New Beginnings...

I started blogging when I started university on request of my sister, who wanted to know how I was getting on… over the years my blogging habits have gone through many stages: informal, informative, rambling, necessity, diary, reflective…

Read the rest of this post, and get all my new posts, over at the new site for this blog www.thegrayscale.co.uk

This blogger page will no longer be updated with my latest posts, but you can see all my new posts with new photographs and videos over at my new website www.thegrayscale.co.uk

Another One Bites The Dust

First exam done! Only 1 to go! After next Friday I will have completed all the university exams I will ever have to do in my life! Damn!

The last week has been great! Despite having to revise with the weather like it is can be a distraction, but going down to the lake for a spot of lunch every day is such bliss! It’s such a shame that just as the weather gets good everyone leaves university! Campus looks so beautiful this time of year!

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 0 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (still revision to go!)
• Last Meal. I haven’t had breakfast! That’s why I'm so hungry! Damnit!
• Song of the day. Michael Kiwanuka – I’m Getting Ready
• Thought for the day. "If you're going through hell. Keep going." - Winston Churchill
• What I’m Doing Now. Watching the Monaco Grand Prix! Our weather is as good as theirs! Haha!

That was quick!

I have a house for when I start my PhD! After only a few short days of looking for houses around Guildford Will, Anna and I have found the perfect abode! Let me show you round…

It’s a 3-bedroom place, all the rooms are big enough for double beds, the kitchen is modern and it has a dishwasher! Luxury R’ Us! It’s not far away from my house with the girls last year, except a bit nearer university if anything. Same local pub though :D

I’m snatching up one of the biggest rooms, and since the place is unfurnished I can’t wait to put my stamp on the room and make it mine! Geeky posters and computer parts everywhere!

It’s so exciting to finally have a place sorted, it means I can really get my head straight about how the next few months before my PhD starts are going to play out, and it looks pretty awesome!

• 26th May. First exam
• 1st June. Last exam ever
• 11th June. Project Viva, and the end of university
• 15th June. Big party
• 17th June. Boat trip with housemates
• 25th June. Start summer job at Sony
• 8th July. Move out of my current house :(
• 17th July. Graduate
• 20th July. Graduation Ball
• 25th July. AMERICA!
• 15th August. Move in to new place :)
• 1st October. Start PhD at University of Surrey

And with producing the Fresher’s videos for the student television station and designing a new website for my local church I don’t think I’ll be bored! I can’t wait!

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (lots of revision)
• Last Meal. Good ol’ fish and chips
• Song of the day. Lenny Kravitz – Fly Away
• Thought for the day. The meaning of life is to give life a meaning.
• What I’m Doing Now. In disbelief that I’ll have to leave this house in 7 weeks time… I might cry.

New Kindlings

As I always seem to be saying on this blog, new and exciting things are afoot. Lots is happening at the moment, and I don’t just mean revision for my final exams… although I probably should.

No, there is lots to look forward to once this university madness is over. I’m currently in the process of looking for a new abode in Guildford for the coming year, since I seem to be sticking around thanks to my new found PhD position :D I’m hoping to live with Will, my current and ex-housemate, and Anna, my current housemates girlfriend. It’s complicated, ok, but it’s going to be awesome! 3-bedroom places are not all the rage, but there are some out there and we plan to find somewhere to call our own! But we haven’t found anywhere yet, there are a few viewings going on this week though so I’ll keep you informed if anything drastic happens. I promise this time.

What else? Well we’ve been testing the limits of our housemate Mike’s stupidity…

For those of you who don’t know, the Cinnamon challenge is where one attempts to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon. It’s as simple as that…

If you like that there’s a few more here :D

I’ve also been keeping up my involvement in the student television station, recently put in charge of producing the fresher videos for the new students starting in September. Now isn’t that a shift? Just a few years ago I was the unknowing fresher…

I’d love to go into more detail about some of these things, but it will all be eeked out of me eventually.

Lots of plans, lots of ambition, lots of revision to do…

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (revision time!)
• Last Meal. Chilli without the chilli 
• Song of the day. Stevie Wonder – Superstition
• Thought for the day. House times are exciting!
• What I’m Doing Now. Putting off sleep…

Pause for thought

Hello again! My heart is still beating, and I have lots of news you might be interested to hear, but first an explanation.

Since I last wrote here almost 2 months (wow, I’m ashamed of myself), I have been very busy. Busy, you say? What on earth could be more important than writing in your favourite place on the internet? You better have a damn good excuse. Well…

I’ve been going to a local piano bar quite a lot with the ginger one in this photo. It’s a very civilised place with live music and cocktails.

Experimenting with banana and choc ice milkshakes.

Doing some terrible singing at the aforementioned piano bar.

 

Covering our kitchen in highlighter fluid and UV ink. The reason behind this will become clear… you just have to be patient.

Been on a treasure hunt around Weymouth.

Gone Ape!

So that’s what I’ve been up to! When I haven’t been doing all of those fun things I’ve been working on coursework and my final project – which I finished today! Hence the post :)

So coursework in and final report written, now is a good time to note that there’s only precious few weeks left of my university life before heading out into the world of work… or is it?

I have kind of been keeping some big news from you since the last post 2 months ago, and it’s kind of what the last post was about. When I wrote the last post I was deep in thought about what to do once I graduate, because I’d been given a choice: Work for Sony, or be sponsored by Sony to do a PhD. And I changed my mind. I’ll never know if it was the right choice, but I’m so happy that I’ve decided to do a PhD.

I don’t want to dwell on what the PhD is on right now, that will come in a future post, but needless to say that it is really exciting and I can’t wait to start! My PhD course is 3.5 years long and it’s at the University of Surrey still, starting in October. I’m being sponsored and getting paid tax-free, so it’s not going to get me into any more debt! I do want to go into depth about why I decided to do a PhD, because I found it a hard decision and I want to be able to help other people who might have to make that decision in the future.

This isn’t the end of my links with Sony, in fact it’s only just the beginning. Sony have a big input in my research during the PhD, but I’m also working there over the summer with the team I was in last year. Hopefully the ties can continue because they are amazing people!

So… life turned on it’s head and I don’t really know what to say. This blog will be getting a major overhaul in the late half of this year, to capture more of my personal and professional life as it develops… hopefully!

I feel like my life is going from strength to strength, just got to get through these exams first and then I have a long summer of work, America and a new home to look forward to! I’ll reveal all, just bear with me! And thanks for sticking round this far! As a thank you here’s the link to the rest of the Pound for Food videos I produced with my housemates recently, they are seriously funny: http://bit.ly/poundforfood.

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 5 out of 10 (revision time!)
• Last Meal. Spaghetti Bolognaise
• Song of the day. Jason Mraz – Everything is Sound
• Thought for the day. Dissertation done! Boom! 
• What I’m Doing Now. Sleep! Then starting revision tomorrow… All will be over in only 5.5 weeks!!!

Only

Only 4 weeks until Easter, when I’ll be writing my final project report and revising for my last exams.

Only 9 weeks until my final project is due, the most important document I will have ever written.

Only 14 weeks until the end of university, after which I’ll have finished the road of education and start my road to finding the meaning of life.

Only 19 weeks until America, another adventure of a lifetime :)

Only one chance to make the right choices in life. Be who you have always wanted to be. Inspire your dreams and make a difference.

• Happiness. 7 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 7 out of 10 (come on motivation, i know there’s some of you left)
• Last Meal. Lots of chicken
• Song of the day. Earth, Wind and Fire – September
• Thought for the day. It’s no big deal. Just the future of humanity.
• What I’m Doing Now. Breathing.

Californication

Right now there are thousands of final year students thinking about what to do when they Graduate: Do I live at home or find somewhere to live? Should I take a year out to travel and explore the world or start earning money as fast as I can? Should I do a PhD or work in McDonalds?

I think the answer is to look at the opportunities you have and see which ones you’ll regret not taking 10 years down the line when you’re working 9 to 5 every week. I’m probably going to be going back to Sony once I graduate since my placement year with them was the best year of my life, but there’s still that question of when to start work?

Originally I thought I’d start straight away, after all I loved working there and I’d already been travelling in terms of InterRailling last summer. But then I got an offer. America…

San Francisco, LA, Vegas and the Grand Canyon. In 20 days. I challenge anyone to say no to that.

For the backstory, basically Charlotte is going to Florida with her dad for a couple of weeks in July, since he has a villa there. I was invited to join them but, unfortunately, that is right about the time of my graduation ceremony and all that jazz, so I couldn’t go :( But then we had a thought. I could go after… And instead of staying in Florida we could go anywhere in America.

After much debate and deliberation, including the idea of going to New York and the east coast, we settled on another plan. California. And the journey was born :)

This week I bought my flights, 25th July to 14th August. From San Francisco to Las Vegas. Can you tell I’m excited?

I have so many ideas of things to do!

• See the Golden Gate Bridge
• Go to Alcatraz
• Drive down the West coast in a convertible
• See the Hollywood sign
• Drive Sunset Boulevard
• See the view from Mulholland Drive
• Walk the walk of fame
• Go to Six Flags Magic Mountain
• Walk down the Las Vegas strip
• Ride The Big Shot at the top of the Stratosphere Tower
• Visit the Hoover Dam
• Raft through the Grand Canyon

ok, so that’s quite a bit, but I’m very excited!!! This is going to be a trip of a lifetime…

• Happiness. 9 out of 10
• Tiredness. 0 out of 5
• Workload. 6 out of 10 (lots of Computer Vision things)
• Last Meal. Bacon sandwich
• Song of the day. Phantom Planet – California
• Thought for the day. Life after university is looking pretty good from where I’m standing.
• What I’m Doing Now. Getting far to excited about California, Nevada and Arizona :)

Progress is progress…

So since my little excursion to Greenwich, life has been dribbling along very nicely indeed. I’ve got some plans for updating some websites which I currently run, namely moving the www.stmarybalham.org.uk site over to a php server running WordPress… I’m doing it to get more experience running my own server, and writing php; but also because I wrote the code for this website before I came to university and since then I’ve learnt some better techniques for dynamic website building than I used back then. It’ll be a challenge, but something I’m looking forward to digging my teeth into once this whole university thing is over.

My final project is coming along, it now shows a lot more information and I’m in the process of building a test rig that can assess the accuracy and performance of the system so far for benchmarking and to get some pretty graphs to go into my write up :)

And I got my results last week for my exams in January, I did really well! I got a first in all my modules and I’m averaging 82% for my degree :) Only 30% of my degree left! The end is in sight, finally!

And for those of you who are interested, the next video about my stupid housemates who are living off £1 for food for a month is up:

I didn’t think my voice could go that high for “Top tip of the week”… turns out I was wrong.

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 5 out of 10 (but it’s all interesting stuff…)
• Last Meal. Fish and chips
• Song of the day. Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Scar Tissue
• Thought for the day. Don’t know whether giving my housemates a beta version of my app was a good idea… :p 
• What I’m Doing Now. About to do some more work… after lunch….

Time for Greenwich

This weekend Charlotte and I went to London for a Mr Scruff gig in Camden. During the day we killed time by going to the birthplace of time itself, Greenwich.

The royal observatory is definitely one of my favourite places in London, if not my favourite.

Greenwich is beautiful, situated by the river with the Cutty Sark, a market, park and of course the Maritime museum. From the top of the hill you can see a spectacular view of London, and although it wasn’t the clearest of days for an uninterrupted view, it was still a feast for the eyes.

The museum itself is fascinating, with the four Harrison clocks on display that changed the way we kept time at sea and on land. It is also home to London’s only planetarium, which projects a spectacular show of the universe and it’s mysteries onto a large dome. And also offered a must needed sit down :)

And being that close to the docklands, who wouldn’t sneak a peek at  Canary Wharf on the noddy docklands light railway :)

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 2 out of 5
• Workload. 3 out of 10
• Last Meal. Rice.
• Song of the day. Mr Scruff – Champion NIbble
• Thought for the day. Which Islay Single Malt to buy…
• What I’m Doing Now. Thinking of the layout for my new website (oooh, such a tease :P)

The final semester begins…

My last semester of lectures started last week and because of my cunning plan to front load my module choices for final year I only have two modules and my project work to do. While I regretted that decision in January, having to sit 4 exams, coursework and write a report for my project it all seems worth it now.

I’ve got a couple of marks back for coursework already, and they are both firsts, so with any luck I should still be on track. I’ll get my exam results before the end of the month and that will be a really good indicator of how I’m doing since I’ve now completed over 70% of my degree…

My new timetable is only 7 hours a week! 3 hours on Tuesday, 3 hours on Thursday and an hour on Friday. This gives me loads of time to work on my project witch is going really well (thanks for asking :P)

My project, ELROND, can now do lots of the things I explained in this diagram a while ago, and there’s still plenty of time for refinements and improvements which should give me lots to talk about in my final report. This makes me happy :)

At the moment my housemates Will and Mike are attempting to eat for a month on only £1 of food a day. I’m helping make a weekly video diary for MADTV:

That’s my voice in the intro :P

What else has been going on? Well I’m starting to think more seriously about life after uni, what to do, where to live, whether to go travelling for a while before starting work and so on… So far I’m planning a couple of weeks in California with Charlotte before starting work for the rest of my life. I’d also like to go on holiday with my housemates, but that’s just an idea at the moment.

It’s all exciting times, and Charlotte and I are off to London this weekend to see Mr Scruff play at Koko. I went last year with Julie and it was AMAZING! I’m really looking forward to round 2!

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 3 out of 10
• Last Meal. Kung Pao Chicken!
• Song of the day. Ed Sheeran’s Plus Album, it’s all good :)
• Thought for the day. I was there when this happened!
• What I’m Doing Now. Thinking about buying a Linode…

Bath Time

So since exams have finished, I’ve spent my time catching up on fresh air. Firstly with a trip to my sisters for grandma’s funeral. It’s never a good reason for seeing someone, but it was really nice to see my sister and James again so soon as I’d kind of resided myself to the fact that I probably wouldn’t see much of them for at least a couple of months.

What else has happened? I’ve bought a new amplifier for my speaker system. It didn’t come cheap, but the idea is that I can eventually buy new speakers and then have a pretty cool sound-system for whatever abode I end up in after university. I have dreams of a cinema projector, blackout curtains and a big comfy sofa… the day will come.

In other news, I have presented another MADTV video! This year we are producing a weekly news show to summarise the interesting goings-on on campus, and I present the 4th episode!

Listen out for my sign off at the end of the video :P

Last weekend Charlotte and I went to Bath, as in the place in Somerset. Despite the bitter cold and occasional snowfall, I fell in love with Bath. It’s such a small city, but packs a lot of character. And the rooftop pool at the Thermae Spa is ideal for washing your stress away after a busy few weeks of exams!

Today is the start of a new semester, in fact my last ever semester! Only two modules and a dissertation left and then I’m a free man… I’m already planning a holiday once all this university malarkey is over, and after that the world is my oyster :)

• Happiness. 9 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 3 out of 10
• Last Meal. Soup and fish
• Song of the day. Civil Sound – More Than I Could Say
• Thought for the day. Nostalgic times…
• What I’m Doing Now. Getting food, because I have none :(

I’ve got 99 problems but exams ain’t one…

Hello! Exams are over until the summer, my 4th and last one was on Wednesday and now I have a week before my new set of lectures start. It’s been a bit non-stop since I last wrote in here at the start of December, the jokes of Christmas and New Year quickly a distant luxury as coursework deadlines and exams loomed. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t treat you to some of the photographs from the New Year celebrations…

The annual gathering of mine and Jake’s friends is fast becoming some sort of tradition, and good thing too because this year did not disappoint! All it takes is two dozen friends, some karaoke, alcohol and Who’s in the Bag to get things going! The cream carpet is still cream, and only one sprained wrist caused by a particularly flowery dance-off containing the “epileptic worm”…

There was also a bit of typical London touristy things going on during the days before new year with Jake, Sarah and Charlotte about…

The Science Museum, because there’s nothing wrong with being a geek, Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, and a secret cocktail bar in Liverpool Street :) good times.

The rest of the time was less interesting, but certainly more productive! With two big essays to write, and four exams to revise for it’s been a busy 3 weeks; but I feel it has paid off as my exams seemed to go well. I should get my results in a few weeks, so only time will tell… But with those done that marks the point of 70%. A whole 70% of my degree is now complete! And only a few months left until that figure goes the full nine yards… scary and exciting times!

I’m genuinely looking forward to my last semester at university. I’m ready to study my final tow modules, and progress further with my final project work.

Job prospects are still up in the air to some degree, but hopefully I won’t have any issues in that department…

So much to look forward too, and so much going on! I’ll aim to keep you guys in the loop with everything from my project, modules, MADTV, holiday plans, work prospects… and I guess I should start thinking about what to do when all this university malarkey is all said and done. Knowing how quickly the last few years have gone it’ll be over before I know it

• Happiness. 8 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Workload. 5 out of 10
• Last Meal. Nibbles. 
• Song of the day. Paolo Nutini -  Last Request Piano Instrumental
• Thought for the day. 70% of degree done. Damn.
• What I’m Doing Now. Visiting my sister and then travelling to Weymouth tomorrow… Seems like I spend my life travelling sometimes :)

InterRail video!

Travelling around Europe by train, summer 2011. Sophie and I visited Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Split, Dubrovnik, Rome and Venice in a month!

I know I’ve been all up on the radio silence recently, exam season is upon us! I have devised my top 40 moments of 2011 that we have to count down together when these exams are over, and start talking about my final semester at university! It’s the beginning of the end!!!

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…

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.

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…

    

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…

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.

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.

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…

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…

 

• 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

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…

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…

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

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

 

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.

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

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

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.

^ 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.

^ 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…

• 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.