Hi All
I get questions once in a while about this blog and just to let you know that I have ceased to update the blog. It will be left here to help others who may one day walk along the path of OpenCV and OSX and hopefully some of my past experiences can help you solve your problems and/or inspire you.
Happy New Year!
Thank you, and congratulations to Kevin :)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Setting up Lightdraw
JL hinted me on this before he got enlisted - the set up behind the Lightdraw application. Look at how easy and convenient it is!
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Lighting the next draw...
Lightdraw has progressed for quite a bit since we last left IHPC. The project is in good hands with Kevin, Cheng Teng and Situ Yi at the forefront of its development.
Over the past few days, Lightdraw has received quite a bit of attention. Let's see where Lightdraw has gone:
Polytechnic Student Research Programme , Best Project Award Presentation Ceremony
I have received no official description about this event, so let me put it in simple terms: The PSRP is a program where all five polytechnics will choose their top two research projects and have the students to present them at the Award Presentation Ceremony. Lightdraw was selected to represent Temasek Polytechnic for the year 2008. In this year, only three polytechnics participated, namely, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic.
The guest of honor for this event is Mr Boon Swan Foo, Executive Chairman for Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd, Chairman for Technology Transfer Network and Managing Director of Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Below are two pictures taken from the invitation book, with Lightdraw highlighted with a red rectangle overlay (in the second picture).
This event was also covered by Channel News Asia and was mentioned during the news broadcast as well as on its website (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/334218/1/.html). If the link does not work, you can refer to the picture below of a scanned printed version.
Temasek Informatics & IT School Project Show 2008 + Lianhe Wanbao
Lightdraw was also showcased at Temasek Informatics & IT School's Project Show. It was categorized under the "IT @ Work" category (the other two were IT @ Play and IT @ Home). This is the first project in the booklet given to all guest and industry partners who attended the Project Show. For this demonstration, we were given an enclosed room to set up and show Lightdraw. Some of the more exciting challenges in doing this were:
Below is a project write up of Lightdraw, in the booklet given to all guests.
On the same morning as the Project Show, a reporter from Lianhe Wanbao (a chinese newspaper) had a short phone interview with us. An article about Lightdraw came out the very same day in the evening copy of Lianhe Wanbao. The scanned version is below:
V-Camp
I was informed that Lightdraw Game: Whackapeng, was used in this community event. The kids who came down to IHPC had a great time playing the simple game of encircling two game pieces (or what they call "pengs") with ordinary everyday devices, such as torchlights and hand phones.
Lightdraw Video II
ASTAR Institute of High Performance Computing released a second video of Lightdraw onto YouTube on March 13, 2008. As of this blog post, it has gathered 28 views so far. The second video (or first public video) consists of newer video footage such as Whackapeng and Laser Window Manipulation. It also retained some previous functionality footage from the first cut. Without further ado, here is the video:
This is Lightdraw's 15 minutes (or more?) of fame. Hopefully, there will be much more in the future to increase the awareness of the existence of such a cool project.
Over the past few days, Lightdraw has received quite a bit of attention. Let's see where Lightdraw has gone:
Polytechnic Student Research Programme , Best Project Award Presentation Ceremony
I have received no official description about this event, so let me put it in simple terms: The PSRP is a program where all five polytechnics will choose their top two research projects and have the students to present them at the Award Presentation Ceremony. Lightdraw was selected to represent Temasek Polytechnic for the year 2008. In this year, only three polytechnics participated, namely, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic.
The guest of honor for this event is Mr Boon Swan Foo, Executive Chairman for Exploit Technologies Pte Ltd, Chairman for Technology Transfer Network and Managing Director of Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Below are two pictures taken from the invitation book, with Lightdraw highlighted with a red rectangle overlay (in the second picture).
This event was also covered by Channel News Asia and was mentioned during the news broadcast as well as on its website (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/334218/1/.html). If the link does not work, you can refer to the picture below of a scanned printed version.
Temasek Informatics & IT School Project Show 2008 + Lianhe Wanbao
Lightdraw was also showcased at Temasek Informatics & IT School's Project Show. It was categorized under the "IT @ Work" category (the other two were IT @ Play and IT @ Home). This is the first project in the booklet given to all guest and industry partners who attended the Project Show. For this demonstration, we were given an enclosed room to set up and show Lightdraw. Some of the more exciting challenges in doing this were:
- Wall Reflection - As the room walls were white, they tend to reflect an awful amount of light
- Webcam Compatibility - We had difficulty in finding the right camera to use for Lightdraw on Ubuntu
Below is a project write up of Lightdraw, in the booklet given to all guests.
On the same morning as the Project Show, a reporter from Lianhe Wanbao (a chinese newspaper) had a short phone interview with us. An article about Lightdraw came out the very same day in the evening copy of Lianhe Wanbao. The scanned version is below:
V-Camp
I was informed that Lightdraw Game: Whackapeng, was used in this community event. The kids who came down to IHPC had a great time playing the simple game of encircling two game pieces (or what they call "pengs") with ordinary everyday devices, such as torchlights and hand phones.
Lightdraw Video II
ASTAR Institute of High Performance Computing released a second video of Lightdraw onto YouTube on March 13, 2008. As of this blog post, it has gathered 28 views so far. The second video (or first public video) consists of newer video footage such as Whackapeng and Laser Window Manipulation. It also retained some previous functionality footage from the first cut. Without further ado, here is the video:
This is Lightdraw's 15 minutes (or more?) of fame. Hopefully, there will be much more in the future to increase the awareness of the existence of such a cool project.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Week 16 (4 Feb - 8 Feb)
Monday, 4 February 2008
We have been informed of a final presentation tomorrow to the Visualization department of AC, as well as anyone interested to attend.
We started working on the slides in the afternoon, as well as on the new Lightdraw video - but we discovered, though quite late into the recording, that the software used to record the video has expired its trial period. We tried to use another freeware program, but it seemed to hang whenever it started to encode the video.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
In the morning was our presentation to the visualization group in the AC department. After which, was lunch at a nice French restaurant around Holland Village, attended by Harold, Bernard, Cheng Teng, Situ Yi and Kevin.
After lunch, its clearing time. Cleared up room, desktop and laptop that I used for the past 16 weeks. Finally finished the report rewriting and hopefully it is better than what I had written previously. Although I know that it is nowhere near perfect, but I am determined to keep on reading and learning from other reports, extending my vocabulary and correcting my grammar to strive for perfection.
Also handed in my February Time Sheet and RFID pass to HR. Within a short time span, 16 weeks in IHPC have passed and this marks the end of my internship stint here. Within these period, many things have happened and compared to the time when we first walked in the doors of IHPC, we are now leaving it being much wiser and knowledgeable. All this is possible to everyone at IHPC who have made this internship much more enriching and entertaining. I truly enjoyed working at IHPC for my internship.
Our paths have criss-crossed and traveled parallel to each other's for the past 16 weeks. But now, our paths gradually diverge.
Till our paths cross again!
Other than that, I will definitely miss the COVE and the Wii times.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
New Year's Eve, there is no work today.
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Chinese New Year! Today is a public holiday and thus, there is no work.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Chinese New Year! Today is a public holiday and thus, there is no work.
Reflection of the Week:
The end of 16 weeks is pretty fast.
As long as we live and learn with an open mind and accept everyone for who they are, stay humble and learn from others, we will pick up many things beneficial to us, both hard and soft skills. It makes us realize how fast life is passing us by and how to make full use of it.
Working in a research environment has helped me gain and hone my problem solving skills as well. To quote Dr Eng: "There's always a line between industry projects and research projects. In research, you never stop asking yourself 'can't I do better than this?' that's how breakthrough in research is achieved."
He has hit the nail right on its head. We always get too caught up with the specifications and datelines that we fail to venture out of the normal line of work and ask ourselves: what can I do to make this function perform better? How can I make the data in the database reusable across many applications? And other questions that help lead the way to innovative and effective ways of performing the same tasks.
Trying and developing new things that are out of the ordinary and common path is no doubt challenging and exciting. I really hope to see the real full fledged version of Lightdraw in action one day. :)
We have been informed of a final presentation tomorrow to the Visualization department of AC, as well as anyone interested to attend.
We started working on the slides in the afternoon, as well as on the new Lightdraw video - but we discovered, though quite late into the recording, that the software used to record the video has expired its trial period. We tried to use another freeware program, but it seemed to hang whenever it started to encode the video.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
In the morning was our presentation to the visualization group in the AC department. After which, was lunch at a nice French restaurant around Holland Village, attended by Harold, Bernard, Cheng Teng, Situ Yi and Kevin.
After lunch, its clearing time. Cleared up room, desktop and laptop that I used for the past 16 weeks. Finally finished the report rewriting and hopefully it is better than what I had written previously. Although I know that it is nowhere near perfect, but I am determined to keep on reading and learning from other reports, extending my vocabulary and correcting my grammar to strive for perfection.
Also handed in my February Time Sheet and RFID pass to HR. Within a short time span, 16 weeks in IHPC have passed and this marks the end of my internship stint here. Within these period, many things have happened and compared to the time when we first walked in the doors of IHPC, we are now leaving it being much wiser and knowledgeable. All this is possible to everyone at IHPC who have made this internship much more enriching and entertaining. I truly enjoyed working at IHPC for my internship.
Our paths have criss-crossed and traveled parallel to each other's for the past 16 weeks. But now, our paths gradually diverge.
Till our paths cross again!
Other than that, I will definitely miss the COVE and the Wii times.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
New Year's Eve, there is no work today.
Thursday, 7 February 2008
Chinese New Year! Today is a public holiday and thus, there is no work.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Chinese New Year! Today is a public holiday and thus, there is no work.
Reflection of the Week:
The end of 16 weeks is pretty fast.
As long as we live and learn with an open mind and accept everyone for who they are, stay humble and learn from others, we will pick up many things beneficial to us, both hard and soft skills. It makes us realize how fast life is passing us by and how to make full use of it.
Working in a research environment has helped me gain and hone my problem solving skills as well. To quote Dr Eng: "There's always a line between industry projects and research projects. In research, you never stop asking yourself 'can't I do better than this?' that's how breakthrough in research is achieved."
He has hit the nail right on its head. We always get too caught up with the specifications and datelines that we fail to venture out of the normal line of work and ask ourselves: what can I do to make this function perform better? How can I make the data in the database reusable across many applications? And other questions that help lead the way to innovative and effective ways of performing the same tasks.
Trying and developing new things that are out of the ordinary and common path is no doubt challenging and exciting. I really hope to see the real full fledged version of Lightdraw in action one day. :)
If whatever is fun isn't tiring, would we ever stop doing it?
The lesser the routine, the more the life.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Week 15 (28 Jan - 1 Feb)
Monday, 28 January 2008
Morning was spent dedicated to adding methods to our class diagram for the Lightdraw controller and DisplayManager. The libraries were left alone for the time being as they are the easiest to do (as the Lightdraw controller would just pass on calls to it).
Another thing that was discussed was how to allow a developer to make use of the plug-in architecture to write his/her own menu and add it to the Lightdraw package.
In the afternoon, focused on improving vertex detection by enforcing the light to be within a certain range from the initial point instead of just any where in the square (think resize range + draw implementation) and helped JL to improve the original Lightdraw code to implement the similar feature in it.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Mucked around with creating a custom structuring element in an attempt to apply a structuring element to the morphological thinning. Learnt quite a few new things like how structuring elements work, how its grid size works, etc.
I also found something new today: 509 Error is a "bandwidth exceeded" error returned from the server.
Anyway, just side track a bit, I found this very interesting post on the yahoo group. Please note that this is not posted by me, and the author is at the bottom of the post.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
The learning point for today is to spend some time to write proper reports. Why do I say so?
It was something that Kevin said that made me thinking back to my mid semester presentation on Lightdraw and a lecture in school (I think it was SSM) ponder about it.
There are already many developers out in the industry working for years now and given their technical skills, they make excellent developers for various projects. However, why do some of them get stuck in the development sector, being unable to move on to more important jobs like a project manager or a sales engineer?
Well, I believe that the answer has got to do with reports and presentations. Someone once said - "A good software system is nothing if no one wants to use it". Which is pretty true - if the sales and marketing team or project manager is unable to convince (potential) stakeholders on investing or using the software system, it will just be another white elephant (no pun intended) shelved away.
Reports and presentations are important to bring across the messages and ideas which one might have. It also has the power to convince the listener on why he should invest his time and money into the project or system. I guess we cannot run away from the fact that our IT systems will be used by business and thus need a solid business plan to accompany it.
Kind of reminds me on Imagine Cup last year, where although the software system may be the best there may be, without being able to articulate our advantages across will mean nothing to the judges.
And now, its back to my report.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Nothing much to talk about for today for no actual development work took place. It is more about the report and OO design of Lightdraw. For the OO Design, we contemplated of having signals and slots structures managed by an event handler, and the discussion of whether we needed it or not.
Friday, 1 February 2008
Today is spent in school at the career fair.
Oh well.
Reflection of the Week:
I was at career fair on Friday and took a look around at the various booths of potential employers as well as the booths of universities. I also attended various talks about potential job applications from employers, such as PA, CAAS and Thatz, and University talks by NUS, SMU and NTU.
I also met one of my previous math tuition friends, Charlene. And we recalled the last time that we were back at our tutor's place being referenced by the format (school name) (secondary level) (boy or girl) (any other info e.g. tall). The arriving in our school uniforms every afternoon with our other barang2 at 2.30pm or 4pm and doing our questions through the afternoon silently, only asking our tutor when we needed help.
Later that day over dinner, I was amazed with how fast time flies. I can still remember myself at orientation back in 2005, the first time meeting my care person, my Alice project (first project in polytechnic) and JPetWorld. In fact, all the way back to my maths tuition teacher's house (even before polytechnic days) - pouring over the questions and working out the answers absentmindedly.
3 years later, I'm now at the end of my polytechnic education, thinking of which university to apply for. What happened during these 3 years? Well, the answer to that would include the juggling of my various commitments, projects, events, getting to know more people over time and making new friends across TP's 5 faculties, and many others. It is very shocking, daunting yet exciting that in May, we would graduate from a place we called school (or for some, home) for the last 3 years and move out into a broader playing field full of opportunities and new experiences.
Time waits for no man. It is what we make out of it.
Morning was spent dedicated to adding methods to our class diagram for the Lightdraw controller and DisplayManager. The libraries were left alone for the time being as they are the easiest to do (as the Lightdraw controller would just pass on calls to it).
Another thing that was discussed was how to allow a developer to make use of the plug-in architecture to write his/her own menu and add it to the Lightdraw package.
In the afternoon, focused on improving vertex detection by enforcing the light to be within a certain range from the initial point instead of just any where in the square (think resize range + draw implementation) and helped JL to improve the original Lightdraw code to implement the similar feature in it.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Mucked around with creating a custom structuring element in an attempt to apply a structuring element to the morphological thinning. Learnt quite a few new things like how structuring elements work, how its grid size works, etc.
I also found something new today: 509 Error is a "bandwidth exceeded" error returned from the server.
Anyway, just side track a bit, I found this very interesting post on the yahoo group. Please note that this is not posted by me, and the author is at the bottom of the post.
You can use "cvGetSeqElem" function..
This is my simple example of finding center point of contour.
------------------------
CvPoint pt[CLENGTH_MAX],center={0,0},ptk={0,0};
cont_no = cvFindContours( segbw, storage, &contour, sizeof
(CvContour),CV_RETR_EXTERNAL, CV_CHAIN_APPROX_NONE);
for( ; contour != 0; contour = contour->h_next )
{
CvSeq* result = contour;
for(i=0; itotal; i++)
{
pt[i] = *(CvPoint*)cvGetSeqElem( result, i );
//printf("%d %d : %d\n", pt[i].x, pt[i].y, result->total);
center.x += pt[i].x;
center.y += pt[i].y;
}
center.x /= result->total;
center.y /= result->total;
:
:
}
------------------------
Good Luck!
Tommy Kim.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
The learning point for today is to spend some time to write proper reports. Why do I say so?
It was something that Kevin said that made me thinking back to my mid semester presentation on Lightdraw and a lecture in school (I think it was SSM) ponder about it.
There are already many developers out in the industry working for years now and given their technical skills, they make excellent developers for various projects. However, why do some of them get stuck in the development sector, being unable to move on to more important jobs like a project manager or a sales engineer?
Well, I believe that the answer has got to do with reports and presentations. Someone once said - "A good software system is nothing if no one wants to use it". Which is pretty true - if the sales and marketing team or project manager is unable to convince (potential) stakeholders on investing or using the software system, it will just be another white elephant (no pun intended) shelved away.
Reports and presentations are important to bring across the messages and ideas which one might have. It also has the power to convince the listener on why he should invest his time and money into the project or system. I guess we cannot run away from the fact that our IT systems will be used by business and thus need a solid business plan to accompany it.
Kind of reminds me on Imagine Cup last year, where although the software system may be the best there may be, without being able to articulate our advantages across will mean nothing to the judges.
And now, its back to my report.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Nothing much to talk about for today for no actual development work took place. It is more about the report and OO design of Lightdraw. For the OO Design, we contemplated of having signals and slots structures managed by an event handler, and the discussion of whether we needed it or not.
Friday, 1 February 2008
Today is spent in school at the career fair.
Oh well.
Reflection of the Week:
I was at career fair on Friday and took a look around at the various booths of potential employers as well as the booths of universities. I also attended various talks about potential job applications from employers, such as PA, CAAS and Thatz, and University talks by NUS, SMU and NTU.
I also met one of my previous math tuition friends, Charlene. And we recalled the last time that we were back at our tutor's place being referenced by the format (school name) (secondary level) (boy or girl) (any other info e.g. tall). The arriving in our school uniforms every afternoon with our other barang2 at 2.30pm or 4pm and doing our questions through the afternoon silently, only asking our tutor when we needed help.
Later that day over dinner, I was amazed with how fast time flies. I can still remember myself at orientation back in 2005, the first time meeting my care person, my Alice project (first project in polytechnic) and JPetWorld. In fact, all the way back to my maths tuition teacher's house (even before polytechnic days) - pouring over the questions and working out the answers absentmindedly.
3 years later, I'm now at the end of my polytechnic education, thinking of which university to apply for. What happened during these 3 years? Well, the answer to that would include the juggling of my various commitments, projects, events, getting to know more people over time and making new friends across TP's 5 faculties, and many others. It is very shocking, daunting yet exciting that in May, we would graduate from a place we called school (or for some, home) for the last 3 years and move out into a broader playing field full of opportunities and new experiences.
Time waits for no man. It is what we make out of it.
Once again, we put another chapter behind us and move on to the next, bringing with us the progress of the storyline and its characters. At the end of each chapter, we are just a fraction closer to the end of the book.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Week 14 (21 Jan - 25 Jan)
Monday, 21 January 2008
Somehow, Lghtdraw game gave its final problem of its makefile (which i had overlooked in my haste to finish up the project) but it has been solved earlier today.
We also did a bit of designing of Lightdraw in its OO version and have thought up of many new ideas on how to present the interface to the user. New ideas aplenty, now its time for the cool off period to evaluate them.
And to officially move on to Vertex detection.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Did a bit of domain modeling in the morning and moved on to Sim Lim after lunch to buy some materials needed for the project when we move on to lasers.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Situ had managed to buy some individual parts at Sim Lim yesterday and was working on creating a infra-red makeshift torch light for replicate the Wiimote tracker based on the Youtube video we saw. All went well with him completing the two torches powered via USB to save batteries.
Today I started work on the HCI which has move and resize capabilities, to develop shape recognition within the square that is being manipulated. Took me quite a while (probably due to lack of sleep) to understand it first before starting to implement my portion. Managed to get it to start drawing within the shape by the end of the day.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Continuing from yesterday, I carried on to implement shape detection together with the help of JL who has helped me in many ways when my brain dead period prevented me from doing the most basic tasks.
We finally managed to get it working, with a bit of tweaking of the previous whackapeng (Lightdraw game) findCircles function's codes to implement a pattern/corner recognition. And based on the shape/num of Corners within the drawn shape inside the square, we would change the colour of the square being drawn during each draw loop of the main function.
We also discussed on the MVC model for Lightdraw and the pros and cons of having a DisplayManager to coordinate the display & menu classes. The main class diagram seems to be taking shape.
Friday, 25 January 2008
I took a day off today to help out at DipIT JAE booth & IIT School booths overall.
Reflection of the Week:
All the design work is making me feel like I'm back to OOAD classes again. The flow - use cases, domain modeling / class diagrams and next would be sequence diagrams, before we start implementing the system. Thinking back to OOAD classes, I wonder how come it was kind of hard to grasp the concept of doing it back then. Perhaps after doing too much functional programming, we get too caught up with implementation rather than design and extensibility of the system instead.
During the designing of Lightdraw for OOP concepts, it all seems to make sense - the rationale falls into place and understanding of the system is made clear. Finally understand how useful and important OO Design of a software system is, especially to ensure that the software is implementing exactly the way we/the client wants it to be.
Well, maybe OOAD classes is not that bad after all...
Somehow, Lghtdraw game gave its final problem of its makefile (which i had overlooked in my haste to finish up the project) but it has been solved earlier today.
We also did a bit of designing of Lightdraw in its OO version and have thought up of many new ideas on how to present the interface to the user. New ideas aplenty, now its time for the cool off period to evaluate them.
And to officially move on to Vertex detection.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Did a bit of domain modeling in the morning and moved on to Sim Lim after lunch to buy some materials needed for the project when we move on to lasers.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Situ had managed to buy some individual parts at Sim Lim yesterday and was working on creating a infra-red makeshift torch light for replicate the Wiimote tracker based on the Youtube video we saw. All went well with him completing the two torches powered via USB to save batteries.
Today I started work on the HCI which has move and resize capabilities, to develop shape recognition within the square that is being manipulated. Took me quite a while (probably due to lack of sleep) to understand it first before starting to implement my portion. Managed to get it to start drawing within the shape by the end of the day.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Continuing from yesterday, I carried on to implement shape detection together with the help of JL who has helped me in many ways when my brain dead period prevented me from doing the most basic tasks.
We finally managed to get it working, with a bit of tweaking of the previous whackapeng (Lightdraw game) findCircles function's codes to implement a pattern/corner recognition. And based on the shape/num of Corners within the drawn shape inside the square, we would change the colour of the square being drawn during each draw loop of the main function.
We also discussed on the MVC model for Lightdraw and the pros and cons of having a DisplayManager to coordinate the display & menu classes. The main class diagram seems to be taking shape.
Friday, 25 January 2008
I took a day off today to help out at DipIT JAE booth & IIT School booths overall.
Reflection of the Week:
All the design work is making me feel like I'm back to OOAD classes again. The flow - use cases, domain modeling / class diagrams and next would be sequence diagrams, before we start implementing the system. Thinking back to OOAD classes, I wonder how come it was kind of hard to grasp the concept of doing it back then. Perhaps after doing too much functional programming, we get too caught up with implementation rather than design and extensibility of the system instead.
During the designing of Lightdraw for OOP concepts, it all seems to make sense - the rationale falls into place and understanding of the system is made clear. Finally understand how useful and important OO Design of a software system is, especially to ensure that the software is implementing exactly the way we/the client wants it to be.
Well, maybe OOAD classes is not that bad after all...
Monday, January 14, 2008
Week 13 (14 Jan - 18 Jan)
Monday, 14 January 2008
Of course, solving this was not alone, it was together with the help of C2E and Kevin.
We finally ended our day at 7pm.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Stress testing of Lightdraw game to see if the changes made yesterday actually solved the problem. And they did. :)
The game did seem a bit slow - due to a single processing thread attempting to accept light input, calculate all the shape and enclosed detection, then followed by rendering it out on 4 different displays (for debugging purpose), which made the light trail very segmented each time it ran through the loop.
Thus I decided to carefully examine each line of the source code to see how I could actually reduce excessive and/or debugging code and thread some methods to better the overall game play.
23 pages of code, 2am.
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Today was spent working on the threaded version of the Lightdraw Game (Whackapeng) two shapes. Managed to finally get the threaded version to work as well as renamed and deleted some methods and variables which were poorly named and declared but not used respectively.
However, some of the resulting problems are:
The program seems to run worse on a single core than the original Lightdraw Game on all four cores. Perhaps the original Lightdraw game will be much worse on a single core? I tried the threaded version on 2 cores and it seems to work better, if not, slightly slower than the original Lightdraw on all four cores. Maybe the conclusion is that the game will need around 2 cores to run at least?
There is a memory leak which I have to fix tomorrow.
There is a segmentation fault which appears sometimes, which does not appear some times, which I have to fix too.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Fixing the two aforementioned problems in the threaded code. (Ironing them out).
Today, I will also try to use the Mii Editor to replace the game pieces for the Lightdraw game to the Lightdraw team Mii characters! Should be pretty fast and cool.
Fixed the time elapsed problem today as well. Which I think this is something interesting to think about. Initially, I had used the processor ticks to attempt to calculate the total time used for playing the game. In the beginning, it showed results like 112, 142, which did not raise my suspicions as the code was slow (single thread) and drawing did seem to take quite a long time. However, with the threaded version and the ability to draw smoothly now, it still showed values exceeding 100 and sometimes even up to 190 seconds ( more than 3 mins).
After reading more about it and pondering aboutthe meaning of life why the program gave such inconsistent values (in comparison with actual time taken to play the game), a sudden thought struck me. I was taking the number of processor ticks at the start and the end and subsequently subtracting the latter with the former and dividing by a constant to give the number of seconds used. However, because there are a total of four cores on the Light machine, could it be that the two values of clock/processor ticks could come from different processors and thus resulted in inconsistent values?
Anyway, with the help of Harold and Kevin, I changed from using the data type clock_t to time_t which solved the problem. Now, I was taking the system time to do the calculation, which solved the inconsistency.
Friday, 18 January 2008
Final clean up of Lightdraw game. Tidied up the code and removed all the rest of commented out codes which were used for debugging or what not. Also added some commands in the drawing of game piece method to turn of the encircled flags. Hopefully they solve the problem.
We demonstrated the rest of our programs and drawn up some plans for the next week, including optional projects, such as adding vertex detection to JL's code as well as doing the UML for a OO approach of Lightdraw.
Reflection of the Week:
As promised, this week's reflection will be about collaborative work using the internet.
During the previous week, I've been checking out the OpenCV yahoo groups' previous threads in search for some answers to my problems. While there, I noticed a few threads asking about how to use OpenCV library with Visual Studio / Windows Environment; and since I had already configured my own environment as well, I thought why not help them. Helped around 3 threads when someone pinged me over the in-built web messenger and asked to clarify a doubt regarding my post.
Soon after, a second person pinged me to ask something about the IplImage class attributes and so on. Within the week, I helped 5 people (complete strangers) through the in-built web messenger.
With the widespread use of technology, I believe it has become much easier to tap on the expertise of more experienced users for help (the way I use the OpenCV groups too). It allows for collaboration all over the world and uses a community based approach to problem solving, instead of the traditional way of independent learning (having to search through books and white papers and not being able to share our knowledge after we have learnt something new).
However, we cannot always be sure that what the other person said is guaranteed to work for us. But I believe that is the nature of learning - curiosity and experimenting will help us find the answers we need and make us more knowledgeable.
What new things or approaches will technology yield next? And more importantly, how will technology affect the way we learn and our approach towards problem solving in the area of having the patience and discipline to slowly sieve through book after book (or link after link) of irrelevant results to find what we truly need?
Right now, I see some users (not majority) of forums and online community portraying impatient attitudes when questions go unanswered and self-centered approaches instead of community base / teamwork. Is this caused by the fast pace of technology which results in them expecting equally fast answers to their problems?
Food for thought. (pun intended)
Oh, one last thing, this week is Doc Green Theme.
The weather is quite good today.Today is spent mainly on cleaning up whackapeng with two shapes (continued from last thurs). Finally, managed to spot the error that I was facing - I had mistakenly used the * operator instead of the *= operator as well as the || instead of a && for the loop condition to initialize random points, thus making the program act strangely and go into a infinite loop occasionally.
Of course, solving this was not alone, it was together with the help of C2E and Kevin.
We finally ended our day at 7pm.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Stress testing of Lightdraw game to see if the changes made yesterday actually solved the problem. And they did. :)
The game did seem a bit slow - due to a single processing thread attempting to accept light input, calculate all the shape and enclosed detection, then followed by rendering it out on 4 different displays (for debugging purpose), which made the light trail very segmented each time it ran through the loop.
Thus I decided to carefully examine each line of the source code to see how I could actually reduce excessive and/or debugging code and thread some methods to better the overall game play.
23 pages of code, 2am.
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Today was spent working on the threaded version of the Lightdraw Game (Whackapeng) two shapes. Managed to finally get the threaded version to work as well as renamed and deleted some methods and variables which were poorly named and declared but not used respectively.
However, some of the resulting problems are:
The program seems to run worse on a single core than the original Lightdraw Game on all four cores. Perhaps the original Lightdraw game will be much worse on a single core? I tried the threaded version on 2 cores and it seems to work better, if not, slightly slower than the original Lightdraw on all four cores. Maybe the conclusion is that the game will need around 2 cores to run at least?
There is a memory leak which I have to fix tomorrow.
There is a segmentation fault which appears sometimes, which does not appear some times, which I have to fix too.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Fixing the two aforementioned problems in the threaded code. (Ironing them out).
Today, I will also try to use the Mii Editor to replace the game pieces for the Lightdraw game to the Lightdraw team Mii characters! Should be pretty fast and cool.
Fixed the time elapsed problem today as well. Which I think this is something interesting to think about. Initially, I had used the processor ticks to attempt to calculate the total time used for playing the game. In the beginning, it showed results like 112, 142, which did not raise my suspicions as the code was slow (single thread) and drawing did seem to take quite a long time. However, with the threaded version and the ability to draw smoothly now, it still showed values exceeding 100 and sometimes even up to 190 seconds ( more than 3 mins).
After reading more about it and pondering about
Anyway, with the help of Harold and Kevin, I changed from using the data type clock_t to time_t which solved the problem. Now, I was taking the system time to do the calculation, which solved the inconsistency.
Friday, 18 January 2008
Final clean up of Lightdraw game. Tidied up the code and removed all the rest of commented out codes which were used for debugging or what not. Also added some commands in the drawing of game piece method to turn of the encircled flags. Hopefully they solve the problem.
We demonstrated the rest of our programs and drawn up some plans for the next week, including optional projects, such as adding vertex detection to JL's code as well as doing the UML for a OO approach of Lightdraw.
Reflection of the Week:
As promised, this week's reflection will be about collaborative work using the internet.
During the previous week, I've been checking out the OpenCV yahoo groups' previous threads in search for some answers to my problems. While there, I noticed a few threads asking about how to use OpenCV library with Visual Studio / Windows Environment; and since I had already configured my own environment as well, I thought why not help them. Helped around 3 threads when someone pinged me over the in-built web messenger and asked to clarify a doubt regarding my post.
Soon after, a second person pinged me to ask something about the IplImage class attributes and so on. Within the week, I helped 5 people (complete strangers) through the in-built web messenger.
With the widespread use of technology, I believe it has become much easier to tap on the expertise of more experienced users for help (the way I use the OpenCV groups too). It allows for collaboration all over the world and uses a community based approach to problem solving, instead of the traditional way of independent learning (having to search through books and white papers and not being able to share our knowledge after we have learnt something new).
However, we cannot always be sure that what the other person said is guaranteed to work for us. But I believe that is the nature of learning - curiosity and experimenting will help us find the answers we need and make us more knowledgeable.
What new things or approaches will technology yield next? And more importantly, how will technology affect the way we learn and our approach towards problem solving in the area of having the patience and discipline to slowly sieve through book after book (or link after link) of irrelevant results to find what we truly need?
Right now, I see some users (not majority) of forums and online community portraying impatient attitudes when questions go unanswered and self-centered approaches instead of community base / teamwork. Is this caused by the fast pace of technology which results in them expecting equally fast answers to their problems?
Food for thought. (pun intended)
Oh, one last thing, this week is Doc Green Theme.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Week 12 (7 Jan - 11 Jan)
Monday, 7 January 2008
SAB presentation for Lightdraw is tomorrow. Lightdraw game with two shapes is really giving me problems today which bugs me quite a bit. It was working perfectly the week before. I guess I must have made one too many changes. Oh well. We used back the single shape game which we made a backup the previous week for the presentation.
There were many people needing to use the Mac today. Thus we were unable to develop much on it.
Practiced a few times with Kevin on the procedure of the demonstration and the clicking and drawing in Lightdraw.
Hopefully all goes well tomorrow.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
SAB presentation went relatively well. The only minor hiccups were that after the Skype conversation with the researcher in India was turned off forcefully (via Apple + Q), the program did not release the camera resource that it was holding on to. We panicked a little before Kevin decided to show the video first. After the video, the SAB members were genuinely interested and did not mind while Kevin took a minute or two to restart the Mac Pro.
After restarting, the camera managed to work and we managed to continue with the presentation smoothly. :)
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Since SAB presentation is still on, we need not be physically present at IHPC today. As such, I took the time to ponder about some of my other commitments and take a break from Lightdraw for a while.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Returned to work and played around with the two shape whackapeng code which did not seem to work. Did not manage to find what was causing it as we only had 4 hours of time inside the COVE to work on Lightdraw today as other teams needed to use the room.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Had a meeting with Lightdraw team to discuss about the progress thus far and the next (few) step(s) which we should take before JL and I officially end our 16 weeks here in IHPC [attached at the end of today's portion]. Time really flies as we are already in our last 4 weeks here.
After which, I worked a bit on the SIP report regarding the company's nature of business section which I had difficulty doing without the help of Kevin. (Thanks!)
Lastly, spent some time cleaning up the source code folder in my account on the Light machine and finally decided to redo the two shape game from scratch as I made too many changes with the original code that I do not even know where the error originates from. Next week is the time to go full steam into the rest of the deliverables for the project.
Next steps - 2 shape game, enlarging HCI, trail on HCI + hover to activate, move and enlarge shape and pattern concept (detecting vertex on drawn shape)
Reflection of the Week:
Lightdraw will be most likely revamped and open sourced at IHPC's open source website. And interestingly enough, I saw the pillow with a different casing at the same location on Friday again.
Anyway, my reflection for this week regards making frequent backups before making any changes. While editing code for the Lightdraw game with 2 game pieces, I had accidentally changed one too many variables across the program and could not get the game to work properly. After another fruitless day on Thursday trying to understand the changes I had made hastily, I decided to reuse a backup I had on my thumb drive to see if I could revert any of the changes. Unfortunately, the back up I had was dated way back to before we even had 2 shapes for the game pieces.
Lesson learnt: If a code works, have frequent backups of it before any changes are made to improve on it.
SAB presentation for Lightdraw is tomorrow. Lightdraw game with two shapes is really giving me problems today which bugs me quite a bit. It was working perfectly the week before. I guess I must have made one too many changes. Oh well. We used back the single shape game which we made a backup the previous week for the presentation.
There were many people needing to use the Mac today. Thus we were unable to develop much on it.
Practiced a few times with Kevin on the procedure of the demonstration and the clicking and drawing in Lightdraw.
Hopefully all goes well tomorrow.
Tuesday, 8 January 2008
SAB presentation went relatively well. The only minor hiccups were that after the Skype conversation with the researcher in India was turned off forcefully (via Apple + Q), the program did not release the camera resource that it was holding on to. We panicked a little before Kevin decided to show the video first. After the video, the SAB members were genuinely interested and did not mind while Kevin took a minute or two to restart the Mac Pro.
After restarting, the camera managed to work and we managed to continue with the presentation smoothly. :)
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Since SAB presentation is still on, we need not be physically present at IHPC today. As such, I took the time to ponder about some of my other commitments and take a break from Lightdraw for a while.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Returned to work and played around with the two shape whackapeng code which did not seem to work. Did not manage to find what was causing it as we only had 4 hours of time inside the COVE to work on Lightdraw today as other teams needed to use the room.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Had a meeting with Lightdraw team to discuss about the progress thus far and the next (few) step(s) which we should take before JL and I officially end our 16 weeks here in IHPC [attached at the end of today's portion]. Time really flies as we are already in our last 4 weeks here.
After which, I worked a bit on the SIP report regarding the company's nature of business section which I had difficulty doing without the help of Kevin. (Thanks!)
Lastly, spent some time cleaning up the source code folder in my account on the Light machine and finally decided to redo the two shape game from scratch as I made too many changes with the original code that I do not even know where the error originates from. Next week is the time to go full steam into the rest of the deliverables for the project.
Next steps - 2 shape game, enlarging HCI, trail on HCI + hover to activate, move and enlarge shape and pattern concept (detecting vertex on drawn shape)
Reflection of the Week:
Lightdraw will be most likely revamped and open sourced at IHPC's open source website. And interestingly enough, I saw the pillow with a different casing at the same location on Friday again.
Anyway, my reflection for this week regards making frequent backups before making any changes. While editing code for the Lightdraw game with 2 game pieces, I had accidentally changed one too many variables across the program and could not get the game to work properly. After another fruitless day on Thursday trying to understand the changes I had made hastily, I decided to reuse a backup I had on my thumb drive to see if I could revert any of the changes. Unfortunately, the back up I had was dated way back to before we even had 2 shapes for the game pieces.
Lesson learnt: If a code works, have frequent backups of it before any changes are made to improve on it.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Week 11 (31 Dec - 4 Jan)
Monday, 31 December 2007
The last day of 2007. And a Monday. Putting such negative thoughts aside, I went to work and improved the per shape timer. The problem with the timer (as mentioned on last Thurday, but recapped here for convenience) was that the timer slept for 20 counts before waking up and clearing the screen. However, if the user had already moved on to the next shape and the thread awoke, it will not know that the user had already successfully encircled a shape and carry on to loyally clear the screen.
Well, that has been solved by ensuring that the thread slept for a much reduced time of 2 seconds and when it awoke, it checked if the number of times it has slept already is more than 20 seconds and if the user had moved to the next shape. If the former is true, it will then dutifully clear the screen, as it has been proven that the user is still on the same shape and the count down for the screen to be cleared has been achieved. If the latter is true, it will restart the sleep counter and carry on sleeping again. This way, the timer will become more responsive and be able to adapt to the change in shapes and be more flexible when coding for other situations, such as pressing the 'c' button to manually clear the screen.
Since today is only till 1245hrs, didn't manage to do much as I had somewhere else to go as well.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Today is New Year Day! My goal for 2008? Same as 2007. Does it mean that 2007 has passed with all my efforts in vain?
Actually, I cannot seem to recall my 2007 goal. hmmz.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Welcome to Situ Yi! Who is JL's long lost cousin. Or so we assume. Anyway, welcome to the team! The first task that we got to do as a Lightdraw team was to... take down the X'mas tree by the receptionist counter and clear the air conditioner of its overflowing water in its reserve. haha. Great way to bond together :)
Today we also welcome back Kevin, to Singapore, after his deserved break in Mauritius. hee. And our really cool supervisor bought us souvenirs too! Kudos to him!
Anyway, when things got serious, we got down to work. shared with the team on the progress of the Lightdraw game as well as took some constructive feedback on improvement to the game play code as well. Had also implemented an overall timer of game which keeps track of how long the user/player takes to complete each level.
Next stop, putting two shapes on the screen at one time and recording & saving the score via File I/O. Hopefully SAB presentation goes well for all too!
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Early morning went down to TP's newly opened visualization lab in ENG school. Saw the displays there - they are really cool and impressive, especially the human skeleton one and the infra-red one. Though many of the technologies there rely on total internal reflection from the glass panel.
But it did take visualization to a whole new level, redefining the way we interact with our computers and how it presents information to us. After seeing some of the displays, I suddenly had this urge to change my entire desktop to use wireless input devices to reduce the wire cluttering at the back. Hmmz..
Back at IHPC, worked on displaying two shapes for the Lightdraw game, instead of just one. Thanks to JL who walked me through the code and some quick adjustments and clarifications from Kevin, managed to complete the code with two shapes appearing on the screen now. Tomorrow its time to refine the code I guess.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Thus week 11 has come to an end. Just merely 4 more weeks and my attachment will be over. Start the day with refining code for the two shape appearing on the screen game. Yesterday had completed the code pretty late in the evening and did not really do much correct/efficient programming. Thus today is the day to think about ways on how to improve the source code.
Walked through the code logic again and re-pondered over the approach of the displaying. Removed lots of printf() statements, as well as some variables which were lying all over the place but not actually used at all. Intending to remove the additional windows displaying the different modes of the input frame (such as canny and original versions) but did not have the time as in the afternoon, many people had to use the Light system for their SAB presentation, which resulted in us not being able to VNC in for performance reasons.
Looks like Monday is the day to do the final clean up of the code.
Reflection of the Week:
This week's reflection is about opportunity. [Once again, its not related to work, but something related to SIP in general]
According to dictionary.com:
So what does this mean? In life, there are many windows of opportunities which pass us by. Whether we want to take up this opportunity is one thing. Whether we want to see this opportunity through to greater heights is another. After all, the decision boils down to us, yes? At that moment, to instigate the decision making mechanism within our head to decide if it is a yes or a no for a particular fork in our lives. However, this simple decision mechanism can be easily influenced by many factors, both tangible, such as cash returns, and intangible, such as negative experiences. Now that is the beauty of evolution - our experiences change us, our decisions mould us. After all, if always following the same path of decision making and choosing the same option when faced with the same situation, what is the difference between us and the machine which you read my blog on?
Intelligence. We grow and evolve over time. Artifical Intelligence. How we attempt to make the computer as smart as, if not smarter, than us. But that is a whole new ball game which many people have written countless of books on.
Seeing the OSIP team (India) come back to Singapore made me wonder about the opportunities I am faced with and the corresponding decisions I have made. Every time a particular decision is made, we gain some, we lose some. For example, choosing not to go to India for OSIP means I have lost the opportunity to do some work attachment abroad and gain some valuable experience, as well as the luxury to end my work attachment this week and experience a different country's culture. However staying locally for my SIP allowed me to work with such wonderful people at IHPC and learn many interesting things such as OpenCV and C Programming. Not forgetting many work related skills from our colleagues and our really cool supervisor, who is very friendly and understanding.
How do we gauge which is better than the other? Even now, being close to the end of my work attachment, as well as seeing the India team return to Singapore, I am still unable to decide which yields better returns. Even more so during the initial fork at choosing between local or overseas internship.
The analogy is similar to a game I played often in the past. Choosing one mission over the other - where one mission rescues a family member caught in a war, and another to gain better tactical advantage in the final battle against the enemy. Of course, being a game, there's always that "load previous..." option or the luxury to try again when one option has failed. Unfortunately in reality, there is no try again option - and opportunities that have once been presented may not be presented again.
Of course, there's always the "if there are no opportunities, make your own" quote that some readers would be thinking now. True to a certain extent - we can recreate the opportunity - or rather, we can create a similar opportunity, but we can never have the same experience as compared to the first. To bring it back to the context of the India SIP team, it is possible to re-create the opportunity to go to India to do some work, be it attachment or normal work in the industry, but I will definitely not be able to work with the same people who just came back, or to perhaps work on the same project, stay in the same housing, etc. Same if we did it the other way around - I might not have been able to work on a really great project like Lightdraw, meet great people, etc.
Conclusion? I can't really tell you how my decision making mechanism in my mind works, probably based on all my experience and possible favorable outcome. But once I have made up my mind, I stick to it and do not regret my decision. Being optimistic and open to new experiences is the best way to learn new things and be positive, right?
Interesting occurrence on the way to work
The last day of 2007. And a Monday. Putting such negative thoughts aside, I went to work and improved the per shape timer. The problem with the timer (as mentioned on last Thurday, but recapped here for convenience) was that the timer slept for 20 counts before waking up and clearing the screen. However, if the user had already moved on to the next shape and the thread awoke, it will not know that the user had already successfully encircled a shape and carry on to loyally clear the screen.
Well, that has been solved by ensuring that the thread slept for a much reduced time of 2 seconds and when it awoke, it checked if the number of times it has slept already is more than 20 seconds and if the user had moved to the next shape. If the former is true, it will then dutifully clear the screen, as it has been proven that the user is still on the same shape and the count down for the screen to be cleared has been achieved. If the latter is true, it will restart the sleep counter and carry on sleeping again. This way, the timer will become more responsive and be able to adapt to the change in shapes and be more flexible when coding for other situations, such as pressing the 'c' button to manually clear the screen.
Since today is only till 1245hrs, didn't manage to do much as I had somewhere else to go as well.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Today is New Year Day! My goal for 2008? Same as 2007. Does it mean that 2007 has passed with all my efforts in vain?
Actually, I cannot seem to recall my 2007 goal. hmmz.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Welcome to Situ Yi! Who is JL's long lost cousin. Or so we assume. Anyway, welcome to the team! The first task that we got to do as a Lightdraw team was to... take down the X'mas tree by the receptionist counter and clear the air conditioner of its overflowing water in its reserve. haha. Great way to bond together :)
Today we also welcome back Kevin, to Singapore, after his deserved break in Mauritius. hee. And our really cool supervisor bought us souvenirs too! Kudos to him!
Anyway, when things got serious, we got down to work. shared with the team on the progress of the Lightdraw game as well as took some constructive feedback on improvement to the game play code as well. Had also implemented an overall timer of game which keeps track of how long the user/player takes to complete each level.
Next stop, putting two shapes on the screen at one time and recording & saving the score via File I/O. Hopefully SAB presentation goes well for all too!
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Early morning went down to TP's newly opened visualization lab in ENG school. Saw the displays there - they are really cool and impressive, especially the human skeleton one and the infra-red one. Though many of the technologies there rely on total internal reflection from the glass panel.
But it did take visualization to a whole new level, redefining the way we interact with our computers and how it presents information to us. After seeing some of the displays, I suddenly had this urge to change my entire desktop to use wireless input devices to reduce the wire cluttering at the back. Hmmz..
Back at IHPC, worked on displaying two shapes for the Lightdraw game, instead of just one. Thanks to JL who walked me through the code and some quick adjustments and clarifications from Kevin, managed to complete the code with two shapes appearing on the screen now. Tomorrow its time to refine the code I guess.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Thus week 11 has come to an end. Just merely 4 more weeks and my attachment will be over. Start the day with refining code for the two shape appearing on the screen game. Yesterday had completed the code pretty late in the evening and did not really do much correct/efficient programming. Thus today is the day to think about ways on how to improve the source code.
Walked through the code logic again and re-pondered over the approach of the displaying. Removed lots of printf() statements, as well as some variables which were lying all over the place but not actually used at all. Intending to remove the additional windows displaying the different modes of the input frame (such as canny and original versions) but did not have the time as in the afternoon, many people had to use the Light system for their SAB presentation, which resulted in us not being able to VNC in for performance reasons.
Looks like Monday is the day to do the final clean up of the code.
Reflection of the Week:
This week's reflection is about opportunity. [Once again, its not related to work, but something related to SIP in general]
According to dictionary.com:
op·por·tu·ni·ty [op-er-too-ni-tee, -tyoo-]
–noun, plural -ties.
a good position, chance, or prospect, as for advancement or success.
So what does this mean? In life, there are many windows of opportunities which pass us by. Whether we want to take up this opportunity is one thing. Whether we want to see this opportunity through to greater heights is another. After all, the decision boils down to us, yes? At that moment, to instigate the decision making mechanism within our head to decide if it is a yes or a no for a particular fork in our lives. However, this simple decision mechanism can be easily influenced by many factors, both tangible, such as cash returns, and intangible, such as negative experiences. Now that is the beauty of evolution - our experiences change us, our decisions mould us. After all, if always following the same path of decision making and choosing the same option when faced with the same situation, what is the difference between us and the machine which you read my blog on?
Intelligence. We grow and evolve over time. Artifical Intelligence. How we attempt to make the computer as smart as, if not smarter, than us. But that is a whole new ball game which many people have written countless of books on.
Seeing the OSIP team (India) come back to Singapore made me wonder about the opportunities I am faced with and the corresponding decisions I have made. Every time a particular decision is made, we gain some, we lose some. For example, choosing not to go to India for OSIP means I have lost the opportunity to do some work attachment abroad and gain some valuable experience, as well as the luxury to end my work attachment this week and experience a different country's culture. However staying locally for my SIP allowed me to work with such wonderful people at IHPC and learn many interesting things such as OpenCV and C Programming. Not forgetting many work related skills from our colleagues and our really cool supervisor, who is very friendly and understanding.
How do we gauge which is better than the other? Even now, being close to the end of my work attachment, as well as seeing the India team return to Singapore, I am still unable to decide which yields better returns. Even more so during the initial fork at choosing between local or overseas internship.
The analogy is similar to a game I played often in the past. Choosing one mission over the other - where one mission rescues a family member caught in a war, and another to gain better tactical advantage in the final battle against the enemy. Of course, being a game, there's always that "load previous..." option or the luxury to try again when one option has failed. Unfortunately in reality, there is no try again option - and opportunities that have once been presented may not be presented again.
Of course, there's always the "if there are no opportunities, make your own" quote that some readers would be thinking now. True to a certain extent - we can recreate the opportunity - or rather, we can create a similar opportunity, but we can never have the same experience as compared to the first. To bring it back to the context of the India SIP team, it is possible to re-create the opportunity to go to India to do some work, be it attachment or normal work in the industry, but I will definitely not be able to work with the same people who just came back, or to perhaps work on the same project, stay in the same housing, etc. Same if we did it the other way around - I might not have been able to work on a really great project like Lightdraw, meet great people, etc.
Conclusion? I can't really tell you how my decision making mechanism in my mind works, probably based on all my experience and possible favorable outcome. But once I have made up my mind, I stick to it and do not regret my decision. Being optimistic and open to new experiences is the best way to learn new things and be positive, right?
Interesting occurrence on the way to work
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