tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88998428292295859892024-03-05T02:56:37.754-08:00talk to the handBeing an Online Journal for My Graduate Research Regarding Sign Language, Computer Vision and Artificial IntelligenceEd Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-78767798627663386232012-01-26T09:02:00.000-08:002012-01-26T09:02:30.838-08:00Still AliveHappy New Year everyone!
I haven't forgotten this. A lot of things happened and I ran out of time for updating the blog. But, I'm back! I plan to make at least one post a week. See you around!Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-60402719431293277202011-08-04T22:35:00.000-07:002011-08-04T22:48:48.198-07:00LibreOffice in Fedora 14Installing LibreOffice in Fedora 14
This is a short note for myself (also for the search engines).
Download LibreOffice tarballs from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/
Extract the RPMs and install the RPMs as per instructions here
Delete or move libstdc++.so.6 in /opt/libreoffice3.4/ure/lib
The RPMs from LibreOffice install to /opt and it has its own copy of libstdc++.so.6. Unfortunately,Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-32556085126605190552011-06-02T03:50:00.000-07:002011-06-02T04:02:08.211-07:00Support House Bills for the DeafWe would like to get 150,000 signatures within this month to pass two laws:
House Bill 4121: Sign language insets for TV news programs
House Bill 4631: Court interpreters for the Deaf
Learn more about the House Bills and sign our petition list at http://housebills4deaf.webs.com/ Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-79644654466547466342011-05-18T05:40:00.000-07:002011-05-18T05:55:54.600-07:00General Assembly for Sign Language InterpretersTo all hearing interpreters , sign language enthusiasts, anybody interested to be sign language interpreters; to all deaf interpreters and deaf individuals:
There will be a general assembly meeting for sign language interpreters
Date: 2011 May 21 (Saturday)
Time: 7:30 am - 3:00 pm
Venue:
CAP Development center
7th floor, CAP Building
126 Amorsolo corner VA Rufino
Legaspi Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-36985058789870283452011-04-15T05:49:00.000-07:002011-05-06T00:36:17.753-07:00Manifold Learning, part 3Part 1 here
Part 2 here
Non-linear dimensionality reduction
In an earlier post, we saw we can approximate higher dimensional data using dimensionality reduction techniques. However, PCA (and similar methods) have a weakness. It requires the constraints to line along or near straight lines. What about data that lie along curves?
Another Illustrated Example
Let us pretend again we have Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-4341841375211771632010-12-04T06:24:00.000-08:002010-12-04T17:38:39.311-08:00WiFi on Lenovo Ideapad B450 with Fedora 14I recently installed Fedora 14 on a Lenovo Ideapad B450 for PDRC and I have had problems with getting the Wi-Fi to work. I am posting this so Google search engines can find it.The Lenovo Ideapad B450 has an Atheros Gigabit ethernet card and an Atheros AR5001 wifi card. I had installed Fedora 12 on it previously and it worked with no problems. After upgrading it to Fedora 14, the wireless card Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-17662931675149492232010-10-04T09:15:00.000-07:002010-10-08T05:02:43.368-07:00Deaf denied exit by Bureau of ImmigrationUPDATE:
As of 8 am, October 7, 2010, the Bureau of Immigrations under the directive of Under Sec. Jovy Salazar of the Department of Justice has placed Mr. Franklin Corpuz on a Qatar-bound flight this morning. This is to rectify the situation and treatment Mr. Corpuz received on 4 October, 2010. This was made possible thru the appeal of Prof. Raul Pangalangan of the U.P. College of Law. A full Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-42634518443830055462010-09-22T23:00:00.001-07:002010-09-23T01:00:38.019-07:00Clarification and CorrectionI recently got interviewed by loQal about my research. You can read the article here. I guess I didn't explain some things clearly enough and I'd hate to give a false impression regarding the research. Here are some items I'd like to clarify or correct.
The Filipino Sign Language (FSL) Archive project is a collaboration between:
Philippine Deaf Resource Center (PDRC) - an NGO
Philippine Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-85984870477019789212010-09-21T18:32:00.000-07:002010-09-22T23:54:10.639-07:00Difficulties in Sign RecognitionWhat makes it hard to do Sign Recognition? I touched this topic briefly in an earlier post. Simply put, there are a lot of things going on in sign language. In spoken languages, you just have to listen to one thing; in sign language you pay attention to the face, the body, the hands and arms simultaneously.
Another part of the problem is the complexity of sign language itself. Facial expressionsEd Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-10315400739680053152010-09-09T12:01:00.000-07:002010-09-10T03:41:22.137-07:00BibliographyThis is a partial dump of the references I have used so far.
Rafaelito M. Abat and Liza B. Martinez. The history of sign language in the philippines: Piecing together the puzzle. In 9th Philippine Linguistics Congress, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, 2006.
Julius Andrada and Raphael Domingo. Key findings for language planning from the national sign language committee (status report on the Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-41570293219949936012010-08-04T02:22:00.000-07:002010-09-10T18:19:08.186-07:00Manifold Learning - part 2Dimensionality Reduction
Trying to make sense of 19,200 dimensions is asking for trouble. Fortunately for us poor humans, most data are constrained in some way. For example, the data varies but it doesn't vary along all 19,200 dimensions at the same time; it varies along some of the dimensions, some of the time. If we know how and when the data changes, we can approximate our data with a smallerEd Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-40479680732021768092010-08-01T11:04:00.000-07:002010-09-10T03:31:14.718-07:00Manifold Learning - part 1Background: How many dimensions?
When we talk of dimensions in casual conversation, we often recall high school geometry. A point has zero dimensions, a line segment has one dimension (length), a rectangle has two dimensions (length & width), and a block has three dimensions (length, width & height).
We can also think of dimensions as a tuple, or a set of numbers, and this set of numbers Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-89965399829622523982010-07-26T00:15:00.000-07:002010-07-25T09:13:01.329-07:00Why sign language?I find sign language fascinating.
It's a language unlike the any other languages I know.
It uses a different set of body parts to communicate.
Sign language linguistics is hard.
Sign language recognition is hard(er).
And it surprises me.
For the longest time, I thought sign language used only the hands and arms. Only when I started reading about it and interacting with the Deaf, did it Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-81799710205753840322010-03-12T07:38:00.000-08:002010-03-12T08:08:18.871-08:00Video to Dataor How Do We Represent Video as an Input to Our Various Algorithms?
What is video anyway? To oversimplify, video is a series of images shown one after another. There are many display and storage formats; but, in essence, they are all just a set of images. How fast, how often the images are presented is measured in frames-per-second (fps). For example, television in usually shown at 30 fps. Each Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-84393177498024108232010-02-27T01:22:00.000-08:002010-03-12T08:10:50.476-08:00Intelligence, Consciousness, and LifeWarning: This post is just me rambling.
Whenever I talk about my research sometimes the topic meanders to Artificial Intelligence. Specifically, two questions come up; (1) are these machines really thinking? And (2) will machines become as intelligent as people? It seems that people conflate three things in these discussions: Intelligence, Consciousness and Life.
Because us humans are Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-10846102973249340562009-12-30T06:16:00.000-08:002010-12-04T06:24:54.617-08:00Globe Tattoo on Fedora 12How to get Globe Tattoo prepaid wireless working in Fedora 12
updated: added minor details, minor edits
It mostly just worked. By default, Network Manager and Modem Manager are installed. If not, install them first. I also installed the usb_modeswitch utility; but I didn't need it. The USB Modem is detected after about 10 secs.
Create a new Mobile Broadband connection in Network Manager.
Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-87260893081015241232009-11-04T08:24:00.000-08:002009-11-04T08:26:34.577-08:00...and now back to the ProgramAfter dealing with technical and personal problems, we are back on the net. Apologies to my three readers!
Regular posting starts tomorrow. Thanks for dropping by!Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-47250785560007132962009-08-12T01:26:00.000-07:002009-08-12T01:46:46.236-07:00Welcome Thinkpad SL400I could not afford the T-series nor the X-series. I settled for the small business line of Lenovo, the SL-series These have just about the same features but at half (or less) the price. What are the trade-offs?
The SL-series are heavier and bulkier. Instead of using lightweight metal parts, thick plastic parts are used.
Lower end video card.
No roll cage in SL-series. The T- and X-series have aEd Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-33355152360036966752009-07-22T01:21:00.000-07:002009-07-22T02:33:27.196-07:00back from the deadI haven't been posting as much lately and for that I apologize to my readers (all three of you). I have successfully defended my thesis proposal (CS298) and I am now in thesis proper (CS300). I plan to do my final thesis defense 2nd week of October.
What have we learned during the Marathon?
Sign language recognition is hard. Sign language linguistics are decades behind spoken language Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-55556314376314960192009-06-01T03:02:00.000-07:002009-08-12T01:48:42.055-07:00Farewell Thinkpad X31My notebook finally died. IBM Thinkpad X31 model 2672-B2U purchased sometime in 2003. No amount of poking, (re)assembly, or pleading would bring it back. When plugged-in (with or without battery) the lights would come on and sometimes the CPU fan, then nothing. Hard disk doesn't spin up (or down), display remains blank. It has been dying for about a year now; a few months ago I just have to keep Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-65774412079313169972009-05-21T00:20:00.000-07:002009-05-21T00:58:01.736-07:00marathon day 21: a long way to goData Collection
total of 117 unique signs (60 2-handed signs + 57 2-handed signs)
3 signers per sign; on average 2 samples per sign per signer
approximately 700 isolated sign samples
88 out of 700 isolated sign samples edited
63 grouped sign samples
37 out of 68 grouped sign samples edited
This is far from complete. In addition to editing the existing samples I also need to annotate and Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-88619388938879633752009-05-11T22:24:00.000-07:002009-05-11T22:28:17.953-07:00minor updates
changed "research tips" label to "research"
added "marathon" label to all research marathon posts
added title to marathon day 4 post
Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-70213473925740769562009-05-11T22:11:00.001-07:002009-05-11T22:16:09.677-07:00marathon day 18: small stepsFSL video progress
90 out of 127 signs (9 out of 13 groups) recorded
2 out of 3 signers recorded
90 out of 328 recorded samples processed
Proposal/Thesis Paper writing
configured LaTeX templates
draft Chapter 1: Introduction
draft Chapter 2: Related Literature
draft Chapter 3: Research Problem
Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-22488490174343645532009-05-07T03:55:00.000-07:002009-05-18T22:33:57.830-07:00Underestimating the Problemupdate: minor edits for clarification
Challenges in Sign Language Recogniton
Multiple types of events
Multiple channels
Multiple interpretations
Sign language linguistics
Multiple types of events
From an earlier post, I mentioned that sign language has several things going on. We need to look at the hand shapes, the arm motion with respect to the body, the body posture, and facial expressionsEd Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8899842829229585989.post-16246353824583153762009-05-07T03:30:00.000-07:002009-05-11T22:22:41.676-07:00marathon day 15: I lost my noseIt is time to re-evaluate our progress. What have we accomplished? What have we learned?
Accomplishments
Created a screencast of the prototype of the visualization tool for demonstrations.
Incremental improvements in the visualization tool.
Standardized the mencoder options for my data files. mencoder is part of the MPlayer project.
Scheduled additional recording sessions with the Deaf next Ed Cabalfinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254433713567052226noreply@blogger.com0