I have finally finished the semester. After rushing through some final exams with a very mediocre attempt at studying, I just had one final hurdle, a semester research project. I only have to get C’s to pass here and thats usually around 40%, so really school isnt too tough and I don’t care too much about it. But for this project, I had been thinking about it for months, and really was into the topic, but had been working slowly, and hadn’t really gotten very far with it.

The project involves trying to develop a super-fast algorithm for tracking hands in images of silhouettes of people. Basically, you have an image of the outline of a person, and you want to figure out if their fingers are visible and as much about the position of the person as you can. Most of the methods to do this kind of thing seem way overly complicated and have lots of limitations. I wanted to make something realllly fast (fast enough to run in real-time in flash) and that could handle images of just hands, or hands and arms, or the top half of a person. Basically I want it to just work…. Anyway I’ll spare you the details (for now) but I had 5 days to actually finish my algorithm, make a demo, prepare a presentation and 2 more days before an 8 page technical report was due. All the while all the other exchange students were taking off to start traveling so we were also celebrating finishing the semester (or them finishing to more specific). I managed to have a breakthrough that I think led me to some significant findings in a certain task of object recognition and tracking, but I had to create a demo, presentation and a paper in a few days… I am really excited about the algorithm though and I’m fairly positive I can publish a paper on the topic. Also in the process, I think I discovered some psychovisual properties of object partitioning that I could test pretty easily and publish a nice paper on that as well. Yay academia… (slash free trips to conferences).

My sleep schedule is fucked. I haven’t been eating properly. I drank a lottttt of coffee. In the end, my demo kind of works , the presentation was awesome, and I have a paper that explains some cool ideas but is pretty crappy by my standards. Since the grades arent important, I finally turned it in at 10am this morning, knowing it wasnt really complete, but it was good enough. Anyway when I summarize my program, it actually sounds pretty funny: It answers the age old question of “How many fingers am I holding up?”. I will eventually build some neat applications with it, some websites that you control with your hands and pointing at stuff. I’ll post progress here when I make some. After all this blog is supposed to be a place to share computer science and web development related stuff as well.

Im finished! My semester is OVER! The idea is slowly settling in… In a few days, I will depart on a 5 month journey on the other side of the world. Time to sit, to read, to draw, to laugh, to play, to drum, to eat, to relax. I think I’ve struck the jackpot in the game of life. I’m so freaking lucky, and I just thank whatever forces of nature are responsible for the quantum interactions of the universe that have led to this particular instant in time (well actually right now I’m pretty tired and out of it, but in a more holistic sense).

For a week I’ll stay in Delhi, working on web development stuff for King Cow, to finish up some loose ends and hopefully make a little cash before living out of hotel rooms and trains and restaurants and all that costly stuff. I have booked a flight to Kochi (Kerala) to meet up with some other exchange students, do the whole houseboat backwater thing, and then travel around south until new years. Not exactly sure where we’ll go yet, but probably some time in Goa, lots of time at beaches, mountains, beauty, anything but the big sprawling beast that is New Delhi. After my friends head back to IIT for the spring semester (suckaaaaas!) then I’ll have a month to do as I please. Right now the plan is to go Varanasi and study tabla, and read books, and draw, and try to decompress from everything. I dont think Varanasi will be easy, but it should definitely be an experience. As much as I am excited for this portion of my trip through the south, I haven’t really planned much of it yet, since it doesn’t really require too much planning. So I can’t really say too much about it now, but hopefully along the way I’ll post some photos and stories.

Instead my procrastination hobby of late (one of them anyway) has been planning my trip for AFTER India. That requires some flights so advance planning is necessary. So for now I’m basically covering the where and when in a general sense instead of the what. This is my rough plan:

December
Delhi > Kochi > bum around the south > Goa (Christmas) > mumbai?

January
mumbai > bangalore? > Delhi -> Rishikesh? -> Varanasi (most of January)

February
Kolkata -> Bangkok (travel around Thailand for the month. No idea where yet!)

March
Bangkok -> Auckland, New Zealand (thru) -> Wellington (tour around with Matt Murphy on a motorbike for a month)

April
Auckland -> Hong Kong (just passing through on a flight, maybe stop for 2-3 days just to see…?)
Hong Kong -> San Francisco (just for a few days to visit Jascha)
San Francisco -> DC (home for a few weeks to see the rents!)

Then its back to Montreal for May & June, and finally back to MD in July to settle (for at least a few months anyway). Im excited, to say the least. I’m really not one for much planning, so I haven’t really read or researched any of these places. I prefer to just show up and let things unfold… That usually meaning tagging along with my Swiss friends who are super organized and have already planned. They used to be in the army. The swiss army. Their travel plans have corkscrews and a toothpick! So I suppose we’ll just have to see where life takes me from here on out. I’ve drawn a sketch, now its time to color outside the lines and see what happens. So, as plans are made, as dates are set, as photos are taken, as people are met, as my life drastically changes from sitting in a tiny cube eating spicy mush and thinking about polygons to traveling around in southeast asia living out of a backpack, I’ll be writing and sharing my experiences here. And if anyone out there in the ether is going to have their physical manifestations co-located within a manageable proximity to my own, please contact me and we can meet up. My plans are flexible and I’d love to see friends out here!

Much love back home to everyone. And don’t hesitate to contact me if you so feel the desire. I have skype. And now that I have free time, I would love to catch up with people. Keep on truckin’