Saturday, December 23, 2006

Roujin Z?

I think the caption "Robots are looked on as a solution to Japan's ageing population" under the first photo in this BBC article is a bit misleading.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

1.

(a) The complex conjugate of a complex number is the number with the same real value and imaginary magnitude, but the imaginary part is opposite in sign.

...

3.
* scale plots/images

A convolution is the result of the application of an impulse response function to an input signal.
The input signal consists of a series of samples (impulses) of various magnitudes. Each input produces a corresponding input response function

Since 'B' is composed of horizontal line samples, it appears as a horizontal broken line in the fourier transform. Conversely, the 'A' being composed of vertical lines appears as a vertical line in the fourier transform.

The diagonal crosspieces of the 'A' show up as rotated diagonals in the fourier transform, while the curving edges of the 'B' show up most as the vaguely rounded shapes at the edges of the horizontal line in the centre of the plot.


clear;
load 'p:\public\alistair\ab'

subplot(3,2,1), image(final);
colormap(gray(256));
y = fft2(final);
subplot(3,2,2), image(256*log(abs(y))/max(max(log(abs(y)))));
ydim = size(y, 1);

xdim = size(y, 2);
mask = zeros(ydim, xdim);
msize = 140;
mask(:, (xdim/2-msize/2):(xdim/2+msize/2)) = 1;

mask2 = zeros(ydim, xdim);
mask2((ydim/2-msize/2):(ydim/2+msize/2), :)=1;

y2 = mask .* y;
ya = ifft2(y2);

y3 = mask2 .* y;
yb = ifft2(y3);

subplot(3,2,3), image(abs(ya));
subplot(3,2,4), image(256*log(abs(y2))/max(max(log(abs(y2)))));

subplot(3,2,5), image(abs(yb));
subplot(3,2,6), image(256*log(abs(y3))/max(max(log(abs(y3)))));


----

lenna....

clear;
load 'p:publicalistairlenna';
subplot(2,3,1), image(xx);
colormap(gray(256));

ynew = 512;
xnew = 512;

scaled = zeros(ynew, xnew);
scaled(1:2:ynew, 1:2:xnew) = xx;

y = fft2(scaled);

subplot(2,3,2), image(256*log(abs(y))/max(max(log(abs(y)))));
subplot(2,3,3), image(ifft2(y));
mask = zeros(ynew, xnew);
msize = 128;

mask((ynew/2-msize):(ynew/2+msize),(xnew/2-msize):(xnew/2+msize)) = 1;
ya = mask .* y;

subplot(2,3,4), image(256*log(abs(ya))/max(max(log(abs(ya)))));
scaledimg = abs(ifft2(ya));
subplot(2,3,5), image(256*scaledimg/max(max(scaledimg)));


the 'ultimate' partner?

From this article on Ananova:

Meanwhile, nine out of ten women look for a man who can make her laugh and 73% want someone who will "automatically" pay for a meal.

Looks like 73% of women are greedy twats, then.

What a disgusting attitude that is, to expect men to 'automatically' pay for all meals. Why shouldn't they pay for it? Selfish arseholes.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Atari Falcon emulator

...And when I say emulator, I mean emulator, not what people often think they mean when they mention Aranym, which isn't one.

Hatari in CVS now has the beginnings of support for TT and Falcon emulation - no software that could emulate these machines successfully has ever been released or even publically mentioned before as far as I know.

Unfortunately, Hatari is only developed for Unix systems and the source doesn't seem very easily portable to Windows as yet (okay, I haven't looked at the source, but I'm guessing that that's the case). However, it compiles and runs just fine in Ubuntu and performs well. What a bombshell!

Here's the announcement on the great atari-forum.com site.