Still Alive

Happy 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!

LibreOffice in Fedora 14

Installing LibreOffice in Fedora 14
This is a short note for myself (also for the search engines).

1. Download LibreOffice tarballs from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/
2. Extract the RPMs and install the RPMs as per instructions here
3. 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, this version is unable to link(?) to the GStreamer / FFMPEG libraries. By removing the libstdc++.so.6 file from /opt LibreOffice is forced to use the system libstdc++.so.6. Now, LibreOffice can use video files in Impress with no problem.

I don't know what instabilities this may introduce LibreOffice, use at your own risk.

Support House Bills for the Deaf

We 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/

General Assembly for Sign Language Interpreters

To 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 Village, Makati

If you are from outside Manila and cannot come to Makati, the assembly will be webcast, e-mail philnasli@yahoo.com to get the instructions. Place in the subject "SLI webcast".

You should have a Yahoo account (http://messenger.yahoo.com/) or a Skype account (http://www.skype.com/intl/en/home) to be able to view the webcast.

Manifold Learning, part 3

Part 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 2-dimensional data and our tools can only analyse one-dimensional data. We cannot use the trick we used earlier because the data no longer lies close to a straight line. However, we can cheat. Looking at it closely, we can see that our data (almost) lies along a spiral.

Just like before, we are going to use the projections of our data (red circles) onto the spiral as approximations of our data. We can do this as long as our data is "very close" to the spiral.

The final trick is to "unroll" the spiral and pretend it is a straight line. We can now use our tools for analysis. Just like in our previous approximation errors are introduced. As long as the data is "very close" to the spiral, the error introduced is small.

You may also notice that I skipped over how we actually unroll the spiral. We'll discuss one way to do it in the next post.

WiFi on Lenovo Ideapad B450 with Fedora 14

I 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 stopped working. Network Manager in GNOME will have "wireless disabled" and no amount of clicking will enable wifi. After some digging and trial and error I blacklisted the acer-wmi kernel module and wifi was working again.

1. Go to /etc/modprobe.d/
2. Edit blacklist.conf and add the following line: blacklist acer-wmi
3. Reboot!

Deaf denied exit by Bureau of Immigration

UPDATE:
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 investigation is ongoing. Mr. Corpuz intends to file formal legal action against the Immigrations Officer. He STILL needs your support for this.

Please send LETTERS OF PROTEST to:

1. snail mail: Atty. Ronaldo Ledesma
   OIC
   Bureau of Immigrations
   Magallanes Drive, Intramuros
   
2. email (please CC me: ed.cabalfin@gmail.com)
   Dept. Of Justice Action Center
   Attn: Romeo D. Galvez
   dojac@doj.gov.ph
   soj@doj.gov.ph
   
3. by fax: Tel. 521-1614

This is not an official press release. I just want to get this out so more people will know. I'll update this post as soon as I get more information. This is from an email sent by Dr. Martinez of the Philippine Deaf Resource Center (PDRC), edited to include links and notes.

Summary
Name of passenger: Franklin Galano Corpuz
Disability: Deaf
Flight: Bound for Qatar via Qatar Airways QR 645, October 4, 2010; 635a.m.

Documents presented at Immigrations (shall be faxed separately):

1. Affidavit of Support from Al Mana Interiors
2. Detailed Invitation to take part in Business Training
3. Visa paper from Ministry of Interior, State of Qatar
4. Passport with Qatar visa
5. Airplane ticket

Purpose of trip:
Invited by company for Business Training and orientation on program for Persons With Disabilities and eventual employment. Program specifically recruits PWDs, two other Filipinos have been placed in Qatar, one Deaf, the other mobility-challenged(Link)

Highlights of incident:
F. Corpuz arrived at NAIA early 4 October 2010 and checked in. He was accompanied by a Qatar Airways flight attendant to the Immigrations counter. Upon being told by the flight attendant that Mr. Corpuz is Deaf,the Immigrations counter officer directs him to the Bureau of Immigrations Office. He is interviewed there by an Immigrations officer (male) who says that he will be disallowed because he is “deaf and CANNOT SPEAK”. He was then asked to leave the airport.

[PDRC] placed a call to the NAIA Immigrations Office this morning and spoke with Ms. Gladys Castillo and Mr. Jeff Ignacio (administrative staff). They said that as a matter of policy they are not allowed to release the name of the Immigrations Officer who interviewed Mr. Corpuz. Ms. Castillo said to send any letters of complaint to Atty. Ronaldo Ledesma, OIC of Bureau of Immigrations. Mr. Ignacio on the other hand said that in their Indicator Checklist for Offloading, the remarks were as follows: “No sufficient proof that his trip is for business to Qatar considering that he is deaf and mute.” He said that it was not specified as to what proof or documentation was lacking.