[linux] Wubi and the 'no disk' issue

This evening I wanted to try Wubi at home. I already gave it a try earlier on my office computer, and it had failed with a strange error: "No disk" message box displaying "Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c"

Same thing happened at home. I was quite disapointed and searched for this error on Google. The problem is explained here.

It turns out my Dell screen has a card reader. This card reader creates drive letters with nothing attached to them (until a card is inserted that is). This disturbs the Wubi installation script.

There are several ways around (such as clicking like crazy on 'continue') but instead I looked for a way to remove these 'empty' drive letters. And, I found a nice small tool doing exactly that, among other useful USB drive letter management options: USBDML.

Give it a try, it works like a charm. Now Wubi can install!

[various] market segmentation

Coding horror has an interesting post about market segments. I think it strongly relates to the euro / dollar / ip-based region locks problems I have been confronted with. I especially like this piece of the post:

Sure, don't make us customers think. Unless you want us to think about how much we'd like to pay you, that is.

Exactly :-) I see two possible outcomes for the current 'region segments' imposed by retailers:

1. They disappear
2. We won't be allowed to order oversea anymore, and shop websites will be unaccessible from outside the country
   

Guess what's most likely?

[research] We're hiring PhDs!

I am looking for a PhD student, starting around next September (2009) at INRIA Nancy on this topic . The profile is a student with a master degree, a strong background in Computer Graphics, familiar with Graphics APIs (OpenGL and/or DirectX) and image processing. Optionally, a background in machine learning would be appreciated. But, most importantly, I am looking for someone with a strong motivation to learn new things and explore novel ideas and algorithms. Is that you? Then contact me!

[various] 1 dollar = 2 euros

We all know pricing policies do not exaclty match the globalization trend. But sometimes it becomes so ridiculous that it is worth noting.

I need a new keyboard, and I need it to be a QWERTY keyboard (here shops sell AZERTY keyboards which is not great for coding - I am in fact using a QWERTY layout on an AZERTY keyboard ... confusing!). I was shoping for books on Amazon US, and decided to have a look. I found the 'Logitech Illuminated Keyboard' to my taste. At this date it is 66.48$. Here I am, checking out, when suddenly the killer message pops up 'This item doesn't ship to your country'. Well, no big deal, let's check out Amazon.fr. Bad news: 1) AZERTY only 2) out of stock 3) 87,89 euros! That's only ... wait ... 122.852$ !!! (today's rate). On Logitech website it is even better: The keyboard (QWERTY version) sells 94.99 euros, or 132.7$.
Yes, that's twice more. Pretty nice huh? (I am assuming Logitech is preventing amazon from shipping - this is more or less what is implied by Amazon as the reason for not shipping. EDIT: Apparently none of the keyboards on Amazon ship to Europe! I'll have to stick with my AZERTY for a little longer)

[code] The library watch

"There are no bad tools, there are only bad workers" Well, there may be some truth to this, but surely good tools cannot hurt! Any skilled programmer has a few libraries up his sleeve, ready to be launched after some nasty problems lurking at him.

In fact, I find libraries to be an essential tool for a researcher in a hurry to prototype ideas - which often involves solving non-trivial sub-problems. So, what libraries are you using in your every day endeavors?
Here are my favorites (I'll skip the basics such as libpng, zlib, etc.):

• Loki - the libary that made me realize what templates are for. Andrei Alexandrescu's book is a must read!
• TAUCS - linear solver for sparse matrices
• ANN - approximate neighbor search
• AntTweakBar - GL/D3D gui, simple, clean and powerful
• LUA - scripting, very easy to integrate
• tolua++ - makes lua even easier to integrate with c++
• TClap - command line parameters, template based
• ODE - physics
• Bullet - physics
• fftw - fast Fourier transforms
• SDL / SDL_net - media library. I essentially use it for multiplatform threads and networking. A bit old-school but still very effective.
  

Now, some libraries I am planning on using much more regularly:

• Boost - how could I live without it! (the answer is Loki+Tclap+SDL+home-grown-stuff ;-) but of course Boost is a must-use)
• SQlite - SQL database in a local file (no server, no config, all is done from your application). Thanks to Anteru for pointing this one out!
  

[research] Video of our SIGGRAPH paper

Our paper on procedural textures was accepted at SIGGRAPH 2009!!!

We will release the paper soon, but in the meantime you can check out our paper's video on the project webpage.

[conference] Eurographics 2009

I am currently at EG 2009. Interesting papers, brainstorming, fun and - since we are in Germany after all - a fair amount of good beer :-)

Marcio Cabral will be presenting our 'Mesh Puzzle' paper, and I'll be sharing a talk with Li-Yi Wei to present our STAR report on texture synthesis; co-authored with Vivek Kwatra and Greg Turk.

Btw, don't miss the tutorial implementation of our Parallel Controllable Texture Synthesis algorithm (SIGGRAPH 2005).