Monday, December 5, 2011

Dinner is served

On Sunday my parents came round for Xmas dinner cooked by my housemates and I. Complete with turkey and all the trimmings, mulled wine, champagne, Christmas pudding and charades…

DSC03328

DSC03330

DSC03332

DSC03337

Bring on Christmas!

  • Happiness. 8.5 out of 10
  • Tiredness. 2 out of 5
  • Workload. 8 out of 10
  • Last Meal. Mississippi mud pie 
  • Song of the day. Parachute – She Is Love
  • Thought for the day. If you don't have any shadows, you're not standing in the light
  • What I’m Doing Now. Still procrastinating.

Friday, December 2, 2011

BBRRAAAGHHHHHHHHHHMMMM!!

We left off with an imminent trip to Weymouth. It was such a relaxing weekend, especially going to Chesil beach a watching the waves come crashing in. From the photos you’ll also notice which one is the dancer…

chesil1 chesil2  chesil3 chesil4

It was quite surreal how high the waves were, and the perfect sound of them breaking onto the seemingly infinite shoreline. It kind of reminded me of the beach in Inception; powerful, but beautiful.

The last few weeks have also seen the start of a new tradition: “Friday Pints”. After a long week working, a few of us down tools for a couple hours and go to to pub for a few bevvies. Get’s the weekend veins working and has already, on a couple occasions, resulted in carnage. Not that long left of university now, but that’s no excuse not to still be students!

Last Friday for example when we went to Rubix and must’ve had one of the best nights I’ve ever had in there. The downstairs bar (called HRB to those of us who started uni before it was renamed to The Living Room) was playing MUCH better music than the main dance floor, Pendulum and Queen among others…

IMG_0262

This week I’ve made some good progress with my project work and started on a couple of essays that have to be in around exam season… which is only a month away now!! I can see lots of coursework and revision in the crystal ball over Christmas…

  • Happiness. 8 out of 10
  • Tiredness. 1 out of 5
  • Workload. 7 out of 10
  • Last Meal. Cereal. In-joke? 
  • Song of the day. Athlete – Beautiful
  • Thought for the day. “Chance favours the prepared mind” 
  • What I’m Doing Now. Procrastinating.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

ELROND #2: The Pipeline…

The second post about my final year Electronic Engineering project to identify landmarks using photographs taken from a mobile phone in seconds.

Imagine you are walking around London and you come across a building that you want to know more about. You whip out your mobile phone and open up the ELROND app. By taking a picture of the building you want to know more about, ELROND returns relevant information in just a few seconds. The name and purpose of the facility, weather it is open to the public, the opening times, the phone number of reception, a history, appropriate web links… wouldn’t that be useful? Well that’s just one potential application of my project.

It could equally be used to display information about portraits in a gallery just by holding your smartphone in front of a painting, with relevant information overlayed on the screen in real-time…

Or just as an alternative to GPS to locate you when GPS is not available… such as indoors…

My project, titled Elrond, aims to provide the backbone or infrastructure to enable such apps to be written much quicker. But how does it work? how does that picture of a building turn into information?

The diagram below gives an overview of the process.

Diagram_dark

  1. Once the Android application has extracted the features from the image of the building using a feature detection algorithm (more on that in a later post) the extracted information is packaged into an XML format and transmitted over a data network (3G or Wi-Fi) to a Linux web server.
  2. The web server then parses the XML file into a format it can understand.
  3. Each extracted feature is then compared to all known features by Elrond, hence gathering a shortlist of which buildings this is most likely to be a picture of. Because the number of known features is likely to be in the order of millions, a neat way of searching the set needs to be used, called a KD-Tree.
  4. The searching returns a shortlist of images that most probably match the query image. The items at the top of the shortlist are the most likely, so the top 100 results are looked into in more detail. Elrond will look at all the features in both images, find ones that match, and store their locations. Then a homograph is calculated to see if there is a way to map the features from the query image to the stored image. A homograph is a matrix that describes the best way to map two sets of points to each other. If the homograph can map lots of points between the images, then that image is given a high match score.
  5. After all the homographs have been calculated, the best matching image can be determined; or no match is found, in which case Elrond cannot return any information. Assuming a reasonable match was found, Elrond now knows what the building is! Relevant information about that building is maintained on a database, and so it can be fetched.
  6. The database information is packaged into another XML file and sent to the mobile device.
  7. The mobile device interprets the XML and graphically displays the information on the screen. Voilà!

I know that some people are reading this gormless, but for those that are interested to know more I want to write more posts about how specific parts of the application work and perform. So if you have any thoughts and suggestions let me know.

The next post will be about less techy things…

Friday, November 18, 2011

Acting Debut & The FUTURE!

I’ve been part of the University of Surrey’s Student Television Station since it began a few years ago, but I’ve always focused on the technical aspects such as filming and editing… but this week, in a bizarre role-reversal between Mike and I, I presented and he edited. So I present to you my first (who knows their may be more…) foray into news presenting…

Charles Gray uncovers plans for the old bookshop to become a strip club after it's refurbishment... or at least it should according to one student. In a MADTV EXCLUSIVE we tell you what is actually to become of our once loved book shop.

In other news, that I haven’t presented to camera, I went to London last weekend and saw some mates from way back when in Sixth form. Brought together with our love for Nando’s free whole chicken, we sat, gobbled and gobbed for hours. It’s always interesting to stay in touch and see what all your old friends have achieved with their lives. Ben, who has already graduated from an Accounting degree, has found himself working in the Pensions department at Wandsworth Council… I wonder where I’ll be in a years time? Back at Sony? Another broadcast company? McDonalds? the street? Like recycling, the possibilities are endless…

But that’s a while away yet, what about the immediate future? Well I’m off to W-hey-mouth this weekend to see the lovely Charlotte :D After that?

  • 4th December. My parents come to Guildford for Christmas dinner cooked by my housemates and I.
  • 15th December. Going to see Matthew Bourne’s Nutcraker in London!
  • 22nd December. The usual trick for Christmas commences… up to my sisters in Chesterfield for the festivities and prevailing jokes.
  • 29th December. The usual trick for New Year… Jake and I hit up London for a ‘small’ party with friends while the parents are away…
  • January. Exams, coursework, projects… back to normality, for my last year at University!!!

Some of you may have heard that I made a new years resolution for 2011 to not buy any chocolate for the whole year, and those people will also know how impossible this challenge should prove to be… well I’m still at it, but the going is getting tough with just 6 weeks to go! I started the year with a chocolate stash (below) to get me through, but this week that stash was depleted to zero. So now, as Boyzone once said, the going gets tough…

 DSCF4836

  • Happiness. 8 out of 10
  • Tiredness. 1 out of 5
  • Workload. 6.5 out of 10
  • Last Meal. A hobnob
  • Song of the day. Ed Sheeran – The A Team
  • Thought for the day. I thought love was only true in fairy-tales, meant for someone else but not for me…
  • What I’m Doing Now. Packing for the weekend

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Taste the Rainbow

Settling back into the slow life is so comforting knowing that you are doing something for your future, and living the present the best way you know how.

I want to inject a bit of nostalgia into this post, knowing full well that this blog has started to show its receding hairline this year with the lacklustre modicum of posts. As the new year beckons, and lets be honest its already on the horizon, I usually turn the content switch to “past” and start idolizing the perfect moments from the year gone by. And this year will be no different in some respects, but I want to start early because it’s been such an incredible year!

January

My best memories from January lie scattered amongst many weeks spent in Switzerland, as in fact most of my memories from the year. But there’s another theme for January, random lols. If it was Sophizzle offering words of comfort to her triffle on the bus home from Tesco, Frazer and I contemplating the benefits of nipple cups, or Sophie getting a super-low voice over serious Skype discussions about housing… it was a laugh. The best moment however?

Walking around an empty Zurich airport in bare feet. Like the set of a film…

February

Another month filled with Swiss air, but also featuring a couple of trips to London to see Maroon 5, Mr Scruff and Lifehouse. And while going dressed as Sherlock Holmes into Guildford town was the best fun ever, the Lifehouse gig at the Roundhouse has a special place in my heart…

March

Sometimes life hands you fragments of perfection, that second when the world stops and you feel that despite the worries you may have, and the challenges you face, you’ve actually got it pretty good :) One particular Friday afternoon, sat outside Lugano airport in the gorgeous sunshine waiting for a plane back home after another great week at work, and the fragments just seem to fall into place. You know you’re doing the right thing and you should never stop being who you are.

April

The last one for today… April. April. Where do I start… There are two things that stand out about April. One was the house boat trip, possibly the single most hilarious, drink-fuelled, best times of my life – spent on my dad’s narrowboat with my then-future-now-current housemates. Initially a bonding weekend to get to know each other better, but once we’d got the formalities out of the way it was all about having the time of our lives. The week was so good we are still quoting from it now, in fact we have a book of quotes in our living room from that trip that goes some way in recreating some of the hilarity: everything from carnivorous geese to gooches, heart-attack sandwiches to the helm of insobriety. This is undoubtedly not the last you will hear from this trip in the run up to the new year. And as for the second thing about April, that will have to wait :)

I want to finish the post with a few pictures from the start of the year that you hopefully haven’t seen before…

DSCF4862

Even as early as January the temptation to buy chocolate (against my new years resolution!) was staring me in the face… I walked past this particular idol in the Zurich terminal building every Friday on my way back to Heathrow…

DSCF5028

Jake comes to Guildford, and we find the FREE Guildford museum to be worth every penny…

DSCF5079

Doing the speed limit in a Mercedes convertible on the Swiss motorway…

 DSCF5096

The sign outside the building next door to our hostel in Amsterdam. It was ideally located for our needs… there was a supermarket and bus stop nearby.

DSCF5173

The boat trip provided lots of time to relax and take it easy, and have cider at every possible moment.

DSC00243

Charlotte’s birthday party had a “what did you want to be when you were younger” theme… obviously I chose geek.

Next time I promise I will talk about my current housemates and give you a tour of the grounds. I just need to be writing in here when it’s light outside!

Until next time…

Charles x

Thursday, November 10, 2011

ELROND #1: Feature Detection in Computer Vision

The first post about my final year Electronic Engineering project. I introduce you to the topic of feature detection and what my project is about.
Feature detection is an important problem in computer vision. Computer Vision is the study of extracting information from the real world and somehow use it as an input to computer programs. A simple example of Computer Vision would be how Gollum was created for the Lord of the Rings films…
The creation of Gollum used motion capture from real world camera shots to digitally create the character.
Feature detection is the process of computer algorithms detecting interesting, or “perceptually interesting” locations of an image. Early feature detection worked by detecting edges within an image, but there were several problems with this approach.
Edge Detection
^ from Wikipedia
One of the biggest uses of feature detection is a process known as Image Registration, where a computer can find similar images and determine that they are actually of the same building/object/face/landscape/tree/etc. And this is the basis for my project.
everyday object recognition
^ originally from http://ils.intel-research.net/ (now removed)
The premise of my project, titled Scalable Landmark Recognition on Mobile Devices, is to allow anyone with a mobile phone to take a photograph of a landmark and be told what it is, where it is and some interesting facts about it. For example, you could take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and phone app would recognise the landmark and return information about when it was built, how tall it is, how much ticket prices are today, opening times etc.

^ from http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2011/10/10/app-review-google-goggles/
This will be a downloadable mobile app for Android phones, and it will use feature detection to find similar images in it’s database and return information about the closest match. The app will require internet access to communicate with a server that will run the query and holds the database.
The project was dubbed “ELROND” by Anne, who I lived with in second year, because it’s close to SLROMD (which is what the actual abbreviation would be) and it also has Lord of the Rings references, which I’m all for!
So far I’ve got most of the feature detection working, and it should be quick enough to identify a match from 1000’s of images in under a second… but only time will tell. I’ll explain more about how my current solution works in a later post, but for now here’s a screenshot of it working on my computer…

13 usingfile
  • On the top-right you can see the query image, this would be the image taken on the phone.
  • Below it is the image matched to it from the database.
  • The white lines are lines between features matched between the query and database image (using a process called FLANN matching).
  • The green box shows where the query image would fit onto the database image if you were to stitch them together in a panorama (called a homography).
  • The top-middle window (with the red circles) shows the features found in the query image. The features are found using the SURF algorithm.
  • The left of the image shows the code output, showing the progress of the database search and how the query image matched to the other images in the database.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Dressing up

First off I forgot to mention that last weekend in Cardiff I also was in London to see Bruno Mars:

DSC03053

Despite the long bus journey from Cardiff to London, and closures on the Victoria line, it was well worth it!

By the way, all this travelling the last year has taught me a few top travel tips to save:

  1. Check MegaTrain a few weeks (ideally 4-6) before you travel and see if they are offering your journey for less than the rail operator.
  2. Also use MegaBus if you can bare the thought, it’s a fraction of the price, and on Sundays it can actually be quicker thanks to Sunday trains stopping at every station under the sun.
  3. If you’re still drawing a blank, or would prefer to use the train, then you can still save money by using your Tesco Clubcard points to get triple discount on rail tickets! I know, epic. Just follow these instructions and you are quids in!

Anyway, back to last weekend:

halloween

I went out as a mad professor for Halloween on Friday night!

death

The house as a whole was looking pretty dapper… except Will, he looked like death :D

cocktails

On Saturday night we had a cocktail party at our house. 5 cocktails: Martini (gin), Daiquiri (rum), Cosmopolitan (vodka), Margarita (tequila) and Old Fashioned (whisky). It was a very classy evening… until we all ended up pissed and rolling around all over the place…

more cocktails

All in all a mixed weekend, but certainly one I won’t forget in a hurry :)

  • Happiness. 7 out of 10
  • Tiredness. 3 out of 5
  • Workload. 6 out of 10
  • Last Meal. Chicken Korma curry (not fish and chips!) 
  • Song of the day. Skylar Grey – Love The Way You Lie
  • Thought for the day. I must try using a head massager in the bedroom…
  • What I’m Doing Now. Working before going to see the King Blues tonight at the Roundhouse in Camden! Yes!

Friday, October 28, 2011

Rum and Coke, Myfanwy

Hello all,

Yes I am still alive… very much alive in fact. I’m back to normality now after 4 weeks at university. Lectures and coursework and not a flight to Switzerland in sight! I still haven’t spent two consecutive weeks sleeping in the same bed yet this year! It might happen before the years out!

Other than that I’ve been keeping myself to myself and taking things as they come. Last weekend I was up in Cardiff to see Jake for his girlfriend’s birthday… much fun and rum was had by all :D

DSC03044

Getting involved in MADTV once again…

DSC02997

Celebrating Halloween in style tonight for the first time ever! And then the house is having a private ‘invite only’ cocktail party tomorrow. Good times are ahead :)

  • Happiness. 7 out of 10
  • Tiredness. 5 out of 5 (sleep is a struggle…)
  • Workload. 6 out of 10 (but it’s all really interesting at the moment)
  • Last Meal. Fish fingers and chips (i know! 2 posts in a row!)
  • Song of the day. Ellie Goulding – Lights (Bassnectar Remix)
  • Thought for the day. I could be a pilot!
  • What I’m Doing Now. At Sony for a day to catch up with people :)

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Final Countdown…

Final year is here! This has been my first week back in lectures for a very long time, but so far it’s been very exciting, and even fun at times :D

I’m very happy with my switch from the Digital Media Engineering course to Electronics and Computer Engineering, since it is far more established and has more specialists at hand to answer questions. Overall, the course change is almost arbitrary, since they are so similar, but it has allowed me to choose the modules I want to study in final year.

The last few days of the InterRail trip in Venice were amazing, it’s such a crazy place. The small canals and busy grand canal just ooze beauty even during rush hour!

DSC02931

Coincidently, you can see more of the InterRail pictures on Facebook:

Copenhagen to Vienna and Budapest to Venice

This is the first time since last September that I can safely say I will be in the country for the foreseeable future, and it feels good! Getting to live with my housemates and already having lots of good times and banter. Which reminds me I haven’t shown you round our house! That’ll come very soon :D

Finally, I’ve started my final year project! The “dissertation” of the Electronics department where you take on a technical project and ultimately write about your findings. I want to dedicate a bit of space for explaining what it’s all about, but it’ll wait… OK, here’s a sneaky peek :p

07 pantheon match

Until next time,

Charles

  • Happiness. 8 out of 10
  • Tiredness. 1 out of 5
  • Workload. 3 out of 10 (the return of the workload!)
  • Last Meal. Fish fingers and chips :)
  • Song of the day. Athlete – You Got The Style
  • Thought for the day.
  • What I’m Doing Now. Heading off for a 4 hour lecture/lab combo!

Friday, September 23, 2011

InterRail Post #11: All roads lead to…a Pizzeria…and a fountain

Sophie here, giving you the second instalment about our time in Rome.

If you are planning to visit Rome, you may want to get a travelcard for the metro or bus; as we decided to walk everywhere. There are a lot of sights to see in Rome, and they aren’t as close together as a map may lead you to believe! After a month of walking everyday, Rome really took its toll on us, one day we even had to admit defeat at 5pm and head back to the hostel before dinner for a 2 hour nap because our eyes just couldn’t stay open any longer.

On Monday we took a visit to the world famous Colleseum, getting a live guide to help us understand some of the history.

DSC02811

Charles took a quick look at St Peter’s Basilica as I was denied entry for not being covered up enough, boo.

DSC02830

The Roman’s seem to have an obsession with holey roofs.

We grabbed some dinner at a touristy restaurant that evening and everything was fine until a suspicious 4 Euros with a squiggle for the description turned up on our bill. Upon asking the waiter what this was he told us it was a cover charge for the napkins, tablecloth and bread (which we didn’t even eat). This promptly turned into a massive argument where we refused to pay the extra charge and even got kicked out of the restaurant, needless to say we won’t be going there again!

I then had to get my theatre fix as it has been way to long since seeing any production. I got a ticket for an African Contemporary dance show but I was thoroughly disappointed as what I saw wasn’t exactly dance. Think lots of running around, shouting in French and a very hairy naked woman in a long veil, not really my cup of tea, oh well it felt god to be cultured.

On Tuesday we headed over to the Vatican Museum and were herded like sheep around the rooms including the room of maps, the room of tapestries, halls of numerous roman sculptures and modern religious art. Our visit ended in the beautifully hand painted inside of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo we salute you!

DSC02835

We couldn’t resist

DSC02846

The Last Judgement

DSC02847

The ceiling depicting Creation and Noah’s Ark

DSC02851 

This one is for you Charlotte

The last thing to note about Rome is the abundance of Ice Cream on sale, everywhere you turn there is a Gelateria with amazing flavours such as ginger and cinnamon, caramel meringue and nutella. Needless to say Charles and I took full advantage of this fact.

DSC02754

DSC02864

5 Interesting things about Rome

1. Sales assistants and waiters have no time for tourists, the Italians could really learn a thing or two from the English about customer service!

2. When there were fights held at the Colleseum the crowd used to be asked towards the end of they wanted to stop the fight and keep the contender standing, they would signal this with a thumbs up. However if they wanted the contender to be flattened they would signal with a thumb to the side.

3. Italian drivers are crazy, you risk your life at every road crossing.

4. Roman restaurants don’t have toilet seats on their loos, I have become a pro at squatting and am building up some good thigh muscles!

5. In many shops they never have change for a €20, be cautious when paying with one!

Rome wasn’t built in a day, so don’t try and see all of it in one!

We are now on our way to Venice for the last two days of our trip before heading home! That’s all from me, I hope you have enjoyed reading my parts of the blog for the trip.

Sophie

x

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

InterRail Post #10: MARIA!!!!!!

After a really cool 7 hour ferry across the Adriatic sea from Dubrovnik, the southern point of the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, to Bari, a small harbour town half way down Italy’s west coast; Sophie and I had already realised one unmistakable fact about the Italians: They are loud. With an average speaking volume over 50dB higher than all other European nations, it’s no surprise that our Ferry journey was abundant with shouts and cries such as “MARIA!!!!!!!!!!!”. Despite this, Sophie and I got chatting to a very interesting traveller with a motor home from south England who had just spent the last 3 weeks taking in all the sights along the Dalmatian coast that we had wizzed past in just 5 hours on a coach… It’s evident that Croatia has far more to offer than any salient traveller could visit in just the 5 short days we spent in the country. I also found out the reason why the Croatians had a street in every major city named after Nikola Tesla, inventor of the tesla coil and, hence, AC power as we use today… he was born in Croatia. Interesting fact I didn’t know.

Anyhow… Bari. Not much to say about this small town, mainly because we were there just long enough to get a bus to the train station, hunt for somewhere to eat (and finding a place selling Focaccia) and watching The Lovely Bones on the laptop waiting for our overnight train to Rome. The overnight train, on the other hand, I could talk about for hours…

DSCN0311

Without a bed reservation, because they were all taken when we tried to reserve them a week earlier, we had to make do with seats. We shared a cabin with 4 other people in 2 rows of 3 seats facing each other. After getting on the train we turned the light off in our cabin and tried to get some resemblance of sleep on the 6 hour train. Unfortunately several factors prevented this: the aforementioned seat layout meaning the person opposite me constantly kicking my shins, the ticket inspector choosing 3am as the opportune moment to check our InterRail passes, the ticket inspector then arguing with 2 guys just outside our cabin for what I can only assume was not having a valid ticket, the aforementioned inherent loudness of Italians and the heat of the cabin after 20 minutes of 6 people trying to sleep and breathing heavily… it was most definitely an experience!

6:30am, finally in Rome sweet Rome… but without a map and only cryptic directions to our hostel. After one long hour we discovered it was only a 10 minute walk from where we started. 20 minutes later the receptionist finally checks us in (slowest check-in ever!) and Sophie and I make full use of the included breakfast :)

And then we napped… for 2 hours.

DSC02750

First stop: Well, lunch… but then: Fontana Di Trevi. The most famous fountain in Rome, and believe me there are a lot to choose from!

DSC02755

For some reason every tourist in Rome must visit this flight of steps… and when I say every tourist in Rome, that is a lot of tourists! Even at the end of September Rome’s small streets were packed with every Tom, Dick and Harry you could think of. I’d hate to think what it’s like during peak season!

DSC02760

The Pantheon.

DSC02761

Still the world’s largest unsupported concrete dome, it really is a sight to behold. And what’s outside this amazing monument… another fountain!

DSC02771

Some run-down theatre…

DSC02775

Up to Gianicolo for sunset and an amazing view over Rome.

DSC02782 

Just before leaving England a month ago I went to my bank to sort out travel things and the assistant recommended a pizzeria in Rome, so we did!

DSC02788

Local, traditional pizza just off the tourist track… I’d recommend it to anyone who’s going to Rome. www.pizzariapanunto.com Thank you Richard Hill!

DSC02792 

The next morning we ventured over the river to a Sunday Flea market, and it was huge! An hour of walking continuously and we hadn’t even found the end! Littered with clothes stalls, jewellery stands, electronics, bags, books, food and everything else; it was a good place for us to get a few souvenirs, as long as you were prepared to barter!

DSC02793

It was HOT!

DSC02801 Stitch

Ancient Rome… Incredible.

DSC02808

Sophie’s feet after a long day of walking around 2500 years of roman history!

Sophie will fill you in on the last 2 days in Rome which include more of that old theatre, a ceiling and table tax! Stay tunes!