The final application could read in an 8-bit greyscale image (as iris recognition devices usually take infra-red greyscale pictures), make an attempt at auto-detecting the pupil, iris and eyelids. Then it will encode the iris into a database, and allow you to compare other irides to it in the future.

I was a little weary at first about doing a project on image processing, but it’s been very fun and interesting to see how different algorithms work for i.e. edge-detecting (sobel filter), blurring (median filter), etc.

Early on we had the choice of using Java or C++ for the application. We decided to go with C++ and Qt and it really paid off. Our entire Qt experience was painless and filled with pleasant surprises along the way of all the Qt classes available to us. QPixmap, QImage and even QtImageFilters are actually extremely powerful and get the job done. We were constantly impressed by the clean solutions that Qt had for everything.

We also tried it briefly on Windows and Mac along the way so the application works well for those OSs.

Found along the way

Some interesting facts I found out along the way:

• The pupil and the iris are not concentric (vary slightly)
• Iris patterns remain remarkably stable over your lifetime (and do not depend on your eye colour)
• This depends on your parameter, but the chances of a false match can be as good as 1 in 1.5 billion
• We implemented a median filter that has order O(r)
• Finally, an interesting story

The software is available under the GPL licence, though it will probably only be useful for anyone who has a small software project similar to this one to do

Source code and report

Our paper for the project and the source code is available at:
projectiris.co.uk

They include: a commenting plugin, a buffer explorer plugin, a yankring plugin, better prolog/Qt syntax highlighting, easy .h -> .cpp switch plugin, some others, and a lot of shortcuts (like for pasting from other applications). Also the very essential tetris plugin.

Vim Awesomeness

Throughout <C-X> means Ctrl-X

First get the config — just execute this command and it will do it:

cd && mv .vimrc{,_old} && mv .vim{,_old} && wget http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~kg109/configs/vim{.tar,rc} && tar xf vim.tar && mv {,.}vimrc

Read on for the cheat sheet…

Navigation:

Go back to normal mode — <Esc> or easier: <C-c> or <C-[>
Move Around — Down (j), Up (k), left (h), right (l)
Move word — w (word forward), b (word backward) ; W (word forward — skip punctuation), B (word backward — skip punctuation)

Page Jump — Page Down (<C-f> — forward), Page Up (<C-b> — backward)
Page half jump — Down (<C-d> — down), Up (<C-u>)

End of Line — $
Start of Line — 0

Start of document — gg
End of Document — G

Jump to last place that you made an edit — g; (g semi-colon — you can also keep pressing it to keep going back)
Jump forward/back paragraph (next line with space) — { or }

Visual Mode:

Enter visual mode — v
Visual line mode — V
Visual block mode — <C-v>

Find-and-replace over some selection — select it in visual mode, then type: :s/oldword/newword/g after you type the first : it will expand to :’<,’> which is fine

Insert Mode:

Insert mode from before the cursor — i
Insert mode from after the cursor — a

Jump to the end of the line and go into insert mode — I (capital i)
Jump to the beginning and go into insert mode — A

Make a new line below and go into insert — o (line above is O)
Auto-complete variables/functions etc — start typing it and then <C-n> or <C-p> next and previous

Deleting:

delete character — x
delete line – dd
delete from cursor to end of line — D
delete several lines — select them in visual mode, and then d or x

delete whole document — ggdG — which does gg (start of document), d (delete) ..G (end of document)
Delete word – dw or dW (word with punctuation)

Delete everything inside {} braces — diB — delete inner brace
Delete everything inside the {} and the {}s — daB — delete a brace

Delete everything inside () brackets — dib — delete inner brackets
– dab — delete a bracket and its contents

Jump to equivalent bracket / brace — % — so if you’re at a { type % and it goes to the relevant }

Clearing

Clearing is just like deleting, but it puts you in insert mode after the deletion. You can also always use it in any case where you use d, so for example:

cw — clear word
cc — clear line
C — clear until the end of the line
ciB — clear inner brace

……… and all the other ones from the Deleting section

Auto-indent

Auto-indent line — ==
Auto-indent whole document — gg=G which goes to start of doc, and indent until the end

Editing files:
Open and edit a new file: from normal mode, type: :e filename.cpp

Find / Replacing

From normal mode:

/something — searches for something. Then ‘n’ searches for the next term forward, and ‘N’ backward
find and replace — :%s/oldword/newword/g
find and replace in all open files —        :bufdo %s/old-word /new-word /ge | update

You don’t have to use the / character by the way — you can use any other character like , or ~ So for example to find-and-replace you could:

:%s~old-word ~new-word~g

Buffers / Windows

Next buffer — <C-j>
Previous Buffer — <C-k>
Close a buffer: :bd — buffer delete

Split windows: :split
Vertical split: :vs — :q to close any of those (won’t close the buffer — :bd to do that)

Cycle through windows: <C-ww>
Switch between .h -> .cpp — <C-a>

Saving / Closing:

Save file: :w
Quit: :q or quit-without-saving —   :q!
Save and quit —   :wq or easier:    

Save all open buffers: :wa

Copying / Pasting:

A delete/clear in vim is a ‘Cut’ — so you can always paste it after. Do just ‘copy’ or ‘yank ‘:

yank line – yy
yank word –yw
yank to end of line — Y

…. you get the idea

Cycle through paste history — paste something (p) and then hit <C-p> to go back in history, or <C-n> to go forward. Alternatively, just hit <F10>

Commenting:

Comment out a line — – (literally the dash character)

Comment out “sexy style” : ,cs (comma c s) i.e. it will do a comment like:

/*
* Line commented out
*/

Switch comment style — ,ca — i.e. switch between using // or /* in C++

Repeating Actions:

Vim is uber consistent. So for most of the above, you can do them X amount of times by proceeding the command with X. So for example:

Delete the next five words: 5dw
Yank the next five lines: 5yy

….etc

Repeat last action: . (full stop)

Macros

Think of them as VBA macros — vim will record the key-presses you make, and when you call the macro it will execute them again:

You can record a macro and place it under any character name. For exactly, to place it under d, just type:

qd <perform all mouse movements > then hit q
Now you can call that macro again with: @d
Execute it four times for example with: 4@d

Folding

For large files, you might want to fold/hide away certain functions temporarily.
Fold selection — select it in visual, then zf
To open a fold: zo
Not a fold, but will wrap the line to a certain length — gq

Extra other configs:

Toggle line numbers off / on: <F12>
Look at paste history and paste something from it: <F10> then navigate through and <Enter>

Tetris:

:Tetris

The kernel header file '/usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h' does not exist.
The most likely reason for this is that the kernel source files in '/usr/src/linux' have not been
configured.

Well, despite the NVIDIA run file looking for the files in the wrong place, you can fix this error by using the more recent NVIDIA driver: NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run

Thanks to all those who helped in #suse

KDE 4 Reloaded Live CDs / USBs

Firstly, the Build Service recently acquired a functionality to generate your own system images from the build service, and the KDE guys quickly generated openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 “Reloaded” CDs and USB images containing KDE 4.3.1. That means they include all security etc. updates (from the openSUSE update repository) as well as the latest KDE 4 packages, and Firefox 3.5.

SUSE Studio

SUSE Studio was fully launched, with quite literally the most usable interface you can imagine for generating any kind of appliance that you want. Great to play around with, but also very useful to have your fully customised USB image, filled with built-in pictures of yourself to flatter your ego. One of the things that impressed me the most was the test drive service, which lets you try out the appliance in a web browser before downloading it.

• Logging the meeting and automatically converting it to a more readable HTML file

• Automatically generating minutes by listening to specially selected commands (click the link to see an example)

Since writing minutes after a meeting can sometimes be an onerous task, this should really help in that department.

If you like, compare the commands in the log (all beginning with # — i.e. #action something) to what is output in the minutes to get an idea of what things can look like.

It was created some time ago and has been used in-and-around Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora project channels, but I don’t think it’s been public knowledge everywhere just yet. Anyone can use it straight away from any channels that bugbot is in; any problems, please give me a shout!

Thanks to Richard Darst and all the others involved in the creation and development of the supybot plugin.

“President Obama has said he is prepared to go through the budget “line by line” to cut wasteful spending…”

McNealey, asked to write a report on the advantages, comments:

“It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software,” …”Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money.”

The article also contains quotes from OSI President Michael Tiemann:

“It’s an accident of history that proprietary standards became so entrenched so early and it’s been a colossal expense for government.”Mr Tiemann said while some departments already use open source technologies, overall it has been estimated that the global loss due to proprietary software is “in excess of $1 trillion a year.”

Here’s to hoping we see some action followed by McNealy’s report.

For a preview of how this happens, join #kde-bugs-dist. Basically, when there’s a new bug, bugbot will drop in a note with:

Of course, bugbot will still snarf out bugs, i.e.:

So if you have any KDE project IRC channel, and you want bugbot to snarf bugs and/or report new ones in your channel, just drop me a note (apokryphos in #kde-devel, #kde-bugs) and I’ll have him added.

Continuous thanks goes to Mez for his gracious hosting.

So far I’ve been really impressed with the latest release. Not only have the reviews been pretty much consistently positive because of some of the shiny new features (like installer and fast package management), but also in general it’s just running very well. I installed it on some 10 different desktop and laptop machines over the past few weeks, and every single one has gone very smoothly.

KDE 4.1

There are a lot of nice things in the upcoming 4.1, so I’ll just briefly mention a few of those visual ones which particularly interest me:

There have been several additions to the KWin composite effects including wobbly windows:

And some new window switching effects:

 

A desktop cube plugin is also in the works.

The Oxygen icon theme is also a real pleasure to use (coming in different colours):

Amarok Neon

Amarok Neon packages are now being built for openSUSE in the openSUSE Build Service. Join #amarok.neon to help join the testing!

ATI Drivers

ATI Drivers are now available for openSUSE 11.0 as well. You can use the same 1-click-install as the 10.3 one. For the link and instructions, check out the ATI wiki page.

In other news, openSUSE is still on top for the last 30-day viewing on DistroWatch!

The repository also appears in the community repository list, so you can add it by going to YaST -> Software -> Software Management. Then, in the menu: Repositories -> Repository Manager. Now hit the Add -> Community Repositories and select it from there.