mcclanahoochie's blog

New Camera: Nikon D7000

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 12:38:27 +0000

It’s official: I’m really into photography as a hobby right now :), proven with my recent purchase… I just upgraded my old camera, to a Nikon D7000, and WOW, what an upgrade! Now I finally have auto exposure bracketing (for much easier HDR images)! Even though this camera makes HDR really easily, I’m sort-of glad my first DSLR(D3100) did not have AEB, as this taught me to really plan out my HDR images; not everything should be overly processed. Still, I’m super excited about an easier Read more […]

Taken While Driving

mcclanahoochie — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:17:25 +0000

I find it really fun to take pictures while driving around in my car — it keeps me entertained and the driving more fun :) . I simply hold up my camera, point the camera out my sunroof or window, and hope for the best! I’ve gathered up a gallery below: See the gallery [HERE]; it’s made over the past year or two. Be sure to check back on this album often, as more will definitely come! Read more […]

Using Gradient Layer Masks in GIMP

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:17:55 +0000

Some simple notes on how to seamlessly blend images in GIMP using gradient based layer masks. INPUT IMAGES 4 images with only different shutter speeds: PROCESS Open all images as separate layers in a new GIMP canvas: Right click a layer > “Add layer mask” > choose default “White full opacity” > Add: Now select the Blend Tool: Click the arrows to “Reverse” the gradient; choose “Bi-linear” shape mode: In this step I’ll focus on the bottom layer Read more […]

Congratulations, Today is your day. You’re off to great places!

mcclanahoochie — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:13:32 +0000

First 365 Photo Project (2012)

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:44:54 +0000

Goal: Remember to take a new photo each day for one year (and post it HERE). Rules: Every photo must be taken on a different day of the year in 2012. Sounds simple enough, right? I hope that I make it!… … Continue reading →

Last Post of 2011

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:47:43 +0000

Nothing important here, just some last minute ramblings while reflecting back on 2011… January — Spoke at the ATT Developer’s Conference about a few of my Android projects February — Bought my first DSLR: a Nikon D3100 March — Discovered HDR photography April — Released first version of ViewerCV into the wild (Android Market) May — Another year of school done; another apartment move June — Attended CVPR 2011 July — CUDA programming fun at AccelerEyes (May-August) August — Purchased my Read more […]

Using Topaz Adjust with digiKam in Linux

mcclanahoochie — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:15:45 +0000

TL;DR; I just found my new photography workflow: digiKam for photo management, organization, and simple batch editing, Topaz Adjust 5 for image enhancement, GIMP for ultra-fine tuning … and the best part is that all this is in Linux (Ubuntu 11.04 to be exact) — making this a great birthday present to myself today! +++ Background I recently purchased the amazing Topaz Adjust 5 and fell in love with it! What I do not love though, is that it requires a computer running OSX or Read more […]

Mini-Review of Topaz Adjust 5

mcclanahoochie — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:02:01 +0000

I recently picked up a copy of Topaz Adjust 5 (released November 15th 2011), and fell in love with it! Here is a simple mini-review and some first impressions of Adjust 5. Topaz Adjust is a photo-editing plug-in developed by Topaz Labs that integrates into editors (such as Photoshop) by adding auto exposure, contrast, and color-correcting tools, along with many tonemapping presets for easy one-click image enhancement. Topaz Adjust’s biggest strength is definitely its powerful preset selection Read more […]

GPU Convolutions: OpenCV GPU and LibJacket — Part 2

mcclanahoochie — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 03:42:00 +0000

This is a response to my earlier post comparing OpenCV’s gpu::convolve() and LibJacket’s jkt::conv2() convolution functions, at various image and kernel sizes. That post generated a lot of traffic, most notably from the OpenCV developer community. Taking note of this, it seems that the folks at Willow Garage have re-vamped their GPU convolutions and posted their own set of benchmarks using their updated routines. While the benchmarks I ran highlighted some performance issues in OpenCV — which Read more […]

OpenCV vs. LibJacket: GPU Sobel Filtering

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 23:10:00 +0000

Update: LibJacket has been renamed to ArrayFire. In response to a comment on a previous post about integrating LibJacket into an OpenCV project, below is just a simple FYI performance comparison of OpenCV’s GPU Sobel filter versus LibJacket’s conv2 convolution filter (with a sobel kernel)… This is an evolutionary post, so be sure to scroll all the way down to see more comparisons… Update (10/24/2011): Round 2 Test system: [via /proc/cpuinfo]: Intel® Read more […]

Fix Android Market Update Issues [build.prop]

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:27:00 +0000

I have been using a custom build.prop file for a while now on my Droid X. There are several benefits [example] for doing so; the main one for me is a higher virtual screen resolution, also known as “LCD density”. This can be done via various methods, including programs such as LCD Density Changer, or manually with adb by editing the field in ‘/system/build.prop’. My current favorite setting for the ro.sf.lcd_density paramater is 192 (vs 240 stock). The following shows the improvement in screen Read more […]

Image processing with LibJacket + OpenCV

mcclanahoochie — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:56:01 +0000

The OpenCV library is the de-facto standard for doing computer vision and image processing research projects. OpenCV includes several hundreds of computer vision algorithms, aimed for use in real-time vision applications. LibJacket is a matrix library built on CUDA. LibJacket offers hundreds of general matrix and image processing functions, all running on the GPU. The syntax is very MATLAB-like, with the goal of offering easy porting of Matlab code to C++/LibJacket. LibJacket with OpenCV For Read more […]

Remapping Macbook Pro Keys for Emacs Use

mcclanahoochie — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:14:25 +0000

Background: I recently took the $$$ plunge and got a fancy new 15″ Macbook Pro to replace my 5-year old ASUS laptop. Though I’m not too fond of Apple’s business model, I just couldn’t seem to find (hardware wise) a more quality built and ascetically pleasing laptop than a Macbook Pro. After 6 years straight of using Linux as my main OS (I despise Windows), I’m now learning my way around OS X for the first time. Having never used a Mac before, everything about OS X’s GUI is new to me. Once Read more […]

Some inspirational quotes on life

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:18:36 +0000

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me…, was the most common regret of all. — from regrets of the dying. Change is inevitable. It’s not a question of if you’re changing. It’s a question of in which direction are you changing. — source Accept that life brings you possibilities. You don’t always know where your life will go. If you go with the flow, it will take you where you need to be. — source The circumstances of Read more […]

How to use nppiHistogramRange()

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 03:59:12 +0000

This past week I spent way too long trying to understand the correct way to use Nvidia’s NPP histogram function for full floating point images. While the SDK includes an example of how to use nppiHistogramEven, there are no examples (that I could find) on how to use the nppiHistogramRange functions. The NPP library documentation was not very helpful either. This is important to know because the hist ‘even’ functions do not support 32 bit floating point images, but the ‘range’ functions do. After Read more […]

En Nuestro Desafio tribute video: Powerlines

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:47:41 +0000

Inspired by [my favorite band] Tristeza’s original video for their song En Nuestro Desafio, I’ve created a similar video for this song, as a tribute to how awesome this band and their song is. Tristeza’s original video already fits the song quite well, but one day while driving (and listening to this song of course), I happened to look out my sunroof at the power-lines going by, and was inspired. I thought that a unique variant of a video for their song would be one of looking at things Read more […]

Holstee Manifesto

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 03:52:59 +0000

Some very inspiring quotes about following your passion in life: You can buy this as a nice poster here. Stumbling upon these motivational words couldn’t have come at a better time for me… ;-) More thoughts and quotes on life here and here. Read more […]

My Simple (and Free) Digital Darkroom Workflow

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 15 May 2011 20:56:05 +0000

Thanks to my new camera and recent interest in photography, I’ve been having fun taking (and editing) lots of pictures lately. I’m still new to photography, but I’ve noticed a pattern develop when I was snapping and post-processing my photos. A simple digital photography workflow routine formed for me — a cycle of: taking photos, importing pictures into the computer, organizing and selecting the “keepers”, editing images, and publishing the photos. The rest of this post will describe my general, Read more […]

The History and Evolution of GPU Hardware

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:36:56 +0000

Here is a paper survey I wrote last semester in my CS6290 class about how the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) hardware architecture has evolved over time. I found the research quite interesting, and spent a lot of time doing it. I’m posting this here, as I feel that more people than my professor should read and enjoy it. Abstract: The graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized and highly parallel microprocessor designed to offload and accelerate 2D or 3D rendering from the central processing Read more […]

4 Years Later…

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:45:09 +0000

2007: Awesome riding spot. 2011: …gone. It’s now a dirt hill, in the expansion of Piedmont Park. Another sweet riding spot taken away. Thanks Atlanta, Georgia. Read more […]

Stupid 1366x768

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 03:33:50 +0000

Well, it seems laptop LCDs are all going from 16:10 aspect ratio to 16:9, to match the HDTV standard format. The most popular 16:9 HD resolution, 1366 x 768, has taken over the laptop market and taken away precious vertical space on almost every new laptop LCD screen! I’m sure 16:9 is really convenient for watching for movies, but I don’t watch movies, ever — especially on my laptop! 1366x768 sucks because it is too short for any useful work, and not wide enough for 2 windows side by side. I Read more […]

New Camera: Nikon D3100

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 05:31:27 +0000

Thanks to my sister, I’ve gotten hooked on photography — so much so, I just made a big investment in a fancy new DSLR! After weeks of comparing various DSLR cameras, I decided to go with the Nikon D3100, because I felt it was a nice balance of features, ‘newness’ (end of 2010), and price (well, that might be a stretch). The most notable features that drew me to this camera were: full manual control (for when I get good), a guided auto mode (while I’m learning), HD video recording, a nice Read more […]

CUDA and Automake

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 06:11:10 +0000

Note: I am by far no expert on this — (I only spent the past few days trying to wrap my head around automake, and before that, never opened a configure.ac file before) — just wanted to share my experiences. Below is an excerpt from configure.ac and Makefile.am files I modified to add CUDA to an existing automake/autoconf setup (the .. .. implies other unmodified/existing lines). # -*- configure.ac -*- # Process this file with autoconf to produce a configure script. .. .. AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(no-dependencies) AC_CONFIG_HEADER([config.h]) .. .. # Read more […]

Top Chillout Songs

mcclanahoochie — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:59:55 +0000

Random list of current top chill-out songs I’m listening to, in no particular order - (forced to one song per artist to bring variety): Tristeza — En Nuestro Desafio (Tristeza is my favorite band) ZerO One — Nothing to Fight About Tycho — Lapse Lackluster — bkt Bignic — Charleston Era Leo Der Stepanians - In Between Ulrich Schnauss — Between Us and Them Zero 7 — Give it Away Radiohead — Everything in its Right Place Mock Orange — Twelve O’Clock Call Pinback — Bloods on Fire Hyper Read more […]

AT&T Developer Summit Presentation

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 05:52:21 +0000

I got an incredible opportunity to travel to Las Vegas and give a short talk at the 2011 AT&T Developer Summit on a few of the cool Android projects I’ve done in school. I was given only ~5 minutes to present 3 of my projects: RoadBump, FeedSpeak, and SPRIME — giving a student’s perspective on Android programming. The other 15 minutes went to Dr. Russ Clark who talked about the GT-RNOC lab, and Shweta Patira, who talked about her iPhone/Android projects. Our session: The Read more […]

Customized Subreddits In Google Reader

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:00:26 +0000

News site reddit offers a nifty way to get the RSS feed for a particular subreddit: simply add “/.rss” to the url. For example: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/.rss is the RSS feed for the technology subreddit. But, when logged in to reddit to see your customized subscription list, adding “/.rss” doesn’t guarantee a customized RSS feed in Google Reader, since it has no knowledge of your reddit login info. Well, today I stumbled across the way to view multiple subreddits without logging Read more […]

Random Quotes and Thoughts on Life

mcclanahoochie — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:39:38 +0000

We can’t really change how much time we have – we can only alter where we put our attention. If you have a minute in a day gone wrong, you still have enough time. You are the creator of your reality. What you Desire becomes your Reality. It takes the whole of life to learn how to live. What story is your life telling? Know your strengths. There are no failures, only lessons. Strive for constant improvement. Attitude, not aptitude, determines what you can do. There Read more […]

Nature vs. Nurture

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:29:57 +0000

I first saw this image (below) about the Reaction Range Model in a psychology book years ago. It really struck me, as I felt it somewhat explained my path of education. Basically, it proposes that a person’s genetic makeup determines the LIMITS on his or her IQ, and that environmental factors determine WHERE within this range the person’s IQ will actually fall. Growing up, I would say that I was more like Jack (bottom left), but in an Average environment, in an average grade school and high Read more […]

Droid X Links

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 13:31:40 +0000

I got tired of re-searching for all these things when I needed to reset, restore, and re-root my Droid X phone, so here is simply a collection of links and references I find useful when wiping/resetting my phone: ADB Drivers Windows Linux Root Instructions Windows Easy z4root SBF Flash (Return to stock 2.2) 1KDS Droid X Full 2.2 SBF Gingerbread SBF Instructions Backup/Restore Apps Droid X Recovery Bootstrap ROM Manager Mount /system/ (read Read more […]

Optimizing GNOME Screen Real Estate

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 13:40:40 +0000

Small screens suck. Even worse, once you get used to a high resolution screen, having to use anything smaller is torture. I find this to be true for desktop moniors, laptop screens, and even phones now (I don’t watch or own a TV, but I’m sure it applies there also). Having wide-screen is certainly nice, but please, don’t take away my vertical space, to get it! I spent top dollar on my laptop (back in the day) to get a higher resolution than 1280x800, the gold standard for 15 inch screens at Read more […]

10/10/10

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:10:54 +0000

October 10th 2010 – a very interesting date, and a random day of procrastination from school! Installed Ubuntu 10.10 — so far, so good; it doesn’t seem too different than 10.04 though. I’ll update my fresh install script for 10.10 soon. Update: v0.3 works pretty well with Ubuntu 10.10; more features to be added soon! Took part in Flickr’s Help Record 10/10/10 festivity with these photos: (1 ‚ 2). Just search for the tag 101010 on Flickr to see more. Actually, I signed up on Flickr for Read more […]

Comfort Zone

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:39:44 +0000

In Starbucks the other day, I was sitting with my laptop just trying to get some work done, and enjoying my morning coffee. I soon noticed there was a cute girl sitting alone across from me, on the other side of Starbucks with her laptop. Being fairly busy, I didn’t think much of it at first, and continued working. It didn’t take long before curiosity got the better of my peripheral vision, which led to periodic glancing around the room to look at her. It was then I realized she seemed to be Read more […]

GTC 2010 Trip

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:18:22 +0000

I just got back from Nvidia’s 2010 GPU Technology Conference in San Jose California. I had an amazing trip, and am thankful that I got to go, as it was my first visit to California as well as my first trade show attendance. [Side Note: The afternoon before the conference, I took Caltrain up to the amazing city of San Fransisco to visit a friend. He toured me around the city streets in beautiful California weather. There is so much to see and do (compared to what’s around GaTech in Atlanta); I Read more […]

The Shortness of Life

mcclanahoochie — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:43:15 +0000

I recently stumbled upon the reading “On The Shortness of Life,” a famous letter by Lucius Seneca. A good overview of the reading can be found here. Here are a few pull quotes from the letter that happen to relate with some of my thoughts this past week. Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it ceases to be before it has come… The engrossed, therefore, are concerned with present time alone, Read more […]

Awesome National Geographic Script in GIMP

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:10:17 +0000

After installing the new plug-in registry for GIMP, I stumbled upon the amazing National Geographic Script. It is incredible! This script simulates high quality, vivid photos — like the ones from the National Geographic magazine. It uses a configurable mixture of shadow recovery, sharpening, local contrast, and various color overlay layers. The script is buried under: Filters > Generic > National Geographic. The default settings usually work for me, but play around with the opacity of the Read more […]

Yet Another Fresh Install of Ubuntu Setup Script

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:00:56 +0000

Over the years of installing, updating, re-installing Ubuntu, I have slowly crafted a decent “fresh install” bash script to help setup and configure Ubuntu after a clean install. This script is ever evolving, and still doesn’t capture everything I want it to, but it does knock out a giant chunk of things to do, automatically from the start. A related and a bit more polished script can be found here: What to do after installing Ubuntu? Run this script!. This one is more GUI oriented, while mine Read more […]

Idle Fuel Consumption | A/C On vs. A/C Off

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 01:21:20 +0000

I was curious about how much gas was actually saved when idling my car with the A/C off, so I gathered some fuel efficiency numbers using the MPGuino I made for my 2002 Honda Civic. The MPGuino can display the instant Gallons Per Hour (GPH) consumed, and this measurement was used for these tests. Testing Notes: All tests were performed on a hot summer day, with the car warmed up after driving around The instant GPH was averaged over 10 seconds for each test The gear shifter was either Read more […]

Back in my day, music was actually good

mcclanahoochie — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:41:29 +0000

I stopped listening to the radio many years ago. I just can’t take it. As a teenager, I had two favorite alternative rock stations I listened to. I could turn on the radio at any time, and it was almost guaranteed that one of those stations would be playing a song I liked. Ah, those were the good ol’ days, and it’s amazing how music can trigger memories. Slowly, it happened that the newer the band to air on one of these stations, the less I liked what I heard. At some point during my high-school Read more […]

Go the extra mile

mcclanahoochie — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:23:56 +0000

These are just a few examples fresh in my head to write about. The Simple Powerline Remote Interactive Monitor and Enforcer (SPRIME) started as a simple open source class project. It turned out to be much more… The GaTech Convergence Innovation Competition happened to be going on at the same time. Our SPRIME project technically could fit in the smart-grid category for the CIC competition, but the project would have to be modified slightly to be eligible for submission. Doing so meant much Read more […]

Droid 1 vs. Droid X | First Impressions

mcclanahoochie — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:36:08 +0000

I just upgraded from the original Droid to the Droid X. Since PCWorld’s article comparing the original Droid and the new Droid X is just sad, I decided to do my own comparison. I’ll do my best to list some first impressions, and highlight the key differences between the phones, based on actually owning and using both of them. For all of the feature-comparison-table lovers out there: Droid 1 Droid X OS Android 2.1 (Google Experience) Android 2.1 (MotoBlur) Battery (yes, Read more […]

15 Minutes of Fame for FeedSpeak

mcclanahoochie — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 11:01:51 +0000

Yesterday, I was stoked about FeedSpeak getting posted on the front page of the xda-developers site! This was totally unexpected and definitely made my day. A few days ago, a friend had recommended that I advertise the app in the xda-developers forum, so I created a simple post for FeedSpeak Pro. After posting though, I learned that the forum isn’t really for paid apps — so I sat down and made FeedSpeak Lite, a free version of FeedSpeak Pro with some features disabled. At first, I didn’t Read more […]

When my life begins…

mcclanahoochie — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:02:09 +0000

I have been having deep, serious thoughts about life lately. I came to realize that for the past few years, I have simply been waiting. Waiting for my life to begin. Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. ~Grace Hansen I have just been waiting around to become something else, something more. Waiting around for certain events to happen, or milestones to be reached. All the while, thinking I was on the verge of becoming, and only after those moments my life would Read more […]

I Can Haz Root?

mcclanahoochie — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 17:28:39 +0000

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to rooting my Droid. As technology freak, I don’t know why I waited this long (since the November 6th launch!) to install a custom rooted Android ROM; shame on me! Anyway, I chose the Bugless Beast series, and have been very impressed. A Froyo build of Bugless Beast was released just a few days ago, giving power users Android 2.2 a few weeks earlier than the official OTA. I must say, Android 2.2 is really nice and polished. It’s hard to believe that only two Read more […]

Goodbye, Facebook

mcclanahoochie — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:54:05 +0000

So I decided it was time to leave Facebook, and deactivated my account. I never really used it much anyway. Aside from all the recent privacy issues, Facebook just seemed too much of a time sink, plus was getting filled with more “friends” (acquaintances) and crap every day. To me, there was a part of Facebook that just died the day it opened up to anyone and everyone. I guess it was sort of neat to know what “friends” were up to whenever I logged in, but eventually I realized that it just kept Read more […]