Internet

Today, we finally got Internet at home. Still wire-ful, but we should get that fixed this weekend.

Ironically, also today, my optimizelife.com domain expired, so I had it renewed immediately. I didn't get their warning, so I have to wonder: how reliable is my email?

caricatures and facial recognition

I would like to see an AI program that makes caricatures of human faces.

The idea is that the way we represent (perceive, remember) faces is by storing a "diff" from the baseline. We probably have different baselines for different categories of people: gender, age, race, etc.

The caricature program would select image features that people perceive (probably eyes, nose, lips, chin, etc.), amplify the deviation from the baseline in terms of location/size/shape, and reconstruct the image. This gets interesting when features perceived interact with each other, e.g. the distance between the eyes interacts with the size of the eyes, the size of the lips wrt to the nose interacts with the size of the nose. The point is that, while we would like to amplify the difference in all features by the same amount, this is impossible: some features need to be sacrificed for the sake of others, so we need to give priority to the more salient ones... just like when you project a globe into 2D, you must choose some properties you want to preserve, while losing others.

I think this means that the caricature function is information-lossy, i.e. irreversible. An algorithm that makes you more "average" again would not return your original face.

This face-morphing website lets you can change your gender / race / age.

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A caricature of my body would probably include narrow shoulders, short legs. But how does my face deviate from the baseline? I suspect I am rather brachycephalic, and have a large forehead, but I couldn't say more. What is your caricature of me? Submit your entry today.

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I want to get serious about biometrics. I would like to scan every millimeter of my body, every month or so. Who knows what the benefits will be? When medicine finally knows use all this information, my medical history will have a lot more data.

getting my phone to synch with my laptop

Going to nokia.com, I finally start to see some hope in figuring out how to synch my Nokia 6165.

Under "Features supported by your phone", I see it's compatible with:
* Nokia connectivity cable CA-53
* Bluetooth

Installing the "Nokia PC Suite", I get two options:
* Data cable (costs ~$30)
* Infrared

But when I check "Infrared", I get "Cannot use the connection type. Check that all the needed hardware, software and drivers are available. Code:OpenMedia"

I tried updating my driver, but Windows couldn't find a more up-to-date version.

I'm now downloading a bluetooth driver for XP.