1st Assignment : Review text : "Wavelets: seeing the forest and the trees", by Dana Mackienzie, 2003

I wish all assignments were this nice. Particularly for a non-mathematician guy like me, this text provides a very useful description on why wavelet theory is important and why I'm exchanging my free time to learn about it. You may want take a look on the full paper here.

The author goes by several interesting examples in order to show a concise history of the wavelet theory and applications. The main highlight of her paper is the comparison of the wavelet analysis with the Human perception of its surroundings. Revisiting the author's example, the Human perception allows us to go from a wide-scale overview perspective up to a very fine-grained detailed perspective. When we are overlooking a forest from a jet flying over 2000 feet above the ground, we can barely see any trees, we just see a very long green "carpet". As we get closer, we realize that such "carpet" is made of tress and if we go even closer we will see branches, leaves, etc. This means that the Human perception allows us to visit whatever granularity we need. However, cameras and/or computers do not have such capability. Digital images only represent one perspective at a time. Getting closer to a digital picture will not give you more than a blurred view of the picture.

According to the author, wavelet is one attempt of representing such different levels of granularities on mathematical models. This is the kind of theory that has been so useful that people all around the world have been using variations of it for a very long time way before it got formalized and known as wavelets.

It is very likely that you have been using wavelets for quite a long time without even knowing it. The jpeg2000 (very popular picture format on many digital camera brands) uses wavelets as one of the steps to compress the image files. On the specific case of jpeg2000, wavelets have the capability of splitting what we consider to be the objects on the scene (face, car, etc) of the background information (usually blur or fuzzy image). By doing that, it generates two stream of numbers (pixel values and variation) that can be compressed in up to 200:1 scale.

As a relatively new concept, the wavelet theories are growing in number and complexity in a very fast pace. Several different areas are still evaluating the best way to take advantage of the wavelet features. The most important is that in the case of wavelets, the theory and the practical applications seems to be evolving together. Not only evolving the mathematical foundations but also the several applications that certainly will bring major breakthroughs to several areas of science.

-Luciano

Getting back to Classes

Hi Folks

I have spent a lot of time writing mostly about my IPhone Apps. It is time to go back to school and start writing about a few assignments again. I have enrolled to two very interesting courses this period. I will be working on "Theory of Intelligent Control" and "Introduction to Wavelet theory".

Stay tuned because I already have quite a few assignments that I will make available on the blog over the next couple weeks.

-Luciano

iToon 1.1 Upgrade

Hello Folks

Due to the great i-Toon success, I have speed-up the implementation of i-Toon 1.1. This is going to be a free upgrade for everyone who already bought i-Toon 1.0.

Here are the main enhancements for i-Toon 1.1:

- single tap at ballon rotates it (no longer attached to the center of the picture)
- double tap on picture resizes it
- Added Resize Slider for handling small balloons
- resize picture and ballon with pinch gesture
- automatically resizes text to fit ballon
- prevents missing balloons by keeping them inside picture boundaries
- save space in your device (iToon App binary has reduced its size in ~30%)
- prevents saving duplicated cartoons by checking if there were any modifications before saving it.

Here are the new User Guides:

i-Toon 1.1 User`s Guide
i-Toon 1.1 Manual do Usuário

This release was submitted to Apple on August 11th. Hopefully it will be available on App Store in a couple weeks.

Thanks

-Luciano

i-Toon, available this weekend (08/08/2009)

Hello Everyone

i-Toon está totalmente traduzido para Inglês e Português. Acesse o Manual do Usuário aqui.
i-Toon is completly localized for English and Portuguese. Check User Manual here.

I'm glad to share that our new App will be available starting this weekend on the App Store.

As we continue experiencing all different App categories, this time we bring to you i-Toon. It is a mix of Entertainment and Photography App. We will position it inside Photography but I get to say that I may change its category to Entertainment based on the users feedback.

On this tool, I got engaged into reshape the code for the very first App I designed. Back then I was going to build a cartoon generator that would automatically build a cartoon based on a picture. I found several constraints to build such application, specially because of storage and memory space.

This time, I have restructured the idea a little bit and made it more interactive. For this first release, here are the main features:

- Acquire Image from your camera or from our picture library;
- Apply "Border" filter;
- Paint image with Cartoon Colors
- Paint picture as Vivid Colors
- Add Ballon titles
- Save i-Toon pictures to your Photo Library
- Send i-Toon pictures via e-mail

Next release(free upgrade), with new features expected for early September. Feel free to send me a message with your i-Toon wish-list. I might very well decide to implement the suggested features if they fit into my planned schedulle.

-Luciano

i-Dig is Ready for Sale !!

Hello Everyone

I'm glad to share with you that Apple has finally approved "I-Dig-The Recycle Challenge" and it is available on the App Store.

As our technology matures, we are adding quite a few features to our games. This time the game is available in English and Portuguese. We have also added support to three of the main OS 3.0 features : IPod Sound as background music, Multiplayer mode and Voice Chat.

Right now, I'm brainstorming in order to get ready to start working on the next release. Here is my current wish-list:

- Add earthquakes (mess up the user tunnels)

- Add at least one big “Boss” in order to complete each phase
- Shake the iPhone to change background music
- improve visual effects
- minimize App footprint
- fix any possible bugs that Users report

My windows for defining new feature should be closed by the end of this month. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

I hope you enjoy the game!

-Luciano

iDig will be sent to Apple Store today !!

Hello everyone

I'm glad to share with you that i-Dig is about to be sent to apple for entering on the App Store.

Here is its description and a few screenshots. If you are interested on writing a review or becoming a beta tester of our future Apps, let me know.

By this weekend, I intend posting a quick demonstration video of the game on You-Tube. Stay tunned, more news to come.

-Luciano

I-Dig : The Recycling Challenge is an ecological adventure. On this first release, I-Dig uses the full potential of IPhone OS 3 and mixes a fun game with an ecological story.

On the single player mode, the game objective is helping out a little worm to collect as much recycle material as possible. By bringing the cargo to the Recycling Center, the user gets Worm$ that can be used to buy upgrades. If a worm were as tall as a human, each game map would allow it to dig into about 650 feet under the ground. The random map generator is capable of generating up to 1000 different maps to make each new campaign unique. As the user goes deeper he/she will find garbage and obstacles. Natural obstacles such as gas pockets will slow the worm down while drag its life away. Snakes are moving around and they may fall on you if you dig under them. Be specially careful about spiders, they can follow you around and keep dragging your life away; they will not stop until you terminate them. Use your bombs to terminate spiders and snakes. Do not forget that your ethanol tank may go out of fuel as you dig in, remember to go back and refill it from time to time.

The multiplayer mode is the greatest part! The same rules of the single player game apply to the multi-player mode. However, on the multiplayer mode you have to deal with a much smarter adversary that will control a second Worm. After the multi-player campaign starts, the users also have the option to start the Voice Chat tool and tease each other while playing. The game will keep track of both user's scores and it will assume that the highest score is the winner. However, blowing up your opponent will make you feel better in case you got a lower score :-) .

Well, help the worm, learn more about the environment and have fun !

-BABs 2Go Team

Another crazy idea...

Some times I get myself thinking about things that are totally unrelated. I do not know why, but I guess that my brain likes it. During one of my divagations trying to find a theme for my theses, I was thinking about the concept of a time capsule.

A time capsule is used when one generation wants to pass information to another generation. It is not more than a chest with a bunch of letters, drawings, written messages, prety much anything that people would like to share with their kids, grand-kids, and so on.

The time capsule is fine, however, as usual, I think it is too simplistic. As a good scientist, I could not see something simple, working perfectly and let it be. On that case, I was trying to find other uses to a time capsule. That was what leaded me to a few strange but accurate thoughts.

OK, the initial idea is sending a time capsule to your relatives in the future. Moving on, I though, "Why couldn't I sent a time-capsule to myself?". All right, that concept alone could be interesting but not new; it would be just like "I will buy an Apple Stock today and leave it on the closet until I retire". Simple and not fun at all.

When I was about to give-up, I though "Well, what about reincarnation? Would it be totally unthinkable to leave something for me when I get back to life?".

Well, if you are still reading this post is because you are not too upset with me by merging science and religion. Fine, I will keep this way because I'm talking only science here.

Even that reincarnation is most of the times linked to a second life, or something mystical. I have been thinking that it is in fact a mathematical possibility. I mean, all your memories would start fresh but as long as there are human beings around, you have the chance to be born again, even at the same time! From the scientific perspective, at least as far as the current state of the science goes, your body is defined by a set of DNA molecules. Those sets of molecules have been around and mixing and matching together ever since the first Human being was born. Several mutations have created pretty much every single individual that we see today.

Even on the worst case scenario, assuming that the DNA molecules are arranging themselves in total random ways, it only means that there is a very small probability that they will ever get together again in the exact same formation that you are composed today. However, if we take another well accepted truth of these days, we know that the universe is infinite on time. Considering that the Human species will last for at least another X billion of years, that small probability that you have to be reborn becomes a possibility. Yes, you may have a really terrible luck and never be born again but you could be also be a lottery winner and be born twice at the same time (identical twins).

Of course that people can argue that those are two different individuals and that is perfectly acceptable. However, they share the very same project design. I'm not really trying to sell anything here, I sure respects other people's opinions. My point is that, just for fun, wouldn't it be nice if you could share information with yourself whenever you/him is reborn?

Imagine the impacts of this if you embrace this possibility. Ecologists could say "Save the planet for yourself" and really mean it! Anything that we do here will not only affect our children but now it could also impact your very own next life. Those Apple stocks would be even more valuable if you think you could cash them in 100.000 years from now.

Well, getting back to the time-capsule idea: Imagine if we could digitalize you life. Just create a log that would be saved on the network (I assume that Internet will survive until them) and it would be encrypted with a DNA-based key. In X thousand years from now, the other young version of "you" would get to a website, use his DNA to unlock the information and learn about an entire life that he/she had several hundreds of years before.

Well, I'm not sure if this would be a nice PhD project (the most of the technology to build this is already available), however, I'd buy a ticket to see a movie about it.

-Luciano