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.

Return to Tehran

At last, I came back from that hell :). What a bad place was over there…. There are lots of work I must get them done !!!

TOO Boring Life

My life is absolutely boring ! I can't stand it anymore. Oh my God, Just one hour for the internet connection :( It's like a prison for me. ME?? I was connecting to the internet 7-8 hour per day before I came to this hell. What a mission! What a mission ....

Working mission? Oh, no please !

Bad luck... I'm in a working mission in a very bad natural condition. I had to go to a territory last week which has no water at all ! I'm near to the YAZD city, an ancient city that is near the hottest area in the planet Earth (Loot desert, or Kavir loot in persian)!!!!
The most irritating thing is not the shortage of water,but it's lack of internet connection. :) Unfortunately, I'm far from city ( we are working for a cement factory as investigating engineering group). Please see this picture of Loot desert ....

Microsoft acquires Yahoo??

After some weird deals like Mysql&SUN and Qt& Nokia, I just heard This News by Reuters !!!
Damn ! It's the most ridiculous news I have ever heard in this stuff. I can't do anything, but if Yahoo accepts this belittling, I will drop my Yahoo mails ....

Python and productivity

Python increases productivity unimaginable. Even though you've never had written any code with it, you can understand its very nice syntax. Consider this:

def fibonacci(n) :
   if n==0 or n==1 :
      return 1
   else :
      return fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2)

Like common speaking huh? seems pseudo code ! Now imagine you have decided to implement an algorithm (a very hard and comprehensive one) with python. Believe me,It takes 30 min in max :)

Where are you :)

1) Ten minutes ago, I added a link of software that says on which point of planet Earth(!!) you have visited my weblog :)

2) Nowadays, I have faced by a lot of problems. My TOEFL TEST date is Feb2 , numerous challenging problem (math approaches) with my day job project and the most important the documentation of my first open source project has still remained. My problem is entirely a classic one: "The shortage of time."If you are interested in my open source project, please refer here

3) Maybe I'm not an ordinary person. I have great ambitions, and honestly, I am working hard to achieve my goals. I'm getting geeker and it's not so good! Real world is completely forgotten by me. What will be happen? I'm not a predictor but I hope I can become closer to my targets. Please prey for me. No problem what religion do you have, I do need it :(

UPDATE: I forgot to say that I added RSS feed too ;)