Recently I’ve been increasingly more worried about losing my core data. Mostly source code, pictures and some data. Plus the edited home video. Basically the private stuff that one cannot “always download again from the Internet”.
For the source code and a few basic data files, I decided to gather everything under a home directory, so that I can keep track of everything.
because I modify those files both at work and at home, keeping track of the changes has become a bit too time consuming.
To synchronize everything I’ve been looking into the rsynch utility, of Unix origin, which is available under cygwin. It seems useful, but still requires some learning.
I’ve also been thinking of keeping all home dir under subversion (files versioning system). To do that though, I’d need to run a subversion server at home. Definitely something that takes its time to setup properly. Also that would mean that I’d still have to keep relying on my home-server, something I’m trying to avoid. However, the home server really matters if I care to keep track of the files history, otherwise, if the server goes down, I suppose I could make a new repository on a new server, as long as I have the most recent files.. which is the thing I really care about.
Another issue that keeps me thinking is wether to keep writing on here (blogger.com) or move back to kazzuya.com, my very own site, originally intended as a diary anyway, and that I’ve been neglecting for the past couple of years.
Of kazzuya.com I like better the hierarchical comments structure (especially since I coded it 8). The nuisance is that at one point I will have to tidy everything up. It’s my site, with my PHP code, and my database structure.. all built to barely work, without a proper backup and restore plan. Basically, my paranoia of losing data has been pushing me towards public and reliable solutions (much like I ditched POP mail in favor of GMail).
Speaking of losing data: DO NOT BUY MAXTOR HARD DRIVERS, THEY ARE CRAP !!! I’ve lost an 80GB one I think, then a 250, now another 250 is dying a slow death. Maxtor hard-drives break very easily, they break for everyone. Just avoid them.
Now, back to the blogger vs kazzuya issue. Another problem with blogger.com (not really it fault) is that my friends in China cannot access it. That’s right, blogger.com is one of those domains censored by the Chinese government. ..kind of funny, kind of sad !
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 12:25 AM EDT
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Friday I left the office and it was raining. I didn’t buy an umbrella because it wasn’t so bad.
Saturday I went out, Sunday night I went to sleep and felt as I was getting sick. By the end of Monday I was sick indeed !
Today, Tuesday, I decided to call in sick and face the cold and sore throat before it would get worse. It wasn’t that bad, but when it’s bad it’s already too late.
The theory goes that with cold wind, one gets his/her throat dry, making the job easier for the bacteria. That may be so, but it’s definitely not the whole story ! One get’s wet in a cold environment, he/she sneezes and there starts the cold effect. It’s that simple, but I don’t know of any proper scientific explanation for this.. at least it’s not common knowledge.
In any case, I spent a few hours on Sunday and Monday on video compression, and the not-so-sick part of today too. I’ve finally came up with some working, decent, implementation. It’s all black & white, but it’s also 640×480.
Trying to video chat at 640×480 is quite a challenge. Capturing with DirectShow from a USB 2 web-camera alone takes a big slice of CPU ! To that must be added the necessary noise reduction, then compressing one frame while decompressing another. I’ve thought about using graphics hardware acceleration to help the CPU, but the good accelerators, those with pixel shaders, are of course on already powerful computers. This is again the big trouble with PCs.. while I see that Apple has been pushing the use of hardware acceleration to do video processing. Having a relatively fixed spec hardware definitely helps push things forward. Apple also uses the AltiVec instruction set, since that’s standard on the recent Macs.
In any case, I’m hoping for a test dev release. Something for others to test (help me to test 8). First I need to add color, because B&W really sucks ! After that, I will try optimize further the compression.
One good starting point for improving compression is to assume that the camera doesn’t move and that the subject(s) are in front of a camera with a relatively static background.
At first, the moving subject will cover one part of the background, then uncover it while covering another part. My goal, would be to progressively memorize the whole background, so that at one point the subject can move anywhere and (ideally) none of the background data will need to be re-transmitted.
Something like this is already implemented in MPEG-1 compression. Hardly anything is new nowadays, it’s mostly matter of efficiently implement some specific ideas in a simple way so that code doesn’t get too complex and encoding doesn’t take too much time. Assuming that the camera is fixed helps avoiding to deal with motion compensation, a very powerful technique that is also very time consuming !
Time to zzzzzzz
poof
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:13 AM EDT
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With all this social activities report, some people may think that I’ve been wasting all of my time. In fact I’ve only wasted most of it 8)
This week I went back to the gym, after having skipped it a few times. Incredibly I was weighting 71.25 Kg ! I remember about a month ago having been so happy for 71.65 Kg and now I’m closer to 71 than ever. That’s one positive-productive news.
I’ve also been working on video compression. I made the frame differences detection more robust, then I moved onto extending the image compression routines I developed recently to handle the video compression. Basically to only send the differences between one frame and the next one. This isn’t done yet, because of course I wasted a lot of time, but I’ve reached a good point (especially fixed a nasty bug).
Today I didn’t leave the apartment. I mostly focused on starting a new web-site for my mother’s pub. I decided to use PHP, especially because of the handy include feature, possibly the biggest problem with HTML. Also I’m planning to add a message board and embedding fresh news to the site via RSS. RSS is the hot topic of the moment, everyone seems to have an RSS feed. What I really want is just to grab news from other sites and embed them on my mother’s site.. just to keep the page active and somewhat entertain visitors.
In order to do all this, of course I had to install and setup PHP support into the Apache 2 server running on my home server.
Lastly ! I played around with Perl, this time to work on the home server pictures album. I need to improve the main page, but I was stuck with a Bash script, so I rewrote the index-page generator in Perl. The actual look is the same, but having the generator run in Perl makes it easier to add the things that I’m planning.
I didn’t seriously study any Japanese, aside from the usual bathroom sessions (that’s how I studied to get my California driver’s license !). Instead, I watched most of Aliens, again !
Hopefully tomorrow I can get something done, instead of trying to do all things at once.
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 1:37 AM EDT
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Hazukashii (恥ずかしい) is the Japanese word to express embarrassment. Contrary to the western culture, it’s not shameful to admit out loud to be embarrassed.
Yesterday night I went out with some friends (now, that’s something new 8). At one point I teamed with one guy to see if we could get acquainted with some girls. The feat proved harder than expected ! Granted that we were in an environment where most guys were Japanese, even more than usual, I’ve never seen a girl telling me hazukashii straight away and then running off ! This has happened a few times yesterday night. Although only in one instance one I’ve heard the word in question.
The reason for all this is not clear, but I have one theory. Excluding that either me or my friend stank badly 8), the theory is that the club, known for being frequented by foreigners (there is even a special discount for foreigners !), yesterday night was actually populated by a different set of girls. Possibly girls that came to Tokyo from less internationalized Japanese cities to shop and have fun for the Golden Week holiday. Those girls weren’t probably expecting to have to deal with foreigners, and quickly succumbed to the fear of the unknown.
Definitely a learning experience.. 8)
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 4:19 PM EDT
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Saturday, I had a small gathering at home. Some nice girls came. When I say nice I mean that when they left the apartment, it actually looked cleaner than before !
It’s nice when people show some sensitivity… it’s not a very common thing. In the past I’ve been breaking my back to make some people happy, only to get my ass kicked around.. fack that !
The gathering went well and after that we went clubbing.
For once it was relaxing to go a club with (non-slutty) female friends, without feeling like a lost soul on a mission !
Tonight (tuesday) I went out again, with a friend. Today and tomorrow and the day after is holiday. Three whole days that mark the so-called Golden Week. A yearly recurring event, although every year the days are distributed differently (sometimes in the weekend 8( ).
The night was nice overall. Not many people around, but we managed to get in good terms with a group of nice girls. However it was somewhat stressful to me, because my friend is very forward and will pretty much jump on a girl before you can even think about her. Actually he usually tells me which one he likes best, then he tells me the second best, so he pretty much tells me all the girls he likes (the nicer ones !) and I’m left in a sort of warned state, left there hanging, feeling guilty for even getting close to any of the preys he’s already marked.
I think that this situation has to change. One just can’t always try to wait for the lion to serve himself, because the lion will always eat all the food 8)
However, the hardest part is actually to deal with my own character. Often there will be a group of two or more girls in which only one or two are really attractive. This is a big problem because I know that by showing interest towards one, the less attractive will somewhat resent of that. I can imagine her seeing the same scene over and over again, every time she hangs out with her friend. And that blocks me from showing my honest interest towards the nice girl.
So, really, it’s not so much matter of playing on a leveled field with the lions, but, mostly, matter of being insensitive towards those that need it the least.
Then there are the forward girls, those that jump on you. While this makes the job much easier, because one doesn’t need to worry about being insensitive, they are still female lions, and one is just the prey of the day..
In the end, to survive, I need to learn to be an asshole 8) Otherwise I’ll be generally starving, and occasionally be eaten.
bha !
Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 4:29 AM EDT
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