Mad Tooey's Site

Today I have started an assault on the CVSSP processing servers, they thought they were safe after that last mass of processing done by one of my centre colleagues. I decided to prove them wrong by writing up a few scripts to dump down a load of work on them.

Also played around with some Linux  environmental variables that allows you to switch between platforms and have hostname dependent configurations may come in useful for anyone working with multiple servers.

switch(`hostname`)

      case "workstation**":

            setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH "/MachineType/opencv:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

            breaksw

      case "Sever**Ubuntu":

            setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH "/MachineType/opencv:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

            breaksw

endsw

Note: * is used as wildcard so all servers of that type use the same config

Just a little logon script to change between libraries in my case was in ~/.cshrc

While looking on amazon for some accessories for my Dell Streak one of the links they had was to this

Incase you didnt realise this is apparently: 

7" 4GB Rockchip 2808 Dual Core Android Tablet PC with HD video playback and Wi-Fi

Reference: Amazon Link

I often moan about the University network and the license server to people so I invested in Matlab Student copy for my open network PC in Uni, this made sense at the time since I aim to get away from the reliance on computer support that as always are over worked and students sit quite low on the ladder. When I originally got this i was over the moon I thought it was great £70 for a copy of Matlab for me to work with and I merrily went on my way.

Well as all good stories do things went terribly wrong I didn't think about it at the time but the only available version of Matlab available to students is 32bit now I am starting to move into video processing more my memory requirements are ever increasing wanting to store the hole few hundred frames in memory and do processing on it and why not I work on machines that have 6-8gb memory so its not unreasonable for me to want to really use that. So hense my new predicament.

Well sadly this story doesn't have a happy ending after contacting Matlab Support they may of responded rapidly (same day) but were unable to help the only version available to students is 32bit and thats not likely to change.

So its back to the University computer for me, and my opinion of Mathworks / Matlab has dropped considerably

Its been a while since posting on my blog, so I thought I would catch up a little I am still working on Video Retrieval at the moment my work is based on Object recognition due to the completion of my previous segments that have been trajectory and colour.

These three pieces should join together to make my first chunk of work and my first retrieval system. I am hoping this will be also merged with a nice demo that I am able to put online for others to enjoy, although at the moment that is a little way off.

At the moment as I said I'm working on object recognition an area that my centre is well known for so I am quite glad to have lots of people to query about Bag of Visual words and the process used to be able to classify frames. 

My aim is to get back into posting on here to keep a journal of my work, so I am now aiming to post every week and hopefully provide a fruitful collection of photos snippets of my work that may be interesting helpful or just amusing.

Was just sorting out some files and found something I generated a while back while playing, guess who you think it is then hover over to find out!

I am now a member of IEEE I may be collecting memberships a little but IEEE is one that I have been planning to join for years.

Despite getting IEEE Explore for free on University Network is good to be a member and get member perks more magazines!

Its on its happening and this is a clip from there site:

http://www.siggraph.org

WOOP For Siggraph 2010!

While on holiday I was hit by annoying dilemma, I have the Android Dell Streak, that has the inability to connect to an ad-hoc wifi without rooting the device. So after looking around I found an interesting solution for Windows 7 users.

Hidden away in the code of Windows 7 is some functionality that never got completed, and seems to be taken on by a company called Connectify this allows you to not just create a one to one ad hoc connection but also to change your little wireless card into an access point.

This is very very useful and solves the Android problem since it see's a access point and is happy. I installed the latest version and had alot of problems that I was a little disheartened about. In that version they had developed there own equivalent to Internet Connection Sharing(ICS) to solve the problems with xbox etc. This didn't seem to work but the earlier version worked smooth as a charm.

So if you are looking for a free easy solution to get your Android phone working easily with your laptop connection or just want to boost the speed by a local access point try Connectify is a great tool and just a tip be patient it takes a little time to set up the access point when you click Start Access point.

Note: Please note this software only works with Windows 7 all other versions wont work sorry XP Guys.

View Developer Site: Connectify.me

To Download the latest version goto: CNET Download

Download the Older version ( 1 . 2 ):  http://www.connectify.me/download/1.2/ConnectifyInstaller.exe (Read Source Article)

I am currently on holiday in Taba Egypt, staying at the Intercontinental in Taba Heights. I don't have a particularly luxurious view since it could be over the sea with the moon shining on the ocean. But instead I have what I consider to be quite a reasonable view of the Sinai. See below a shot from my balcony.

Over this weekend I have been going through the process of reformatting and upgrading my little NC10. I decided to take the plunge from Windows XP to Windows 7 with an upgraded RAM. The main reason I upgraded the RAM was to help run Matlab but I really enjoy using Windows 7 so it made sense to go for it.

The NC10 is a Netbook with the following specification:

The memory change was easy and went over with no problems excepting me miss placing the tiny screw but found and is all sorted now. The Windows install was very quick I have only installed Windows 7 on more powerful PC's like Duel cores etc, but this seemed to install in not far off the same time despite the limited resources.

The boot up into Windows 7 isn't the fastest but when all is loaded I have been pushing the little NC10 quite hard and it has put up a valiant fight even when doing several installs and a eclipse build.

I tried KUbuntu on the machine and sadly that seemed to struggle quite a lot so was a little disappointing so have resorted back to Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop environment.

Other than that must say big thumbs up for Windows 7 runs very well on limited resources.

Pixel the Research Dog!

At the moment my work involved working on Matlab to implement a paper that was done about 2 years ago by Mitsubishi in Guildford. Unfortunately this requires Matlab to actually work today was broken by Matlab not being able to access the University license server.

But all is not bad, I went through some more image processing theory with my Supervisor and then finished at midday to come home and do some reading. I haven't covered fourier transforms before so I have had more to learn since this is the next step in the method. This also means I have to touch up on some more trig and also learn complex numbers.

Outcomes:

• Improved Image Processing theory
• Recapping Maths and expanding

Homework:

• Complex Numbers

Wednesdays Work:

• Continue recapping
• If Matlab is available then implement the fourier transform step
• Continue image processing theory

Well I finally got sorted and have come in for my first day, start off with a chat to John about what I'm going to start on where the project is going and how best to proceed.

Once I started working I have had a few new challenges,

• Linux - I have used it a few times in the past but wouldn't say I'm a linux guru
• Matlab - I have completed a Neural Networks coursework using Matlab but that's it actually programming with Matlab is a new experience. 

Well once I got going things seemed to go quite smoothly had a few problems with the maths since I am a bit out of practice that is one of my "homework tasks".

So what I actually did today, was work on implementing a image retrieval system using the Hough transform. This works by taking an image, performing an edge detection on it then using the Hough transform to populate the accumulator space. This is a space of angles and distances from the origin using maximised values of the columns allows us to generate a histogram fingerprint.

Well this is about as far as I got today, the next step is to perform a comparison on the histogram to be able to lookup on the fingerprints.

Outcomes

• Implementation of a standard fingerprint system for images
• Getting used to working in the University

Homework Tasks:

• Revise A-Level maths
• Look into hough transform and search methods

Next Tuesdays work:

• Retrieval method

I haven't really blogged in a while, I've been very busy sorting all sorts of things out. I intend to catch up and write post about the things I have been upto but I want to catch up with where and what's going on.

I am now officially living in Guildford, me and Nettles have a little flat and its great. We moved in yesterday and were very impressed and settled in quickly. Even managed to have Roybott over last night that was good fun had a few drinks and watched pulp fiction. Today Nettles went to work for her first day was very exciting and I'm sure she has done amazingly well got a celebration meal for tonight that I hope she likes.

Okey now Ill back track I have been offered and agreed to complete a PhD in Sketch Based information retrieval, what that means and what I will be doing will be covered soon but to summarise its very cool ... although I may be a little biased.

So to summarise last few weeks PhD at University of Surrey flat Guildford.

Will explain more soon, but yets just say WOOT!

Ill be moving into my new house in Guildford next monday cant wait not long now and I start my Ph.D.

I spent some time today battling to try to get RoundCube webmail to work well with:

• Windows 2008
• SQL Server Express 2008
• hMailServer
• IIS 7.0 With PHP

Well it took some fiddling but after some time I got it to work. My major issue seemed to be getting PHP to see MSSQL extensions. I found the documentation a little misleading not realising that you needed to install FreeTDS.

But after getting that setup all worked well will give it a try as a webmail client see how it goes if not might try migrating to Google.

I have ranted a lot in the past about Fasthosts and Streamline with poor customer service and bad uptime and what not. But today I'm proud to say I have something positive to say.

After slating Streamline for there poor uptime they made a suggestion that worked. I moved my MySQL database from one server to another, seems simple enough. But has moved me from 85-90% uptime to near enough always 100%

I am not sure what that says for people who don't have multiple SQL servers to move between but it atleast suggests if your having problems its worth uprooting and moving your db to another server. I also don't know what this says about the quality of Streamline servers.

None the less my first positive comment and about Streamline!

I was watching Would I lie To you on the BBC (Link) and something that astonished me is the Bible was produced in Cockney.

All I can say is what the? but if you are desperate to get your hands on this fine tomb then its available from Amazon

I was looking at my website and realised how bland all the websites I make are they don't tend to have many if any pictures. So I've decided to cram some in and ask for people to give me some pictures to liven up my website.

I'm no artist so please help a developer have a pretty site 

Today I've started learning ActionScript to make a simple game of Asteroids, I have only looked at Flash that is for designers so it always seemed very alien to me. But ActionScript I am glad to say is a nice change and allows some quite easy programming of games.

I plan on doing some posts on how to use ActionScript for games programming but I want to complete my demo first so I can talk from experience.

If you would like to know more about ActionScript games programming a good place to start is:

http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/apps/playfish/

Playfish are a games studio that make flash games that integrate with social networking site API's.

Anyway, will post again soon with a beginning of ActionScript Games.

Play fair!