iiWAS2009

I was at the 11th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services (iiWAS2009) last week, 14-16 Dec, held at the Asia e-University in Kuala Lumpur. AeU is very new, and they're currently sharing premises with Takaful Malaysia in Jalan Kampung Attap. (Student helpers at the conference tell me they'll be moving to the permanent campus in Nilai, or was Cyberjaya? next year.)




The Maharajalela monorail station is 4 minutes away and the hotel 2 minutes away, so I'd hop down to Berjaya Times Square 2 stops away for dinner.

So what's iiWAS2009 about? Well a bit of everything, given their focus: the Global Information Infrastructure, where "the seamless integration of information and services remains a major challenge towards a vision of semantically rich information and service oriented architecture for global information systems. This vision is at the convergence of progress in technologies such as XML, Web services, RDF, OWL, of multimedia, multimodal, and multilingual information retrieval, and of distributed, mobile and ubiquitous computing". Topics of interest included:

• Web Engineering and Web Services Track
• E-applications Track
• Web Data and Semantic Web Track
• Information Integration in Ubiquitous Computing Track

Yours truly still submitted a paper on NLP, though. To the co-located Master & Doctoral Colloquium. Only 5 papers got accepted out of 21 submissions, so I guess they didn't just let any submissions through easily. In fact they had a shepherding process to make sure that you really have incorporated reviewers' comments in the camera-ready submission...

The MDC Chair, Dr Karin Hummel, also acting as the presentation session Chair, was really friendly, enthusiastic (in a non-scary way, that's always very important) and encouraged feedback and discussion from the audience. So with that kind of friendly vibe, comments and discussions kept flowing, the presenters and audience was full of camaraderie at the end of two hours, and did not mind one bit going to lunch late.

I suppose my paper presentation was well received. The audience attending the session, having no or little background knowledge on NLP, found the topic interesting. One gentleman was initially mildly apprehensive as he perceived that NLP (in particular Machine Translation) researchers are attempting to take over the livelihood of human professional translators and interpreters with half-cooked technology. Luckily I was able to allay his doubts -- which happened to be a common misconception about MT technologies by the general public -- by describing the correct usage scenarios of MT scenarios from my slides. By the end of the discussion, the said gentleman was applauding with comments like "Bravo! Future generations will bless you."





There was a conference dinner on the 2nd night, but with a terrific rain going on, evening KL traffic being what it is, and the guest-of-honour got delayed somewhere, we waited for about 2 hours at the dinner venue at the Pullman Hotel in Putrajaya (I hitched a ride with a colleague from MMU after finishing a discussion there). It was well 8.20pm when we were finally allowed to touch the food. Too famished and tired and with presentations still to be finalised, my colleague and I left early after having just enough... to head back to the hotel where I worked till midnight, having a final glance through my slides, and revising a project grant proposal due the week after. Yawn.

U of Warwick's Seasonal Greetings

I must say that the University of Warwick has a fun way of keeping in touch with its alumni. Take, for example, this "online advent calendar where you will be able to discover something new about the University of Warwick on every day up to Christmas Day."

The current V-C, Professor Nigel Thrift, goes on to say in his message:

"We hope that using this calendar, rather than mailing a traditional Christmas card, will give people a unique insight into the life of the University. This initiative is in keeping with our drive to reduce paper use by the University. The money we are saving by not producing a University Christmas card will be invested in additional landscaping to improve our campus and to benefit the environment."

Certainly much better than any boring ol' run-o'-the-mill electronic greeting card, too. Now that's a thoughtful ICT strategy.

2010 Calendar from Vladstudio.com

Vladstudio.com has released a very good-looking 2010 calendar. You can either buy the printed calendar (nicely ring bound and all), or download it for free to be used as wallpaper calendars.

捏捏泥泥捏捏

看官，看标题看傻了是不？呵呵，其实是我和文聪最近到家附近一所黏土手工艺教学教室上课去了。虹粘土之家在槟岛、北海有几家分店，我们去的是拉惹乌达 Raja Uda 钟灵中学对面的分店，最新一家则是在皇后湾广场 Queen's Bay Mall 二楼。

上课时间绝对自由，想什么时候去就什么时候去，想待多久就待多久。文聪拿的是黏土花课程，我则是小玩意课程。



这是我的第一个作品，装饰用笔筒。中间的小猪猪的蝴蝶结太重，胶水又没贴牢，跌了下来⋯⋯但我做玫瑰花做上瘾了。黄色的水仙花是我自己加的哦。鲜艳的黄色为整个作品增色不少。



这盆雏菊则是文聪的第一个作品。他其实共作了十朵，有粉红、黄和白色，但只插了三朵。其他的打算在家里找些形状漂亮的酒瓶来插。我本来想供在观音前，但他说假花不宜供佛菩萨。



这个信箱上的小动物们是我从教室里不同的作品样本 mix and match 出来的。黑色的底颜料还真的衬托出鲜艳跳脱的颜色了。后面还躲着一只トトロ（小龙猫）呢。

TeX Live 2009 (and MacTeX 2009) is here!

TeX Live 2009 has been released!!! *Squeeeee!*

I'm downloading MacTeX now. Except that, considering Malaysia's slow internet speed (even with broadband), I'm actually getting BasicTeX and upgrading the packages with TeXLive Manager after that.

浦泽大神啊啊啊啊

刚开始追看 Billy Bat。忽然间 Monster，20世纪少年, Pluto... 似乎都又回来了。只希望这一次浦泽大神可以许我们一个“比较看得懂”的结局。

又或者如某网友所说，“不烂尾，非浦泽”？（喂）

Book design with LaTeX

I'm now embarking on a series of blog posts on how I produced the Grid Computing Cluster report with LaTeX for the Malaysian LaTeX User blog. Look for posts tagged with 'bookdesign'.

Nostalgia

I do so, so miss U of Warwick and Coventry sometimes, especially the Cathedral...

Addicted

Y'know, I think I'm actually getting addicted to this blogging stuff with Flock. :)

Flock!

I'm testing out Flock, a "social Web browser" that comes bundled with an blog editor. Mainly because I'm sick of getting disconnected (Baaaad streamyx! Baaaad uni network! Baaad!) halfway through authoring a post. It's supposed to be very Web 2.0 and everything.

I looked at some desktop blogging clients alternatives, but they're either only available for Windows, or they're not free. If most websites and features load alright in Flock I'd probably even ditch Safari altogether.

Accessing Package Documentations

LaTeX package authors are awesome, not only because they develop and maintain so many goodies for the convenience of other LaTeX users (especially those of us who aren't that well-versed with TeX), but also because they fully document the usage of their packages. (Well most of them anyway.)

How do you access these documentations and manuals, though? Do you google (or search on CTAN) and download the manuals every time you want to look up the details of user commands in, say, the glossaries package? Occasionally, though, you may find that the manuals you just downloaded are the wrong versions for the package files installed on your system.

Chances are that the documentations are already installed on your system, when you first installed those packages. They're usually located in $TEXMF/doc/tex/latex, or $TEXMF/doc/bibtex for BibTeX-related packages.

There's an easier way to look up a package's documentation than manually navigating the TEXMF trees, though. In TeXLive (that's probably what you have if you're on a *nix or Mac system), type

$ texdoc glossaries (or whatever package you're interested in)

at the shell prompt. Voíla! The documentation for the glossaries package would open automatically for your perusal.

If the file that appears seem like an example file demonstrating a package's functionalities and not the documentation proper, try

$ texdoc --list glossaries


instead. You'll be presented with an interactive list from which you can select the file you want to open.

MikTeX users on Windows can use the command

mthelp glossaries

at the command prompt or from the "Start → Run" dialog instead. A browser window would open, listing possible documentation files associated with the package name you supplied. Click on a link to view the file you're interested in. And if you trust the system enough to hit upon the "main" documentation file at the first try, use

mthelp --view glossaries

instead.

Malaysian LaTeX Users

I just signed on as an author on the Malaysian LaTeX Users blog! :D

I'm just wondering how long I can keep this stint up though? *Peers at own lonely, lonely blog*

Using .eps Graphics with PDF output

For quite some time now, the graphicx package would automatically sort out which file types to use whenever it encounters \includegraphics{some_file}, where the extension of some_file is not specified.

That is to say, if you are generating to a .dvi, the system would look for some_file.eps. If you are generating to a .pdf, it looks for some_file.{pdf|jpg|png}.

But what if you want a .pdf and you work with .pdf, .jpg and .png graphic files, but suddenly you received a .eps graphics from your collaborator? (This actually happened to a lecturer at my university.)

Well, you could always convert it manually to a .pdf yourself with GhostScript or GIMP, of course. But now the process can be automated if you're using MikTeX 2.8 or TeXLive 2009, as highlighted by Rob Hyndman.

In MikTeX 2.8, use the epstopdf package together with graphicx, like so:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,epstopdf}
\begin{document}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{some_file}
\end{document}

If all you have is some_file.eps, it will be automatically converted to a some_file-eps-converted-to.pdf during the first time the LaTeX document is compiled and included in the final document output.

If you're using TeXLive 2009, you don't even have to load epstopdf explicitly, but I say include it anyway, for portability's sake.

Batch Transcoding with VLC 1.0.x

After I upgraded my VLC player to v1.0.x, I realised my batch transcoding script stopped working. After much tinkering with the syntax and googling, I've got it working again. Here is the updated script:

#!/bin/bash
vcodec="mp4v"
acodec="mp4a"
bitrate="3072"
arate="192"
ext="mp4"
mux="mp4"
# Modify the path to VLC on your machine accordingly
vlc="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC"
fmt="MPG"
dst="/Dest/Path/"
for a in *$fmt; do
  echo $a
  $vlc -I dummy -vvv "./$a" --sout="#transcode{vcodec=$vcodec,\
  vb=$bitrate,acodec=$acodec,ab=$arate}:std{mux=$mux,\
  dst=\"$dst$a.$ext\",access=file}" vlc://quit
  touch -m -r $a $dst$a.$ext
done

Book Printed — Finally

Early this year I was asked to help compile a technical report/book for a grid computing research project that I'm involved in. Essentially it's a group of researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds (grid computing, medical imaging, animation, mathematics, natural language processing, software engineering, networking, ...) coming together to "grid-enable" their own existing applications so that the apps run faster etc.

"But not too technical, so that even lay-people can understand what we're doing. Make it look as professional as possible," I was told.

Look professional? Gee, great excuse for me to run wild with LaTeX. Whether it was the right decision might be debatable, and I haven't solved all issues to perfection (e.g. CMYK colour model with "true black")... but we managed it!

Book's Printed and Published!!

@BOOK{GridATUSM:Report,
  title = {Grid Computing Cluster:
           The Development and Integration of
           Grid Services and Applications},
  publisher = {Platform for Information
               Communication Technology Research,
               Universiti Sains Malaysia},
  year = {2009},
  editor = {Bahari Belaton and Lim, Lian Tze},
  address = {Penang, Malaysia},
  isbn = {978-983-3986-58-3},
}

Chasing after the chapter write-ups. Playing with design ideas. Lots and lots of experimenting with the memoir, tikz and various other packages. Searching for free stock photos. Adjusting the various margins and skips and spacing so that each chapter fill up each page just right. Writing to and calling the National Library to get an ISBN number and CIP data. Hiccups along the way due to requests in design changes, mismatches with the printing company's technical specs etc...

And finally all is done. We have now 200 copies of the thing. Not for sale (which would've been a nightmare with the royalties, we're not that gung-ho yet... maybe the next one. If there's a next time.) but for distribution.

Great, great thanks to the team members (principle investigators and research officers) for the write-ups, Pn Norliza for the proof-reading, Mr Tan for pointing us in the right directions every now and then, Hooi Leng for handling the liaising and PO procedures with the printing company. Couldn't have done any of this without any of you.

Use LaTeX — Or Don't Bother to Format Your Manuscripts

Read it here yourself: http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55780/

Farewell Eitan

Eitan Gurari, the author of TeX4ht — the best LaTeX to HTML/OO.o/etc conversion system that I've come across — has died. :-(

He was a most helpful soul on comp.text.tex . RIP Eitan.


(Yes yes yes, no tribute to MJ and yet one for Eitan, I'm a geek, yes.)

RegEx Tutorial and Tools

Great article and resources round-up about regular expressions at SmashingMagazine! One for the bookmarks.

Begone, ._whatever!

So Finder in OSX has this quirky habit of creating a ._blah for every blah file when transferring file between operating systems, due to the AppleDouble system and resource forking. (No idea what those mean exactly, but you can always ask Google.)

David Olinsky left this nugget of a solution as a comment here:

export COPY_EXTENDED_ATTRIBUTES_DISABLE=true

UPDATED: as well as this attribute, introduced in Leopard as noted by nzight:

export COPYFILE_DISABLE=true

Thank goodness! Now stick those in your .bash_profile...

Oh and to remove those blasted files:

> find . -iname '._*' -exec rm -rf {} \;

PicasaWeb adds automatic translation of comments

While uploading photos to PicasaWeb this morning, I was surprised when non-English comments were automatically translated to English. The results are rather entertaining, yet still demonstrating the usefulness of machine translation to non-speakers of the source language: (admit it O blog reader! Yes, you, 'cause I know there's no one else who reads this blog!)

(Original link)

S.Shen Apr 9, 2009 12:10 PM

孩子越来越像爸爸了。妈妈别生气哈～ Children more and more like a father. Do not be angry mother ha ~

Lian Tze Apr 10, 2009 11:17 AM

呵呵，没生气啦，早就认了⋯⋯还在肚子里作超音波扫描时就已是爸爸的翻拍版了 Oh, you did not angry, identified long ago are still ⋯ ⋯ stomach for ultrasound scan is the father had been a remake version of the

(Original link)

S.Shen Apr 9, 2009 12:09 PM

好可爱 Good lovely

Lian Tze Apr 10, 2009 11:11 AM

可爱得爆⋯⋯不是爆灯，是我们的脑也快爆了。;-) Too cute not burst burst ⋯ ⋯ lights, is our brain will soon burst. ;-)

Periodic Table of Typography

 

Compiled by Cam. Nice one to hang on a cubicle wall. Bound to confuse people, or not: perhaps they'll just assume that I'm now dabbling in Chemistry and not some funny nutty typography and leave me alone.

Batch transcoding with VLC

I have a bunch of MPG videos from my videocam but neither iPhoto nor iMovie would recognise them. Now VLC has a transcoding wizard that'd do the conversion to MP4 nicely, but to do it interactively through the GUI is just too tedious. Using this tip from the VideoLAN Wiki, I used a script to perform the batch transcoding:

#!/bin/bash
vcodec="mp4v"
acodec="mp4a"
bitrate="3072"
arate="192"
ext="mp4"
mux="mp4"
vlc="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/clivlc"
fmt="MPG"
dst="/Dest/Path/"
for a in *$fmt; do
  $vlc -I dummy -vvv "./$a" --sout "#transcode{vcodec=$vcodec,\
  vb=$bitrate,acodec=$acodec,ab=$arate}:standard{mux=$mux,\
  dst=\"$dst$a.$ext\",access=file}" vlc://quit
  touch -m -r $a $dst$a.$ext
done

If you want to try this on Linux or Windows, you should use vlc instead of clivlc. I included the touch command so that the transcoded videos would still have the original capture date/time as their last modified date.

ISBN to BibTeX Converter

Kenjutsu posted about an ISBN to BibTeX converter in comp.text.tex. Given an ISBN e.g. 0471976970, it returns:


@book{0471976970,
Author = {D. Grune and H. Bal and C. Jacobs and K. Langendoen},
Title = {Modern Compiler Design},
Publisher = {Wiley},
Year = {2000},
ISBN = {0471976970},
URL = {http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Design-D-Grune/dp/0471976970%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JYN1NVW651KCA56C102%26tag%3Dws%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0471976970}
}


The author of the converter stated that he's obliged to include the link to Amazon to comply with the terms and conditions for using Amazon's Web Service API to generate the information.

The converter accepts both 10- and 13-digit ISBNs, but doesn't seem to be able to recognise books with editors instead of authors (you know, a collection of articles). Still, it can be useful.

Episode IV — now in ASCII art!

I first came across this at Random Determinism, where there's an embedded YouTube version as well. But I thought to myself: Is this a geeky blog, or what?^[1] And so — open up a terminal and go

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

Enjoy!



^[1] OMG I can't believe I just admitted that OMG OMG OMG OMG...

The Pink Jedi Again

Notice the giant Vader in the background? :)

This would make a nice parody movie poster. One of these days, when I have some precious free time on my hands...

Little Jedi in Pink

Pretty in Pink.

MC turned out to know more about Star Wars than I do. The moment he saw Hui Ning in this new dress, he made a beeline for the camel humps at the Penang Municipal Park.


Correction: As it turned out eventually, no, MC doesn't know more about Star Wars than I do — Banthas don't have humps.

Can we have a much, much better Sejarah syllabus, please?

For quite some now I've been reproachful about the way Sejarah was taught when I was in secondary school. I absolutely hated the subject at the time, but especially after university, I find myself wishing frequently that I learned the history of my country in a more meaningful way. As opposed to memorising tons of facts without comtemplation and questions, and going by the "heuristic" of "them bad, we good. As in, we good." (You know what that emphasis is for.) And other propagandistic stuff. You know, it's even scarier that most people don't even realise there are propagandistic stuff in the textbooks years after they graduate.

Call me a defeatist or whatever, but I can't even find the energy to start elaborating why I feel this way. I'm sure many of you know why and probably feel the same way. (OK OK, that makes only one of you.) Well nothing sums it up better than this article, "Learning Malaysian History: A Lopsided Formula" written by John Lee for Education in Malaysia. Great read. And I hope for my child's sake that the Sejarah syllabus be given a long-belated overhaul.

In the meantime I'm reading up as much as I can, so that I'll be able to at least give my child a clearer picture when she has... questions. Especially the awkward ones. I hope I'll be able to give her some answer that makes sense from a historical context instead of a lame "sorry kid, that's how it is..."

After all, that's the whole point of History, isn't it?

I want a cubicle like this!

Google engineers are having lots of fun building various stuff both decorational and functional, out of giant Lego-like blocks called "Bloxes". These are

"interlocking cardboard boxes that were something like giant legos that connected on all six sides. They ... were originally intended to be used to build flexible workspaces (like easily morphable cubicles)."

Here's a cubicle office with an attached lounge area:

More photos here. Gee, I wish I could have a Blox cubicle. Can I? Can I? What? No funding? Dang.

C'mon, Tajel!

Awwww c'mon, Tajel! LaTeX has lots of goodies for the Humanities, too!