24.01.12 Master Ngram Viewer
I tend to play a lot with the Google Ngram Viewer whenever I get tired of processing accessible data that are for my own consumption most of the time (and it’s probably boring enough for anyone else to take in). But you never quite know what mining Google Books’ massive corpus of 5 million English-language books would get you to.
Read on...
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books •
google •
google books •
infographics •
information •
malaysia •
ngram viewer
20.01.12 Kindle Touch
No frills, minimalistic, and green. This is going to be useful.
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amazon •
books •
e-reader •
kindle •
kindle touch
13.01.12 CamelCamelCamel - a nifty Amazon price tracker
If you have purchased stuff from Amazon before, you would very well-acquainted with how their prices fluctuate all the time. Your targeted item could be $18 last week, suddenly $24 this week, and before you know it, it plunges all the way down to $15 for Super Deals week just before Christmas! What a bummer if you had already bought it…
Read on...
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camelcamelcamel •
infographics •
information •
price tracker
12.01.12 La Traviata at Royal Opera House
Photo: Piotr Beczala as Alfredo and Ailyn Pérez as Violetta, taken from Royal Opera House’s Flickr photo set for 2011-2012 production.
Went for Royal Opera House Covent Garden’s 18-year-old production of Verdi’s La Traviata on the 2nd day of the new year. Some excellent singing were in offer, in particular from Ermonela Jaho’s Violetta, whom I thought had well-balanced clarity and coloratura (unlike the very popular but awkwardly out-of-sync Anna Netrebko here) and a very warm-spirited Paolo Gavanelli as Father Germont. The period staging was amazingly decorated, accompanied with tender lighting. What else to expect but a typically melodramatic ending to the show for the ill-fated, self-sacrificial Violetta.
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la traviata •
libiamo •
music •
opera •
royal opera house •
sempre libera
09.01.12 Potato, Cheddar and Chive Sourdough Bâtard
Accomplished with mixed-leavening method for dough, and simulated hearth baking. Artisan, savoury. Goes well with cream cheese or soups.
I took this recipe from the back sections of Peter Reinhart’s ever-popular Bread Baker’s Apprentice where there are some good suggestions of enriched breads that use the mixed-leavening method.
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baking •
batard •
bba •
bread •
cheddar •
chive •
peter reinhart •
potato •
sourdough
07.01.12 Computer Vision Reading Groups
A strange thing to do when I just have the urge to nose around at what other computer vision (CV) people are reading. Doesn’t tell the whole story, but tunes me into some trending vibes and at times, a sudden kick in the arse.
Sticky goes here:
05.01.12 Tech Obesity *munch*
Here’s a brilliant New Year’s Day piece by New York Times columnist, Pico Iyer, simply titled ‘The Joy of Quiet’. I’m probably not surprised if this article had been intentionally written to pack some New Year’s Day punch. If you have not made any new year resolutions, great. You might want to read this before making any.
Read on...
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communication •
information •
pico iyer •
quiet •
technology
31.12.11 Memorable indeed, 2011
To stop myself from being taken into some incessant rambling over editing of this post, I’m going to do a quick summary of what I can think of, that are memorable personal landmarks of year 2011. Here we go, in extended point form…
- Moved to London for a year. Jobless in status, though
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25.12.11 Christmas - celebrating Christ's humanity and divinity
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I’m reminded of Apostle Paul’s credal communication of how we are to treat relationships with one another and to be a shining likeness of Christ’s humility, in the very same way Christ was borned to earth, fully human but fully divine.
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christ •
christmas •
philippians
13.11.11 ICCV - Day 8
Final day of workshops, final day of ICCV.
I attended the 1st Workshop on Benchmarking Facial Image Analysis Technologies, which had an array of talks on the latest benchmarks and datasets for facial image analysis. Jonathon Phillips from NIST gave an overview of NIST face benchmarking and protocols including unveiling some upcoming video datasets for the next few years. The guys from NICTA Australia had a review on face biometric benchmarking, and some other interesting new datasets were presented for gender classification, 3D twins and expression challenges, partially occluded 3D faces and a couple of “in-the-wild” datasets for facial expression and facial landmarks (points).
Read on...
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barcelona •
computer vision •
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research •
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Here's a collection of earlier posts, and some even earlier (and archived) ones...