Revised GREC 2005 paper finished

I have just finished the revised version of our paper on "Generic Shape Classification for Retrieval" (original version). This paper will be re-submitted for review for the post-GREC 2005 proceedings, to be published in a Springer LNCS book.

My contribution to Senior Projects report template

In order to help students from IMMI group, we are creating a report template that will not only provide uniformization to senior projects reports but also give students the main topics they should focus on their reports.

This morning I reviewed the latest version of the template proposal and add some contributions to it.

Demonstration Tool for CALI

At IMMI group we use a calligraphic recognition library (CALI), developed a few years ago by Professor Manuel João da Fonseca. Several researchers and students are currently using this library in several applications successfully, some of them with little knowledge of the technique behind the recognizer.

In order to illustrate how CALI works, I am developing a simple demonstrator that lists in detail the features extracted by CALI for each scribble. A preliminary windows version of this application is now available for download (ZIP [379KB]). This is a compressed stand-alone executable file. Installation or configuration is not required, just unzip and run.

Screen-shot of CALIdemo preliminary version.

Updating Senior Projects Home Page

Our senior students must create a web page for their senior project, "Trabalho Final de Curso" (TFC) in Portuguese. Moreover, these pages should respect a given template and must be stored in a single place. This is my responsability. Based on the Computer Graphics and Multimedia (CGM) web pages I developed a template for TFC's pages and I am now gathering and publishing these.

Some of these pages are already accessible in a temporary address, while the CGM server aren't up and running.

Fourier Descriptors

After spending some time studying Zernike Moments for shape classification I concluded that to fully understand this technique I must also study the Fourier Descriptors (FD) method. However, it is not as simple as it seems, maybe because I don't remember Fourier Transforms.

I start my research at the CVOnline entry on FD. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Backing Up MSDN CD's

Today I need to return the MSDN CD's  with  Visual Studio .NET and libraries to IST computer and network services (CIIST). Thus, I decided to make a backup copy in order to have some indepence from the CIIST when the MSDN disks are necessary to install or update something in my computer, which occurs frequently.

I get some empty CD's and started the copy proccess. However, despite my attempts to write at the maximum recording speed (48×), the writing took always about twenty minutes by CD. When I verified the writing speed I noticed that it were 4×.

During the duplication of the last CD, I started labeling the new discs. Then I discovered why the copy was taking so much time. Instead of CD-R discs, I am using CD-RW discs "compatible 1×, 2× & 4×". Damn!!! How can such detail get unnoticed!?

Conclusion: a task that should take a few minutes, consumed more than one hour plus the time I spent trying to "fix" the problem. At least I made some bibliographic research while backing up the CD's.

Zernike Moments...

Today I was supposed to write one or two paragraphs about the use of Zernike moments in shape classification and retrieval, preferably comparing this method with CALI. However, at the end of the day I came out with nothing but a colossal headache. I believe that understanding Zernike moments takes more than one afternoon.

Requesting sponsorship to attend WSCG 2006

Two weeks ago we submitted a paper to the 14th International Conferences in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision (WSCG 2006).

Although I do not known yet if this paper will be accepted for publication, I need to apply now for fundings in order to have some chances to obtain any sponsorship to attend the conference. Thus I spent this morning preparing the documentation to request funding from Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Presentations at 13 EPCG

Last week I've been in Vila Real attending the 13º Encontro Português de Computação Gráfica (13 EPCG). There I presented two short-papers: "Recuperação de Desenhos de Moldes Combinando Imagens e Esboços" and "Simplificação de Plantas de Arquitectura para Classificação Automática". Besides showing our work and get some valuable feedback on it, I saw what other Portuguese researchers on computer graphics are doing.

Listening questions from the audience at 13EPCG

Submitted paper to WSCG 2006

Uff... It was a tough week. Finally, at the limit of the deadline, we finished and submitted the paper to the 14th International Conferences in Central Europe on
Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision (WSCG 2006).

Our paper, titled "A Calligraphic Interface for Managing Agents", presents the approach followed during the development of the editION prototype. Unfortunately, due to lack of time, it do not came out as good as we would like to, but we think it was pretty acceptable. Let's wait for the reviewer's comments.