The Embarcadero

I made this picture myself. Gave it a name - The Embarcadero.
It's been four weeks since she went back. I miss her so much!


Like this picture? Then take it (it's that simple). I won't mind at all. No lawsuits will be filed against you :P No ... I'm serious. Just take it, as long as you remember who made it (it was me) ;) It's easy for me to make another one because I know the techniques.

I'll be very happy if people are talking about this picture of the embarcardero.

Cheers! :)

A Hoax or a fact?

I'm compelled to share this piece of article with you, the readers. This is something I believe that some of you read this astounding story from your friends through emails or from casual conversations:

The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting a revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 percent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that,

“The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them

as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to.

It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs - over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

I do not know how true would Mr Celente's predictions be. But I would say it would reach a certain degree of possibilities.

The most talked about topic

Here's a topic that started of this week (the content is already spread worldwide):


From: Jerry Yang [mailto:jerry@yahoo-inc.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 2:20 PM
To: all-worldwide@yahoo-inc.com
Subject: update

yahoos,

i feel it’s important for me to reach out to you after our earnings announcement, and before our all hands meeting tomorrow.

we as a company have been through a tremendously challenging year; and managing the increasingly turbulent global advertising climate has been an important focus for the last three months.

throughout the first three quarters of 2008, we have been balancing between investing in our top priorities, and managing our cost structure. beginning in september, with the help of Bain & Co., we initiated a series of steps to determine how we can become more efficient and productive as an organization.

we heard from you through the YEES survey, and through your suggestions on backyard, and we’ve identified many areas that we all feel we can improve upon. our productivity efforts, based in part on what we heard from you, will involve initiatives such as streamlining our organizational structure through reducing layers and increasing spans of control, and eliminating redundancies. longer term structural efficiencies include consolidating facilities, improving procurement, and standardizing our global technology platforms.

today as part of our q3 earnings release, we said that our goal is to reduce our current annualized cost run rate of roughly $3.9 billion by more than $400 million before the end of 2008. we are targeting non-headcount expenses wherever possible, such as facilities and outside services. however, because compensation expenses are the single largest part of our costs, we anticipate a reduction of at least 10% of our global workforce by year-end.

affected employees will be notified of layoffs in the next several weeks. we understand that hearing this news now creates uncertainty, but we are moving ahead in a way that balances speed with a clear focus on accomplishing what is necessary to set the organization up for long term success. going forward it will continue to be important for us to make the right decisions to keep our business efficient and strong.

having layoffs is very difficult, particularly in light of all we’ve experienced this year. but we don’t take these decisions lightly, and are committed to treating affected employees fairly, offering severance and outplacement services.

the steps we are taking are not easy for us as a company, but as we become more fit as an organization, decision-making will be faster and it will be easier for us all to get more done and stay focused on our strategy. these changes will also prepare us to better deal with the macroeconomic downturn. as with previous downturns, yahoo! continues to be a place where consumers turn for information and communications, and is an integral part of their internet day. as the global economy improves in the future, i certainly believe that we will be stronger and benefit from the actions we are taking now.

as always, i thank you for all you do as yahoos.

best,

jerry

Facial features extraction

Now you see me ... now you don't ... and now you see me again :P



If I understand technically how this actually works, the image recognition process involves facial features extraction. The minimum number of feature points is 2 - the reference points at your eyeballs. Well, of course, the more reference points you provide, the higher the accuracy you'll get.

I have this image with 19 reference points, just to substantiate my theory.


Coincidentally, I said coincidentally, all the 19 reference points matches. This includes the corners of my mouth, eyebrows, nose and chin. Depending on what pictures MyHeritage has in their database, the algorithm will find a match to my picture. So I was matched to Chow Yun-Fat - pictorially, not genetically.

Anyway, both of us are living in two separate worlds. I'm a software development engineer with MS in Computer Science from University of San Francisco working to make ends meet while Chow Yun-Fat is a famous actor. Not forgetting the huge difference of our gross salaries :)

To my readers, you may try this out at MyHeritage Celebrity Morph. I particularly like how they manipulate our pictures. For laymen, it's called morphing your pictures into your favorite artists, but for a curious computer science geek like me, it's called AI techniques put into use.

Wii ...

I bought a new set of Nintendo Wii! :)

happie happie happie :D

I wanted to buy this console for the past two years but the demand for Wii consoles is always greater than supply over here in the States.

Here Comes Another Bubble

Here's a video I'm watching/listening to it again and again and again and again ...

May 16, 2008

Commencement ceremony:
Master of Science in Computer Science