Danny's Blog Attempt

OpenCV 2 Computer Vision Application Programming Cookbook

2011-06-11T07:39:00.006-03:00

So, I was reviewing this brand new OpenCV book, from Robert Laganière, which is just amazing. It seems to be the best update to Bradsky and Kaehler's well known "Learning OpenCV", as it focus on OpenCV 2.0.
For someone looking for an updated reference in OpenCV, one will find lots of the new C++ API coverage, as well as a nice chapter 8 covering "Detecting and Matching Interest Points", including FAST, SIFT, and SURF features, which are a must for such a fully featured library as OpenCV.
Besides the attention paid to new topics, there's a good setup explanation for Qt and Visual Studio.
All topics are covered in a straight to the point methodology which makes of it an easy guide to consult for several topics of OpenCV.
The only drawback of the book would be not even mentioning OpenCV's Python API, which is great for prototyping.
All in all, this is a great book and it came to fulfill the needs of an OpenCV 2.0 reference the computer vision community was looking for.

Palestras da CP 2010

2010-01-30T11:48:00.006-02:00

Caso alguém queira fazer download das palestras da Campus Party sobre realidade aumentada, os links estão aqui:

Realidade aumentada com ARToolkit

Processamento de Imagens para Robótica com OpenCV e RoboRealm

Realidade Aumentada com Unity3D (Unity3d Augmented Reality)

Se queres paz...

2010-01-04T16:43:00.001-02:00

preserva a criação. Eis o tema escolhido por sua Santidade, o Papa Bento XVI, para o XLIII Dia Mundial da Paz. Seguem alguns trechos desta atualíssima mensagem (para a mensagem na íntegra, cliquem aqui):

"Por ocasião do início do Ano Novo, desejo expressar os mais ardentes votos de paz a todas as comunidades cristãs, aos responsáveis das nações, aos homens e mulheres de boa vontade do mundo inteiro. Para este XLIII Dia Mundial da Paz, escolhi o tema: Se quiseres cultivar a paz, preserva a criação. O respeito pela criação reveste-se de grande importância, designadamente porque «a criação é o princípio e o fundamento de todas as obras de Deus»

...

Muitas são hoje as oportunidades científicas e os potenciais percursos inovadores, mediante os quais é possível fornecer soluções satisfatórias e respeitadoras da relação entre o homem e o ambiente. Por exemplo, é preciso encorajar as pesquisas que visam identificar as modalidades mais eficazes para explorar a grande potencialidade da energia solar. A mesma atenção se deve prestar à questão, hoje mundial, da água e ao sistema hidrogeológico global, cujo ciclo se reveste de primária importância para a vida na terra, mas está fortemente ameaçado na sua estabilidade pelas alterações climáticas. De igual modo deve-se procurar apropriadas estratégias de desenvolvimento rural centradas nos pequenos cultivadores e nas suas famílias, sendo necessário também elaborar políticas idóneas para a gestão das florestas, o tratamento do lixo, a valorização das sinergias existentes no contraste às alterações climáticas e na luta contra a pobreza. São precisas políticas nacionais ambiciosas, completadas pelo necessário empenho internacional que há-de trazer importantes benefícios sobretudo a médio e a longo prazo. Enfim, é necessário sair da lógica de mero consumo para promover formas de produção agrícola e industrial que respeitem a ordem da criação e satisfaçam as necessidades primárias de todos. A questão ecológica não deve ser enfrentada apenas por causa das pavorosas perspectivas que a degradação ambiental esboça no horizonte; o motivo principal há-de ser a busca duma autêntica solidariedade de dimensão mundial, inspirada pelos valores da caridade, da justiça e do bem comum. Por outro lado, como já tive ocasião de recordar, a técnica «nunca é simplesmente técnica; mas manifesta o homem e as suas aspirações ao desenvolvimento, exprime a tensão do ânimo humano para uma gradual superação de certos condicionamentos materiais. Assim, a técnica insere-se no mandato de “cultivar e guardar a terra” (cf. Gn 2, 15) que Deus confiou ao homem, e há-de ser orientada para reforçar aquela aliança entre ser humano e ambiente em que se deve reflectir o amor criador de Deus»

...

É cada vez mais claro que o tema da degradação ambiental põe em questão os comportamentos de cada um de nós, os estilos de vida e os modelos de consumo e de produção hoje dominantes, muitas vezes insustentáveis do ponto de vista social, ambiental e até económico. Torna-se indispensável uma real mudança de mentalidade que induza a todos a adoptarem novos estilos de vida, «nos quais a busca do verdadeiro, do belo e do bom e a comunhão com os outros homens, em ordem ao crescimento comum, sejam os elementos que determinam as opções do consumo, da poupança e do investimento».[26] Deve-se educar cada vez mais para se construir a paz a partir de opções clarividentes a nível pessoal, familiar, comunitário e político. Todos somos responsáveis pela protecção e cuidado da criação. Tal responsabilidade não conhece fronteiras. Segundo o princípio de subsidiariedade, é importante que cada um, no nível que lhe corresponde, se comprometa a trabalhar para que deixem de prevalecer os interesses particulares. Um papel de sensibilização e formação compete de modo particular aos vários sujeitos da sociedade civil e às organizações não-governamentais, empenhados com determinação e generosidade na difusão de uma responsabilidade ecológica, que deveria aparecer cada vez mais ancorada ao respeito pela «ecologia humana».

...

Assim, proteger o ambiente natural para construir um mundo de paz é dever de toda a pessoa. Trata-se de um desafio urgente que se há-de enfrentar com renovado e concorde empenho; é uma oportunidade providencial para entregar às novas gerações a perspectiva de um futuro melhor para todos. Disto mesmo estejam cientes os responsáveis das nações e quantos, nos diversos níveis, têm a peito a sorte da humanidade: a salvaguarda da criação e a realização da paz são realidades intimamente ligadas entre si. Por isso, convido todos os crentes a elevarem a Deus, Criador omnipotente e Pai misericordioso, a sua oração fervorosa, para que no coração de cada homem e de cada mulher ressoe, seja acolhido e vivido o premente apelo: Se quiseres cultivar a paz, preserva a criação."

Visita ao CPTEC

2009-12-03T22:34:00.006-02:00

Nossa, hoje fiquei realmente impressionado. Graças ao fenomenal professor Jairo Panetta, pude ir conhecer o Centro de Previsões de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos do INPE, um dos poucos lugares com supercomputadores aqui no Brasil.
Foi um prazer conhecer desde o SX3 ao Cluster 1100, passando pelo Tatuí e outros. Queria deixar os meus parabéns para toda a equipe de pesquisadores e funcionários do CPTEC.
Sei que este post merece ser bem maior, mas queria pelo menos agora deixar algo registrado aqui. :)
Iremos tentar colocar parte do modelo de previsão de tempo rodando em um cluster de PlayStations 3, na arquitetura Cell. Por favor, confiram as novidades no site do projeto: http://code.google.com/p/ps3hacking

VisionBlaster lança código de integração entre Unity3D e headtracking

2009-10-27T23:19:00.003-02:00

A empresa que desenvolve jogos em Unity3D em São Paulo, a VisionBlaster (www.visionblaster.com), lançou o código fonte do streamer de 6 graus de liberdade com a FaceAPI. Com este código pode-se observar headtracking e uma espécie de realidade aumentada em que o personagem imita a movimentação do usuário. O link para o post encontra-se aqui.

Games and Teaching

2009-10-10T15:10:00.008-03:00

Just as a remark, I'd like to put two links here that deal with the subject of using games in learning and teaching. I see an enormous potential, but I'd like to dive in a bit more before getting to conclusions. Please comment in case you have some idea or other references:
A book about it Games and simulations in online learning: research and development frameworks
An article discussing the fear of games: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0830.pdf
Another great one: https://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/EducatorResources/YourLearningJourney/CreativityandInnovation/jrte-40-1-023-gro.pdf

Now, some focus on useful games: http://www.gamesforchange.org/

Another great example of using games is showing abuse felt by some people and letting the whole world know about it. I personally enjoyed the idea of Darfur is Dying. Check the cool game here.

It seems Channel 4 has some experience in it: http://www.channel4learning.com/
There's an article about it here:

Unity3d em São Paulo

2009-09-10T23:09:00.002-03:00

Bem, já existe uma empresa trabalhando com Unity3D em São Paulo:
http://visionblaster.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=11&Itemid=59&lang=pt
"A VisionBlaster cria jogos em Unity3D de acordo com os seus requisitos, seja um AdverGame, algum jogo de caráter educativo ou mesmo algum aplicativo cujo visual precisa ser feito em 3 dimensões (3D)."
Outras empresas, como a AlphaChannel já estão dando treinamento: http://www.alphachannel.com.br/noticia.php?id=259 . Esta tecnologia realmente promete.

Filtrando imagens apelativas com 'Olha o nível!'

2009-04-13T11:06:00.004-03:00

Sabe-se que atualmente muitos seqüestros de crianças estão ligados à pornografia infantil. O próprio artigo 70 do Estatuto da Criança deixa claro:

'Art. 70. É dever de todos prevenir a ocorrência de ameaça ou violação dos direitos da criança e do adolescente. (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente - LEI Nº 8.069, DE 13 DE JULHO DE 1990.)'

Visando evitar a dissipação de tais imagens, bem como diminuir o caráter apelativo de diversos sites através de imagens de violência e lembrando que a internet é uma mídia interativa, o serviço 'Olha o nível!' foi criado.

Através do site: http://olha-o-nivel.appspot.com/ , pode-se baixar um plugin para o Firefox que bloqueia o aparecimento de tais imagens em uma navegação, de forma colaborativa. Assim que alguém que tenha visto alguma imagem apelativa na internet, pode reportar tal imagem para o site (clicando com o botão direito e selecionando 'Olha o nível!') de forma que outras pessoas que tenham instalado a ferramenta evitarão automaticamente o carregamento destas imagens. Desta forma, as estatísticas de carregamento de imagens apelativas irão diminuir, forçando os produtores de conteúdo a mudar o enfoque de seus sites. É claro, a ferramenta só fará sentido com um número razoável de usuários.

De qualquer forma, fica a dica: http://olha-o-nivel.appspot.com/

Python mouse move in 5 lines of code (Linux only)

2009-03-24T11:59:00.002-03:00

from Xlib import X, display
d = display.Display()
s = d.screen()
root = s.root
root.warp_pointer(300,300)
d.sync()

ImageJ LiveWire plugin updates

2009-02-27T22:36:00.001-03:00

Well, it's been around a year... or two... :)
It was about time to update LiveWire to catch up with newer versions of ImageJ.
The new release is here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ivussnakes
For a more updated documentation, one should check: http://imagejdocu.tudor.lu/doku.php?id=plugin:segmentation:livewire_plugin:start
I hope it is still useful. Please, write me back in case you've found some installation problems.
I'm also looking for someone who wishes to integrate it to the official tree of ImageJ.

In the middle of bits, PWMs, wires, resin, and electromagnetic waves, TORP (CP01) was born...

2009-01-26T20:05:00.007-02:00

January, 25th, around 8:00 pm, during Campus Party 2009, that's when TORP was firstly fully assembled for the first time.
The project aimed at building the first humanoid open source robot in Brazil and it was called TORP (www.theopenrobotproject.org).
The idea was to create a robot that would work as a study platform whose modules would be able to be hot plugged and they could also be interchangeable, since it's hard to unplug a hand from one robot and to couple it to another because of the lack of standards.
Without prior support from public research funds, CP01 (the name of the first assembled version of TORP) was sponsored by several institutes and industries, namely: E3 Futura, Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, Universidade do Estado de São Paulo, Micropress, RIMA and Campus Party.
For more information about the project, I'd suggest taking a look at http://www.theopenrobotproject.org/ .
I'd really like to thank everyone from the team (please remind me if I've forgotten someone, specially contributers from Campus Party, whose names I couldn't take note):
Alan Morgensztern, Alexandre Simões, Esther Colombini, Guilherme Andrade, Jackson Paul Matsuura, Kauê Silva, Maira, Marcelo Franchin, Melissa Sanchez Freitas, Paulo Vitor Lima, Rafael Ribeiro da Silva, Rafael Toschi Chiafarelli, Ronaldo Carrion, Victor Nalin, and my girlfriend Kathy for all the support. Thanks for my bro and Dé for being there as well :)
And thank You, God, of course, for everything running smoothly :)

If there's anyone interested in the lecture about Computer Vision, here's a link to it (Portuguese only... in case you want it in English, please leave a comment):
http://www.slideshare.net/dannyxyz22/campus-party-computer-vision-presentation

I've tried to gather all news about the project here:
http://tecnologia.terra.com.br/interna/0,,OI3470641-EI12933,00.html
http://oglobo.globo.com/tecnologia/mat/2009/01/25/apresentado-na-campus-party-primeiro-robo-livre-do-mundo-754136596.asp
http://www.gluon.com.br/blog/2009/01/25/noite-de-premiacao-na-campus-party-2009/
http://colunistas.ig.com.br/tecnologia/2009/01/24/cp01-nasce-ao-vivo-na-campus-party/
http://www.ita.br/online/2009/noticias09/campusparty.htm
http://www.unesp.br/int_noticia_2imgs.php?artigo=4041

For photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33142604@N00/tags/campus/

Please, leave your comment about TORP, we'd love to hear your feedback!

TORP - The Open Robot Project

2009-01-15T02:16:00.001-02:00

So, just in case some of you might be interested, here's a link to the official site of TORP - The Open Robot Project (http://www.theopenrobotproject.org/).
Make sure you'll check it out at Campus Party Brasil '09 :)

Compiling OpenCV for Gumstix

2009-01-13T23:01:00.001-02:00

It's common sense that OpenCV is one of the best computer vision libraries available nowadays and it's certainly very useful to benefit from it in embedded environments. There's a trade-off between locally processing images and uploading them for remote processing, but some algorithms might as well run smoothly on embedded devices.

In order to compile OpenCV for Gumstix, firstly one needs to download it from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=22870

The version I've testes was opencv-linux 1.1pre1, but I believe any other release will barely follow the same ideas provided here.
After the file has been extracted (tar -xzvf opencv-1.1pre1.tar.gz), one should configure the environment variables for the compiler:

export CC=/home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc
export CXX=/home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-g++

$ ./configure --host=arm-linux --build=i686-linux --prefix=/home/developer/opencvgum --without-gthread --without-gtk --without-python --disable-apps

Notice that we've defined that the prefix=/home/developer/opencvgum is the place it will be installed when we type 'make install'. By the way, make sure you have created this directory.
Be sure to substitute the /home/developer path to your user path, as well as the /gumstix/gumstix-oe/ to your installed gumstix environment.
We've also disabled the gtk environment since we are not interested in running the GUI applications inside the gumstix. I've also disabled python and building the applications.
Now that configuration has been successful. Type:

$ make

And then:

$ make install

If everything went well, you'll have the binaries and samples installed to /home/developer/opencvgum
Now, it would be useful to try and compile the samples so that we are sure they will run in the Gumstix.
In order to build them, go to /home/developer/opencvgum/share/opencv/samples/c and edit the build_all.sh script.
Make it executable:

$chmod +x ./build_all.sh

And then change all gcc and g++ to its arm-likes. My build_all.sh ended up like this:

#!/bin/sh
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/home/developer/opencvgum/lib/pkgconfig/

if [[ $# > 0 ]] ; then
        base=`basename $1 .c`
        echo "compiling $base"
        /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc -ggdb `pkg-config opencv --cflags --libs` $base.c -o $base
else
        for i in *.c; do
            echo "compiling $i"
            /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-gcc -ggdb `pkg-config --cflags opencv` -o `basename $i .c` $i `pkg-config --libs opencv`;
        done
        for i in *.cpp; do
            echo "compiling $i"
            /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-g++ -ggdb `pkg-config --cflags opencv` -o `basename $i .cpp` $i `pkg-config --libs opencv`;
        done
fi

Notice that we've also defined the export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/home/developer/opencvgum/lib/pkgconfig/ so that the correct includes and linked libraries are built correctly.
Run this command and you'll notice the executable files will be created. I think that if you don't disable the flag "--disable-apps" in the configure application and make this change to the build_all.sh earlier it might also work.

Well, now that OpenCV has been built, you should be able to copy it to your gumstix. There's a small problem though. If you compact the files, you'll notice it's very big, so, a good idea is to delete a couple files we are sure we are not going to use.
An advice would be to delete some of the haarcascades.

Choose some of them you are sure you won't use, like the haarcascade_profileface.xml inside the data sub-directory, for instance. Delete a couple others as well.
This way, you'll be able to create a .tar.gz of around 6.5MB.
When it's done, copy it to your gumstix through scp:

$scp opencvgum.tar.gz root@192.168.YOUR-GUM.IP:/tmp

Make sure you copy it to /tmp, because you'll probably be out of space copying it somewhere else.
Extract it and then try to run one of the demos that does not use windows... the ./letter_recog application, for instance... it's located at:
/tmp/opencvgum/share/opencv/samples/c

Well, you might be able to see it running. Else, some libstdc++.so is missing error could also happen.
This means you don't have this library installed. One easy way to install it is through the command

$ipkg install libstdc++6

In case some other libraries are missing as well, repeat the procedure with their names. Notice that some packages have odd names.
For instance, if you had typed:
$ root@gumstix-custom-verdex:/usr/share$ ipkg install libstdc++

Then you'd have received the following message:

Nothing to be done
An error ocurred, return value: 4.
Collected errors:
Cannot find package libstdc++.
Check the spelling or perhaps run 'ipkg update'

Actually the name of the library is libstdc++6. Make sure you type the correct library name.

Well, in case libstdc++ is really installed, you might as well get some error like:

./letter_recog: error while loading shared libraries: libcxcore.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

It means the LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not pointing at your opencv libraries.
Simply type:

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/tmp/opencvgum/lib/

You will eventually be able to run your letter_recognition application.
Well, in case you want to run other applications, like the face recognition one, make sure you disable the GUI related functions and write your results to files.
We'll be able to see it working at Campus-Party Brasil
Make sure you'll be there!

Gumstix UVC drivers

2009-01-13T20:27:00.001-02:00

This post describes gumstix uvc driver installation for a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000. It follows this wiki page as a guideline.
It requires that the steps in this wiki have been performed.
Firstly check-out the old driver sources from:

svn co svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk

After file checkout, one should change the Makefile.
Change the KERNEL_DIR var to point to your gumstix kernel path, as in:

KERNEL_DIR    :=
/home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/work/gumstix-custom-verdex-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/gumstix-kernel-2.6.21-r1/linux-2.6.21/

Define the CROSS_COMPILE var:

CROSS_COMPILE   := /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-

Change make lines so that they include your CROSS_COMPILE and ARCH=arm vars:
From:
       @(make -C $(KERNEL_DIR) M=$(PWD) CROSS_COMPILE=$(CROSS_COMPILE) modules)

to:

       @(make -C $(KERNEL_DIR) M=$(PWD) ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=$(CROSS_COMPILE) modules)

And from:
       @(make -C $(KERNEL_DIR) M=$(PWD) INSTALL_MOD_DIR=$(INSTALL_MOD_DIR) INSTALL_MOD_PATH=$(INSTALL_MOD_PATH) modules_install)
to:
       @(make -C $(KERNEL_DIR) M=$(PWD) ARCH=arm
INSTALL_MOD_DIR=$(INSTALL_MOD_DIR) INSTALL_MOD_PATH=$(INSTALL_MOD_PATH)
modules_install)

Now, type make uvcvideo
The file uvcvideo.ko is built. This file should be copied to /lib/modules/2.6.21/kernel/drivers/media/video/uvcvideo.ko

Nevertheless, if you type make, you'll notice a message like:

-------------------------------- WARNING ---------------------------------------
The USB Video Class driver has moved to http://linuxtv.org/.
Using the Berlios SVN repository is now deprecated.
Please check http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/ for download instructions.
If you really want to compile this historical version, run 'make uvcvideo'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
which tells us that we are using deprecated files for the driver.
I've tried to use the latest drivers from the Mercurial clone repository, but I'm getting this error:

"/home/developer/uvc-new/uvcvideo-90c7dc24fb4d/v4l/cx18-driver.h:65:4: error: #error "This driver requires kernel PCI support." "

In order to build it, I've changed the root Makefile to:

CROSS_COMPILE   := /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/cross/bin/arm-angstrom-linux-gnueabi-

install:
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_DIR) ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=$(CROSS_COMPILE) install

%::
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_DIR) ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=$(CROSS_COMPILE) $(MAKECMDGOALS)

And the v4l/Makefile to:

OUTDIR ?= /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/work/gumstix-custom-verdex-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/gumstix-kernel-2.6.21-r1/image/lib/modules/2.6.21/build
SRCDIR ?= /home/developer/gumstix/gumstix-oe/tmp/work/gumstix-custom-verdex-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/gumstix-kernel-2.6.21-r1/image/lib/modules/2.6.21/source

I've tried to issue some "make -i" command, but I doubt it will work. If you've made any progress with the new drivers, feel free to comment.
The old drivers have worked pretty fine as well.

Adobe Flex and Flash Face detection library

2008-12-04T14:15:00.002-02:00

I'm interested in developing a flex or flash library that could be used for face detection or augmented reality. I haven't found any on the web so far.
Just wondering how many of you are also looking for it.
[]'s

EHCI 0.5 is now ready for PyCon Brasil 2008

2008-09-17T23:24:00.004-03:00

Well, it was about time :)
Ehci 0.5 has just been released and it now features Python bindings.

It's pretty easy to use EHCI in Python. The following snippet shows how to do it in 6 lines:

import ehci

ehci.ehciInit()

while(1):
      ehci.ehciLoop(1,0)
      x,y,width,height = ehci.getHeadBounds()
      print "Coord (",x,",",y,") width ",width,"height ",height

These two videos give some idea of EHCI integration with Panda3D:

To download it, check http://code.google.com/p/ehci

EHCI Final Report

2008-08-29T00:57:00.010-03:00

Official EHCI project site

Well, it's the end of Google Summer of Code, and I need to say that it was great to be with Natural User Interface Group and with Google support.

As one of the last features that was missing was the ability to browse through an image with the hands, I'd like to post this video here:

The most recent updates since last blog post are the windows binaries, as well as new hand interaction demo.

Windows binaries 6 degrees of freedom head tracking download. This version was compiled without OpenMP support, so it's running way slower than the source one compiled with OpenMP support. It means that it won't work as fine as in Linux.
UPDATE: This new version supports OpenMP

From the updated planning, the features in red have been completed since it was re-planned: (features in blue have been removed from project planning)

1st Month:

Hand and Head tracking. 3D head tracking class. Small OpenGL demos.

2nd Month:

Body tracking, and gesture recognition classes. Zoom and rotation features. Documentation of classes through tutorials, code documentation and demos

3rd Month:

Motion flow and 3d model wireframe tracking classes. Documentation. Project packaging through Google Summer of Code and Natural User Interface sites.

Packaging in Natural User Interface site is supposed to happen in September 3th.

In the end, most of the initially planned features have been implemented and documented.

I'd like to thank:
Everyone from OpenCV project (for creating this amazing library)
Pawel Solyga, NUI (for being such a great mentor)
Thomás Cavichioli Dias, ITA (for teaching me how to use OpenCV as well as for giving me depth information on how to use and create cascade classifiers)
Juan Wachs, BGU, Israel (for creating hand detection cascade)
Stefano Fabri, Sapienza - Università di Roma (for all the interesting papers, articles and attention)
Roman Stanchak, OpenCV (for all the help with Swig and Python interfaces)
Len Van Der Westhuizen (for creating and releasing the head model used throughout the project)
Vincent Lepetit, Computer Vision laboratory, EPFL (for the great survey and advices)
Mike Nigh (for the Irrlicht work)
Jared Contrascere, Bowling Green (for the OpenCV/Ehci/Windows work)
my professors at Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (for all the knowledge taught)
Johnny Chung Lee, Carnegie Mellon (for his great ideas with Wii)
everyone else that I'm unfortunately forgetting, and
my girlfriend Kathy, family and friends (for supporting me through the project),
and, of course, God, Who has given me the strength, love and support to carry this project!

EHCI Updates - Version 0.4 has just been released

2008-08-06T02:19:00.013-03:00

(check project site at http://code.google.com/p/ehci)
EHCI (Enhanced Human Computer Interface) now features packaging through a tarball. Installation is supposed to be as simple as configure, make, make install. Besides easier installation, the new version has several features, like:

- New features:

Hand detection/tracking: now users can interact with the computer using their hands (notice that no accessory besides an ordinary web cam is being used).

The result can also be seen in a noisier environment in this video.

Enhanced lightning model/more robust algorithm: this video shows the new lightning model, as well as the 6 degrees of freedom head tracking in a noisy environment.

- New API:

EHCI's new API focuses simple functions, so that developers can completely abstract the OpenCV layer. Example functions:

while(1){
ehciLoop(EHCI2DFACEDETECT,0);
getHeadBounds(&upperX,&upperY,&headWidth,&headHeight);
}

- Installation procedure:

Autotools based installation is now available: a simple ./configure ./make ./make install should be enough to get developers able to use EHCI library
A distribution tarball is easily downloadable from ehci project site

- Updated documentation:

new demos (simple2d and simple3d)
cleaned up code (boxView3d and 6dofhead have been cleaned up)
tutorials have been posted on project wiki
the project now features doxygen documentation

- Robust algorithms:

6 degrees of freedom now considers up to 200 feature points to track, which provides better tracking
Enhancements to the algorithm have been researched and are on the way and documented

- Lightning model working:

6 degrees of freedom sample now considers normals for accurate lighting
Blending functions as well as a single glut layer have been added

- Tagged versions:

SVN tag directory is being updated accordingly

- Python bindings:

Python bindings are on the way. SWIG is being researched, as well as some drafts have been developed.

ITA Latex Users Society - ITALUS

2008-07-11T00:30:00.004-03:00

Queria deixar um link para o projeto de uso de latex no ITA. Aqui vai uma breve descrição e o link:

http://code.google.com/p/italus

Este projeto visa difundir o uso de latex em teses do Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, tanto para alunos da graduação como para alunos do mestrado e doutorado. O trabalho hospedado neste site é composto por templates para geração das teses nos formatos requisitados pela instituição.
Conta-se com o apoio de todos os usuários, tanto na requisição de novas funcionalidades, como para atender a uma nova especificação do ITA, ou mesmo para "codificar" estas alterações.

Adding keywords to eclipse rcp preferences lookup (search text field)

2008-07-08T16:14:00.007-03:00

One might need to add more words to eclipse preference search bar while developing an RCP application. By default, it only looks up for the preference page title. In order to add new keywords, one needs to add a keyword reference and a keyword extension point.
Supposing the plugin.xml has the following sample page:

<extension point="org.eclipse.ui.preferencePages">
<page class="testercp.preferences.SamplePreferencePage" id="testercp.preferences.SamplePreferencePage" name="Sample Preferences">
</page>
</extension>

Add a keyword reference through:

<extension point="org.eclipse.ui.preferencePages">
<page class="testercp.preferences.SamplePreferencePage" id="testercp.preferences.SamplePreferencePage" name="Sample Preferences">
<keywordreference id="marte.keywords.preferences">
</keywordreference>
</page></extension>

And then, add the keyword extension point as:

<extension point="org.eclipse.ui.keywords">
<keyword id="marte.keywords.preferences" label="velocity stopping point">
</keyword></extension>

Now, if anyone types velocity, stopping, or point it will bring the SamplePreferencePage.

There's also a way to add these extensions through the wizards.

EHCI Upate - 6 degrees of freedom head tracking

2008-07-07T00:34:00.009-03:00

I'm posting here some updates of the Google Summer of Code EHCI project. This part of the project deals with head tracking with 6 degrees of freedom, a problem often referred as finding the pose of an object. Since no light is being generated from the head - as in some types of infra-red tracking - it needs to rely on natural features of the head. This implementation tries to follow the excellent work from Luca Vacchetti, Vincent Lepetit, and Pascal Fua, from the Computer Vision Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), "Fusing Online and Offline Information for Stable 3D Tracking in Real-Time". The paper is available here

There's a video on youtube showing current progress.

Details

The algorithm starts automatically looking for a head in the image, through the famous Viola Jones algorithm.

After finding the head position, a feature tracking algorithm is started. It uses cvFindGoodFeatures to track in the region of interest defined by the head width and height. When these features are discovered, they are mapped back to a head model (I'm currently using a cylindrical model, but I plan to use the excellent head model by Len Van Der Westhuiz en, which is available here, thanks Len!).

When the head model 3d points are known, as well as its corresponding 2d image points, DeMenthon's POSIT algorithm is used to find the initial pose estimation.

After that, an optical flow algorithm by Lucas-Kanade is used is used to track the points along the frames. These points are mapped back to original 3d points and the pose matrix is updated.

The source code shows how to deal with several important OpenCV functions, such as cvGoodFeaturesToTrack, cvCreatePOSITObject, cvPOSIT, and cvCalcOpticalFlowPyrLK, as well as some interesting OpenGL features like loading custum Model View, and Projection matrixes through glLoadMatrix.

I'd really like to thank God and everyone that has helped me develop this work with invaluable tutorials, papers, 3d models, and e-mails,

Links

Posit tutorial: http://opencvlibrary.sourceforge.net/Posit

Explanation of the raw format: http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/dataformats/povraw/

The full report is available at http://code.google.com/p/ehci/wiki/6dofhead

ITA Cell Research and the Cell Ecosystem

2008-06-27T21:55:00.002-03:00

Well, it's nice to have an opportunity to show ITA's progress with STI Cell research. In June, 23rd, 2008 we had the pleasure to receive the IBMer Ph. D. Robert M. Szabo, from Cell Ecosystem Development Systems and Mr. Flavio Carazato, from University Relations of IBM Brazil.
A presentation with ITA research is available here. Besides showing our work we have also received important Cell related information, as accessing a QS20/QS22 (double floating precision!) cluster at GaTech. A full report of the visit is available in our wiki at http://code.google.com/p/ps3h acking/wiki/2008BobReport. Thanks to Robert Szabo, Flavio Carazato, and all researchers and professors from ITA.

EHCI Updates

2008-06-05T20:43:00.003-03:00

This week I've been working on hand tracking. I've read some important paper about the subject and I've installed softwares that deal with it. Both of them are reported at http://code.google.com/p/ehci/wiki/HandTracking . Besides that I've made some small videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1WNb0g0f9Q and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmh-mZFxWns) showing the behaviour of "Flock of Features" and Viola-Jones Haar Cascades. Both of them yield very good results, each one with a different goal.

While using the Viola-Jones Cascades, I've applied Juan P. Wachs xml training file. This file's been trained with more than 1000 images so that the A gesture (a closed hand pointing upwards) could be effectively recognized. Thanks to Juan for making the file available. Besides that I'd also like to thank Dr. Vincent Lepetit for great directions to follow.

I'm now studying Viola-Jones haartraining in more detail to see if the same approach for generating the closed hand feature can be used for detecting open hands, as well as detection in other directions. I'm also willing to test some 3d model tracking.

Some other minor updates are my faculty's and NUI Group's logos appearing in the front page of the project.

When I get hand detection finished, at least for two closed hands, zooming and rotating features will be able to be implemented, which are the goals of the first month.

EHCI Update

2008-05-31T16:50:00.003-03:00

This blog entry is about an update to GSoC project Enhanced Human-Computer Interface.

Updates:

Better draft documentation - videos and screenshots - on HeadTracking at http://code.google.com/p/ehci/wiki/HeadTracking
Code commited to svn: http://code.google.com/p/ehci/source/browse
Created a Makefile: http://code.google.com/p/ehci/source/browse/trunk/drafts/boxView3d/Makefile
Run script that will hopefully run on Linux and OSX: http://code.google.com/p/ehci/source/browse/trunk/drafts/boxView3d/run.sh

Videos:

Enabling gnome-terminal shortcut under compiz

2008-05-27T21:10:00.002-03:00

Just in case the shortcut you've set up for opening your terminal is not working under compiz, try to do the following:

Open gconf-editor (in case you don't have it, look for it in your application manager (apt-get,synaptic,yum,etc))
Go to apps->compiz->general->allscreens->options and then, look for command_terminal and write 'gnome-terminal' (quotes for clarity)
You should be all set :)

I hope that helps,
be with God

Gnuplot in Action - Book review

2008-05-12T22:41:00.005-03:00

A great reference about gnuplot is Philipp Janert's Gnuplot in Action. This book explains straight to the point gnuplot concepts, like ploting funtions, reading from a file, selecting columns for plot, exporting plots as images, and creating macros, right in the beginning.
Interesting features, like plotting data that's not sorted as well as multi-line records are also covered.
Smoothing a line with bezier from data obtained from a file "text.txt" is explained to be as simple as:

plot "test.txt" smooth bezier

This book also shows how to create logarithmic plots using gnuplot, with sidebar explanations included.
A crazy example showing how to plot a unix password files is presented, so that some string related data can be shown. Hot keys and mouse are also covered.

There's an entire chapter dedicated to plot styles. Errorbars are covered in the same chapter.

Another very interesting chapter is the one that deals with 3D plots through surface plots (splot) and contour functions.
A nice explanation about terminals as well as macros, scripting and batch operations is done at the end.

Overall, Gnuplot In Action is a depth reference about gnuplot and everyone who needs a deep understanding of this great tool should have this book for handy reference.

In order to evaluate the book, one can get the freely available sample chapter Essential Gnuplot.
One can also get the software through http://www.gnuplot.info/ or by using one's preferred package manager.

Generating keypresses on Linux

2008-04-30T23:25:00.004-03:00

I was trying to simulate keypress events for some javascript based webpage - actually it was typing the whole alphabet - and I came up with the following code, using Xlib:

#include X11/extensions/XTest.h
#define XK_LATIN1
#define XK_MISCELLANY
#define XK_XKB_KEYS
#include X11/keysymdef.h
#include X11/Xlib.h
#include stdio.h
#include stdlib.h
#include sys/time.h

//notice that libraries are lacking < > because of html tags
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
Display* pDisplay = XOpenDisplay( ":0.0" );

KeySym key[] = { XK_a,XK_b,XK_c,XK_d,XK_e,
XK_f,XK_g,XK_h,XK_i,XK_j,
XK_k,XK_l,XK_m,XK_n,XK_o,
XK_p,XK_q,XK_r,XK_s,XK_t,
XK_u,XK_v,XK_w,XK_x,XK_y,
XK_z};

system("sleep 4");
int i;
for( i = 0; i < 26; i++ )
{
XTestFakeKeyEvent ( pDisplay, XKeysymToKeycode( pDisplay, key[i] ),
True, 0 );
XTestFakeKeyEvent ( pDisplay, XKeysymToKeycode( pDisplay, key[i] ),
False, 0 );
}

if( pDisplay == NULL ) return 1;

XCloseDisplay(pDisplay);
return 0;
}

In order to compile it, just run:

gcc generateKeys.c -lX11 -lXtst

I hope it helps!

Fisl 9.0

2008-04-21T23:49:00.004-03:00

Fiquei na arena de programação, mais especificamente verificando as novidades de desenvolvimento Open Source para Internet Tablets e celulares da Nokia.
O sistema operacional para os modelos 770, N800, N810 e N810 WiMax é o Maemo e o gerenciador de janelas é o Matchbox. O toolkit para GUI é o Hildon, também usado no Ubuntu Mobile (http://live.gnome.org/Hildon , https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/projects/haf/doc/api/index.html). Alguns screenshots do Hildon podem ser vistos aqui (http://test.maemo.org/screenshots.html).
No primeiro dia, a plataforma de desenvolvimento foi o N95 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95), cujo sistema operacional é o Symbian OS que roda exclusivamente em processadores ARM. Dado que este sistema operacional é proprietário e sua implementação de C++ não é padrão, uma forma interessante de programar para o N95 é através de Python. Através do S60 (http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/pythonfors60/) pode-se fazer aplicações stand-alone e rápido desenvolvimento de protótipos. Um exemplo de aplicação que utilizava a câmera fotográfica para tirar uma foto e salvá-la no sistema de arquivos pôde ser feita em pouco mais de uma hora. Uma excelente referência com tutoriais para o S60 pode ser vista aqui (http://www.mobilenin.com/pys60/menu.htm). E aqui (http://www.mobilenin.com/pys60/resources/ex_camera_viewfinder.py) o código de uma aplicação para S60 que tira uma foto em 19 linhas.
Eis então que surge a pergunta, por que não desenvolver tudo em Java ME? Estas threads dão uma idéia (http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125743 , https://developer.symbian.com/forum/message.jspa?messageID=59978 ). Basicamente está ligado ao fato da virtual machine não disponibilizar algumas funções e à velocidade dos programas. Quando estas duas questões não são importantes, é muito provável que Java ME seja a melhor escolha, ainda mais visto que o C++ do Symbian não é o mesmo comumente disponível nos desktops.
Com relação ao desenvolvimento em Maemo, fica a dica do OpenBossa (http://www.openbossa.org/) com várias soluções interessantes combinando Python, Linux e embedded development.
Aqui (http://labs.vivi.eng.br/blog/?p=44 , http://labs.morpheuz.eng.br/blog/21/04/2008/fisl9-good-start/) há dois posts sobre a arena de programação do Fisl 9.0, explicando o que foi feito em cada dia. Também saiu um post bem engraçado no site do fisl: http://www.fisl.org.br/9.0/www/node/475 .
Fica aqui o meu grande abraço para todas as pessoas que conheci neste encontro, bem como um grande agradecimento pela oportunidade cedida pelo CCA e companhia dos amigos de trabalho :)

Google SoC 2008 Work Schedule

2008-04-06T12:41:00.004-03:00

1st Month:
* Hand tracking/gesture:
1st week: * Study and implement Viola-Jones http://research.microsoft.com/~viola/Pubs/Detect/violaJones_IJCV.pdf paper for hands
2nd week: * Study and implement Flock-of-features http://www.movesinstitute.org/~kolsch/handvu/KolschTurk2004Fast2DHandTrackingWithFlocksOfFeatures.pdf
3rd week: * Study and implement posture recognition and hand gestures http://www.movesinstitute.org/~kolsch/pubs/Dissertation_twoside.pdf
4th week: * Test features and integrate developed code in an easily accessible C++ class. Show zoom and rotate functionalities.

2nd Month:
* Head and body tracking
1st week: * Facade classes for OpenCV already implemented head and body tracking.
2nd week: * Study and implement head distance information.
3rd week: * Combine 2d head tracking and head distance, so that 3d head tracking is done.
4th week: * Integration tests and integrated classes. Deliver small OpenGL based demos and tutorials on how to use the framework.

3rd Month:
* Motion flow and augmented reality
1st week: * Create easy to access objects that react to motion flow, similar to the ones I've developed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJvKT-NId9M
2nd week: * Study and implement 3d model tracking through wireframes http://www.bmva.ac.uk/bmvc/2000/papers/p66.pdf
3rd week: * Integrate developed research in easily accessible classes and write documentation.
4th week: * Time to develop side projects as packaging TouchLib for Linux or to use in case prior time wasn't enough for some features.

Enhanced version of head tracking and openGl

2008-03-30T11:07:00.004-03:00

This video shows my enhanced approach - using CV_HAAR_FIND_BIGGEST_OBJECT - to combine OpenCV head tracking with a 3d OpenGL environment so that the user will see objects from their head's point of view. Since this headtracking is 2d, no depth information has been obtained still, although I'm planning it for some next post. Now, it takes around 20 ms for the face recognition algorithm, which gives a nice refresh rate.

Thanks to Vadim Pisarevsky for the function.

Simple PlayStation3 (PS3) HelloWorld program for cell, without makefiles

2008-03-16T15:59:00.003-03:00

I've created a simple hello world showing how to call an SPE program from a main PPE one in the following url: http://code.google.com/p/ps3hacking/wiki/HelloWorld.
This simple program intends to show how a simple program like this can be compiled through the embedspu program.

Another attempt to produce chroma keying

2008-02-28T04:14:00.000-03:00

This video shows the last result.

Realtime blue screen, background subtraction, OpenCV

2008-02-27T03:04:00.003-03:00

Just trying out to remove colors near blue using OpenCV.
It's a simple approach: image filtering and classification through blue and red channels intensity.
Still doesn't look good when the object is far from the camera.
Trying to improve it.

Installing gnome pilot for palm Z22

2008-02-17T13:57:00.007-03:00

So, I was getting an error similar to this one, while installing palm on Fedora 8 (FC8), through the gpilot applet

Failed to connect using device 'cradle', on port 'usb:'.
Check your configuration, as you requested a new-style libusb 'usb:'
syncing, but have the old-style 'visor' kernel module loaded.
You may need to select a ttyUSB...' device."

Well, the kernel object module for palm must firstly be added.
The visor(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_Visor) module seems to be readily available and works with palm devices.
In order to add the module, simply type:

su
modprobe visor

You can type dmesg and see a message similar to this one:

visor 6-1:1.0: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter detected
usb 6-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0
usb 6-1: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1

It tells that /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyUSB1 now links to palm. (In my case it was ttyUSB1).

Unfortunately this link is only available to the super user. In order to add it to ordinary users, one can do the following

su
updatedb
locate pilot.rules

The location of the pilot rules will be shown.
Then, just copy it to /etc/udev/rules.d/
In my case it was:

cp /usr/share/pilot-link/udev/60-pilot.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/

Now, edit the file /usr/share/pilot-link/udev/60-pilot.rules

Change
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{product}=="Palm Handheld*|Handspring*",KERNEL=="ttyUSB[13579]", SYMLINK="pilot", GROUP="uucp", MODE="0660"
to
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{product}=="Palm Handheld*|Handspring*",KERNEL=="ttyUSB[13579]", SYMLINK="pilot", GROUP="uucp", MODE="0777"

Non root users have access to palm, now :)

Configure using gnome's pilot applet:

Go to panel-> right click, then "Add to panel", then Pilot Applet...
Now you should configure (note that a symlink will be created from /dev/pilot to ttyUSB1

ls -all /dev/pilot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2008-02-17 14:06 /dev/pilot -> ttyUSB1

)

Configs should be like this:

type: USB
device: /dev/pilot
Speed (default): 57600
forward forward... click hotsync

Now install Evolution or some other software that will be able to display your palm data.
In order to synchronize contacts, memos, etc, just open the gpilot applet and choose 'Conduits'. There you can choose the calendar, contacts and some other options. As soon as you have Evolution installed, and press the HotSync button in the palm, everything will be synchronized.

Installing applications ( .prc files)

(first step is to pause gpilot Daemon - simply right click, "Pause Daemon", so that gpilot and install instructions don't get mixed)

In order to install applications, simply use pilot-xfer. For instance, to install Foo.prc, from the current directory, one shall use:

pilot-xfer -p /dev/pilot -i Foo.prc

And to remove it, use the same name as you get when you type

pilot-xfer -p /dev/pilot -l

Now remove it like:

pilot-xfer -p /dev/pilot --delete Foo

(in case Foo is the name you obtain with the -l command).

I hope that helps :)

*************
(this works only for one session... in order to add this command to every boot, one can do the following:

su
emacs /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Add this line to the file:

/sbin/modprobe visor

Open source class scheduler

2008-02-16T13:22:00.002-02:00

I was just wondering how useful would it be to have an open source class scheduler. I mean, create a GTK or Qt based scheduler using Hungarian Matching or some other Operational Research algorithm in order to schedule teachers and classes or other types of tasks.
I've seen commercial versions of around U$100.00, but I'm still not sure how much benefit it would be to the open source community.
I'm tracking this post's visits, so, the number of Google searches that lead here will be tracked and I'll decide if it's worth based on this number and comments to this post.
Thanks for your feedback

GPUWire - A GPU implementation of the livewire image segmentation algorithm

2008-02-11T03:00:00.000-02:00

This video shows one of the results of my master thesis which is a solution to the Single Source Shortest Path problem through the use of a GPU.
The idea belongs to the field of GPGPU and my approach was using the GPU in order to parallely expand vertices just like the Delta-stepping algorithm.
Source code, as well as my master thesis can be found at http://code.google.com/p/gpuwire/.
The GPU API used was NVidia's CUDA.

I'm currently making small corrections to the thesis text as well as trying to clean up the code.
It's interesting to notice that the GUI used is Qt. I'll probably post an entry explaining how to glue CUDA and Qt.
If you're interested, please leave me a comment.

WebCam + OpenGL + OpenCV head tracking = Immersive 3d environment

2008-01-24T02:11:00.003-02:00

UPDATE! This sample has evolved to a project sponsored by Google. Please check http://code.google.com/p/ehci

This is my first attempt to create a 3d immersive environment using a simple webcam to track head's position.

This video shows my approach to combine OpenCV head tracking with a 3d OpenGL environment so that the user will see objects from their head's point of view. Since head tracking is 2d, no depth information is obtained. Besides that, it takes the face recognition algorithm around 200ms, which yields low fps (about 5). I'm currently trying to improve that :)

*******
Well, thanks to Walter Piechulla I could decrease detection time to around 20ms using the flag CV_HAAR_FIND_BIGGEST_OBJECT - which makes opencv detect only one face - in a parameter to the function cvHaarDetectObjects, that looks like this now:

cvHaarDetectObjects( small_img, cascade, storage, 1.1, 2, CV_HAAR_FIND_BIGGEST_OBJECT,
cvSize(30, 30) );

(by the way, I had to update OpenCV from CVS)
As soon as I get some time, I can make another video showing speedup :D
Thanks Piechulla

********
The new version is available here: http://danielbaggio.blogspot.com/2008/03/enhanced-version-of-head-tracking-and.html

Avoiding ACM Web Account to download papers

2008-01-15T23:22:00.000-02:00

In case you are a researcher and you really want that paper but ACM web account is blocking you from seeing it, you might try the following:

Access the paper from your university - some universities have granted access because of their IP, which makes it very easy for researchers to download the papers
Get yourself an ACM Web Account
In case you are a researcher and you simply are not at the university when trying to see the paper, an useful workaround can be looking for the author's homepage or the congress that published the article

For instance, I was looking for the article "Early Experience with Scientific Programs on the Cray MTA-2" which leads me to this page, which doesn't allow me to get the file. Then, googling for the first author and a related word "Wendell Anderson cray mta 2" leads me to the Congress page, from where I can get it. It generally works :)
Besides that, ACM Web Account seems to be a great service. I would really recommend getting one account :)
Hope this post can help you!

************** this text can be useful for google indexing *******************
Full-Text is a controlled feature.
To access this feature:

Please login with your ACM Web Account.
Please review the requirements below.

From OpenSocial's sandbox

2007-12-28T16:25:00.000-02:00

I've been playing out with OpenSocial's API from within Orkut's sandbox for a while. This API intends to integrate social sites like Orkut, MySpace, Hi5 and others through a javascript API.
In order to test, I've signed up for a sandbox account and started reading the documentation api .
After creating the Hello Worlds gadgets - by the way, in order to use Orkut's sandbox, Google gadgets need to be created - I've came across the output on the right.
I'm still wondering why so few friends are retrieved... maybe it's a sandbox limitation... I don't know... I've just posted this to find it out.
****
Ooops... they've just answered that... only friends who are also in the sandbox are listed... that's why it only retrieves a couple friends :)

Small ruby script to remotely run a program

2007-12-28T16:10:00.000-02:00

In case one needs to remotely run a program from some ruby application, an easy way to do that is using Net-ssh. It remotely runs commands through ssh.
After installing the gem through a simple

gem install net-ssh

the following script can be run in order to call the 'ls' application, used to list directory's contents:

require 'rubygems'
require 'net/ssh'

session = Net::SSH.start('your-host','your-user', 'your-password')

session.process.open("ls") do | ls |
ls.on_stdout do | p, data |
puts "#{data}"
end
end

What you should know before diving into GPGPU study

2007-10-23T21:38:00.000-02:00

Before choosing your Graduate/Master/PhD thesis subject as something in GPGPU, you should be aware that:

1- A new technology, from NVidia, called CUDA, has been created and you don't need to use Graphics API to make general purpose programming using GPUs. Besides being outdated, confusing and not productive, graphic API code lacks several features available from CUDA, specially the ability to make scatter. Unfortunatelly programs written for CUDA are only going to run in GeForce 8000 series (and later), QuadroFX 5600, 4600 and Tesla C870, D870, S870. Other frameworks as Brook and RapidMind should be checked as well.

2- You need to understand that a GPU, as you'll use it, is a set of SIMD (single instruction multiple data) processors grouped in multiprocessors. It means THEY WILL ALWAYS EXECUTE THE SAME INSTRUCTION during a clock cycle, but in different data. So, you should not think of them as being able to execute threads in a fashion like a dual-core Intel would, or even the Cell processor. Make sure your algorithm can be expressed in such a way.

3- Memory transfers can become potential bottlenecks for your application. Remember that, when programming GPU code, the data you access needs to be located at the global memory space in GPU. In order to load something there, you'll firstly need to download data to the GPU. As a rule of thumb, it takes a GeForce 8600M GT around 6ms to download a 1024x1024 pixels image (around 4MB). And YES, it might be the single detail that will prevent your application from running faster on GPUs.

4- There's some initialization time for the GPU (which is around 100ms). If you need to run only one iteration of your algorithm, and it is supposed to take less than 100 ms... CPU will probably be the best choice.

5- There's very small shared memory for GPUs. CUDA architecture makes available is 16KB per multiprocessor. It means, that if you are running 256 threads in a single multiprocessor (which is what you should be generally doing) you'd have 64 Bytes per thread... which are about 16 integers... if you can solve your problem with such a small amount of memory, your application will be extremely fast, because shared memory access is almost as fast as register access. Else, you'll need to write to global memory... it takes around 300 cycles to retrieve a value from global memory - which has around 256MB depending on your GPU. If you cannot hide this latency processing the retrieved data while other requests are made, your application will really lag in this point. A good strategy is to allow other threads to process the data while others are waiting for memory requests. An application heavily focused on memory requests will suffer dramatically because of this.

6- Only single precision floating point registers are available. It means around 7 digits of mantissa. Of course, future GPU generations will include double precision values.

7- Linear algebra problems will most probably run very fast on GPUs.

8- Large arrays, such as N-Body simulations are also a good fit for GPUs.

Some benchmarks on CPU, Cell and GPUs are included in this paper. It should be noticed, though, that the article hasn't been accepted for the congress, mainly because this application really does not require much processing from Cell or GPUs, as it spends most of the time on memory transfers. For more info, a great article about the subject and a great site www.gpgpu.org.

*Source: NVidia CUDA Programming Guide and personal experience with GPGPU

latex error .sty not found

2007-10-22T22:40:00.000-02:00

Hi guys, if you've come into this error:
"latex error your-new-file.sty not found"
while building your .tex files, and you are sure you've just put them in some sort of directory like:
/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/your-new-directory
you should run the command
$ texhash
and then, latex should be ready to find your style files
:)

Imobiliária São José dos Campos

2007-10-09T19:05:00.001-03:00

Aluguei um excelente imóvel na milimoveis www.milimoveis.com.br milimoveis.blogspot.com

Good friends @ Northwestern University - Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center

2007-09-08T00:57:00.001-03:00

Well, just for the records, I'd like to leave this picture here, with all the great colleagues I've met in Northwestern University. Special thanks to Simon, Dong, Rhett and Pan Du for the help along the project :)

Summer of Code final project

2007-09-07T21:00:00.000-03:00

GeneQuad, an automatic way to describe genes based on their GeneRif (Gene Reference into function) is available through a rails web application, in the following address:
GeneQuad
The other project, GenDex is also available.
Both of them are intended to be useful in cancer research field as well as bio-informatics.
Guess what's the most researched gene in 2007?

Rising Stars

2007-06-12T21:01:00.000-03:00

I've made some research finding out the genes that had more importance according to published articles in the last years. The findings are reported in these pages http://code.google.com/p/genequad/wiki/RisingStars and http://code.google.com/p/genequad/wiki/DetailsRisingStars

On the other hand, the ones that had less importance are also reported at http://code.google.com/p/genequad/wiki/ShowStoppers

Importing pubMed database with a ruby script using bioruby

2007-06-11T23:24:00.000-03:00

If you desire to import pubMed database, a useful library for ruby may be used: bioruby. This post http://code.google.com/p/genequad/wiki/ImportingPubMed shows how to do that.

Zipf's Law in geneRIF

2007-06-11T23:21:00.000-03:00

This post http://code.google.com/p/genequad/wiki/ZipfsLaw shows a study about Zipf's law in geneRIF.

Importing geneRIF database to sqlite3

2007-06-11T23:16:00.000-03:00

Ok, if someone wants to import the txt file from NCBI to sqlite3, http://code.google.com/p/genequad/wiki/ImportingGenerif tells you how to do that. A procedure just like this may be used to import to other databases as well. Congrats NCBI for geneRIF!

Some studies about Zipf's law and genes

2007-05-30T00:49:00.000-03:00

Well, actually, I only needed somewhere to upload this picture :)
If you want to check my reports about the genequad project on Summer of Code, you'll get a good clue of what it's about :)

Trick to change octave's plot background

2007-05-23T00:51:00.001-03:00

Well, I was trying to change octave's plot background, but I found no easy way, so I changed the way gnuplot is called (gnuplot is the program octave calls to plot the graphics). Simply go to /usr/bin, log as root, and backup gnuplot as

cp gnuplot gnuplot.bak

Rename it to gnuplot1:

mv gnuplot gnuplot1

Now create the script gnuplot by typing

emacs gnuplot

Create this script:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/gnuplot1 -background white

Add execution permission through chmod +x gnuplot

It will make a standard call to gnuplot change to gnuplot -background white, which will change your plots background in octave.
If you have a better way to do this, please leave me a comment
Have fun :)

IVUS Plugin available

2007-01-04T05:54:00.000-02:00

In order to make my graduation thesis fully repeatable, I'm making the IVUS plugin available. This ImageJ plugin adds the functionality to slice an image frame sequence in 4 directions, so that longitudinal segmentation may be applied. It is used for Coronary Intravascular ultrasound images.
The download is available here http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=171446&package_id=195893&release_id=475672 under the ivussnakes package in IVUS Plugin release.
Enjoy it!

IBM Cell Workshop with Peter Hofstee

2006-12-15T05:51:00.001-02:00

So, these days have been great!!! I was able to present a purpose from ITA to Peter Hofstee!!! I just can't believe such a genius was here in Brazil and we had the opportunity to interact with him in two days of workshops.
Besides him, Bob Szabo was there and I was able to show him www.cellperformance.com. It was great!
I'll be able to post some of what happened these days in the following posts! Keep tuned!

My Graduation Thesis is Online

2006-12-07T04:09:00.001-02:00

Well, I've finally made my graduation thesis available online. I hope it may help someone :)
The link is here: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ivussnakes/TG.pdf
The abstract is the following:

This graduation thesis deals with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) image segmentation through LiveWire and Snakes algorithms. As the type of ultrasound studied is the one from coronaries, there’s an initial detailing of the medical environment in which the problem is inserted.
The introduction is followed by an explanation of how LiveWire technique works, which is by calculating the shortest cost path between two pixels of the image. There’s a discussion about the implementation, using binary trees and a heap data structure. This is followed by the evaluation of which costs should be adopted, which were: modulus and direction of the gradient, the laplacian and a non-linear function.
Then, Snakes algorithm is described, which simulates a set of vertices submitted to one internal ﬁeld of energy and another external one. There’s also a discussion about the number of iterations to be adopted as well as the values used as parameters.
It is explained, so, how simulated images, used for evaluation, were generated. Besides, a model for Speckle noise is described as well as the ﬁlter to which the images were submitted.
There’s a brief discussion on how the algorithms were implemented, with a special focus on ImageJ platform and it’s extensibility features.
The results are, then, described, with each of the simulated image types: noiseless, with Speckle noise and ﬁltered. The main results found are that LiveWire has better segmentation quality and is slightly affected by noise, while Snakes is faster and is practically not aﬀected by wrong initial points retrieved from longitudinal segmentation.
There’s, then, the conclusion, describing what was found, focusing the high velocity of Snakes technique, followed by good results. Although better results were found for LiveWire, the processing time was about 500 times higher, what might indicate this method is not desirable. Due to the good results found with simulated images, the developed platform promises to work efficiently in a medical environment, after submitted to validation by specialists.

I've got more news! Stay tunned!

CiberMouse competition

2006-11-03T01:50:00.000-03:00

So, it seems I've been trying to be accepted in another competition.
I've produced this article in a 13 hour insane research.. don't know about its quality, but it seems reasonable for the time taken... If you wanna take a look, it's here: http://ivussnakes.sourceforge.net/ITANDROIDS CiberMouse.pdf
Let's see what happens... will there be time to produce a reasonable team as well? I don't know... end of year is always complicate... If you wanna check the competion's site, it's here

Never too late to start

2006-10-17T02:07:00.000-03:00

Well, I've finally written my first post on Wikipedia. The article is related to the description of the LiveWire segmentation technique.
If you want to check it out, follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livewire_Segmentation_Technique
Let's see how long it lasts there :)

Video about IVUS Coronary Segmentation

2006-10-16T03:48:00.000-03:00

If you want to see the results of a 350 images IVUS stack, take a look at http://ivussnakes.sourceforge.net/?q=node/23

Holiday adventures

2006-10-16T03:47:00.000-03:00

Well, it's really late now, but just for the records, I'd like to post a video about one of the jumps in Visconde de Mauá here. It was really fun!

IVUS Coronary Segmentation LiveWire Videos

2006-10-10T03:28:00.000-03:00

I've posted some videos about how to use the LiveWire Plug-in to segment IVUS stacks on YouTube. Those can be seen through this link. I've published a new session on the LiveWire plug-in site called Videos. Most of the screen recorded material will be there http://ivusnakes.sourceforge.net.
If you enjoy the plug-in it will be published pretty soon.

LiveWire Segmentation Plugin for ImageJ Release 0.9.5

2006-10-07T04:18:00.000-03:00

I've released a new version of the Livewire segmentation plug-in here
For the official page, check http://ivussnakes.sourceforge.net/

New features:

***Make sure you have ImageJ 1.37r or later and Java 1.5 ***

Works with color:
Now LiveWire is able to segment color images. This is done converting them to grayscale and then using the standard procedure (Thanks, Volker Bäcker!)

Run with macro: one can now use the following macro to use LiveWire
run ("LiveWire", "x0=50 y0=30 x1=95 y1=95 magnitude=43 direction=13 exponential=30 power=10");

Just go to Plugins->Macro->Record...
Then type the above macro, give it a name and press the "Create" button.
Now save the file and go to Plugins->Macro->Install... Then, choose the macro file you've just created.
There'll be a new menu under Plugins->Macro->"Your New Menu". Choose it to run the Macro.
Make sure you've set the points inside the picture :)

New cost feature: Exponential
Now a new feature was added to cost. Basically, it gives more weight to paths that are over a low cost resultant gradient and paths over high gradients have less weight, being cheaper paths. This is done through the function:
fe = Math.exp(-pw*x)*fg;
where fe is the exponential cost and pw is the power parameter. Fg stands for the gradient magnitude cost (the one whose weight is affected by the "Magnitude" slider)
It works better if the other weights are set to zero (except for the "Power" one).

Better user interface:
Following code and opinions given by Volker Bäcker, the user interface is now better, so that the user is now able to finish segmentation through right-click and start another with left-click. To move points or add new points to the existing one, the user should press the keyboard shift key at the same time.

7 Eleven Japan

2006-10-06T00:03:00.000-03:00

Este artigo mostra detalhes da gigante rede de lojas de conveniência 7 Eleven Japan e como ela teve sucesso ao estabelecer um inovador modelo de negócios que está mudando a indústria de lojas de conveniência no Japão.
A missão básica de uma loja Seven Elevan Japan é providenciar soluções para todos os problemas da vida corriqueira. Cada loja oferece uma variedade de produtos de alta qualidade e serviços necessários diariamente ou em uma base emergencial para transformar a vida em mais fácil e mais conveniente. Foram descobertas duas razões principais para a falha das lojas de conveniência atuais. Elas ignoraram: a importância da conveniência para o cliente e a qualidade dos produtos e serviços.
Com a sua forte capacidade de analisar as necessidades dos clientes, a SEJ perseguiu uma estratégia integrada apoiada por uso inovador de informação e TI, para controlar o marketing, merchandising e a fabricação de produtos originais.
A política de fazer outsourcing da maior parte das capacidades de TI para parceiros e perseguir avançadas iniciativas em TI, deu a SEJ vantagens substanciais sobre seus concorrentes.
TI estratégico, diagnóstico humano e por informação tal como conselhos de loja, controle em tempo real de item por item, rede de TI abrangendo toda a indústria e um sofisticado sistema de análise contribuíram para o sucesso da SEJ.

CE-278 - Yano - Aula 6

2006-10-05T23:10:00.001-03:00

McBusted
O artigo trata do primeiro trimestre em que o McDonald's não teve lucro e as decisões do CEO com relação a isso.
Ao longo do artigo, nota-se que o McDonald's nunca conseguiu incorporar eficientemente a tecnologia em seu contexto. Muito disso está associado à falta de criatividade da empresa que tem o Big Mac há 38 anos.
Quando o CEO Cantalupo percebeu que um dos maiores programas de inovação do McDonald's, o Inovate custaria um bilhão de dólares, cortou-o dizendo que aqueles custos eram apenas o começo.
Um dos pontos que o CEO disse ser necessária prioridade era na limpeza dos banheiros, pois as crianças poderiam não lembrar da qualidade do gosto de um cheeseburger, mas suas mães com certeza lembrariam quais banheiros eram sujos ou não.
O modelo principal em que o McDonald's baseou-se foi como se utilizassem modelos de produção em massa de carros para o meio de hambúrgueres.
Com relação ao programa Inovate, sabe-se que uma de suas medidas era monitorar não apenas a temperatura do óleo de fritura, como também o número de hambúrgueres vendidos e em quais lugares. Com este sistema, poderiam saber também se a temperatura de fritura dos hambúrgueres era suficiente para evitar que bactérias fossem proliferadas. No entanto, não sabia-se como utilizar tal sistema para melhorar operações tradicionais, o que mostra a incapacidade de adesão a novas tecnologias, o que levou o McDonald's a perder espaço no mercado para muitos de seus concorrentes.

CE-278 - Yano - Aula 5

2006-10-04T14:44:00.000-03:00

When Failure is not an option

O artigo trata do estudo de sistemas que exigem um auto grau de confiabilidade no funcionamento, como no controle de tráfico aéreo nos Estados Unidos. O controle de falha utilizado para tal emprego foi desenvolvido pela Universidade da Califórnia, Berkeley.
No artigo, cita-se um caso de extrema necessidade de confiabilidade, que é o de um porta-aviões, no qual todas as atividades devem ser sincronizadas, havendo um grande número de pessoas jovens e constante renovação do efetivo.
Nota-se que a forma de procedência padrão do porta-aviões, ocorre através de subordinação e uma estrutura hierárquica. No entanto, em situações mais perigosas, como durante a decolagem e recuperação de aviões, as ordens hierárquicas tornam-se sobremaneira demoradas e a forma de atuação muda para uma cooperação em time, muito mais dinâmica e eficiente.
Em situações de emergência, até mesmo o mais moderno da base tem não apenas a autoridade mas a obrigação de suspender as atividades de vôo. Caso a sua ação seja posteriormente criticada, o mesmo não seria punido, por outro lado, se estivesse certa, ele seria publicamente elogiado.
A inovação também é inserida em processos tidos como simples memorização, pois a entrada de novos membros dá margem a novas idéias a serem debatidas com o efetivo mais experiente, havendo criatividade sobre processos que poderiam ser estáticos.
Após a citação do caso do porta-aviões, há uma comparação com uma organização civil, uma planta nuclear de energia, na qual esperava-se que os procedimentos também fossem hierárquicos. No entanto, nota-se que a constante inovação nos processos e questionamento sobre os mesmos pôde implicar em melhores procedimentos de segurança para a organização, mostrando que uma estrutura semelhante à do porta aviões também pudesse ser aplicada em uma instituição civil.
Um dos grandes pontos percebidos em comum em todas as grandes corporações de sucesso com relação a confiabilidade é a redundância. Encoraja-se grande comunicação nestas corporações, independentemente da hierarquia, logo, há muita redundância na troca de informações, o que evita falhas e mal-entendimentos. Outra característica é o constante aprendizado, que obriga os operários a estarem sempre questionando os procedimentos e encontrando novas maneiras de solucionar os problemas, motivando-os e evitando que haja comportamento retrógrado.

LiveWire implementation

2006-09-16T22:30:00.000-03:00

I've made available my LiveWire implementation for Java.
It is distributed as a plug in for ImageJ. One can easily download it through this link. There is also one page available with more explanations here.
I hope you enjoy the plug in and feel free to submit me any bug or feature request.
Thanks!

CE-278 - Yano - Aula 4

2006-09-14T03:04:00.000-03:00

Resumo do artigo Software Chronic Crisis, da Scientific American ( http://www.cis.gsu.edu/~mmoore/CIS3300/handouts/SciAmSept1994.html )

O artigo inicia-se através da citação de um grande sistema de software para o aeroporto de Denver, o qual necessitaria de um excelente planejamento para atender a grandes demandas. Tal sistema foi muito atrasado, chegando a cogitar-se que não poderia ser entregue. Em 1994, ano em que o artigo foi feito, 2 a cada 8 projetos de grande escala eram cancelados.
O que se previa era uma grande crise de software, pois até 1994 não tinha-se o conceito de Engenharia de Software muito desenvolvido e o desenvolvimento de software tinha problemas muito parecidos com os do início da revolução industrial.

Comenta-se sobre o fato de mesmo que o Departamento de Defesa fizesse testes sobre seus softwares, os mesmos ainda apresentavam erros durante o uso. Parecia que os métodos utilizados para a produção de sistemas de tempo real não eram suficientes para usos de segurança crítica.
Outro grande problema enfrentado era o de conectar peças independentes de software. Como os sistemas não eram projetados pensando-se nisso, quando havia a necessidade, muitas vezes os projetos falhavam.
São citados vários casos de insucesso de integrar sistemas. Um deles foi no Departamento de Veículos Motores, na California. O projeto, após custar 6.5 vezes mais que o esperado falhou. Outro deles foi o de integrar os sistemas de passagens aéreas com o de reservas de carros e hotéis. Este falhou após serem gastos US$165.000.000.
Alguns dados de uma consultoria da IBM mostravam o seguinte sobre os projetos de larga escala:
55% custavam mais que o esperado
68% demoraram mais que o esperado e
88% tiveram que ser substancialmente reprojetados

Outro exemplo de projeto que teve seu custo em muito aumentado foi o da Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Esta agência teve seu projeto acrescido de um bilhão de dólares e alguns subprojetos cancelados. Isto reforça a necessidade da aplicação de técnicas de Engenharia de Software às necessidades atuais.

Um dos primeiros passos em direção à Engenharia de Software foi o desenvolvimento do CMM - Capability Maturity Model. Ele teve início no Software Engineering Institute e dava aos programadores alguma forma de medir a qualidade do seu desenvolvimento através de questionários e entrevistas.
A maioria das empresas na época (75%) tinha CMM 1, ou seja, não tinham nenhum processo de medição de qualidade, enquanto outros 24 % tinham CMM 2 ou 3.
O uso de CMM por algumas empresas demonstrou um retorno de investimento de US$7,80 para cada dólar investido no treinamento dos programadores para atingir níveis maiores de qualidade de software.

Uma das formas de se testar softwares para uso em massa é lançar a sua versão inicial como Beta e deixar que várias pessoas o testem, achando vários erros, para posteriormente lançar a versão final.
A maioria dos bugs encontrados em um projeto são erros de omissão.
Uma tentativa de se encontrar erros em estágios iniciais de desenvolvimento é modelar os programas através de métodos formais, os quais seriam a tradução do programa para uma forma matemática de resolvê-lo. Apesar das vantagens, métodos formais podem ter problemas durante a revisão, pois ler uma página de fórmulas é muito mais oneroso do que rever algumas linhas de código. No entanto, alguma empresas mostram resultados satisfatórios para práticas com técnicas do tipo "clean room", na qual uma probabilidade é associada a cada função de acordo com o número de vezes que virá a ser utilizada.

Há uma grande reclamação sobre o incentivo governamental sobre o apoio a iniciativas de desenvolvimento da Engenharia de Software.
Um dos pontos fracos da computação da época (e também atualmente) é a dificuldade de manter os códigos prontos para as mudanças tecnológicas. Embora tenha-se um código em pleno funcionamento em uma arquitetura, a sua implementação pode variar bastante, havendo dificuldade em componentizar os softwares. Houve uma tentativa de criação de linguagem para que isso não fosse problema. Há um grande indício de que UML foi derivada de tais preocupações.

Um grande desenvolvimento de Software ocorreu em torno da Índia, onde o governo apoiou o crescimento de iniciativas de Software. No entanto, em 97, havia apenas em torno de um bilhão de dólares no mercado de software indiano, enquanto o mercado mundial tinha 92 bilhões.
Os desenvolvedores indianos eram tão vantajosos que acabava sendo mais econômico enviar um grupo de americanos para a Índia do que desenvolver nos próprios EUA. Outra vantagem era o preço de unidade de componente, que custava em torno de US$925 feito por um americano e US$125 por um indiano.

Um dos principais problemas na indústria de venda de componentes é o fato de que as pessoas querem comprar os componentes uma única vez e fazer várias cópias dos mesmos.

Uma espécie de continuação deste artigo pode ser encontrada em (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00020D04-CFD8-146C-8D8D83414B7F0000)

CE-278 - Yano - Aula 3

2006-08-27T22:22:00.000-03:00

Comentário do Artigo - Operation - Leadership - do general Peter Schoomaker

O artigo trata de uma mudança de paradigmas de liderança na área militar e consequentemente em outras áreas.
Segundo o autor, organizações vencedoras serão aquelas que fazem "soluções criativas em circunstâncias ambíguas", pois todos devem devem saber como ser um líder.

Os principais pontos do coronel Schoomaker, autor do artigo, são:
- Enfoque sua missão, defina sua identidade: deve-se conhecer as principais habilidades de cada um e haver um objetivo bem definido.
- Pegue as pessoas certas, construa o time certo: nunca confunda entusiasmo com capacidade, recrutar pessoas que realmente fazem o que é esperado.
- Ser um líder, demonstrar liderença: "Liderança tem tudo a ver com lidar com mudanças". Além disso o autor diz que liderança significa fazer com que as pessoas façam algo que não fariam normalmente - e fazer com que façam isto com vontade. Como não há uma fórmula pronta sobre como isto deve ser feito, procura-se por características comportamentais, psicológicas e intelectuais do que acredita-se serem traços de sucesso. Para avaliar tais carcterísticas, coloca-se os candidatos em situações que imitam a vida real.
- Ensine às pessoas como pensar e não o que pensar: uma forma de fazer com que as pessoas pensem é dar as linhas gerais do problema e não a solução do problema em si, fazendo com que os capitães ou gerentes sejam capazes de criar soluções ao invés de seguir ordens.
- Princípios essenciais mantêm a união: deve-se ter uma cultura de princípios básicos e fazer com que as pessoas subordinadas desenvolvam outros princípios. Um dos princípios básicos do autor é "Quando pensar em uma solução tática, tenha ciência de que o seu inimigo fará um movimento contra a sua tática" e que deve-se estar preparado para a reação adversária.
- Aprender fazendo é a forma de aprender: deve-se simular um ambiente de situação real e observar as atitudes tomadas. Quando a simulação acabar, deve-se fazer uma revisão dos principais passos tomados e ver quais seriam as opções caso tivessem o conhecimento atual da situação.
- Faça de todos um professor: Saiba que o seu time deverá ser capaz de continuar suas missões mesmo que você não esteja mais presente no meio. Ultimamente, a maneira mais efetiva de medir um líder e a performance da sua unidade na sua falta.

Aula Yano 2 - Comentários sobre o artigo A Business-Oriented Foundation for Service Orientation de Ulrich Homann

2006-08-17T03:46:00.000-03:00

Resumo do artigo A Business-Oriented Foundation for Service Orientation de Ulrich Homann

De acordo com as definições atuais de orientação a serviços, estes oferecem funcionalidades acessíveis por rede através de padronizadas interfaces. Estas características principais prometem pelo menos interoperabilidade de protocolos independente de plataforma, provedor ou localização.

Atualmente, entretanto, resolver problemas de integração técnica não é suficiente por si próprio para justificar o investimento em orientação a serviços. Para reforçar o argumento, diz-se muito sobre apoio de orientação a serviços à agilidade do negócio porque, em um ambiente orientado a serviços, as soluções são mais fáceis de serem construídas compondo-se serviços, reconfigurando-os e os reutilizando. Isto talvez proceda, mas pela atual definição de orientação a serviços, muitos negócios devem implementar orientação a serviços e ainda assim prover o apoio a TI que o negócio precisa ou deseja.

Para justificar um investimento em orientação a serviço, entretanto, precisa-se endereçar os problemas que possam vir em todo projeto empregando novos princípios arquiteturais:

- Como impedir que a orientação a serviço siga iniciativas prometedoras similares nos mesmos erros arquiteturais que ocorreram no passado?
- Como ter certeza que a arquitetura escolhida para implementação relaciona-se com os requisitos de negócios?
- Como maximizar a expectativa de vida de implementação em um ambiente sempre renovado?

Para conseguir satisfazer tais objetivos, propõe-se entender os negócios como uma rede de capacidades. Uma capacidade modela o que uma função de negócios faz - seu comportamento visível (contra como ela o faz, seu comportamento interno) - e o nível esperado de performance. Pagar empregados e enviar produtos são exemplos de capacidades. Estas capacidades têm "proprietários" e "clientes" em uma forma genérica e o que espera-se que eles façam a um certo nível (como unidades por período de tempo, ou outra medida de qualidade). Isto é "o que" é feito e o nível que é feito. Dentro das capacidades há especificidades de como aquela capacidade é implementada a um dado ponto em tempo com respeito a pessoas, procedimentos, tecnologia e assim por diante. A este nível de abstração, nós focamos em aspectos externos, e como eles são atingidos não é importante. A capacidade é essencialmente uma caixa preta.

O que um modelo deve ter, afinal:
In other words, modern businesses cross traditional corporate boundaries in multiple dimensions, and it only makes sense that our modeling and solutions account for this. The corporate boundary is becoming analogous to the fiscal year for a company when it comes to planning. Both are important and relevant boundaries, but businesses have to plan and budget beyond these boundaries.

Evolução dos sistemas:
Systems Evolution - Connected Environment of Business Functions

If you examine the systems of any given company and look at what they do, you generally will find that the systems or applications support specific functionality or user communities. Finance systems for the finance community, customer relationship management (CRM) for the marketing, sales, and support communities, and so on. If they are connected at all, the connections are not very elegant. The result is that customers live with disconnected silos of functionality. The unpleasant fact for them is that in all likelihood it will stay that way, as new ways of doing business emerge faster than integration can occur.

O que é uma business capability?
Business Capabilities - A More Stable Foundation

So, we find that the real question is "When you architect a solution for your customers, which elements of that architecture are really durable and allow you to deal with change?" Because that answer obviously provides the best ROI and the best insurance against architectural obsolescence.

What we have found is that the stable elements are much more about what businesses actually do (for example, create purchase orders, generate invoices, ship products, and so on). These business activities, which we refer to as business capabilities, are relatively stable, but how businesses implement them with people, procedures, and technology, and how those activities knit together into processes, is far less stable. So now, we need to find out what a business does, what its capabilities are.

Before we continue, let's introduce a few definitions for our discussion:

* A business capability is a particular ability or capacity that a business may possess or exchange to achieve a specific purpose or outcome. A capability describes what the business does (outcomes and service levels) that creates value for customers; for example, pay employee or ship product. A business capability abstracts and encapsulates the people, process/procedures, technology, and information into the essential building blocks needed to facilitate performance improvement and redesign analysis.

Como são alinhadas as capacidades:

Capabilities - The Optimal Problem Solving Layer

We propose modeling the business as a structured—as opposed to a physically integrated—network of capabilities. This addresses the "rich interconnection" over which other aspects (such as the way technology is applied) can be layered from the start instead of added as an expensive and cumbersome afterthought. As you can see, this aligns closely with the black-box service-orientation model: Business capabilities are the structural elements (black boxes) that provide a stable foundation aligning service-orientation projects with their business drivers.

Capabilities Expose Interfaces

One of the most important aspects of capabilities is how they relate to other capabilities; thinking about capabilities in context of the ecosystem is really thinking about their connections. Thus, early detection of their connections to other capabilities, or essentially defining the interrelated ecosystem, is also a crucial step in understanding which boundaries can be traversed and which cannot, a crucial step for maximizing any re-architectural efforts. In fact, discovering these connections may be as valuable as defining the capabilities, because you manipulate and manage the connections, while the capabilities remain essentially unchanged black boxes.

Divisões das capacidades:
Level 1 Foundation Capabilities, subdivididas em
Operational Capabilities - Capabilities—regardless of provider of any given capability—that are required to deliver the value identified as the goal of the business

Environmental Capabilities - Environmental Capabilities address the capabilities outside the basic operations of the business that either influence value delivery (e.g., expectations of customers, compliance requirements by governments, or competitive capabilities by existing or emerging suppliers), or offer opportunities to leverage the ecosystem (including customers) for value delivery/differentiation.

Level 2 Capability Groups

Capability Groups are the next level in the capability model. For example, within the core capability "1. Develop Products/Services" there is often a capability group called "1.1 Plan Products/Services." The Product Engineering group that plans products may further consist of a number of capabilities at level 3…n where specific capabilities and their attributes are described.

A capability group is often an important initial level for doing analysis because it is at the capability group level where service levels, impediments and constraints, and organizational ownership/accountability can first be abstracted and made actionable.
Level 3 Business Capabilities

Capability groups are decomposed into business capabilities. Business capabilities are the building blocks for the business capability mapping. Business capabilities can be decomposed into more granular business capabilities. There are detailed attributes that are captured at the business capability level. Within the analysis you may decompose some business capabilities to very detailed levels (Level 4 and beyond) and aggregate other capabilities at Level Three. It is not necessary to decompose all capabilities to the same level.

Conclusão a melhor forma de

* How do we prevent service-oriented architectures from following similar, hopeful initiatives into the same architectural mistakes of the past?
* How do we ensure that the chosen implementation architecture relates to the actual or desired state of business?
* How do we prolong the life expectancy of the implementation in an ever-changing environment?

é:

The key point to take away is that service-orientation with Web services is only the implementation of a particular model. It is the quality and foundation of the model that determines the answers to these questions. Business capabilities give you a frame of reference to pose these questions and answer them for the various interconnected viewpoints in your business. It finds the stable elements of business to model your architecture around and provides a critical layer that closely aligns to service-orientation. service-orientation in turn supplies the compartmentalized, but connected, structure to implement capabilities so that IT meets the actual business requirements and provides a truly agile business.

Easily using sourceforge's cvs

2006-08-16T22:47:00.000-03:00

Everytime I do it for the first time it's like a pain. So, I'm gonna let everything one needs to know in this post

Firstly, you'll need to create this enviroment variable to save your typing everytime you need to cast a command. So, edit your ~/.bashrc file and add this line to it:

export CVSROOT=:ext:dannyxyz22@pacwinter.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/myproject

Now, exchange dannyxyz22 for your account in sourceforge and change myproject for your project name.
Then, you'll have to create a directory for your files. You'll make it through the import command.
Suppose you are at ~/develop/ and that your project is under ~/develop/myproject . Simply type the following:

cvs import -m "test" myproject myproject-vendortag myproject-releasetag

Where -m "test" is your log message, myproject is your project and vendortag and release tags are only strings for these tags.

Now, your files will be uploaded.

The rest of the process is simple. Everytime you need to add files to your project, go to a clear directory and check out the whole project through:

cvs co myproject

Then your project will appear as a subdirectory. Now, add files through:

cvs add file.cpp

Don't forget to make a commit, else your files won't be permanently added to your project.

cvs commit

Now, it's only fun!

Problems running asterisk

2006-08-14T00:54:00.000-03:00

So, I've been playing around with asterisk, and had this bug
root@lelix:/home/baggio# asterisk
Unable to open pid file '/var/run/asterisk/asterisk.pid': No such file or directory
Running the command asterisk -cvvvv gives you some info about what's going on, so I came up with thi s error:
Aug 14 00:51:05 WARNING[8857]: manager.c:1742 init_manager: Unable to bind socket: Address already in use
Actually a ghost asterisk was running so I found it through:
ps -A | grep asterisk
8831 ? 00:00:00 asterisk
And then killed it:
kill 8831
And everything went fine afterwards.

CE-278 - Yano - Aula 1

2006-08-10T04:39:00.000-03:00

O post de hoje será dedicado às aulas de CE-278, Modelagem e Gestão de Processos, do professor Edgar Yano.
A proposta do post é descrever de forma sucinta o site, identificando os pontos positivos e negativos.
Basicamente, o site fala sobre os desafios e oportunidades do mundo de negócios em uma era digital.
O principal conceito passado é que todo tipo de mídia pode ser digital, ou seja, transformado em bits. Nota-se que tudo fica cada vez mais digital, assim como as novas sociedades. Tudo à nossa volta pode estar conectado entre si, e conectados a grandes redes, até mesmo a internet toda.
Para notar esta grande participação das pessoas em uma era digital, estuda-se alguns dos principais motivos de atração, entre eles:
- A facilidade de comunicação
- Comunicação por e-mails e mensagens instantâneas gratuitas
- Procura por informação
- Compra e venda de produtos
- Pagamento de compras
- Procura por nova moradia ou trabalho

Algo um pouco estranho no site são algumas conclusões sobre a quantidade de informação produzida por ano, estimada em alguns exabytes. O site afirma que a quantidade de informação seria equivalente a uma prateleira de livros com 30 pés, por pessoa. Mas sabe-se que boa parte desta informação está relacionada a vídeos e dados telefônicos, o que deprecia a proposta.

Com relação ao capítulo de design, há a divulgação de algumas obvialidades, como por exemplo, "The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either".
É interessante notar para os fatores que cativam usuários a certos sites, como tipografia, cor, layout, hierarquia do site, entre outros.
Outro ponto bem abordado é que o visual da página pode passar impressão de segurança para os usuários, embora isto seja altamente não correlacionado.

Outro tópico abordado está relacionado com a importante carga de informações que os usuários deixam ao longo de suas navegações. Tais informações podem ser extremamente úteis para procurar perfis de potenciais compradores.
Uma ferramenta interessante para tais análises é citada, o Google Analytics.

Um dos pontos fortes do site é a análise de casos sobre os Modelos de Negócios da era digital, bem como sua classificação e alguns exemplos específicos, como o Red Hat, Wikipedia e o Slashdot.

Há uma interessante abordagem sobre Autômatos no site, descrevendo serviços que os computadores podem fazer autonomamente, como filtrar SPAMS ou mesmo enviá-los. Há algo muito interessante dito:

The first phase of the Web is human communication though shared knowledge. We have a lot of work to do before we have an intuitive space in which we can put down our thoughts and build our understanding of what we want to do and how and why we will do it. The second side to the Web, yet to emerge, is that of machine-understandable information. As this happens, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade and bureaucracy will be handled by agents, leaving humans to provide the inspiration and the intuition. This will come about though the implementation of a series of projects addressing data formats and languages for the Web, and digital signatures.

Além destes tópicos, muitos outros como Ética, Privacidade, Propriedade Intelectual e Privacidade são discutidos.

Algumas vantagens do site:
- Oferecimento de podcasts
- Grande uso de links para pesquisas mais aprofundadas
- Análise de cases

Desvantagens do site:
- Podcasts muito delongados e um pouco prolixos
- Análise muito superficial em alguns tópicos

Debian port for IBM's Cell Simulator

2006-07-23T20:26:00.000-03:00

Well, today I've made available a Cell Simulator for Debian through this link

Removing or disabling ImageJ toolbar

2006-07-21T05:04:00.000-03:00

So, I've been playing around with ImageJ and faced the problem to remove the default toolbar. I mean, as I needed specific user interaction, I had to get rid of the useful default toolbar.
It is a nice trick. Thanks for TurboReg being open source I've got some useful ideas.
Firstly, you'll need to add some imports:

import ij.ImagePlus;
import ij.gui.ImageCanvas;
import ij.gui.ImageWindow;
import ij.gui.Toolbar;

Now, your setup method should look something like:

public int setup(String arg, ImagePlus imp) {
this.img = imp;
return DONE;
}

Now remove the old MouseListeners and the old Toolbar in your run method:

public void run(ImageProcessor ip) {
ImageWindow win = img.getWindow();
canvas = win.getCanvas();
for(int i=0;i
canvas.removeMouseListener(canvas.getMouseListeners()[i]);
}
//Here, you'll add your MouseEvent handler...
//if this class handles MouseEvents implementing MouseListener, you may
// directly add 'this'
canvas.addMouseListener(this);

/**
* This part will remove the old toolbar
*/
Toolbar oldToolbar = Toolbar.getInstance();
Container container = oldToolbar.getParent();
Component[] components = container.getComponents();
for(int i=0; i<>
if(components[i] == oldToolbar){
container.remove(i);
//TODO add new toolbar here
//container.add(newToolbar)
break;
}
}

It is a good idea to keep a copy of the old toolbar to restore it after your application finishes.
Now, enjoy your freedom, hhehe

Oxygen - Soul Asylum lyrics

2006-07-19T04:07:00.000-03:00

Well, this music has been in my mind for the last days. It's from Soul Asylum, one of my favorite bands. It brings me back memories from "Veil of Tears" era. I have gotten these lyrics by ear (and mixing up with some I found in internet). I hope this version is correct (and that there's no problem making it available in Internet). So, here the lyrics go:

Oxygen - Soul Asylum

Wishing upon a mattress
Falling off the axis
Slipping in stillnes
Flipping the pearl(?)
I walk you when you're wasted
I can almost taste it
All this oxygen's for your

But it's a couple more volts of shock treatment for you
When a couple more votes of confidence will do
I walk you when you are wasted
I can almost taste it

And it's a couple more volts of shock treatment for you
When a couple more votes of confidence will do

All is there to remind you
Before and behind you
Follows you everywhere you go
Make me say you're crazy
It don't even phase me
Cause you're the sanest one I know

Just a couple more breaths of oxygen will do
They may say you're crazy
But she's so amazying

But it's couple volts of shock treatment for you
(A couple volts of shock treatment for you)
When a couple more votes of confidence will do
(Lonelyness, Lonelyness again)

Just a couple more breaths of oxygen will do
But it's a couple more pills and a couple more pills
And a couple more "What do you do those things you do?"
(Shock treatment for you)
Just a couple more volts of shock treatment for you
(Shock treatment for you)
Just a couple more breaths of oxygen will do
(Shock treatment for you)
Treatment, treatment for your
(Shock treatment for you)
That will do
That will do
That will do
That will do
That will do

Starting up!

2006-07-19T03:59:00.000-03:00

Well, I'm just trying to see how it works