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Archive for February, 2007

Image Processing: Outside and Inside views

27 Feb

matlab_logo
Working with different graphical editors, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, I’ve never gone really deep into details of actual image processing algorithms. Simply, because I didn’t have to. Since every tool does what I want – it’s enough!

But, taking Data Image Processing course, I’ve witnessed bunches of maths inside. And after calculating an average number of filters used in any graphic editor, I just want to take off my hat in front of these people who created these applications, and thank them. Guys, you’re a crazy maths geeks!

Another regards should be sent to Matlab Community for releasing such a powerful tool, and those people who support the community and post really helpful material, because concerning so many features of Matlab I got lost in this pile of commands, functions and processing features.

 
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Posted in Design, Gadgets

 

WordPress as e-Commerce solution.

23 Feb

As Timur mentioned yesterday (already?):

I am beginning to think that WordPress is one of the most stable web applications I have seen.

Due to some plans, I’ve made a small research on the point of using a e-commerce CMS to perform basic shopping transactions. After few minutes of googling, I came out with Zen Cart, osCommerce, NucleusCMS and WordPress as open-source solutions for installing your personal e-commerce shop.

It looks that I’ll stick to WP platform due to small facts that can be taken as an advantage of WP:

  • Great Supporting/Development community
  • Very neat and flexible Template design (no headaches with changing index.php, single.php, etc)
  • Good CMS architecture (even me, as the second laziest person in Cyprus (After Leonid :D ) can work with this platform)
  • Big plug-in database (and the plug-ins are normally working, without redoing them)

These are the main advantages, you can notice from the first sight, after using WordPress for a while. But I’ve never thought that things can be worse then this. They can. Zen-Cart Templates database almost made me cry.A main advantage of this CMS is XHTML template architecture, therefore, it’s very easy to accommodate for user needs. osCommerce amazed me with .pdf files in template archives, instead of ready-made solutions: you expect of getting a nice, handsome template, but as the result you get an Acrobat manual “How to customize your website”.Thanks! Therefore, this platform give a really good payment support for the products: Paypal, Google Checkout, Credit cards and so on.
NucleusCMS showed itself as a great CMS, which bunch of plug-ins, facilities you can install on your on-line shop, but after WordPress admin panel, it’s really inconvenient to switch for Nucleus after WordPress.

Although, WordPress got few minor disadvantages for being used as on-line shop:

  • Only two e-commerce plug-ins are in stock right now.
  • e-Commerce plug-ins are an add-on type for the blogging platform, they don’t replace the major usage of WP
  • Search problem issue. Built-in search of WordPress do not index product pages from e-Commerce wp plug-in (so you need yet another plug-in, but not “search for everything”, because it won’t do)
  • Main payment capacity is processed via Paypal, there is no Google Checkout plug-in, yet, therefore, GCheckout already earned 8% of the market as payment system, and it’s most probably the main competitor of Paypal in a close future

4 versus 4. A tie, but these disadvantages seem to be minor for WordPress in comparison with support & development features of mentioned CMS. Maybe I’ve overstated negative features of those CMS’es, or I wasn’t searching an appropriate solution in a right way.
What over CMS can you suggest and describe their main features which you like?

 
2 Comments

Posted in Design, Gadgets, Links

 

Tune of a day: The Streets – Has It Come To This?

18 Feb

 
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Posted in Links

 

Usually…

15 Feb
  1. It’s hard to make a first step, but it’s easy to move on.
  2. It’s easier to find a thousand of excuses then to accept your guilt.
  3. As usual, it’s easy to say that you prefer to have mustaches then to shave everyday!
  4. Usually, it’s easier to write and delete two huge posts and write this one just to make things short and clear!
  5. Usually, people use 5 points bullet list, so here is the fifth one!

This is just another useless post, with another useless question: ” What other things can be described as bloody usual in our life?” :)

 
2 Comments

Posted in Blogging

 

Forest. Connection established

15 Feb

Wooden Brothers

No matter, how far you live, Google Analytics will find you! :D

 
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Posted in Google, Heap

 

J4vk navigation: categories and tags

13 Feb

After moving to a new hosting, I’ve witnessed some problems with navigation issues of the blog. For example, tags didn’t want to work. At this point, categories are not the best solution for good post search and data classification. Few minutes ago, I’ve fixed tag plug-in, so now you can use both: more general post distribution via categories, and more precise identification via tags. Some of the post can be found through different categories and tags due to the mixture of context in the posts, which can belong to different groups.

 
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Posted in Gadgets

 

Artificial Brain?

13 Feb

Right now, Stanford University is about to launch a new project, that will help out to discover a new computational features of a human brain.

Now Kwabena Boahen, a neuroengineer at Stanford University, is planning the most ambitious neuromorphic project to date: creating a silicon model of the cortex. The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons.

It looks like more and more people become attracted by the R&D of artificial systems, in other words, millions of investitions are going for research facilities of creating human like computing and imitating human capacities like human vision, an ability to identify the smell. Human still remains the most interesting subject of analysis as for digital programmers working on image processing methods to create the appropriate vision, as for computer scientists – in order to reach human like way of processing the information, and engineers – to imitate balancing abilities of a man.

Artificial Intelligence Logo

The latest robot for “snow collecting” in Japan took 7 years of researches just to produce correct vision navigating and identification system – so the robot will identify how to move, where to move, and finally, where is the snow. I doubt that this project, of creating an artificial silicon brain will take less time, but humanity always set impossible goals for itself in order to answer that there is nothing impossible in the world. And the more people will be interacted in those researches, the better will be the feedback of science reflected on our life.

 
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Posted in Gadgets

 

Design Roundup

13 Feb

Bittbox offers a nice collection of glass headers
Pixel to Em calculator
For those who got tired of calculating it
NetDreams
Nice, good looking work in CSS, fine content placement around the site.
ORION Blog
Good layer placement, very neat work, smooth colour gamma. I’m loving it! ;)

 
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Posted in Design

 
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