A seminar at Scientific computing

Today , Dr. Frank Ham from Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University attended a seminar in Uppsala University and gave a lecture on "Large Eddy Simulation on Unstructured Grids" . You can find the abstract of it here .

There is no doubt at all, that Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is one the most complicated science that we have ever made ! And maybe that's why many of the most brilliant minds are working in this or related fields .
I was interested in two aspect of this lecture : the Visualization stage and the backbone GRID infrastructure of the their project .
Surprisingly , they need the technology 100 times faster than what they have now (Nov 2009) by the end of 2017 !! It means an enormous progress in both hardware and software . Can they achieve this ?? I don't know , but I hope so ....

The second period

For the second period , I chose two courses :
"Scientific Visualization" and "Computer-intensive Statistics and Data Mining".

In Scientific Visualization course, they focus on VTK library and consider this huge library as a high level abstract one . I mean they don't concentrate on "under the hood" computer graphics basis; instead, they train students how to think from a level upper to determine the problem specifications and apply visualization techniques to demonstrate the results.
Another point about the course is that the formal programming language for this course is Python !! Oh my goodness ! It was one of the best news I had ever heard :)

But the second course is more interesting ; it's about "Statistical Pattern Recognition" ; thought, the primitive 8 lecture (out of 21 lectures) is about "random number generation, Monte Carlo , and Bootstrap techniques" . A nice point about this course is that We have to do our project in "R programming language" , which is an amazing language with exceptional capabilities for Statistical Programming .

Nevertheless , I have to try hard to dominate all of them . It takes 99% perspiration :)

Favorite picture

Licensed by NASA

This is the most inspirational picture I've ever seen !!
It will (maybe) become my permanent Desktop background . I changed my Facebook's profile picture too !!
As you can see it's so mysterious , weird, lovely.... Something about our pure curiously to unknown areas (I don't mean Theology bullshits, I mean absolutely Nature) . Something which rises from your inner whispers, Something that forced our ancestors to move out from their caves ....

About me these days

1- My classes have started since Aug 31. Here , the educational system is very packed . I mean each semester is divided into about two "2 months period", and normally you pick up two course per period.
Well , in my opinion , it's a good method for hacker-minded people (or self-taughts ones). You just focus on two topics and finish them , that's all ! Like a hacker who wants to penetrate a new stuff !!

2- My research interests are shifting to "Data mining / Visualisation", but it's not clear at the moment... I'll write about it later.

3- Human beings are the same any where :) I knew this, but I can see it here more ...

A Heavenly Voice

oh my goodness !

I've just discovered this heavenly voice by surfing the web during
last weekend !! Her name is "Jessica Mauboy". She is Australian and I'm her fan from now !! You can see one of her nice music videos :

Facebook

I joined the Facebook today !!
I want to become more familiar with web2 technology ...

You can find my profile here :)

Update :
First Impression : Facebook is so amazing !!

Uppsala Pics

Here is the first pictures that I took on my arrival to Uppsala city .

Please see them at Flickr !!

UPPSALA

I'm in Uppsala , Sweden at the moment .


Uppsala is a very lovely city; Lots of bicycles, nice and neat weather and guess what ! Full of historical buildings ....

UPDATE: There is a revision in my post ,as may be you can see :/

Huge setp to vision

At last , I got the Sweden student visa. No news from Australia,
but I'm not sad anymore !
After a long thoughts about my future, I believe that the Uppsala University is a unique and extra ordinary opportunity to go further into Computer Vision.
Frankly, I felt disappointment when I faced new mathematical algorithm during my work on vision problems. For instance, in Optimization techniques I suffered from lack of advanced math courses and someone who can debug my problems !! In some cases, I had to re-invent the wheel again and again !! But , it seems that conditions are changing.
I really love collage life, because I don't have to invest entire of my time on , for example, dealing with customers rather than focusing on technical problems. I don't want to say that customers always suck! But, It's clear that working with potential customers in countries like middle-east is too different from a country like United States. Things are not classified here, and I do hate disorderliness ...
long story short, the most prominent aspect of Computational Science at Uppsala University is that it reinforces my math basis. Look the first quarter lessons : "Scientific Computing, bridging course" and "Optimization" ! The first concentrates on some subjects like Linear Algebra , Numerical Analysis, etc. and second one has no need to explain ...
On the other hand, let's not forget some other technical areas like "High Performance Computing" which Uppsala is very well-known for it.
As you see, this Master program is really GREAT.

WOW ! What a challenging and active researches I will face :)

Missing Link Found

"Scientists working in Africa have discovered a Stone Age skull that could be a link between the extinct Homo erectus species and modern humans"
--National Geographic

As a someone who believes in Darwin's theory, I'm so happy to hear this :)
Though, regarding to the nature of the science , any new discovery needs lots of work and examines to prove ...

OOPS ..... UPPSALA ?

I got another admission from Uppsala University , Uppsala, Sweden .
I admitted at IT department, Computational Science Division.
As you can see at it's syllabus page, it has lots of Math based courses which is necessary for high-tech areas like Computer vision.
On the other hand, the Uppsala's ranking is so amazing :
1st in Sweden and 63th in the world !

What a weird admission. I was preparing myself for QUT, Australia !!!
But after 4.5 month there is no news from Australia Embassy :(
I'm so confused ! I love Australia and its hyperactive atmosphere. But I think that Uppsala provides me challenging projects as well ; I mean the program is an exciting challenge itself too :)

Hope I make the right decision ...

An amazing Flight attendant

Just see how much creative this guy is !! He's a staff member of Southwest Airlines ...

Why I love FOSS - 2

As you can see in Eric's essay, he strongly recommend to start programming by Python. I was familiar with programming languages before; I had passed the programming course ( C language) a year before, so I was familiar with some basic skills of programming (loops, I/O, etc).
But in my opinion , python was absolutely different from C.
As you can guess, the most visible aspect was indentation! I didn't use to it and I had lots of struggles with it.
Another part was classes. The "__init__" syntax was so weird to me and I was more comfortable with something like "this" in Java.
Anyway, I had to fight with these initial set points, and I did. I started with python tutorial in its homepage, but it was(is?) so fuzzy. Unfortunately, there were and are too rare python developer in Iran and my English literature was not so good to start reading a book from the beginning to end.
Yes ! I confess that it was not a smooth path, but i do believe that it was worthwhile to try...
On the other hand, Inasmuch as I was studying Electrical Engineering (power) and the nature of lessons were so different from the subjects like O.S. and web programming, this problem got bewildered my mind.
Because of lots of input data and lack of proper concentration, my productivity was too low. Essentially, take this as an experimental result :
"Focus on just one subject or go to the hell !!"
If you want to be a genius in a major, you have to focus on it days and nights in an uninterpretable form. Only this can show you the magical doors. That's it , That's all.
As I mentioned before, the lack of focus on one subject decreased my productivity enormously and the biggest result of it was the decline of self confidence. You know, lack of self confidence is the mother of any defeat....
If I invest my time and energy on just hacking rather than work on some stuff like H.V. structures and Linux kernel processes at the same time, I had been a hacker till now...
Long story short, after graduation, I decided to put entire of my time on cutting-edge software developing; nevertheless, at this period of time my country is not a high-tech one. I couldn't find even one company that works on Computer Vision. Hence, my friend and I found a new one, but it's not so promising.
I really intend to immigrate from Iran to to some where else that I can work on my area of interest and have active connections with international community ...

Why I love FOSS

I started my Hacking Path [1] with Eric Raymond's legendary essay (How to become a hacker) in 2002 .
Though, I'm not a hacker, I really love it's culture and communications.
I knew nothing about computers and honestly I scared of them before.
You know why ? Because my first contact with computers was through Microsoft Windows some years before(win95 I think) .
It was all wizard (type of installation of software,etc)... When I was turning on the PC, the magic was starting, I was seeing a monocolor
screen and then a nice background . "How does windows do it ?" I asked this question numerous times from myself, and you know,
no one knew it. Everybody was conquered by its wizards.
Damn you Microshit with your damn wizards.
But,then, a flickering light enlightened my brain suddenly. I read Eric's essay, and I think you can guess what's happened after it .
I started to convey the linux and re-assembled it from scratch several times.There was no magic anymore. Every thing was absolutely clear , numerous papers were in the queue to read and lots of dedicated developers were ready to answer the questions.
My life and mindset changed completely. When I say my whole life, I'm not kidding. Because I have been an absolute freedom fan, I found
the liberality spirit in FOSS culture. Linux has never been just a simple O.S for me , but it's been a new viewpoint to the world to me.
Thanks Eric for Your legendary essay. Thanks Richard Stallman,the great, for GNU Idea and your dedicated works to support it.
I will talk about my first impression when I saw python soon ...


[1] Please attention, I mean the Hacker in free/open source software (FOSS) term .
The distance between Hacking and Cracking is the same as the distance between Heaven and Hell !!

ClusterMaps New policy

I just noticed that the ClusterMaps window on the right side of my weblog has changed !
They emailed me at the same time that they have decided to make annual archive of locations !
Hey, Come On guys ! We live in the 21th century and we have a term call opinion poll :/

My Admission

After receiving some offers of admission, I plan to accept the offer of "Queensland University of Technology" (QUT) , Brisbane, Australia .
I found them so active in my area of research ( Computer Vision), so I think If I can get the Australia's student VISA too (this is a so molesting procedure) a new season of my life will begin.
I can work on what I do love in a dedicated form. I will have lots of talented colleagues and we can work in exclusive teams. I really like team-work projects and I believe that it increases my productivity enormously. Two brain are always more productive that one!
I've never been sure about the future , but I've decided to work hard and keep my hopes. That's every thing I can do :)

Update 1: Humm .... maybe I get another offer from different university !
It is Curtin University of Technology , and has a VERY active lab in computer vision area. Its projects make any geek crazy :)
It's a hard dilemma ! Any suggestion ???

Update 2: At last , I decided to choose QUT !
I didn't know that QUT has very strong relations with industry !
Here are some of their Areas of Research and collaboration :

Image and Video Research Lab
Speech and Audio Research Lab
Australian Research Center for Aerospace Automation
CRC for Spatial Information

Seems so promising, isn't it ?

An interview with Dr.Naderi

" Firuz Naderi (PhD) is the associate director if NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) , responsible for projetc formulation and strategy.
Before this, he was the head of Mars Exploration Program which he led successful launch of Mars Odyssey, landing of the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) and the development of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ."
-- from JPL's website

OBAMA WON

AT LAST ...... OBAMA won !!

One point, I saw the McCain's last speech in Arizona . I do respect his great personality and peaceful soul. I understand why America knows him as a Hero now. He is so modest.

And Congratulations to Barak Obama for his decisive victory,and hope he acts to what he told before ...
I saw his first speech as a president of Unites States at a huge crowd in Chicago too.
It was perfect, as expected, and was full of hope and prosperity.
This African-American guy has a genius to inspire people :)

Here is some quotes in his speech :
"
+ We rise and fall as one nation.
+ Strength comes from Ideas. --- WOW! He is a solicitor. Don't forget it...
+ It's time to reclaim American dreams.

"
Humm.... One thing is clear : Sweety America will never forget her children ....

GOD BLESS OBAMA.
GOD BLESS AMERICA.
GOD BLESS ANY FREE HUMAN.
GOD BLESS OUR PLANET; EARTH :)

Why I like Obama

That's why I like Obama .
He is a gentle man, So self-confident ,a dandy guy, and a skilled solicitor who knows how to use every word in a proper place. I hope Americans elect him, he puts more pressure on dictator countries (truly ,not by playing role), reconstructs the economy and can makes up the financial crisis ...
Hope So....

UPDATE: I changed the Pic, because of respect to McCain's great personality. Maybe his reaction in the last debate was a little mistake ....

Start a Startup in a Bad Economy ?

A very nice and new-brand article by Paul Graham. Worthwhile to read. I'm specially interested in this sentence :
" Which means that what matters is who you are, not when you do it. If you're the right sort of person, you'll win even in a bad economy ".
This is the heart of his article. That's why I told it's worthwhile to read. Briefly, he says that your success depends on your personality more. And I'm completely agree with him . I don't deny the importance of facilities and the economy a country. There is no doubt at all that nowhere else has Silicon Valley. Everything needs its atmosphere . Starting a startup in US is absolutely different from India or , god forbid, Iran ! You need some preliminary infrastructure to do a great and innovative work. BUT ..... it doesn't mean you stop to try . Interestingly , the history of human being shows that the people who grow in hard conditions , have higher capability to perform more complicate things. That's not due to being more intelligent, but , it simply is a Adaption Paradigm . Where the " Evolution" matters !!
long story short, Paul wants to say there are scarce people who are brave to do risk. That's why we have little pioneers and lots of ordinary people . Don't you think so ?

UPDATE: Here is another inspiring article that proves the idea .

My trip to India

As I mentioned before , I had a trip to India . It was my first international trip , but seeing other country and contacting with its people was not too weird to me. Frankly, I knew India and maybe that’s why I didn’t shock when I saw its streets.

India is a very big, ancient , nice to travel country and people are calm and peaceful. Meanwhile, it is too complicated to analysis. I mean, you will never find any society in the world that its people live in such a kind of paradox conditions.

Wealth and Poverty live with each other in an absolute consent ! No one wants to be poor, but ‘most’ of them believe that it’s just their FATE !! They do believe it and this is the key to understand why they live in peace. Though, the cultural impacts due to globalization has affected them, which is completely normal, some cultural approaches like believe in concepts (like “Dharma” , “Karma”, etc.) still attend in their mindset .

In my opinion, If you don’t know India and you have decided to go there, you will be surprised when you see streets. But wait ! It is a little part of India. More and more events are waiting for you ! Just open both your minds and eyes and look at every minute thing. Concentrate on their interchanges , focus on their poverty, their wealth, their customs, their believes, their temples architecture, their behave with animals (in any specious),etc.

On my behalf, briefly, rejecting Buddha from India ( over 1500 years ago) , was maybe the biggest strategic mistake by Indians. Although relation between Buddhism and Hinduism is as strong as a massive string , there are some fundamental differences too. Investigating these differences need a separate post and I don’t want to explain it here …

Anyway , to conclude the argument, here are some pics which I took over there :

Mumbai's Airport in a raining day:

The road between Mumbai and Pune:










Pashan Lake :










Mumbai's beach :









Mumbai's beach from another viewpoint:









A nice building in Mumbai (British style):










Another Building in Mumbai (another nice British architecture):










EVERY thing is in peace :









A little temple:









Pune City from top:









Pune university :









A very nice park in Pune and the place of Gandhi's wife SAMADI :









Gandhi's personal instruments :









I bought a great coffee here :)









An indian VEG restaurant ( Oh my, so spicy!)









At Bazar :









Monkey and elephant Idols :









P.S. The captions of pics have added ...

Cheers :)

India

I came back from India :)
I had a good trip . Indians are very nice people. I will post my experiences and photos soon.

In Defence of C

" In defence of C" is a very short and expressive article about the importance of C as a prominent programming language. It is worthwhile to read. In fact, as I've mentioned in my profile, I'm a hardcore fan of C. I do love it. It's a very strong language, meanwhile, it's little, pretty, elegant and has a very clear syntax. The grandeur of UNIX has derived by the power of C ...
If I were in an island alone, and I had to choose two programming languages, I chose C and python :)

I support Open Web Foundation

This is an Elegant and timely attempt about protecting web from exclusive behaviors of some just-profit-seeking companies !!!

Untill now, just Google and FaceBook have supported it ; but in my opinion, it will appreciate by the most of FOSS individuals and big companies in close future ....

Their definition is quite expressive :

"The Open Web Foundation is an independent non-profit dedicated to the development and protection of open, non-proprietary specifications for web technologies."

I abandoned my part-time job

After a long discussion with my colleague, we decided to quit our job ! We worked on a Computer Vision application to find and trace vehicles on road. We succeed to release the software , but we faced with VERY low demand for our product. Unfortunately, our customer deceived us and we even could not compensate our initial needs (Renting apartment,etc).

Yes , that's it. We were not business guys and we even did not know what it is !! We just sat and started to code (and what a hard code, purely math). My country is not a High-Tech one (at least in Robotics areas).

We were lucky to have another job. My friend works for an accredited software company in Iran(mostly web developing), and I work for this company as an Electrical Engineer who is expert in Electrical Relays and have practical experience on its control systems like DCS and SCADA. In fact, these control systems use some OS technologies like Linux and Unix and some well known communication technologies like TCP/IP,etc to communicate with each other..... Not so bad.....

From now, I'll just work for my heart and not any company. I will release my free softwares for my own and not for profit. I'm so tired to think about novel algorithms (at least until second announcement). Anybody who faces these problems feels this sadness too. I want to focus on some other fields like web developing using python. I tried some frameworks like Web2py, TurboGears and Django ,etc. But I didn't think about build a real world application yet.

I'm so tired , I need to rest. Or in One republic's word :
"
Well, all I need
Is the air I breathe
And a place to rest
My head
"

UPDATE: I've decided to just write about my FOSS interests. You will not see about Electrical Engineering stuff.
UPDATE 2: We came back to our business ! Surprise :)
We will work on Face Recognition ( oh my). I do love this area of research. It's too hot nowadays.
Cheers

FSF Logo

I've just added FSF Logo !!
I don't know why I didn't it some years before?!!
In fact, if I have to make a choice between Free Software and Open Source, I will choose the first one definitely... That's because of my Freedom concerns and not for technical issues ....

FireFox "Formal" party in Tehran

Yeah. That's right :) FOSS friends, at last, succeed to present the party.
It's today (6:00 - 8:00 pm). I'll do participate it. Come on folks :)

WOW ! One Republic ?!

Nowadays, I just listen to one republic's new albom songs.

They, specially Ryan Tedder, are very cool guys. I think he and me maybe have a very close feeling about the universe. Just see his lyrics, for example " Say All I need", or " Apologize".

Oh, my God, they are great,great, great ....

Getting started in computer vision ?

I have recently received some emails from some newbies which asked me how to become an expert in Computer Vision(CV). As a matter of fact, I don’t know myself as a CV expert; hence, maybe I can’t show you the door (remember the Morpheus in the Matrix film :) .But as a self-taught software developer who does love this major, I have some proposals for you. Here it comes:

First : Start by the procedure that Robin Hewitt suggests: Getting started in computer vision. She is an independent software developer who is a prominent expert in relevant stuff. Do whatever she proposes !!!!

Second : Become familiar with Matlab and specially C/C++. I can argue more than one hour that you need both C and C++. I do love C , and I can extend CV algorithms with it; but in the industry you do need C++. In the real world applications , you need software engineering approaches beside of algorithms and therefore, you MUST develop softwares in OOP mode. You HAVE to learn it. It’s Compulsory !!

Third : Learn to develop softwares with Python. I don’t want to start to describe it. Just google it….. You will be a better hacker when you use it to develop raw algorithms.

Forth : Start to study Math every day. It’s like an exercise for your brain :) I’m not kidding !!

Fifth : “ Concentrate and NEVER give up!" Take this as a fundamental rule….

Cheers

UPDATE: You can use the python binding for OpenCV too .

Just " from opencv import *" and have a lot of FUN :)

web2py, an amazing web Framework

After some experiences with many python frameworks, I found a framework which is very nice and clear in my opinion. Its name is web2py (known as gluon too) . Its motto is pretty and expressive : "Easy as pie", "Serious performance", "Very intuitive", "Great documentation", "The best web framework ever" .... I found it interesting and for sure you can try it too :) hummm, another point; If you wanna know about the differences between it and other web frameworks, read this document. The document is comprehensive enough and is well documented. For those hackers who have long time experiences with different languages and frameworks, this comparison will be interesting and makes them clear view point.