Graduation on April 1

How would you feel if your graduation is on April 1?
Many of my friend got this honour. Actually in early 2008, my plan was to attend this ceremony myself. But things got delayed and eventually I missed out on this one and will attend the one in September.
Anyhow, because of that, my parents got another chance to travel to Perth since they already got the tickets long before anything is really confirmed. So we had a great time in the whole March when they were here in Perth and they will come in September again for the ceremony.

I attended the ceremony for my housemate DeRong - Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical).




Caught up with many friends.


Jingyu from China - Mining Engineer


Danno and Tone whom we spent our phd years together - Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science.


Jayvis from Spore- Mechanical Engineer


Chris from Mauritius, Stuart and Kaysen from Msia - all engineers


James from Msia - a student I tutored in his first year Computing for Engineers & Scientists. OMG!


Peter, my PhD supervisor who came for Danno's ceremony. I got hassled for my correction. :P Yes, I would get it done real soon.


Du, Danno's another supervisor who is also in the visvis group I belong.


And the big group of friends who came for Derong's ceremony:
Zheng, KokSoon (my friends who's visiting Perth), Yeeting, Derong and Minli.


I also test out my 12x zoom with ISO800 for some long range photos in Winthrop Hall.


PhD recipients get to sit up on the stage (showcasing the variety in hairstyles).


Honorary Doctorate recipient - Michael Fitzpatrick. (caught Peter in the background)


Daniel who did CS honours in our lab. He now got his EE/CS double degree.


Evgeni my fellow modeller.


Fred I met through ShihChing and Jason's church.


Derong looking smart


Stuart


Tone contemplating the moment


Danno's name and shortest ever thesis title read out by Robyn, who was my supervisor for a year and used to be in visvis group before she became the Dean of graduate research school.


Danno shaking hand with Chancellor.

I'm pretty happy with the zoomed results given that indoor stage that's very far away generally is very hard to photograph.

The ceremony was great. The food afterwards are delicious too. And I found a new word I don't know how to pronounce -- ENGINEERNG.

Photos from my phone

Here are some photos I took using my phone.


Chia, my good friend from Tasmania has arrived Perth 2 weeks ago. He's here to stay. There shall be lots of good time ahead.


Kings park bush fire. The dynamic range of my SE-W810 phone camera is just not enough to see the ash ground.



My little wing friends along the path I cycle to work.


Quick sand bun (流沙包) - made with salty egg yoke. Yummy... See it's flowing. (there isn't much information on this bun online, other good photos here and here. It's a HK/Guangzhou specialty. According to my Guangzhou housemate it is a new treat in GZ these couple of years.
By the way, you can find it in the new Dragon (龙门) Restaurant on Francis Street. Pricey though.



Lego structures built by kids in the Art Gallery of Perth. Reminds me of my childhood playing a small tin box of Lego with my brother. Great fun. Always wished I have such big pile of lego to build huge stuffs. I'll probably put aside a Lego corner for my kids with this basic building block, not those Starwar type you see in toy shop, I find them too specific which limits the creativity.

Earth from above

I went to watch the earth from above exhibition in Perth last Saturday. It's a photography exhibition of aerial photos of some interesting places on earth -- to provoke thinking about over-consumption and sustainable living. Awesome photos with awesome message! The only down side is that it's outdoor under the beautiful summer sun! There are some shaded area where I enjoyed most of the photos and caption readings.

Go and see it if you haven't, it's at the cultural precinct (just north of the Wellington train station). It's open till 7pm daily till 12th this month. Last 8 days.

There's also a Google earth version.

Since 1950, economic growth has been considerable, and world production of goods and services has multiplied by a factor of 8. During this same period, while the world's population has doubled, the volume of fish caught has multiplied by 5 and the volume of meat produced by 6. Energy demand has multiplied by 5. Oil consumption has multiplied by 7, and carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of the greenhouse effect and global warming, by 5. Since 1900, fresh water consumption has multiplied by 6, chiefly to provide for agriculture.

And yet, 20% of the world's population does not have drinkable water, 40% have no sanitary installations, 25% is without electricity, and 820 million people are underfed with half of humanity living on less than A$3 a day.

In other words, a fifth of the world's population lives in industrialized countries, consuming and producing in excess and generating massive pollution. The remaining four-fifths live in developing countries and, for the most part, in poverty.

From: earthfromabove.com.au

Working life

I've been working for 3 weeks - 3 days (Xmas, Boxing Day and New Year Day). This is the first time I really work, like a full time 9-5 job (actually mine is 8-5), and it's not that bad, especially weekends! Haha! But time is really limited, don't even have time to clear my inbox, read my Google Reader's stuffs, play facebook, upload photos, etc..

Anyway, some of my friend has asked or will ask me "how's your new job?". So I shall give a 3 weeks working life review. :D

The job is pretty cool, at least my title is - Seismic Processing Geophysicist. Yes, I know. What the ?! right? dugeo is a geophysics company. We process seismic data for company so they can see clearer what's down there in the earth several km down. The strength of dugeo is something called Quantitative Interpretation, which in the terms I can understand mean transforming seismic wiggles into oil/gas probability.

I had 2 weeks of training with some interns and staffs from their KL office. It was great as I get an orientation into the field (which is completely new to me) and my classmates are all from Malaysia. Ha! It's so strange to work in an Australian company in Subiaco with so many Malaysian colleagues. Before They left after their short term training back to Malaysia, I brought them to had some little tour in Perth. :)

WingSee on the left and Victoria in the middle. Wingsee is based in KL and Victoria is based in Perth.


From left: WS, Eddie, Elaine, Jassica and myself. Eddie and Jassica are interns both are geology students from Uni Sabah Malaysia. Elaine is based in KL.

People are really great in dugeo. And there are lots to learn. Boss is cool. I get to cycle to work/drive/take bus. It takes about 20mins to cycle through Kings Park from my place to work. And there's shower for us to use. Staffs there wear Tshirt, shorts and slipper or no slipper to work. :D And there's a flat hierachy, anyone can go to anyone to ask questions.
I shall upload a photo album called dugeo in my facebook right after this to introduce some people in the company.

After the training finished, I'm assigned to work with a project building velocity models. With the correct velocity model the seismic images can be properly cleaned up to show what's really the structure down there in the earth several kilometers down. However, the real job I'm currently doing is pretty much donkey work clicking mouse to line up dots to be straight lines. :P I did 100+ locations today, there are about 2000+ locations. Xb And each one of them need to be revisited several times and again since the velocity model building is an iteration process. I think I might get carpal tunnel syndrome and bad eyes if I don't take enough breaks.
Hope I get this done soon and get something more interesting...

First 3 days of work

I started my working life this Monday with DownUnder GeoSolutions. It has been good. Steep learning curve. Been on training since the first day and may continue for 2 weeks. Funny thing is that there are currently 11 staffs and interns from the KL office having training in the office here. So it's pretty Malaysian at the moment. :D

People are nice and very casual. shorts and slippers/barefoot are common.

Gotta sleep, 8am start is not fun. :(

My Thesis Submission

I finally submitted my phd thesis.


Getting the four copies of 220 pages thesis to graduate research school for submission.


My super good supervisor Peter.



My another super nice supervisor Amitava.


Shih Ching, my cubicle mate for the whole phd journey. :D


Minh


Lanny and Jing Bo


John


Chris


Luigi


Rob


Bob

Some more photos in my gallery.

Merdeka 51st

The last 3 weeks has been crazy for me, so busy I have no time to think.
There were several celebration for Merdeka, I submitted my thesis and I left Perth to Malaysia for 3 months holiday.
This post will concentrate on the Merdeka.

This year's Malaysia independence day celebration is the most enjoyable one for me so far. I met two new friends Siow Yong and Yia Shi, I was invited to the official reception for the Merdeka by the consulate and the Merdeka ball organised by AMWA was a big success!

I wrote a short post on AMWA's blog.

On 24 August, AMWA had its annual Merdeka Day Golf.


On 28 August, the Consulate General of Malaysia in Perth hosted an official merdeka reception at the Perth Town Hall.


The finale of Merdeka celebration was held last night at the Perth Convention & Exhibition Centre. With “Wonderful Colours of Malaysia”, AMWA hosted the 51st Merdeka celebration with Malaysian cuisine, cultural performances, a fantastic live band, groovy dances, happy snaps and a lot of fun!


I met Siow Yong because he ordered tickets to the Merdeka Ball from me. And after we started talking only I found out that works very close to UWA in an area I have a lot of interests in -- audio signal processing for hearing aids. And he also turns out to be very nice to talk to.
click here for a picture of Siowyong with the Vice CG Mr Tan.

Another really cool encounter is Yia Shi aka Ivy. I first met her at the Merdeka Golf. She is a budding journalist with Asia Business Times -- a new newspaper in Perth. She came with another journalist Angel and Joe.
After chitchatting for awhile we were pleasantly surprised to find out that she came from my mom's hometown where I spent a lot of my childhood at, and her mom came from my hometown. Ha! What a small world.
We sat at the same table during the golf lunch and had a good chat. Then Angel and Yia Shi came to cover the merdeka reception, so we met the second time there. And then the newspaper company had a table at the Merdeka ball, so I met their boss Mr Peh then as well. Mr Peh is really nice as well, and I met his son who's a table tennis state representative before at UWA. Small world again.



I'm writing this post in Malaysia. :)

Beijing Olympic and possibly first Gold for Malaysia

This is a bad time to be at the end of a PhD. I'm so tied up with writing and correction with the thesis that I hardly have time to watch the Olympic. Anyhow, I did watch the opening. It is just awesome! Telstra has this ads for Olympic that carries a song with this lyrics - "we are one, and we are many...." and I thought it's a very good reflection of the drummers, the Taichi performers and many others at the Beijing Olympic opening.

I also think that the concept of a painting 'drawn' by the dancers, the kids and all the athletes is just brilliant. However, the last minute change from the super-sweet -voice singer to the super-cute-looking singer by direction of high official is a bit of a shame.

Actually this post is about tonight man's badminton final between Lee Chong Wei (Msia) and Lin Dan (China). Malaysia had never won gold in Olympic and tonight may be the first time the national anthem of Malaysia being played in Olympic ceremony. Lee Chong Wei is in good form, so is Lin Dan. Actually Lin Dan is on fire and won all his games in this Olympic in straight 2 games. They played each other many times before and Lee always win when the game is in home ground.

It's sad that Australia TV doesn't broadcast it! Why did SBS broadcast woman's badminton final but not man's?

Anyhow, I hope Lee Chong Wei will win for Malaysia, like what he did for the Sudirman Cup 2007. Go Lee Chong Wei!!

Making Google Street View into 3D

I was very excited about Google Street View in Australia. I think in a computer vision point of view, it provides such a huge amount of usable multiple views data to play with.

One idea I have is to:
1. Run the SIFT descriptor (by David Lowe) over the photos along one street to grab the interest points,
2. Ran RANSAC with rather loose tolerance to find homography match, and classify regions into planar surfaces. Maybe some super pixel algorithm will be useful to grow small region into bigger one based on colour information.
3. Transform the Street View into a 3D cardboard style walk through like the Photo Popup I mentioned before.

I think it would work. And because we know it's on a street, there are many constraints that can be added like we know the ground under is flat and it's pretty much sky on top kind of things.

If you're reading this and implement the algorithm and got a paper published or something, just give me an honourary mention will do. ;)

On a non-technical note, here is one place that it didn't quite work out on Street View. There's clearly a road there, but it didn't show it.



Or on Street View live:

View Larger Map

Google Street view in Australia!

Google gets down and detailed on the street where you live


View Larger Map


View Larger Map

If you know where I live, you can even see my Daihatsu parked on the side of the road. Haha! That's pretty cool.

Win a Creative Zen X-Fi with Bejeweled

The new MP3 player looks fantastic with the in-ear earphone, the sound technology. The 16GB version even support wireless LAN.

Go play the Bejeweled-like game and enter by 22nd Aug to be in the draw to win one.



Damned! What a time waster! Here's my best score.