HIS item is about my personal research and, in particular, its recent development and progression, which may take it in a different and exciting direction. I currently work on assessment of registration algorithms, which I have described in some depth over at MARS — my research-related publishing platform. The latest item discusses everything at a more technical level.

Below lies the diagram which describes a possible framework, which is still at its ‘propsal stage’. The ultimate aim is to provide an e-Science workbench for medical image analysis. My experiments account for a mere subset, where image/volume sequences need be aligned.

Click image for full-sized version

OME time ago I mentioned the three Linux machines which I have accumulated, but this situation has changed due to a miserable hard-drive crash. I received a new (and slightly better) machine as a replacement yesterday. Rather than having 2 Ubuntu boxes and 1 SuSE box, it is now 2 for SuSE and only one for Ubuntu.

The main motive for this shift was a video card incompatibility, but I also must confess that I do not like GNOME as much as I like KDE. Moreover, SuSE is a more comprehensive and self-contained distribution where fewer installation tasks need to be completed once the operating system has been set up.

Arbitrary screenshot of my SuSE Linux box at work

SuSE, which comes from Novell, has become one of the market leaders as far as Linux in the enterprise is concerned. Novell are among the most prolific vendors of Linux as they incorporate merely any modern desktop environment. When I installed SuSE on the new machine yesterday, I received the re-assurance that Novell, much like Canonical (makers of Ubuntu), simply understand usability, as well as the need for a friendly UI and stability. Therefore, they are bound to flourish at the expense of more ’stubborn’ distributions, which often pose challenges rather than assist the user and adhere to abstraction. Their support and community are quite strong as well.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, continues to have a few weaknesses, so I will continue to favour and evangelise SuSE whenever I get the chance. I must stress that Ubuntu is an excellent distribution for beginners and it also boasts excellent hardware detection so it involves little or no gamble. Its accompanying Live CD gives further reassurance too.

ATER this morning I shall be leaving for a 10-day vacation. I will attempt to continue adding content to my blog, though pace will not be comparable with my usual. As I will be getting less input (i.e. reading and conversing), I don’t expect myself to have much to say either.

Shown above is a photo from my last vacation in springtime. A few transformations were applied to the image using the excellent GIMP, just for amusement. Knowing my past experiences, this vacation will only lead to accumulation of work and reslessness. Internet is an addiction to me.

HIS Wednesday I will deliver a talk to an audience of surgeons at the Royal Eye Hospital. The two short presentations gracefully run under Firefox and focus on computer security and data recovery, which are not my primary fields of expertise. Nonetheless, there is plenty of information to deliver on the subject as it is broad and open-ended. As usual, my presentations are publicised on-line (not finalised yet):

• PC Security in a Connected Environment (XHTML)
• Basics of Data Recovery (XHTML)

Please do remember that both presentation were composed with a non-technical audience in mind. They do not bog down to a low level of granularity and tend to refer to Windows more often than to other platforms, which I shall not neglect to advocate. It is by no means propaganda, but I hope to get across the message that Windows (and several applications including IE) is prone to failure and woe.

arly this morning I made a bold move; it was bold for me, at least. I decided to make both partitions on my hard-drive adhere to the Reiser filesystem (FS), overwriting an unused Windows 2000 (NTFS) partition, which was rarely ever accessed. At times it was exploited as a storage area, yet no more than once month, which made it a complete waste of space.

Before formatting the NTFS partition, I was able to transfer data to the Windows partition using special tools. Linux can read NTFS, but not write to it, whereas Windows only understands its own filesystems (FAT, FAT32 and so forth) so there is no reciprocity. Nevertheless, there are tools which enable Windows users to read a Reiser filesystem, which is a common Linux filesystem.

• rfstool - read ReiserFS under Windows
• YAReG - a .NET GUI for the above tool

They both require the user to boot into Windows, which is why I gave up on them and decided to stick to Linux partitions instead.

The moment of truth: so long Windows partition (click to enlarge)

To cut a long story short, I now have two Linux partitions, which I am extremely happy with. This move would not have been simple if it weren’t for the kind help from Houghi.

At an earlier stage I thought about installing Mac OS X on the new partition. Unfortunately, the process seems time-consuming, complicated and unreliable at its end. Moreover, it turned out that this had never been possible as Mac OS X (specifically the hacked version which runs on any machine) will not function under a partition, i.e. it requires a separate physical drive. To the curious, there are full instructions on how to installed Mac OS X on any standard PC. Many pictures and screenshots are included.

n a matter of hours I will head off to a plenary research meeting at Oxford University. I decided to catch the 5 AM train rather than arriving at Oxford yesterday. It has become rather difficult to stay off-line for more than half a day, let alone a day or two. Many hundreds of messages accumulate in the newsgroups, many dozens in mailing lists, and about 100 RSS feeds need catching up with. Moreover, error logs expire, server have potential of crashing, and physically speaking, no proper exercise can be undertaken.

A talk I look forward to describes work by Lewis and Chen. The presentation Lewis will deliver bears a title which intrigues me.

Below are 2 photos that I took in the previous Oxford plenary meeting in May 24^th - 25^th. I retain a comprehensive daily photolog so the corresponding entries of the first and the second day are included, as always.

“That MR brain image in the background is mine… but don’t tell anybody…”

am taking on a new project these days. Its name comprises the words Models of Appearance, Registration and Segementation. It may prevent me from posting items in the Web log and in the newsgroups. If you wish to have a look at research work that I currently do towards my Ph.D., have a look at the new site, which I have arranged using the almighty PHP-Nuke.