Open Warrior

I recently got back from Australia where I presented my first published conference paper at an academic conference. The conference was the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) which ran concurrently with the International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL). I had one paper accepted at JCDL and another accepted at ICADL. The conferences took place in Surfer’s Paradise, Gold Coast, Australia.

The paper at JCDL was called Translating Handwritten Bushman Texts and is available via ACM here or via my institutional repository here. The paper for ICADL was called A Visual Dictionary for an Extinct Language and is available via Springer here or via my institutional repository here.

It was a great experience! Not only did I get to see and hear what cutting edge research was being performed by leading researchers in the field of digital libraries, but I also got to meet and interact with many of them and form some new connections at various Universities around the world. I also got to put faces to many of the papers I have been reading for most of this year

The main things that I took away from the conference were:

• Computer science does not always need to be technical, but can also be philosophical and have social implications.
• Researchers are generally interested in what others have to say.
• Researchers contextualise the research of others and fit it in with their research.
• Computer scientists are not simply nerds, but also like to have fun (but everyone already knows that)!

Unfortunately, I didn’t really have time to explore the Gold Coast since I was only there for 4 days, but I did get to go to the Outback Spectacular show (sort of Australia’s Wild West) and got to see family which recently immigrated to Australia a few years ago, as well as a cousin who lives in the United States, who I hadn’t seen in 7 years, and who just happened to be in Australia at the same time as me.

I would like to thank my supervisor A/Prof. Hussein Suleman for assisting me in writing the articles, as well as my co-authors Sanvir Manilal and Lebogang Molwantoa. I would also like to thank the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town for funding my trip, and lastly, the JCDL and ICADL reviewers who liked my papers and got them accepted into the conferences.

I just wrote a KDE service menu wrapper around the Dropbox python CLI. For more information please go here.

On another note, if you haven’t tried Dropbox I advise that you give it a go by clicking here

I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how I could use MEncoder to record video and audio from my webcam and kept running into a “floating point exception” problem. In scouring the internet I realised that many people seem to be having the exact same problem. It turns out that the problem is due to a bug in MEncoder and is simply fixed by installing the latest version.

I use Kubuntu Jaunty so the problem for me lay in the version of Mencoder that comes packaged with it. To fix the problem all I did was follow these instruction for adding a thrid party repository for newer builds of MPlayer/MEncoder and then installed the latest MEncoder using apt-get.

sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder

Thereafter I was able to capture video and audio from my webcam using the following command:

mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o webcam.avi

A few weeks ago I wrote a post which introduced the BOLD Project. Well, a lot has happened since then and this post gives an overview of the translation system which I am building.

BOLD Translator Overview

The translator is split into three parts:

1. The preprocessor
2. The user input
3. The matcher

The Preprocessor

The preprocessor is called as soon as an image is inserted into the repository. The preprocessor works by first segmenting the Bushman words in the dictionary. It does this by exploiting the known fact that every Bushman word on a page is underlined by a solid black line. Once the Bushman words have been segmented, specific features are extracted from them and these features are stored in inverted files. Once the features have been extracted then the orifinal image, the segmented words and the inverted files are all stored in the repository.

The User Input

The user who is accessing the Bleek & Lloyd notebooks uses a tool to select a specific word on a page which then becomes known as the key. The same features which were extracted from each word in the preprocessor are extracted from the key. These features along with the key image will be used later for matching.

The Matcher

The matcher starts by taking the features belonging to the key and finding images with the same features in the inverted files. For each feature match, the score of the image which matched increases. At the end of all the feature comparisons, the images with the highest scores are returned. At this stage there may be some images with the same or similar scores, so to resolve this clash the matcher performs a more intensive comparison between the key and the images with the highest score. Based on the result of this comparison, the most likely match is returned.

So that’s how the BOLD Translator works. Ultimately it is a framework which means that it will be designed such that anyone can adapt it and make use of it by plugging their own algorithms into each of the specific parts. In the next day or two I will blog about the actual work that has been done on the system up to now as well as show some of the results that the translator returns at this point.

The BOLD (Bushman On-Line Dictionary) Project is an honours project being worked on by myself and two colleagues, Sanvir Manilal and Lebogang Molwantoa and is supervised by Dr. Suleman. Together we are creating an online visual dictionary based on about 40 000 scanned images of dictionary pages which form part of the Bleek & LLoyd Collection. The dictionary pages contain an English word and the bushman translation(s) of the word. The goal of the project is to create a useable on-line visual dictionary which researchers around the world can make use of to find out more about bushman culture and bushman language.

The project has been split into three separate parts:

Part 1: Archive Management – Lebogang Molwantoa

This part involves the setting up and building of the archive, including developing administrative tools for managing the repository.

Part 2: Searching and Browsing – Sanvir Manilal

This part involves the way in which end users interact with and make use of the dictionary.

Part 3: Image Based Translation – Kyle Williams

This part involves using the Bushman dictionary to translate Bushman words in the existing Bleek & Lloyd Collection on the fly.

I’ll make use of this blog to provide updates on how development is going, as well as to document techniques I develop – with the idea being that:

1. I document them for my own use
2. They’re out there for use by other people who may be working on similar projects.

Wish us luck!

A page from the bushman dictionary*

* This image is not available under the same CC license as the rest of this blog. For more information about this image please visit http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za

Nokia Maps is a great application for any phone user who spends any time on the road. However, anyone who has used it before knows that it comes with it’s own set of problems, with the most annoying being the bad GPS signal. It often takes more than 10-20 minutes to get a satellite lock if it even gets one at all. A bit of Googling showed that many people are having the same problem and in my messing around I found a workaround which works quite well and which I’ll share here.

It seems like the main problem is a bug in the Nokia Maps software which makes it hard for Nokia Maps to pick up a GPS signal and lock onto it, so the solution is to find another means of picking up the GPS signal and once you’re locked onto that signal, to then open Nokia Maps.

(I tested this on my Nokia E71 and it works flawlessly, so I would expect the same for other Nokia handsets)

The way that I pick up the GPS signal is by using Google Maps, which should be downloaded and installed by going to http://maps.google.com via the Nokia Browser. The reason you use the Nokia Broswer and not some other browser such as Opera Mini or Skyfire is that the Nokia Browser is able to provide the Google Maps website with your phone details and then the Google Maps website will make the correct download for your handset available to you.

Once you’ve downloaded Google Maps onto your handset, open it and you’ll see it start searching for GPS satelites. With mine it took about 30 seconds before I got the “GPS active status message which allowed me to see my current location on the map. Once you’ve got a GPS signal in Google Maps then open Nokia Maps (while keeping Google Maps open) and you should find that you have a GPS signal immediately! You can then close Google Maps and enjoy your strong GPS signal.

If this solution worked for you then please let me know

When I first got news of the Nokia Music Store in South Africa I was really excited – finally an online music store which would allow me to buy local content without needing to have iTunes, because as a Linux user iTunes just isn’t an option. One day I was walking on campus and people were handing out pamphlets with information about the Nokia Music Store and how one can use it to buy music. I read the pamphlet and my excitement about the Nokia Music Store dropped to complete disappointment. There were two main reasons for this:

1. The music is in WMA format and makes use of DRM – this effectively means that I can’t play it on any operating system other than Microsoft Windows and that I can’t put it on my iPod. This alone renders the service completely unuseable to me.
2. The Nokia Music Store website only works with Internet Explorer. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounts for about 66% of browser use on the Internet. By only supporting Internet Explorer, Nokia effectively prevents about 34% of their potential market from accesing their site.

The two issues mentioned above basically render the Nokia Music Store useless to computer users like me who don’t use Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. I’m a big fan of Nokia and the work that they do, though I really believe they got it wrong with their online music store. Either way, I can only hope that they’re aware of this and are working towards improving the service so that all computer users can make use of it without the restrictions.

I recently got a Lenovo SL300 Laptop, with a built in camera and was pretty keen to get onto using the camera with Skype, but it wouldn’t work – I couldn’t get a video feed from the camera. To cut a long story short, after two days of Googling and playing around I found a solution (though I can’t remember where I found it) – here’s how!

Tested on (K)Ubuntu Hardy & Intrepid (See bottom for Jaunty fix)

By default the webcam works on all Linux kernels 2.6.25+. However, the problem is that when the kernel loads the uvcvideo module, it loads it with the wrong parameters.

To correct this first unload the uvcvideo module:

~# sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo

Then reload the module with the correct parameter:

~# sudo modprobe uvcvideo quirks=16

Exactly what quirks are, I’m not sure – all I know is that various values for the quirks parameter work (I tried up to 50) without any noticeable performance difference.

Automating the Process

Now one would expect that you would want to automate this process and that’s also really simple – all you need to do is add an option to pass the quirks parameter to your kernel when the module is loaded. Exactly how you do this might vary depending on your linux distribution.

On Ubuntu do the following:

~# cd /etc/modprobe.d
~# nano options

At the bottom add the following line:

options uvcvideo quirks=16

And that’s it! Either reload the module with modprobe -r uvcvideo or restart your computer, and you won’t have to worry about it again!

I’ve only tested this solution on the Lenovo SL300 running Kubuntu Hardy and Intrepid, but I’m pretty sure it will work with all UVC webcams which aren’t displaying a picture.

Update: Upgrading to Jaunty breaks this fix. I think the reason is that modprobe no longer makes use of the options file, but instead replaces it with a series of conf files. To get the camera working again do the following:

~# cd /etc/modprobe.d
~# sudo nano uvcvideo.conf

Once again add the following line:
options uvcvideo quirks=16

And then reload the uvcvideo module with “sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo” and then “sudo modprobe uvcvideo”

Edit: If anyone successfully used this solution on a SL400 or SL500, please let me know.

The title of this post is obviously a play on the cliche, “the road to success.” The point I’m trying to make with the title is simple – the road to success is anything but straight.

To have a successful business strategy you need to start with the end in mind. The end should be big – don’t think “opening a restaurant,” think “create a successful brand which becomes internationally synonymous with great food and a great time.” My understanding of a business strategy is that it is a series of processes and systems to get to the bigger picture.

The notion of a detour to success is about the fact that it’s never a straight and simple road to achieving success, and following the processes and systems as set out in a business strategy is never a linear task. A lecturer used the metaphor of an air flight: ultimately every flight has a destination and there is a direct route which can be taken to get to that destination. However, because of external factors such as wind speed and bad weather the plane never ever flies a straight line directly to its destination. Instead the plane goes off and flies in the wrong direction for parts of the flight. However, as long as the pilot keeps adjusting and correcting the flight direction, the plane will eventually arrive at its destination, even though it went slightly off course at times.

A business is like a flight and a business strategy gives you your direct flight path. External factors, such as legal and economic ones, cause you to go off course at times. However, you ultimately know where you want to end up at the end.

A business strategy is going to go off course, and it takes leadership and critical thinking to bring your business journey back on course. However, it can be done, and I believe that the ability to do this is what differentiates a great business leader from an average one.

I’ve just started an honours course on business strategy, and one of the requirements of the course is that at the end we write a reflective essay on our initial views on business strategy, and how they’ve changed over the duration of the course. I’ll use this blog to reflect and think about business strategy, and track my changes in mindset over time.So far we’ve only had an introductory lecture, so up till now, most of my thoughts and views are mostly my own and largely uninfluenced.

So what do I think of business strategy?

Well firstly I think that many separate business processes come together to form a business strategy. Some of these business processes are tried, tested, proven to work and can be implemented in a systematic way. However, I think that in many cases, these tried and tested processes need to be adapted to suit a specific business environment. At this stage, a level of understanding of the business is needed, and a critical and logical leader needs to take charge and move forward.

Sometimes however, some of the business processes which form part of the business strategy are not tried and tested. At this stage I think that the business leadership needs to draw on past experiences, case studies and a bit of a “gut feeling” to determine the way forward.

I guess the type of thinking required to form a business strategy can be learned and that’s the motivation for a business strategy class.

I’m sitting in my second lecture and writing this from my phone, so now it’s time to listen and come to understand how business works and how to think critically in developing a business strategy.