. -- Yi. Ma, in Warning Signs of Bugus Progress in Research in an Age of Rich Computation and Information, 2007.

That is something to think about. Nowadays, researchers have the big challenge of dealing with vast informational and computational resources. All this power also leads to lack of focus and fundamental research when used without discipline.