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Summary: Tim and Roy talk about Mono, Ubuntu, Android, mobile development, and a little about CPTN towards the end

TODAY’S show is shorter than usual, but it covers many different topics that OpenBytes has summarised.

Today’s show ends with the usual theme track. We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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ikileaks is currently mirrored on 1426 up-to-date sites (updated 2010-12-21 20:29 GMT)

Here is the mirror list sorted by apparent bandwidth

via wikileaks.ch

currently put the final touches on my program which detects and analyses the movement of the heart using the fiesta protocol in an MRI-type modality (1.5 Tesla).

Recent and very simplistic experiments, where two rather distinct images were taken from the set and then rotated, were used such that the only real and anatomical shift is a rigid, geometric one. Two sorts of transformations were used; firstly, in two cases the images were rotated about the middle and in one case the rotation was around one of the corners. This gave different types of variations and various parameters were changes until the algorithm was able to track the points (placed at the edges) rather well. There are now new parameters in place, e.g. (in this case):

threshold = 1
transform_type = sum
frame_size = 2
shuffle_radius = 1
draw_grid =  0
arrow_type = gradient
verbosity = 1
output_type = image
draw_circles = 1
triagulate = 1
measure_tangent_component = 1
search_along_gradient = 1
gradient_search_range = 2
boundaries_line_width =  2
...

Going under the suffix “mid” (slice 3 from the bottom) we have an example of how the landmark points get moved between the frames.

Initial frame

Initial frame with landmark points on

Initial frame with connected landmark points

Position of landmark points at the end of the tracking sequence

Looking at edge detectors we have the possibility of fusion for improved tracking — with a two-tier image, one for the derivative and another being the original.

Sample image

Sobel edge detection of the image

Prewitt edge detection of the image

As an engine, I am currently using MATLAB for reasons of succession (other users of the program I built are less likely to run it in Octave like I do), but I don’t touch the MATLAB ‘desktop’, just the bash shell and vi as the editor (ncurses).

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Summary: Tim, Gordon, and Roy struggle with coughs and connection difficulties and yet manage to produce another episode filled with news and discussion

TODAY’S show covers many topics including the new Linux release, Android, Microsoft’s latest departures and failures, and of course Wikileaks. This is the first episode in about a week due to lack of time for the three of us to regroup and record. Our new IRC channel and new official Web site will be announced quite soon.

Today’s show ends with the special track for TechBytes, courtesy of Marti who can be reached via this Web page. We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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T HAS been a while since the last post about an ongoing port from Octave to MATLAB (not a major challenge, ensuing compatibility being the goal) and also since the last episode of TechBytes. I work hard this weekend finishing and finalising (with GUI) my work on an existing project before proceeding to the next, which will deal with 3-D face recognition.

ESTERDAY I encountered my first major setback in Octave for Kubuntu. It was a bug, not a missing feature. It involved an outside library again. I tried installing a newer version of gnuplot (installing the latest one by compiling the source code), but this did not resolve the issue. All in all, over an hour was spent on it, first assuming that I was coding wrongly and later realising that the issue was upstream (there are many more threads like this and they dominate the discussion on the matter). Applying the patch manually would only be a short-term solution as it was already submitted for inclusion in future releases, so for the time being, where this function is needed, I will reluctantly be testing the code under MATLAB (for which I have an academic licence that everyone gets whether they want to or not). It was rather depressing to use MATLAB for a few hours yesterday. Compatibility will be assured again when the little issue (fixable with just a line or a few) is addressed also in the binaries offered by GNU/Linux distributions. Apart from that I’m having Fedora-Octave-ImageMagick compatibility issues [1, 2], which help not at all.

My overall experience with Octave is pleasant and it remains by far the primary choice for image analysis. But for others who insist on using MATLAB I must ensure cross-compatibility, thus the following (under Fedora):

The image shows the interface which now precedes the tracking phase. Points can be placed by the user with text guidance in the console. The interfaces were also improved to separate between rectangular, circular, and manual placements.

Here is an example image without the interface.

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Summary: First show for 2011 speaks about consoles, sales, Android, software patents, and an outlook for the new year

THE FIRST 2011 audiocast is out. The show is getting a new site very soon and OpenBytes publishes the show notes for everybody. Today’s show concentrates on Microsoft failures, criticism of statistics in the media or the recording industry, and finally some 2011 predications about Android’s success and Steve Ballmer’s departure.

We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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