Updates Feed from niw.at

Goodbye 2009, Happy 2010!

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I’m summarizing my 2009.

The first quoter is for developing the new iPhone application and waiting the “Pending Contract.” Except the iPhone application, I had a “First Contact” meeting which will be connected to the exciting project I’m involved in later. The end of March, I was traveling to Bayarea to meet up with some companies and friends in Silicon Valley.

Next quoter from April to June, I had an important interview for the exciting project I mentioned. I was moving my office to Toranomon area then starting that project. At this time I renew and resize my MacBook Pro from 17 inches to 15 inches.

In this summer, I was getting San Francisco for the meeting of the project, and working harder than before. As you know, there was cold even in summer.

In the end of this summer, I met a giant lubber duck. He or she is coming back to Osaka again this winter.

The last quoter from October to the end of this year is the most exciting but really busy months. The project released the product, had a big event. Working to fix the bugs, optimizing the parameters. Then getting San Francisco again for the next things.

In this year, I was getting to Bayarea three times. I can say this year is the year of changes while I was saying this year must be changing something at the new year party.

That project is for Twitter. And then next year, I’m going to move to San Francisco then join them.

Goodbye TWENTY NINE, Happy TWITTY TEN!

Using OpenCV on iPhone

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

OpenCV is a library of computer vision developed by Intel, we can easily detect faces using this library for example. I’d note how to use it with iPhone SDK, including the building scripts and a demo application. Here I attached screen shots from the demo applications.

Support OpenCV 2.0.0 and iPhone SDK 3.x

I updated the script and made patches for OpenCV 2.0.0 and iPhone SDK 3.x! (Updated 11/15/2009)

Getting Started

All source codes and resources are opened and you can get them from my github repository. It includes pre-compiled OpenCV libraries and headers so that you can easily start to test it. If you already have git command, just clone whole repository from github. If not, just take it by zip or tar from download link on github and inflate it.

% git clone git://github.com/niw/iphone_opencv_test.git

After getting source codes, open OpenCVTest.xcodeproj with Xcode, then build it. You will get a demo application on both iPhone Simulator and iPhone device.

Building OpenCV library from source code

You can also make OpenCV library from source code using cross environment compile with gcc. I added some support script so that you can easy to do so. The important point is that iPhone SDK doesn’t support dynamic link like “.framework”. We have to make it as static link library and link it to your application statically.

Getting source code from sourceforge. I tested with OpenCV-2.0.0.tar.bz2.
Extract downloaded archive on the top of project project directory
```
% tar xjvf OpenCV-2.0.0.tar.bz2
```

Apply patch for iPhone SDK

% cd OpenCV-2.0.0
% patch -p0 < ../cvcalibration.cpp.patch_opencv-2.0.0

Following next steps to build OpenCV static library for simulator. All files are installed into opencv_simulator directory.
```
% cd OpenCV-2.0.0
% mkdir build_simulator
% cd build_simulator
% ../../configure_opencv
% make
% make install
```

Following next steps to build OpenCV static library for device All files are installed into opencv_device directory.

% cd OpenCV-2.0.0
% mkdir build_device
% cd build_device
% ARCH=device ../../configure_opencv
% make
% make install

Patch and Configure support script

OpenCV 2.0.0 (and also 1.1.0) has a glitch which refuse builing the library with iPhone SDK. You need to apply the patch cvcalibration.cpp.patch so that you can build it.

Congiure support script configure_opencv has some options to build OpenCV with iPhone SDK. Try to --help option to get the all options of it.

Converting images between UIImage and IplImage

OpenCV is using IplImage structure for processing, and iPhone SDK using UIImage object to display it on the screen. This means, we need a converter between UIImage and IplImage. Thankfully, we can do with iPhone SDK APIs.

Creating IplImage from UIImage is like this.

// NOTE you SHOULD cvReleaseImage() for the return value when end of the code.
- (IplImage *)CreateIplImageFromUIImage:(UIImage *)image {
  // Getting CGImage from UIImage
  CGImageRef imageRef = image.CGImage;

  CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
  // Creating temporal IplImage for drawing
  IplImage *iplimage = cvCreateImage(
    cvSize(image.size.width,image.size.height), IPL_DEPTH_8U, 4
  );
  // Creating CGContext for temporal IplImage
  CGContextRef contextRef = CGBitmapContextCreate(
    iplimage->imageData, iplimage->width, iplimage->height,
    iplimage->depth, iplimage->widthStep,
    colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast|kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault
  );
  // Drawing CGImage to CGContext
  CGContextDrawImage(
    contextRef,
    CGRectMake(0, 0, image.size.width, image.size.height),
    imageRef
  );
  CGContextRelease(contextRef);
  CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

  // Creating result IplImage
  IplImage *ret = cvCreateImage(cvGetSize(iplimage), IPL_DEPTH_8U, 3);
  cvCvtColor(iplimage, ret, CV_RGBA2BGR);
  cvReleaseImage(&iplimage);

  return ret;
}

Don’t forget release IplImage after using it by cvReleaseImage!

And creating UIImage from IplImage is like this.

// NOTE You should convert color mode as RGB before passing to this function
- (UIImage *)UIImageFromIplImage:(IplImage *)image {
  CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
  // Allocating the buffer for CGImage
  NSData *data =
    [NSData dataWithBytes:image->imageData length:image->imageSize];
  CGDataProviderRef provider =
    CGDataProviderCreateWithCFData((CFDataRef)data);
  // Creating CGImage from chunk of IplImage
  CGImageRef imageRef = CGImageCreate(
    image->width, image->height,
    image->depth, image->depth * image->nChannels, image->widthStep,
    colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaNone|kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault,
    provider, NULL, false, kCGRenderingIntentDefault
  );
  // Getting UIImage from CGImage
  UIImage *ret = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef];
  CGImageRelease(imageRef);
  CGDataProviderRelease(provider);
  CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
  return ret;
}

Ok, now you can enjoy with OpenCV with iPhone!

Frequently Asked Questions

I can’t build and run this demo application for iPhone device, I can build and run it on iPhone simulator though… why? I got next error when building.
```
ld warning: in /usr/local/lib/libcv.dylib, file is not of required architecture
ld warning: in /usr/local/lib/libcxcore.dylib, file is not of required architecture
Undefined symbols:
  "_cvCreateMemStorage", referenced from:
      -[OpenCVTestViewController opencvFaceDetect:] in OpenCVTestViewController.o
  "_cvGetSeqElem", referenced from:
      -[OpenCVTestViewController opencvFaceDetect:] in ......
```
- Have you ever installed OpenCV for MacOS X? This error is because of the linker using wrong library for MacOS X instead of iPhone device. I solved this problem so that you can now build it for iPhone device. Please git pull or download the package again from github.

Change Log

12/21/2009 - Support Snow Leopard + iPhone SDK 3.1.2, Thank you Hyon!
11/15/2009 - Support OpenCV to 2.0.0 + iPhone SDK 3.x
03/14/2009 - Release this project with OpenCV 1.0.0 + iPhone SDK 2.x

One more thing…

I mentioned that the face detection using OpenCV takes very long time. For example detecting with iPhone screen size image, it takes 10 seconds or more…hmmmm

License

This sample is under MIT License.

Giant Rubber Duck

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is an story about one month ago.

I googled and found an interesting something giant was in Osaka, the giant rubber duck. In this summer, you could see the giant robot in Tokyo bay, the actual size of Gundam though, I had no chance to get there. Yeah, I agree the Tokyo bay area is not far from my home located in Tokyo city, this is that no one travels where they are living. In this case, this giant is far from here, and I have a chance to getting west: Twitter Meetup in Kyoto.

How Giant is it? His/her height is about 3rd floor of the buildings. Unfortunately he/she is tied to the pier, if not, It must be really sur.

Add previews, language selector to Google on Safari

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

There are cool tool which allows us to change the website to what you want to do, named: GreaseMonkey. Unfortunately, this tool could not work on Safari itself. But the genius guy developed the same tool for Safari named GreaseKit. This tool is commonly compatible with GreaseMonkey and some user scripts can work on it without any change. But some user scripts I found on userscripts.org do not work well on Safari with GreaseKit. Then, I scratched user scripts which work like these scripts with GreaseKit.

Add previews to Google search results

This user scripts add the thumbnail previews from google preview to the Google search results.

Download

googlethumbnails.user.js (0.2.1, hosted on GitHub)

Change Log

0.2.1
- Support AutoPagerize
0.2 (rather 0.2.0)
- Follow the changes on google
- Change open.thumbshots.org to googlepreview.com
- googlethumbnails-0.2.user.js (2Kbyte)
0.1.1
- Follow the changes on google
- googlethumbnails-0.1.1.user.js (1Kbyte)
0.1.0
- First release
- googlethumbnails-0.1.0.user.js (1Kbyte)

Add language selector to Google search field

This user scripts add the language selector (known as hl parameter) to the search filed of Google. Currently this script has only Japanese, English selection but you can add any other language code by changing the this user script code around the “var langs = {…”

Download

googlelanguagecodeselector.user.js (0.2.1, Hosted on GitHub)

Change Log

0.2.1
- Follow the changes on Google, they added “-webkit-appearance: button;” to the buttons
0.2.0
- Add button mode and make it as default
- googlelanguagecodeselector-0.2.0.user.js (3Kbyte)
0.1.1
- Follow the changes on Google
- googlelanguagecodeselector-0.1.1.user.js (2Kbyte)
0.1.0
- First release
- googlelanguagecodeselector-0.1.0.user.js (3Kbyte)

How to use them?

First you should install SIMBL to enable GreaseKit.
Follow this install instruction, install the GreaseKit plugin.
Download these user scripts and drag and drop into Safari or, just click the download link then install it.
Then, open Google.com. Enjoy!

A study meeting for reading source codes of PureData

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve joined a study meeting for reading source codes of Pure Data today.

Pure Data is a kind of graphic programming environment to generate computer musics. It is not only for that but also we can use it as generic programming environment to make a kind of graphics, physical gadgets and so on.

One guy who’ve joined this meeting presented a demo project which uses Pure Data, Arduino, electromagnetic and magnetic fluid to show the level meters with magnetic fluid.

Unfortunately My iPhone is not 3GS, I couldn’t take a movie though, it’s really interesting and I remind my projects I’ve done in the university.

The study meeting is self was just beginning and we’re trying to read a part of source codes of Pure Data(Yes, Pure Data is an open source project). Nagano-san who started this meeting successfully ported Pure Data to iPhone so that we’ll see some good Apps like RjDj which is an iPhone application uses Pure Data.

Recently I set up my Snow Leopard environment then updated TerminalColoeropard for it. Snow Leopard prevented us to use some techniques and I then tweeted it already though, I’ll write another article later.

TerminalColoreopard, Change Terminal.app ANSI Color on Leopard

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Introducing TerminalColoreopard!

Terminal.app on Leopard supports full ANSI color and multi color profile and many encodings and treat japanese correctly but, one thing – the changing the ANSI color is missing. When we use the Tiger, we can change the ANSI colors on Terminal.app using Terminal Colors Plugin. But this nice plugin cannot work with Leopard one. I tried to write same one for Leopard and now, I present it as beta version.

Snow Leopard Support

I uploaded an beta version of 64bit TerminalColoeropard plugin for Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.6. It requires to install the newest beta version of SIMBL prior to use this plugin.

I mention that current SIMBL 0.9.1b which we can download today includes a bug, you have to run /Library/ScriptingAdditions/SIMBL.osax/Contents/Resources/SIMBL Agent.app by hand after restarting your Mac OS X. (Updated again Sep 7, 2009)

TerminalColoreopard-0.2.5-beta_snow_leopard_only.zip (27Kbyte)

Download and Install

TerminalColoreopard-0.2.4.dmg (105Kbyte)

Download the package
Double click to mount one.
If you have never install the SIMBL which TerminalColoreopard need to work, double click SIMBL.pkg to install it.
You confirm the Terminal.app does not work now. If not, you should quit one.
Copy the TerminalColoreopard.bundle into (Your Home)/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins. If there are no destination, you should create one.

Defects

Currently the color settings are shared any color profile.
Even if you change the color using the palette, it will not affect the screen quickly. You currently refresh the screen manually.

Road to 1.0

~~Fix the defects~~
Add the installer.pkg
Add the preset of color set like Tango Colors or something
Move color pane into the original preference dialog

Change Log

0.2.4
- Fix the runtime error when you’re using bright color
- You can change even bright colors.
0.2.3
- Fix the bug which I didn’t commit but was included in 0.2.2
- TerminalColoreopard-0.2.3.dmg (63Kbyte)
0.2.2
- Fix memory leak bug
- Add black and white color buttons
- TerminalColoreopard-0.2.2.dmg (64Kbyte)
0.2.1
- Support MacOS X 10.5.2 software update
- TerminalColoreopard-0.2.1.dmg (63Kbyte)
0.2.0
- Fix missing dmg background
- Remove black and white color settings because we cannot change these color, it seems be depended on the configuration of Terminal.app itself.
- Change the way to hack and overwrite the methods in Terminal.app
- Adjust color configuration panel GUI
- Open the source
- TerminalColoreopard-0.2.0.dmg (63Kbyte)
0.1.0
- First release
- TerminalColoreopard-0.1.0.dmg (100Kbyte)

Donation

If you would like to help the TerminalColoreopard project, please feel free to donate via PayPal using the following form.

Thank you for your donation!

Source Code

Now, I publish this project in open source. You can get the whole source code from my github repository.

License

TerminalColoreopard is under MIT License.

Heading to Western Japan

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is summer vacation season, I was then heading to my family home and continued to Kyoto city for the meetings. We’re usually using Shinkansen to get to western Japan instead of airplane, If we can select the travel scheduled to be operated with N700 series, we can use WiFi, AC power on the window seat. It is really useful.

When we’re getting to Osaka city, we can select airplane instead of Shinkansen because of the milage services, time and/or money though, just for getting to Kyoto, it is better to use Shinkansen.

The last train to back to Tokyo which depurates at 9.30pm, arrives at 12am from Kyoto station is operated with N700. Many guys are tired, sleeping on that travel and it’s everyday things in Japan business scene.

Good night, Japan.

Huuumid Tokyo, iPhone OS 3.0.1

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

How humid is it here Tokyo…?! My friends said that this summer is not so hotter than last year though, I think, the issue is not temperature but humidity. The hygrometer in my room shows 60%.

After getting to Tokyo, I’m wearing T-shirt and half pants against I was using winter jacket in San Francisco. I’m almost screwed up this differences.

Anyway, after updating my iPhone to OS 3.0.1, sometimes its battery seems to be getting dead more faster than OS 3.0. It seems to be happen once we use SMS/MMS after switching off iPhone, I think, not sure though, it may be an issue of the software of SMS/MMS.

I hope Apple fixes this issue on new iPhone OS 3.1.

Feed URL and Multilingualization

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

As you know, this website is multilingualized, I mean, you can read almost all articles and blogs both in English and Japanese. Though, because of the implementation of multilingualization(m17n), you can’t select Japanese feed using Google Reader or any other feed fetchers before one month ago. Currently the url of feed is provided on the language specification which you are selecting on the sidebar, in some cases you can’t grab correct url specified for each languages.

If you failed to grab it, I suggest you to unsubscribe this side then subscribe again. The end part of url shows which language you can read on the feed.

Enjoy this on your preferred language! Of course, you can subscribe both of them, the contents are slightly different.

Anyway, This site is build up on Radiant CMS with a bunch of extension I made. When I have a set of time, I’d push them on my open source repository, which includes this m17n extension.

Short Summary of San Francisco Journey

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I’m in the lounge at SFO for waiting the flight. I’ve better to make a summary of this journey after getting to Tokyo city (I had amazing experiences!), before that, I put some pictures here from this journey on flickr, you can see all photos from here.

Say goodbye Northwest Airline, they were merged to Delta.

Every time, it starts here, Narita Airport.

Google Maps Favorite Places in San Francisco, we can see this marker everywhere in the town.

It’s a sky of California, we think. This is a sunny day of only 4 days in this journey.

We had a nice branch at the “favorite” cafe in Mission area.