cebidae: the blog of david dean

New Blog

2006-02-17T09:25:00.000+10:00

This blog will no longer be updated. My new blog is at www.cebidae.com, and hopefully will remain there forever. At some point in the (hopefully) near future, I might set up some sort of redirection from here to there. I'm not sure what you can do with blogger and redirections.

Welcome to the Matrix

2006-01-30T20:00:00.000+10:00

toothpaste for dinner.

Bill of Rights - Security Edition

2006-01-30T10:39:00.000+10:00

Not being an American, this isn't directly relevant to me, but it is still fairly amusing:

The Bill of Rights: The First Ten Amendments to the constitution of the United States printed on sturdy, pocket-sized, pieces of metal.

The next time you travel by air, take the Bill of Rights - Security Edition along with you. When asked to empty your pockets, proudly toss the Bill of Rights in the plastic bin.

You need to get used to offering up the bill of rights for inspection and government workers enforcing the USAPATRIOT ACT need to get used to deciding if you'll be allowed to keep the Bill of Rights with you when you travel.

Link. Thanks, Penn Jillette (I cannot remember which podcast exactly).

Cyanide & Happiness

2006-01-18T15:57:00.000+10:00

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Common sense and speech recognition

2005-12-02T12:50:00.000+10:00

One of the big problems with speech recognition systems is that they can be quite stupid. Most existing speech recognitions sytems either use tightly constrained word networks, or they are just a form of keyword spotting. If our goal is to design a system that can freely transcribe speech, we still have a long way to go.

One of the main problems with attempting to freely transcribe speech is that a lot of words sound like a lot of other words (some words even sound exactly the same -- brake vs. break), so even if you have a clear idea of the sounds (or phonemes), it can be difficult to determine the word. What we need is a common sense database. But first, onto existing real world speech recognition.

Existing Real-world Approaches

A word network based system is only designed to recognise a distinct number -- generally quite small -- of types of phrases. As an example, Voice Commander, a pocket pc application can only recognise these commands:

Call contact at home/work/mobile
Show contact
Digit Dial (which then only recognises digits)
Start application
What can I say (which gives this list)
Goodbye

By limiting the choices the recognition network can make it greatly reduces the effort involved in deciding what each word was.

The other solution to speech recognition, generally employed in automated telephone systems, is keyword spotting. A typical keyword spotting session will start with the automated system prompting you with something like "Please state your problem." (We'll assume were in computer technical support here), and the keyword spotting system will attempt to find any predefined keywords in your reply. As an example, if you then said "I am having problems with my Windows machine resetting" it might have spotted Windows and resetting and decided to transfer you to the software support area.

Common Sense

As mentioned earlier, one of the big problems with automatic speech transcription is deciding whether the user said "put the eggs in the basket" or "put the eggs in the casket". An even harder example might be "put the key in the lock" vs "put the key in the loch". To decide what was said the automatic system needs to have some idea of what makes sense.

To this end, and as reported in this story in Technology Research News, researchers at MIT have developed the Open Mind Common Sense database. This database is basically just a big list of 'facts' in sentence form that have been submitted by users on the web (hence the quotes around 'facts'). Anybody who registeres can submit their own facts by answering various questions, and can also query the database about facts as well. Additionally the data is available for download as a zip file for research purposes (although it appears to be a bit out of date).

Anyways, lets say we needed to decide on "put the eggs in the basket" vs ".. casket". A query for "egg basket" gives 9 examples (like "one type of basket holds easter eggs) but a query for "egg casket" doesn't return anything. So, automated system chooses basket as the word.

But, even if you don't care about speech recognition it is just fun to query the database and come up with lots of useful facts like You can type on a computer keyboard, You can use a computer in a ranch house. and Computers are used to use up desk space. Have fun!

Lazyweb, How do I use you from Blogger?

2005-11-29T12:41:00.000+10:00

Lazyweb, how do I submit my request to you from Blogger. Just kidding. Heres the problem, and then the solution:

Lazyweb intro

In my previous post, I wanted to know if anyone out there can help me with a little unix problem. However because I am the only regular reader of my blog, I don't really expect to get an answer just by putting it up here.

Enter the lazyweb. The idea behind lazyweb is that someone on the internets has the solution to your problem, you just need to find them. A good primer by Clay Shirky is here.

The problem (with Blogger)

Anyway the problem as I see it is that lazyweb.org is implemented using trackbacks, which are not as popular as they used to be, due to spam and other fun gunk. Even worse, Blogger doesn't ping trackbacks anyway, so I cannot get my lazyweb request up on lazyweb.org.

The solution

The solution is to ping the trackback url manually. So I just had to work out how to do that. So I did: Simpletracks, by Adam Kalsey is a simple web form that allows you to manual ping trackback urls. For example, to post your problem on lazyweb.org put http://www.lazyweb.org/lazywebtb.cgi in the Trackback URL field, and fill out the rest of the fields based on your lazyweb request. Hit Send Ping, and wait. Run on over to lazyweb.org and your request should be up there. Now all you have to do is wait (and wait...).

Finding only leaf folders

2005-11-28T16:17:00.000+10:00

How can I find only leaf folders in unix? I have a couple of ways I don't really like. Surely this should just be an option on find. Anyway:

Option 1: Counting Hard Links

find -type d -links 2

Why I don't like it: It won't work if there are any hard links (other than . and ..) to any of the folders.

Option 2: Post-processing using awk

find -type d | awk 'NR == 1 {prev = $0}
    index($0, prev) != 1 { print prev }
    { prev = $0 }
    END { print $prev }'

Why I don't like it: It's fugly and long.

Lazyweb, can you help? Or should I just stop being fussy?

UPDATE: Option 1 it is. Because:

I don't have any other hard links to those folders, and
I couldn't make hard links even if I wanted to (see this comment)

Short Term Fame, and the monetizing of

2005-11-20T23:48:00.000+10:00

What if all the disappointed people who's Australian Idol contestant didn't make it could buy a produced mp3 (or DRM'd equivalent) immediately on iTunes? That would make some money. Even better, what if the songs were put up for all contestants each week, and the polling was done according to the number of sales (at least they would get something for their money, as opposed to SMS voting). By the way, this is not my idea. Thanks Matt Round.

Gravitational Tractor Beam

2005-11-10T20:11:00.000+10:00

The latest astronomy picture of the day (APOD) from NASA details a possible implementation of a gravitational tractor. I don't really understand it (perhaps I should read the paper) but it appears that you simply put a heavy ship near the rock you want to move, and by applying gentle thrust away from the rock you actually pull the rock in that direction (and modify its orbit so it doesn't crash into Earth). Ace.

Funny Road Rage Ad

2005-11-10T14:35:00.000+10:00

For Ikea (huh?). Thanks, Museum of Hoaxes.

Riya.com - Face recognition-based online photo tagging

2005-11-04T15:32:00.000+10:00

Riya photo search looks like it will be very interesting. I like the idea that once you tag an item in a single photo (a face, or even an object), it will be recognised in all other photos, and tagged accordingly. It will be interesting to see how accurate it is. It's good to see that you can export the photos out again with meta-data intact (or will be able to). Doesn't support firefox yet though, but will in beta. Thanks, Download Squad.

Quadratic Formula - the tax office way

2005-11-02T11:24:00.000+10:00

If the IRS had discovered the quadratic formula, by Daniel Velleman. via Isabel's math blog.

Using gait monitor to detect unauthorised mobile phone use

2005-10-14T08:22:00.000+10:00

Engadget have an blog post about researchers who are investigating detected unauthorised mobile phone use by using a gait detector within the phone. Link.

Interesting comment found on the blog post:

Posted Oct 13, 2005, 5:38 PM ET by Brad C

Tech like this just has too many variables: What if I'm getting a piggy-back ride from
someone? Does it detect my walk or theirs? Which one should it detect? What's the difference between giving a piggy back ride and carrying a dead body?

Google and NASA

2005-09-29T20:22:00.000+10:00

It appears that Google has plans to collaborate with NASA, which will include a significant presense at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

The company is also interested in extending its mapping prowess to outer space, he said.

"We already have Google Earth," Norvig said. "We'd like to have Google Mars and Google Moon."

"I didn't realize how much content and information was trapped in the accumulated history of these organizations," Schmidt said. "Imagine if our supercomputing power can be applied to the problem."

Link.

You're right. Fetch me a backup potato.

2005-09-20T22:53:00.000+10:00

goats.

Office Gags!

2005-09-19T22:46:00.000+10:00

Joy of Tech have come up with a wonderful parody of comic book advertising. Some good ideas here.

Google Blog Search

2005-09-14T17:41:00.000+10:00

It's about time. Link. Thanks.

Aussie book-price comparison by SMS

2005-09-14T10:20:00.000+10:00

BuyMate allows you to SMS the ISBN of a book you are looking at in the bookshop to 0427 767 763 and get quotes from various online booksellers. Thanks, Boing Boing.

Mozilla: A failure by almost any measure.

2005-09-13T14:46:00.000+10:00

I have just been reading Open Source Development with CVS, and I came across the folllowing amusing (in hindsight) paragraphs:

The importance of releasing runnable code was demonstrated by one of the most well publicized mis-starts in the history of free software. Netscape Communications Corporation announced in January 1998 that it would publicly release the source code to their Navigator Web browser under a license allowing others to modify and redistribute the source code. The news sent a wave of excitement through the free software community. The lack of a good free Web browser had long been a serious problem, and Netscape was claiming that it would solve it in one stroke.

Netscape’s sincerity was not faked; the company did exactly as it said. However, three and a half years later, the project is a failure by almost any measure. It is still possible that a working Web browser might arise from the tangle of code available from www.mozilla.org, but don’t hold your breath. Despite the huge demand for a free Web browser and the many programmers willing to contribute their talents to make it happen, the long-awaited production release of Mozilla still does not exist.

The point the book was making (go read it) was actually valid (make the first release of an open-source project compile and run), and the original release of Mozilla into the open-source world was fairly disasterous, but look how it turned out.

Homemade GPS

2005-09-07T13:09:00.000+10:00

A very interesting looking project on making a GPS unit from cheap parts. Link. Thanks, MAKE Blog

Speech activated street photography

2005-09-05T08:39:00.000+10:00

Here is an interesting setup. A webcam wired to a notebook in his backpack combined with a bluetooth headset allows him to take photos by just saying "take shot".

Riverfire, The Missing of

2005-09-04T21:12:00.000+10:00

Dump and Burn
Originally uploaded by Allan Henderson.

We went into my brother's apartment in Brisbane for Riverfire this year. He told us it was going to start (with the F111 dump-and-burn shown here) at 19:30. So we heard the dump-and-burn at 19:00 (the real start time) while we were down at street level in the city, but we didn't see it. We got back up to the balcony in time to see some great fireworks still.

Design your own LEGO Kit

2005-08-30T12:19:00.000+10:00

I haven't actually look at it myself yet, but Engadget reports that you can design your own LEGO creation online, and then actually order the correct set of blocks so you can have it in real life. Cool.

Dr. Snip Vasectomy knife

2005-08-16T20:56:00.000+10:00

Steve Lodefink points out a very interesting piece of schwag.

A Rocket to Nowhere

2005-08-06T14:52:00.000+10:00

There is a very interesting essay on the (United State's) manned space program on Idle Words, and leaves me wondering if there is any point in it existing at all. Go read it.

Ear biometrics

2005-07-16T16:49:00.000+10:00

Apparently ears are a lot more invariant to changes that a lot of other biometric options available. Research is undergoing at the University of Southampton into using the shape of a persons ears to identify them.

Ears are remarkably consistent, he says. Unlike faces, they do not change shape with different expressions or age, and remain fixed in the middle of the side of the head against a predictable background. “Hair is a problem,” Nixon admits. “But that might be solved by using infrared images.”

Getting around ING Direct's pop-up online banking

2005-07-06T21:33:00.000+10:00

I have a savings account at ING Direct, but when you login to their online banking application, it insists on opening in a new window. I don't want it to be in a new window, I want it to be in a new tab. Plus: not showing the address bar means that I cannot make sure I'm at the right place (phishing and all that jazz).

So I dug around their javascript to find out what the entry page for online banking is. And it is https://www.ingdirect.com.au/client/. So now I can just follow this link without fighting with ING's stupid interface. And if you use ING Direct, bookmark that link, because it makes it a lot easier.

Darth Vader fetish chick

2005-07-01T12:26:00.000+10:00

This is a little strange. Thanks Boing Boing.

Multifinger biometrics

2005-06-30T10:36:00.000+10:00

jkOnTheRun points to BiometricPIN system, which improves upon existing single-fingerprint readers by jointly recognising a number of fingers and the sequence that they are tapped in. This should reduce the spoofability of your biometrics, but I'm not sure it is a complete solution.

I Park Like An Idiot

2005-06-29T14:49:00.000+10:00

Don't stick I Park Like An Idiot bumper stickers on other cars like these people did.

I'm a bit dissapointed by the images on the website, there's a fair bit of (bad) photoshopping there, and not that many really bad parkers anyway. Interesting idea though.

Shrinkwrap Contracts for Housing

2005-06-25T12:09:00.000+10:00

We are used to hidden clauses in software shrinkwrap, but apparently it happens in the "real world" too. Luckily, the purchaser in this case insisted that the relevant clauses be removed from the contract, which was lucky because they didn't perform as required and would have got away with it otherwise:

When the reader complained after his final walkthrough of the house, he was told there was nothing he could do because, basically, the arbitration clause would not allow him to sue. "This very smug woman who managed the builder's office was telling me in a teacher-to-child voice that the missing features had been deleted from the plans at their discretion," he recalls. "'I really understand that you might be upset,' she was saying to me, 'but that's the way it is and you really can't do anything about it.' She was a bit shocked when I pointed out that my sales contract in fact didn't include the arbitration clause, and even more shocked when I called the builder directly and cancelled the contract for non-performance. That afternoon they began adding the promised features, even though they had to tear it down a bit to do so."

Link.

Google Maps Australia?

2005-06-22T12:25:00.000+10:00

Google Maps appear to have upgraded their satellite imagery for major Australian locations. I hope this is a precursor to including map information for Australia. Our current online map provider, whereisn't hasn't even bothered to update their data from around 2002. Here is my current house, and here is my uni and here is my next house.

Monks and Hyperspectral Image Processing

2005-06-20T10:32:00.000+10:00

Monks at an old Christian monastery plan to use digital cameras to extract hidden text in old parchments. Hyperspectral imaging, which would be the imaging of many spectra, the monks plan to examine editing of the oldest existing Christian bible. Another interesting point is there are some wrinkled pages that are two brittle to be straightened out, so they are photographing them from many angles, and virtually straightening them. Link. Thanks, Engadget.

brisbane craigslist

2005-06-17T14:39:00.000+10:00

Hey, there's a craigslist in Brisbane!

Commercialisation of Retinal Implants

2005-06-17T12:05:00.000+10:00

According to Engadget, IIP Technologies are the first company to commercialise retinal implant technology. Retinal implants are used to stimulate the retina is such a way that vision can be aproximated in people who previously had none or limited vision. We are doing some interesting research in our image labs in this area. (However, there is no actual information about it there, so don't bother following the link)

Short Videos

2005-06-16T15:00:00.000+10:00

This is cool, and this is freaky (as in nightmare-inducing).

Thanks to j-walk blog, and ektopia.

Get off Drink Driving because of closed source code

2005-06-07T09:25:00.000+10:00

This is interesting: Judges in Florida have tossed out a large number of drink driving cases because the accused asked for the source-code of the breathalisers to be released to the court to verify that the devices were accurate. Thanks, Boing Boing.

Two Litres of Icebreak

2005-06-01T07:59:00.000+10:00

Two Litres of Icebreak
Originally uploaded by David Dean.

Did you know Icebreak came in two litre bottles? This is not good for my addiction.

Scary Axel

2005-05-29T00:16:00.000+10:00

Scary Axel
Originally uploaded by David Dean.

I'm not sure how this came about, but doesn't Axel look hilarious in this photo. I think the flash may have been a bit much.

tags [ family photo ]

DIY 3D Laser Scanner

2005-05-25T19:48:00.000+10:00

MAKE Blog has put up an interesting link to a group that have hacked together a 3D laser scanner using a laser pointer and a wine glass, and not much else. Cool.

However, this one looks impressive too.

tags [ 3d scanner diy ]

Systm: War Spying

2005-05-25T09:33:00.000+10:00

Over at systm.org, there are torrents of their first episode, which is on "War Spying", locating unsecure wireless camera feeds (ala X10). The episode shows the building of a single box that can be used to perform this interesting task. Reminds me of the google search you can do for cameras left accessible to the web, presumably by accident.

Simpsons as Radio Play

2005-05-23T12:58:00.000+10:00

Someone has put a mp3 file of a "Descriptive Video Services" audio track for the simpsons on the web. It is basically a blow-by-blow commentary of the simpsons, with whatever is happening on the screen indicated by a narrator. Very listenable, and as mentioned here, would be good as a podcast. Thanks, MAKE Blog.

Music retrieval by tapping

2005-05-20T12:18:00.000+10:00

Duke, who listens! (aka Paul Lamere), has posted a link to a song search by tapping applet. It is pretty cool, as you can retrieve songs by just tapping the keyboard, similarly to song search by humming/whistling, which was cool a while ago.

tags [ research music ]

Brisbane Hail Storm - Shade Cloth

2005-05-20T11:07:00.000+10:00

Brisbane Hail Storm - Shade Cloth
Originally uploaded by Michael Henderson.

Isn't this a beautiful photo?

Snow Hail in Brisbane

2005-05-20T10:57:00.000+10:00

It hailed in Brisbane last night. I didn't personally get caught in it, but a bunch of Flickr users did. This particular photo is something I would never have expected to see in Brisbane. Looks like snow.

tags [ brisbane weather hail ]

The original analog-to-digital converter

2005-05-19T12:24:00.000+10:00

I was reading an article (online link) in the lastest IEEE Spectrum magazine outlining the research life of James Flannagan, a pionering speech researcher, and came across this amusing anecdote:

... when Flanagan began this work, such simple components as analog-to-digital (A-to-D) converters did not exist. There was no way to get real-time analog signals into a digital computer.

Instead, Flanagan and his group would use a photograph of an oscillogram and measure the various amplitudes of the signal. Those numbers were then recorded on punch cards—with a huge stack representing a few seconds of speech—and fed into the computer. The output would be a plot of processed waveforms.

Sounds like a lengthy process.

tags [ speech research history ]

Bloggers vs Locks

2005-05-19T11:41:00.000+10:00

You'd thing the blogosphere was out to get lock makers, but seeing as how pointing out flaws in products designed to provide security is a good thing, I'm OK with it.

You may remember that you can use a bic pen to open bicycle locks, well now you can use a small roll of cardboard to open laptop locks (7.5 MB video link).

On another security related issue, here is a short how-to on faking fingerprints, also found on boing boing. The don't seem to go on to actually test their fake fingerprint however, so Dan's still got them beat.

tags [ lockpick fingerprint ]

European Childcare

2005-05-19T09:07:00.000+10:00

Kindergarten
Originally uploaded by schoschie. Click on the photo, and have a close look.

tags [ childcare europe ]

Childcare Brokerage in Australia

2005-05-19T08:51:00.000+10:00

We have had many experiences with searching for childcare in and around Brisbane, and I have always maintained that things would work better if waiting lists were maintained centrally (perhaps by a government department) so that parents didn't have to put their child on 50 waiting lists, and so children could be automatically removed from waiting lists when the get in. (Obviously some special circumstances might apply, like where you really want to get in to a particular day care centre, so you will want to stay on their list even when you get in somewhere else.)

Failing a centrally organised list, the next best thing would be to have a childcare broker. This person/organisation could put themselves (rather than a specific child) onto waiting lists around the state, and when you sign up with this company they find the first available spot they have held in your area.

I turns out that there is a mob that can arrange something like this for you. They call themselves API Leasure Lifestyle, and they say they are "Australia's leading member benefits organisation dedicated to improving the quality of life of its members by providing exclusive benefits and services," whatever that means. Anyway, on their Child Care page they say:

Consultants can identify child care services in your area, then contact each service to determine who can best meet your needs.

API's Childcare referral service provides you with timely, unbiased and tailored information to the needs of you and your child.

Sounds good. Costs $99 for a yearly family membership. Might look into this.

UPDATE: This link just appeared as a google ad on my page. They claim to help find childcare centres. These people do too.

tags [ childcare broker ]

Audio Visual Speech Databases

2005-05-18T11:43:00.000+10:00

One of the problems with choosing to do research into audio-visual speech processing, as I am, is finding data to perform experiments on. In the acoustic-only speech processing world there is a good number of databases that are phonetically balanced and accurately transcribed at word and phone levels (TIMIT would be a good example). In the audio-visual world it is difficult to obtain databases that have significantly more than 10 words - usually digits.

Some examples of databases that are available (at a cost) for performing audio-visual speech research are M2VTS and it's successor XM2VTS and a relatively new entrant, CUAVE (which can be obtained for free). The speech in these databases primarily consists of digits (i.e., "one, two ...") which obviously isn't a particularly real-world scenario.

Currently, there is virtually no available (at any cost) databases that can be used to study real-world applications of audio-visual speech. There are some databases that have been used in research that fulfill this criteria, such as IBM's ViaVoice (pdf) and IDIAP's VidTIMIT, but they aren't available outside of those organisations.

However, recently a group of MIT students have created two new audio-visual speech databases that could be useful for my research, outlined here. AVTIMIT is a audio-visual database based on TIMIT (as is VidTIMIT), and AVICAR is a database of the type of input an in-car audio-visual speech processing system would expect. I don't know if we can obtain these databases, but we will try.

Another interesting find in the same abstract above is the Open Audio-Visual Continuous Speech Recognition project. I haven't had a look at it yet, but I imagine there is some code in there that could prevent me from re-inventing the wheel.

tags [ speech research audiovisual database ]

Graduation Cap Hack

2005-05-16T13:40:00.000+10:00

Graduation Cap Hack:

Just a brief background about me and this hack. About a year and a half ago they cut my major (Technology Education) at Virginia Tech. Thanks by the way. This left my major of 13 with only one overworked professor and two doctoral students to teach us. This didn't really leave us very happy with the president of Tech, Charles W. Steger.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to mess around with that stupid hat that you have to wear to your graduation, and make it not so stupid.

This is how you do it.

Selling on eBay

2005-05-15T11:36:00.000+10:00

We've got a fair bit of junk around here, so I thought I'd dive into the deep pool (swamp?) that is eBay. I'm starting small with a 64 MB compact flash card with PC card adaptor, anybody want? If all goes well I'll probably progress to bigger items like my old notebook with the broken screen.

20 Questions Neural network

2005-05-10T23:28:00.000+10:00

Go, play this. It will be addictive. You can get also get a portable 'orb' version. I want. thanks, cool tools.

uNSLUng - hacking the Linksys NSLU file server

2005-05-10T20:55:00.000+10:00

WOW. This is so incredibly cool. Linksys's NSLU device is a consumer network storage device that allows you to connect up to two USB hardrives to a network. Go look. What's special is that it is actually a little linux box. And this online community is dedicated to improving the firmware distro on this box so that it can do all sorts of fun things. Such as running websites, email servers, itunes servers, sharing USB printers, .... Basically you can probably make it do anything a linux machine with a huge amount of attached storage and two USB ports can do (more with a hub). Might be a problem with RAM though. Jamie is probably all over this by now.

How about a MP3 player? (found here)

* USB1 with 250G Lacie HD hanging off it.
* USB2 with USB Soundcard hanging off (Griffin iMic in my case, also tried others).

Patched the unslung-able-kernel to allow for USB Audio. Ported alsa-drivers to OpenEmbedded and built for unslung-able-kernel. Ported a set of audio utilities, accumulating into the port of MPD (http://www.musicpd.org). My slug is playing music to my stereo system now, feeding of the mp3's on the disk. It also feeds in Internet Radio stations. To control it I use a webbrowser through a php front and a client on my iPAQ.

Want one? In Australia? Here are some prices.

UPDATE: I have been doing a bit more research on the home NAS front, and I am starting to lean more towards a kurobox, which is what the NSLU would be if linksys designed it with hacking in mind (and an internal HDD, which you supply). Check out this Tom's Networking review. Don't know how to get this in Australia though. Will investigate.

iPods prompt Australian copyright rethink

2005-05-10T20:04:00.000+10:00

Australian IT - iPods prompt copyright rethink (Paul Osborne, MAY 06, 2005):

Mr Ruddock said the review would examine whether an exception or specific exceptions to copyright based on fair use should be adopted to make copyright law more flexible in the digital age.

'Many Australians believe, quite reasonably, that they should be able to record a television program or format-shift music from their own CD to an iPod or MP3 player without infringing copyright law,' Mr Ruddock said.

'However, this issue needs careful consideration.'

thanks, heretic

Amusing logical test

2005-05-09T14:24:00.000+10:00

An amusing logic test. Some examples:

3. The number of questions with the answer E is (A) 0 (B) 1 (C) 2 (D) 3 (E) 4

4. The number of questions with the answer A is (A) 4 (B) 5 (C) 6 (D) 7 (E) 8

Thanks Boing Boing

UPDATE: I did it! The solution is dadbeddedabadbadbabe. hehe.

USB Barbie

2005-05-07T21:30:00.000+10:00

Boing boing report on "the bestest Barbie doll mod ever".

moss graffiti

2005-05-05T22:04:00.000+10:00

This spider is made of moss. Find out how. thanks make blog

music researchers vs DRM

2005-05-05T21:53:00.000+10:00

I never thought of this before, but DRM can cause big problems for music researchers:

One of the big problems faced by Music Information Retrieval researchers is how to get good data for MIR experiments. Even a small scale music classification experiment may require 10,000 songs. At $1 per song, that's $10,000 just for the data for a small experiment. Experiments with larger collections (100,000 to 1,000,000 songs) become impossible.

The situation is about to get even worse. Soon, we may lose all programmatic access to our music. As more digital music is sold (iTunes) or rented (napster) more of our music is wrapped up in a DRM container. The only thing we can do with such music is to play it with an authorized player. Doing anything else with the bits is forbidden. Even trying to get at the bits is forbidden thanks to the DMCA

UPDATE: I submitted this story to Boing Boing and they ran it! Even gave me a backlink too. I wonder what that will do to my visitor counts. How many people follow "thanks" links anyways?

High-tech pen allows handwriting identification

2005-05-05T13:53:00.000+10:00

High-tech pen allows handwriting identification - ZDNet UK News:

Signing on the dotted line could soon become a way to digitally authenticate oneself, according to one company that has started selling a USB-connected pen that they claim can identify a user from the pressure and velocity of their handwriting.

ZDNet had problems with their pen however:

When demonstrated to ZDNet UK, the pen failed to work for the first two attempts of registering and authenticating, but the company insisted that this was uncommon.

"Occasionally there are a couple of glitches," the assistant said. But generally it's an excellent way of identifying yourself."

thanks engadget

How to address reviewer comments on your papers

2005-05-05T12:20:00.000+10:00

There is a very funny edition of the Piled Higher and Deeper comic about addressing reviewer comments on your academic papers. (If this doesn't mean anything to you, it may not be funny - you have been warned.)

Stick it to The Man! Don't Go to Arkansas to Tan!

2005-04-28T21:52:00.000+10:00

Via boing boing:

WAYNE: "Hi, do you require a thumbrpint scan to get a tan there?"

TANNING BIMBO: "Yes, sir, we do."

WAYNE: "OK, let me see if I understand this correctly. Is there a state or local law that requires you do this?"

TANNING BIMBO: "No, sir, it's for our computer systems"

WAYNE: "So you want to breach people's right to
privacy not because there is a state law that demands you take a
thumbprint, but because it's a company policy?"

TANNING BIMBO: "Yes, that's right."

WAYNE: "So you don't see anything wrong in insisting
that people give you a thumbprint -- a totally invasive request -- and
possibly even an illegal one, just because your company says so."

TANNING BIMBO: "No, sir, our systems require it. We
have fourteen locations and this is how we ensure that some one isn't
using another person's tanning plan."

WAYNE: "Why would you need to take a thumbprint scan of a person coming in once, for one tan, and paying for that tan right then?

TANNING BIMBO: "Our systems require it."

WAYNE: "Thanks, I just wanted to get this all straight before contacting the media."

Yeah, I'm going to trust some tanning salon with my thumbprint. That only leaves nine fingers for the rest of my shopping (remember: don't use the same password in more than one place).

URL ABCs

2005-04-28T14:51:00.000+10:00

These are my URL ABCs:

A is for au.search.yahoo.com - yahoo australia
B is for bloglines.com/myblogs - Bloglines rocks
C is for cebidae.blogspot.com - me
D is for del.icio.us/cebidae - me again
E is for ebay.com.au
F is for freefall.purrsia.com - great webcomic
G is for gmail.google.com/gmail - email
H is for ht.com.au - onlince store for computer stuff
I is for ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/dynhome.jsp - research
J is for jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2004/11/text_entry_epip.html - Good article on text entry for table pcs
K is for king-spot.com - online reading
L is for library.qut.edu.au - qut library
M is for my2.statcounter.com/project/standard/stats.php?project_id=422089 - my stats
N is for notebookdepot.com.au - I repaired my laptop
O is for olt.qut.edu.au/bee/EEP102 - I lecture this subject (you probably can't see this)
P is for putfile.com - online image and video storage
Q is for qutvirtual.qut.edu.au - qut administration stuff
R is for realestate.com.au - looking for somewhere new
S is for staticice.com.au/index.html - good for searching for cheap electronic gadgets
T is for tours.surroundpix.com.au/tumb_view_new.app?w=c&&property_id=68328&more=1&&pnum=451353# - I think my wife went here, must be a house or something
U is for uq.edu.au - university of queensland, good educational software prices
V is for vb.mvps.org/vfred/breaks.asp - what's broken from vb6 to vb.net (like i care)
W is for webscription.net - good publisher of ebooks (baen)
X is for xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi - currency conversion
Y is for yahoo.com.au - yahoo
Z is for zompist.com/excuse.html - the metaverse excuse-o-mat

Scoble, why can't I use my preferred input method?

2005-04-27T14:28:00.000+10:00

It seems that Microsoft isn't making it easy to allow third party screen-keyboard applications to hook into the Tablet Input Panel (TIP). For some examples of these type of applications see this great jkOnTheRun article. I prefer the MessagEase application, but jk has only great things to say about SHARK.

Anyhow, these alternative keyboard applications have been designed based on a significant amount of research on improving our input speed with a stylus over handwriting or qwerty onscreen keyboards, so they can be very useful if you use your Tablet PC in slate mode like me. However, from my conversations with the developers of MessagEase it appears that Microsoft isn't making it easy to allow third parties to hook into the TIP: (the link is here, but you may need to subscribe to their yahoo group to see it)

About integrating MEOK with TIP: we have asked Microsoft about this and their answer (so far) has been that they do NOT want third party keyboards to integrate with TIP. (Maybe the feedback of some of our users canconvince them otherwise).

This means that these application developers have to duplicate functionality just to get their applications to be as easy to call-up as the existing TIP. In particular, I would like to be able to make use of MessagEase in the floating TIP button that keeps getting in my way when I'm trying to work (In the mean time, I can probably work out how to turn it off, but I haven't as yet).

So basically, I'm putting this up here to ask Robert Scoble, Tablet PC Evangelist (amongst other things), why can't I use my preferred input method in the TIP?

UPDATE: I've sent an email ~~instead of~~ in addition to hoping Robert would notice this in his PubSub feeds.

wifi in freefall

2005-04-26T22:41:00.000+10:00

Hehe. Wireless gameplay can be fun I guess, but what would really be fun is wireless gameplay whilst plummeting towards earth.

cold sleep for mouseys

2005-04-26T22:24:00.000+10:00

Wow, they have managed to induce hibernation in mice. If we can do it to humans, not-so-boring space travel is in our sights! Thanks futurismic.

Impressive Home Theatre

2005-04-25T20:39:00.000+10:00

This is a fairly impressive home theatre, in an over-the-top, very tacky kind of way. Thanks, boing boing.

virtual fridge magnet fun

2005-04-25T11:50:00.000+10:00

This is fairly amusing, a virtual fridge with letter magnets you share with the rest of the internets. It can be fairly childish, and it is amusing when you are fighting with (many) other people for the same letters. Thanks, Nickster.

Caesars Palace to launch guest biometrics

2005-04-25T11:42:00.000+10:00

You probably already know I think this is a bad idea:

Pride believes the move to fingerprint biometrics makes it more convenient for customers who need not worry about lost keys.

Yeah, lets just start handing out our biometric information to anyone in the name of convenience. This just means that the security of any one application is only as good as the worst one using the same biometric.

3d face generation

2005-04-23T23:37:00.000+10:00

These people look interesting. They appear to be selling applications that can generate three dimensional models of human faces either at random or from a limited number of regular photographs. I don't know if this is impressive or not, or how well the applications actually work (I'm just going by their website), but random face generation certainly sounds fun. There's a video demonstration if you are interested, but I'm too lazy because apparently I would have to download a new codec to view it. It amuses me when companies think I should download more software just to view their advertising ('virtual tour' plugins are a good example of this concept).

Starting a fire with only a coke can and chocolate

2005-04-23T23:28:00.000+10:00

Simple really. Just polish the can using the chocolate and use the polished can to focus the sun on something flammable. Link. Thanks, make blog.

Who Needs The Kwik-E-Mart?

2005-04-23T13:29:00.000+10:00

I do...

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of songs from the Simpsons, complete with mp3s. I wonder how long it will stay online?

Don't Breathe the Moondust

2005-04-23T13:15:00.000+10:00

I've never thought of this before, but one of the problems with manned exploration of the moon and Mars is that the dust could be dangerous to humans. In fact, previus lunar astronauts had problems with "lunar dust hay fever:"

In 1972, Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmidt sniffed the air in his Lunar Module, the Challenger. "[It] smells like gunpowder in here," he said. His commander Gene Cernan agreed. "Oh, it does, doesn't it?"

The two astronauts had just returned from a long moonwalk around the Taurus-Littrow valley, near the Sea of Serenity. Dusty footprints marked their entry into the spaceship. That dust became airborne--and smelly.

Later, Schmidt felt congested and complained of "lunar dust hay fever." His symptoms went away the next day; no harm done. He soon returned to Earth and the anecdote faded into history.

The lunar problem was solely because of the small grain size of the lunar dust, which isn't actually poisonous per se. Bigger problems will come with Mars, where the heavy metals in the red soil may be toxic. And then theres the dust storms. Link to full story from science@nasa.

Freaky, hairy computer mice

2005-04-22T22:37:00.000+10:00

'nuff said. See Engadget for original link.

Keyword spotting in podcasts

2005-04-22T22:12:00.000+10:00

This is very interesting. TVEyes, a television and radio search company have brought out a search engine for podcasts based on what was said within the podcast, called podscope. Here's a couple of example searches.

Thanks, Danny Ayers.

About David Dean

2005-04-22T16:32:00.000+10:00

I hope that most of my 10 or so regulars will actually make use of this information, because if my only regulars already know me then that is a little sad... but oh well, here goes....

I am a PhD student in the Speech, Audio, Image and Video Technologies (SAIVT) laboratory at QUT's Garden Point Campus in Brisbane, Australia. My area of research is currently going by the title of "Audio-visual speaker recognition", and I am just past 1 year into researching this topic (which means I have done very little actual work :) ), and I have just less than 2 years to go. I have had one conference paper accepted for the AVSP 2005 conference upcoming in July in Canada, and I am hoping another conference paper submitted to ISSPA 2005 in August will be accepted.

More details to come in the future... (such as personal life - for hints see my flickr photos)

If you want to contact me, I can be reached at ddean at ieee dot org, and if you want to see things that I find interesting, but am too lazy to put up here, look at my del.icio.us feed.

'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' for Mobile Phones

2005-04-22T16:26:00.000+10:00

I found this on Engadget a couple of days ago, and thought it might be interesting to some people: OMRON Demonstrates 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' for Mobile Phones at Security Show Japan 2005

The new system features face-recognition technology for camera-enabled cell phones and other devices as an alternative to passwords or fingerprint scanners for security and access control. However, as mobile units enabled with the 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' require no additional hardware, 'OKAO' technology offers a biometric security software solution at a reduced cost.

Switching from Google to Yahoo

2005-04-07T22:14:00.000+10:00

For the past couple of weeks I have performed my searching tasks using Yahoo (not this page, far far too much crap) instead of Google.

Why: Yahoo likes me. When I do a yahoo search for David Dean, this site is the first result. I don't know where I am in Google's search for David Dean, but it isn't in the first few pages. Also Yahoo actually aknowledges that I have inbound links, whereas Google seems to think I don't have any. This may have something to do with the sandbox theory everyone is talking about, but to me it just seems rude: I know there are links out there to my blog, but Google is lying to me and telling me there isn't. Even if google wants to hold back those links for calculating pagerank, it should at least acknowledge they exist. It knows about me, so it must have some links to me right?

Everything is good so far, the search results seem to be just as good as Google's. I am missing the answers.com links in the search terms, and the lack of a usenet archive, but I'll persevere.

Determining streets from taxi location data

2005-04-07T22:06:00.000+10:00

Mikel Maron writes about using tracking data from Google Ridefinder to infer the street geometry of Manhattan. Looks like this:

Students from government schools do better at uni than private-school-students

2005-04-06T13:59:00.000+10:00

catallaxy » Should unis discriminate against students from private schools?

Do students from government schools do better at university than students from private schools? Consistent with the previous research, using Monash data Ian Dobson and Eric Skuja have found that the answer is yes (the full report can be bought from the People and Place website).

More pope-foolery

2005-04-06T11:41:00.000+10:00

Geese Aplenty says

Then I started thinking about the final episode of Buffy, where the good guys changed the rules and cast a spell that activated all the slayers-in-waiting. Suddenly, there were hundreds of superpowered girls ready to protect the earth and avenge the innocent. I'm forced to ask: why don't we do the same thing with the pope? Let's not just choose one of them. Let's find all the people who would be in line to become pope and just say 'You're all popes. Get on it.' We could give them a bunch of big hats and just like that! we've made the world a safer place for humanity.

He proposes they be called the "popepourri". Good name.

Finally, a bovine rectal palpation simulator

2005-04-05T11:32:00.000+10:00

Mark Frauenfelder reveals a little too much in the title of this post.

defective yeti's new job

2005-04-04T10:34:00.000+10:00

defective yeti:

Updates to this blog might be kind of sporadic from now on because I just found out that I'm the pope. I don't really know much about Catholicism, but always figured that popes were elected, or picked by a council, or the next in line just became magically popey when the old one died (like on Buffy The Vampire Slayer). Wrong on all accounts -- apparently my name was selected in a random drawing. I filled out a contest card at a '24 Fitness Gym' a few years ago for a chance to win a trip to Hawaii, but I didn't really read the fine print and was unaware that fourth prize was the papacy.

Don't you just hate the fine print. Gets you everytime.

Hilarious parody of Boing Boing

2005-04-01T21:38:00.000+10:00

boring boring: a directory of dull things

Also, suggest a tedious site:

We know how rote it is to share every single link you find with other people and we're really unable to stop you when you choose to share them with us. But when you send us links, you're wasting your time. The best way to have a satisfying experience interacting with Boring Boring is to try to do what we try to do: as little as possible.

Brisbane Olympics for 2020/24

2005-04-01T21:33:00.000+10:00

Peter Beatie says brisbane will look seriously at hosting the Olympics in 2020 or 24

"Looking at the countries currently in the queue to host the Olympics, Brisbane would have to wait at least 20 years."

Also, Pete would like Rugby to become an olympic sport

"The fifteen National Olympic Committees in the Oceania region including Fiji, New Zealand and Tonga would support the push for rugby"

Probably a good idea.

Text input methods for Tablet PC

2005-04-01T11:26:00.000+10:00

Seeing as how I'm going to get my Tablet PC soon (did I mention that?), I'm looking into input methods so I don't have to use the yucky keyboard anymore. jkOnTheRun has an good article about alternative text input methods for tablet pcs, and it appears that IBM's free SHARK is the winner, which jk also has a review of.

Tablet PC as virtual blackboard

2005-04-01T10:57:00.000+10:00

In an article about using Tablet PCs as a meeting management tool, Patrick Mayfield talks about using a Tablet PC and a projector as a virtual blackboard:

Anyway, at yesterday's meeting I added one additional piece
of technology - my beloved Tablet PC - and I believe it improved the
effectiveness of our day even further. With the Tablet we were able to:
Use blank slides in a hyperlinked PowerPoint presentation
as an 'electronic blackboard' (yes, the background was black) using ink
annotations;
Track discussion on topic 'sub' Mind Maps using the pen-enabled feature of Mind Manager X5; and
Ink annotate Word and Excel documents that we reviewed as a group. (These were proposed changes to key courseware elements in which we all had a keen interest.)
Plus, I am now able to circulate all this 'on-the-fly' notation to everyone at the meeting by email.

I think that that is possibly the coolest idea i've heard yet (I'm getting a tablet pc soon... ). Especially as you could just switch to a new slide when you finished the old one, and save all the work in the powerpoint.

via jkontherun

Car thieves take fingers

2005-04-01T10:53:00.000+10:00

One of the downsides to a biometric car lock is that you might lose your fingers when you get carjacked.

MindManager on Tablet PCs

2005-03-31T23:07:00.000+10:00

I think i might give Mindjet's Mind Manager software a go when I get my new tablet PC (soon... so soon...)

MindManager on Tablet PCs

Mind mapping, the technique our software is based on, was originally done with pen-and-paper. With the advent of the latest tablet PCs, mapping has come full circle as maps can once again be built “by hand.” But this time on a digital piece of paper to combine the best of both worlds: the freedom of the pen and the memory and flexibility of computers.

via the tablet pcs weblog

Common sense boosts speech software

2005-03-31T23:03:00.000+10:00

Common sense boosts speech software:

'One surprising thing about testing interfaces like this is that sometimes, even if they don't get the absolutely correct answer, users like them a lot better,' said Lieberman. 'This is because they make plausible mistakes, for example 'tennis clay court' for 'tennis player', rather than completely arbitrary mistakes that a statistical recognizer might make, for example 'tennis slayer',' he said.

'This suggests that there ought to be more research into how to get computers to make better mistakes,' said Lieberman.

via Jen's Weblog

Anti-Chewing-Tobacco Activists Speak Out Against Secondhand Spit

2005-03-31T14:32:00.000+10:00

The Onion | Anti-Chewing-Tobacco Activists Speak Out Against Secondhand Spit

'I don't give a shit what Skoal says, secondhand spit is a serious threat,' Pertwee said. 'At the very least, the industry needs to measure secondhand spit's effects on kids, who are closer to the ground, where all that spit ends up.'

P2P Quality Control

2005-03-22T10:09:00.000+10:00

Freedom to Tinker writes about Cornell researchers attempting to invent a form of quality control for P2P networks:

This scheme presents would-be adversaries with a dilemma. If Alice's votes are truthful, then if you want to mislead Alice about one file, you have to earn her trust by telling her the truth about other files. You can tell occasional lies, but on the whole you have to be a truth-teller. (You can achieve the same effect by lying about almost everything, and telling the truth about just one file. Then Alice will conclude that you are a habitual liar, and will count your votes with negative weight, giving credence to the opposite of what you say. Again, you have to provide Alice with many useful-to-her votes in order to trick her once.)

A Coder in Courierland

2005-03-21T12:52:00.000+10:00

A Coder in Courierland || kuro5hin.org:

Once upon a time, I was a coder not unlike yourself. My day consisted of coffee, perl and java hacking, meetings, and e-mail. I had a cubicle with fluorescent lighting, my own bookshelf and two computers. And I traded it all in.

Even before Office Space, white collar workers peered out the window (if they were so lucky) and imagined a more romantic life doing real work out under the sun.

Well, having no children, no great career ambition and no financial obligations more pressing than a crippling student loan, a year and a half ago, I decided to live this dream.

I became a bicycle messenger and now I'm here to report back.

Will biometric security harm users?

2005-03-20T21:14:00.000+10:00

vnunet.com writes in Will biometric security harm users?

Most worrying is the fact that biometric parameters are largely permanent. This is a limitation, not an advantage - if someone learns your password, you can change it, but you can't change your fingers if a criminal manages to replicate your fingerprint.

As Bruce Schneir has said, biometrics are not secrets. Remember that!

via Grits for Breakfast

Speech Jobs at Microsoft

2005-03-15T15:00:00.000+10:00

How to look for speech jobs

Submissions directly to me from my blog. I love getting submissions from people who see one of my open listings here and send me their resume. If you have your own blog, it lets me understand you better and perhaps suggest or refer you to somebody else.

Get to it! (I'll wait until I've finished my PhD)

Partial screen dimming reduces power consumption

2005-03-14T14:17:00.000+10:00

Tom's Hardware writes about a new development in selectively dimming screens on portable devices to save on battery life:

Ranganathan and his colleagues develop a method of lighting up only the portion of the screen that's being used - only the lines of text being read, for example. The display changes as the user scrolls up or down the page. The researchers conducted usability tests and found that people were neither using all of the properties of the display nor the full color spectrum or the full screen resolution. Dimming parts of the screen could mean decreasing the usability of a mobile device but Ranganathan said that 95 percent of users surveyed preferred the new interface, even without the energy-saving advantages.

Sounds interesting, but how is this implemented? I would think you would need some sort of gaze tracking to do this right.

Fujitsu palm vien authentication

2005-03-13T14:42:00.000+10:00

Engadget write about Fujitsu's palm vien authentication demo

The Engineer Online - Mind reader

2005-03-13T13:34:00.000+10:00

I have found an interesting article on the human factors in biometric systems:

...according to Angela Sasse, Professor of Human-Centred Technology in the department of computer science at University College, London, much work is needed to match the reality of human behaviour with the performance expected from the technology.

She has spent years studying human responses to biometric technology and says that unless more research is carried out into its limitations users may become unco-operative and any systems implemented may fail.

The article talks about choosing biometrics that are quick and work for everyone, and why that is very difficult.

Colorization Using Optimization

2005-03-10T14:43:00.000+10:00

Colorization Using Optimization

In this paper we present a simple colorization method that requires neither precise image segmentation, nor accurate region tracking. Our method is based on a simple premise: neighboring pixels in space-time that have similar intensities should have similar colors. We formalize this premise using a quadratic cost function and obtain an optimization problem that can be solved efficiently using standard techniques. In our approach an artist only needs to annotate the image with a few color scribbles, and the indicated colors are automatically propagated in both space and time to produce a fully colorized image or sequence. We demonstrate that high quality colorizations of stills and movie clips may be obtained from a relatively modest amount of user input

And you can even download the matlab scripts that do it.

via J-Walk blog.

Make an Infrared Webcam

2005-03-08T10:49:00.000+10:00

MAKE: Blog: Make an Infrared Webcam

Make an IR camera! Using a webcam, removing the lens and replacing it with material from photo negatives, it should block visible light and only let IR through. I haven't tried this yet, but I think I will. If I get this working I think I'll put it on my robot and see what types of things it does. I wonder if IR signals from my TV remote will show up.

Direct Link