7.1 megapixels for the New Year

It's the time of year for happy voices: Christmas carols, bratty kids, "ho ho ho," the Dreidel song. There is one voice though which loudly protests, "Nah! Nah! Oh, dear God, Allah, Buddha, Thor, and Zeus! Stop!" But it is never heard. It is never heard because it's usually drowned out by a voice that says, "I'm going to get more exercise this year." or "I'm going to silence those creditors." or "I'm going to find aliens in the 4th dimension." It is never heard because passion and eggnog rule over reason and logic any day of the week. It is never heard because the hope of New Year's Resolutions is greater than the horror of reality.

To that voice, I say, "NOTE: THIS TEXT HAS BEEN CENSORED".

Projects for 2007

Research

1. Tracking across Multiple Non-overlapping camera views: my current overarching project.
   
2. Face Detection: finishing project.
   
3. Tracking within camera: useful for face detection and my overarching project.
   
4. Classification (The Toyon Project): I think I've been recruited.
   
5. Maybe some stuff with blimps: some my adviser mentioned that sounds like fun, but there's other stuff to work on.
   

Audio/Visual

1. Shoot a different person a day: so maybe it should be more of an average. This should help my portrait taking skills.
2. Shoot a self portrait a day: for practice.
3. Shoot a scene a day: more practice of techniques.
4. A movie a month: take photos and movies and edit them into something, hopefully interesting.
5. Weekly news podcast: This would be the ultimate A/V project and least attainable as it would require other equipment and other people. And the first part would be to drum up interest for it to happen. Why news? Because nothing else has so many story ideas so easily. If presented a la SNL's Weekend Update or The Daily Show "monologue," it could actually interest drunk college kids.

If you'd like to be my subjects for experimentation for any of these, please come and see me. I can shoot you on the spot. Just warn me long enough to load my deagles.

j/k I suck at Counter Strike.

Robotica's Funniest Home Videos

Robots have come a long way since Ibn Ismail Ibn al-Razzaz Al-Jazari made his drinking boat.  Their moving close and closer towards perfection, but perhaps in that way farther from humans.

Enter "Advanced Step in Innovative MObility," better known as ASIMO.  Honda's famous robot that has been touring the world and greets dignitaries with a certain grace rarely seen in a robot, until one faithful day that was captured on video and put on the Internet (Google Video), as everything is nowadays.

I'm sure we should thank the crew at Honda,who quickly hid ASIMO and shut down the event to the laughter of the crowd.

I first caught this on Engadget.