Black [X] Truder

At Newcastle! - Part Two

10/10/2008 4:25:28 PM

Sorry for the delayed post guys! Time passes quickly here :)

I've been taking lectures for the past two weeks and was given some tasks to attend to during my free time. Many things are happening around here and posting about each is pretty much impractical.

To put my news in short, I moved into a shared flat with other International students (no more stays at hotels), met a number of friends, went on a couple of trips around Newcastle, and best of all: got a broadband Internet connection at my place! :D

Anyway, here are the details, starting with the incidents that were mentioned at the end of the previous post ...

An Evening at a Bar

Victor is a Spanish undergraduate student that I met during my first week at the university. He studies music at Newcastle and has invited me to a "Jam Night" at one of the local bars. He said that this bar holds Thursday evenings for jamming sessions and that many bands and solo artists perform there every week.

I made it there that Thursday and watched some bands perform; the evening was amazing! Anybody who wants to play would simply write their names on a chalkboard and wait for their turn. The songs played ranged from country to some rock oldies, in addition to few originals.

Victor was expecting me to bring my guitar and jam along, but I told him I've been in town for a couple of days and it's not the right time ... yet ;)

Luckily, I got away with my vile no-drinking habit that evening with a simple "Sorry, I have a medical condition, I can't drink" :P

The Tap

This happened during my first week too! I was heading someplace for dinner when a girl got almost ran over trying to cross the street to my side while yelling "Hey! Hey!".

She looked terrified and asked me if I can get her "a tap". I asked her "What's a tap?" and she acted out smoking a cigarette. I figured that a tap is slang for a cigarette! She said "I can't buy it because the guy at the supermarket thinks am a minor but my 18th birthday was just yesterday!".

Now in normal conditions, if somebody approaches me with such a proposition, my reaction would range from simple refusal to beating them to death :P, but this girl really did crack me up! :D

So yes, I went to the supermarket and bought her a tap (how responsible). She gave me a pound and asked for the change but I didn't want to bother counting the pennies so I just told her "It's on me" and she was like "Ooooooh" and she hugged me :S

Of course I didn't let her go without some lecturing about the risks of smoking but she looked like a lost cause, or else I wouldn't have saved myself the hassle of denying her request.

Trip to Tynemouth

A couple of weeks ago I went with some friends to Tynemouth, a town at the mouth of the river Tyne at the east coast of England.

We passed by the historical Tynemouth Castle, a castle that stands on a high rocky cliff and is believed to have been there since the 10th century (making it 1000 years old). Anyway, embare7 wella el youm, it looked nothing more than a deserted bunch of stones to me :F

We also spent some time at King Edward's Bay.

The Tyne River

My favorite place in town is the Tyne river, I just can't get enough of it! It's great that this place is only a 15-minute walk from my university!

There are several bridges over the Tyne, some of which are high and expose wonderful scenery of the river, the town and the lands far beyond. The area around the banks of the Tyne (the quayside) has wonderful walks and is a perfect place for spending some moments of tranquility.

There are also some other places that are worth writing about but I'll leave these to other posts.

More news to followup later!

At Newcastle!

9/22/2008 1:43:38 PM

Hello everybody, this is to let you all know that I’ve arrived safely and am currently doing just fine in Newcastle, UK!

My trip to Newcastle was great. I had a five-hour stop at London’s reputable Heathrow airport, one of the world’s largest airports, which was such a nice opportunity to look around. I’ve wandered for hours but couldn’t see but a tiny portion of the airport. Heathrow is so big that people use metros to travel from one terminal to another!

My flight to Newcastle was a little bit delayed so I arrived late, unpacked and fell to bed. I woke up the next morning and took a walk around, checking up the places and the routes. My WLAN-equipped mobile phone and Google Maps are really doing me a great service here; I can locate any place and determine the best route to it with only few clicks on my mobile phone! :D

Anyway, I’ve been staying in hotels ever since I arrived, looking for somewhere to stay while I finish my Masters. Today I finally signed a contract governing my accommodation for the next year; I’ll be staying in a shared flat with five other international students.

Newcastle is such a great place to live in; there are endless things that I envy the people here for; the weather is great, there are almost no traffic jams and there are many green spaces around.

The town structure is very well planned, organized and friendly for first-timers. The rules that administer this place are so sensible that breaking them will simply do nobody any good!

The town can truly be described as “International” because of the great population of International students, workers and residents. Everybody here is friendly because they all realize that they live in a city that brings together a large number of nationalities from all over the world. Even the town locals appreciate this unique feature of their city and are actually happy about having such a variety of people around.

Anyway, I still have a couple of interesting “incidents” that I want to tell you about, in addition to the university … oh the university! (needs a post on its own!) but I’ll leave these for the next posts!

Upcoming events …

Ghaith gets invited by a Spanish guy to a Thursday evening in a bar and he comes over. What happens?

Ghaith is wondering around in a desolate part of the city at night and a girl gets almost ran-over trying to get to him from the other side of the road while yelling “Hey! Hey!”. What does she want?

More 3D Scans

8/22/2008 12:32:49 AM

Next week will be our last in our training at KADDB. Our 3D Laser Scanner is now completed and we're adding the final touches. The scanner has undergone tremendous upgrades and is now performing way better than it used to last month.

To put it in short, during the past month we've managed to complete multiple viewpoint scanning and 3D mapping. The device can now automatically capture data from multiple views of the object and merge these sets of data to form a complete 3D model.

We've corrected serious bugs related to surface sampling. We've also programmed algorithms to compensate for inaccurate calibrations and instrument errors. Using these and some additional tweaks we've raised the maximum sampling rate to an amazing 6.66 samples/mm while cutting half the scan time!

The models we're producing now are extremely accurate and look amazing.

Take a look ...

The figures above show two point clouds of the Garfield toy. The cloud on the left is an example of what we were getting a month ago while the one on the right is an example of current scanner output. The new model is of much higher resolution and is completely noise free.

First of all, to help you visualize how our scanner now produces complete 3D models by scanning an object from multiple angles, have a look at these ...

The above models are for a violinist statue. They are actually point clouds, but are so dense that they look like 3D models even before reconstruction.

The cloud on the left has a lightning effect that will help you visualize what the model looks like. The cloud on the right is a special point cloud where data collected from each viewpoint has been represented by a certain color. There are four colors in this point cloud because it was formed by four different scans, each being from a different angle.

I've taken closeup captures on the violinist statue's face (which is smaller than 15cm x 10cm) to show you how accurate our scanner's resolution can be. The models below were constructed using only 25% of the maximum scanning resolution ...

One of the objects we scanned was an old wooden eagle statue. The produced model showed all object details including tiny carved regions ...

The high quality of the models we're producing reflect greatly in rendering.

Here are few shots:

In case you're wondering, that's a camel on the right ;)

The guys at KADDB were amazed by the results of this project. We've been told that there is a good chance that our 3D scanner will be moved to their central research department where it will be allocated larger funding and continue to be worked on.

I have decided to build a separate web site giving the in-depth technical details for researchers. I will also provide some of the models we've produced and explain few ideas that make our scanner better than many others. The website, however, won't be available anytime soon because it's by time I have some rest now ;)

First 3D Scans

7/18/2008 9:36:52 PM

Hello everyone,

It's been a tiring month. My friends and I have finally acquired the components of our 3D Laser Scanner and we've been busy with it ever since. It's only been few days since we were able to actually do a 3D scan and I thought I'd post some shots here.

For those of you who did not catch up with me lately, I am currently building a device that creates a 3D computer model for any real world object. Two of my friends are working with me on this project, which counts as my university summer training.

The device uses a high precision laser sensor to sample the surface of an object and produce a data set known as a Point Cloud. A special data processing software is then used to convert the point cloud into a polygon based model of the object, a process known as Reconstruction.

We’ve assembled the device in a temporary frame that allows us to perform scans till we complete the final assembly. Our first scanned object was a 7x5 cms Garfield toy. We scanned one face of the toy with 3 samples per millimeter resolution. The obtained point cloud was pretty impressive:

The point cloud itself clearly depicts the shape of the scanned object. This is because the high sampling rate makes points appear to be a continuous surface by themselves :)

Also, reconstructing the above point cloud into the polygon based model was better than I expected. Normally, trying to reconstruct a single face scan will result in many "holes" in the object surface due to the low sampling rate of surfaces that fall perpendicular to the direction of the laser beam.

Combining multiple face scans will resolve this problem as surfaces that are perpendicular to the direction of laser from one viewpoint will actually be scanned from multiple viewpoints allowing them to be sampled properly.

Anyway, with those great results, we moved to scan a much larger object. We chose a big car that measured about 50 cm x 50 cm. We scanned a single face with the same resolution of the toy and the results were astonishing.

Scanning a model this big makes one appreciate the high resolution of sampling. The produced point cloud was so dense that you could barely see through. Another interesting observation is that the laser sensor was able to sample the windshield, which is made of a transparent material.

This scan took approximately 11 hours, and resulted in a super high-quality output. Below are rendered shots of the car model.

All the above models were scanned from a single view angle. It hasn’t been until Thursday that we were able to capture multiple shots and merge them into a single 3D model.

Am sorry because I couldn't post pictures of the device or explain how it works. It is still too early to publish this type of information on the Internet. We still need to wait till the project is over, after which we'll be able to publish all the cool details :)

Off University

6/4/2008 1:51:12 AM

Yesterday I had the last of my final exams, marking my last day in PSUT. There won't be anymore lectures or exams, it's all over :)

My graduation project discussion seminar was last Wednesday. It went good generally, although a little bit different than what I expected. Everything went very fast; the forty minutes were over before we had chance to demonstrate the amount of work we did in our project.

For some reason, my recollections of what happened during the seminar were a little blurry when I got out. I can't say I was shocked or overwhelmed by the "greatness of the moment". To me, the whole graduation project discussion thing was just another job to be done. It didn't deserve that much of credit that people give it to.

Anyway, a couple of days later I started to remember some really funny things that happened during the seminar :D

I was targeted by most questions during the discussion, some of which might be best described as general or rather irrelevant to the topic at hand. The doubtful and daring tone of the discussion committee got me furious that it blinded my reason at some instances.

It's really funny that I already know that I get furious whenever my work is to be challenged/questioned but I still get furious anyway :D

Also, two engineers from KADDB have attended the seminar and were granted permission to ask few questions. Their inquiries went about our KADDB's project; the 3D Scanner, which was not our graduation project.

The stepper motor controller we presented as our graduation project is actually a part of our 3D Laser Scanner, a fact that the discussion committee didn't know. KADDB's engineers appeared to be totally extraterrestrial with their Laser Scanner questions, the university docs were like "huh?".

Our project's documentation was very professional and had a very neat printing job. It turned out to be the best documentation I've ever come across. The project's presentation and demonstration were very good and interesting to watch I believe.

So that's about our discussion seminar. I'll dedicate a post to write about the project itself later. Also, my 3D Laser Scanner project begins now, so expect more technical stuff to be coming soon :P

Apart from the discussion seminar, my last week in PSUT was typical and light weight. I had almost no lectures last week and had only three final exams that were over before I realize they started.

My vacation starts today and I can't count the things that am planning to do. Fortunately, this time it will be a "very" long vacation :D

Three Weeks to Go

5/15/2008 11:48:07 PM

My graduation is almost three weeks ahead.

I've finished my second exams today (they were just a couple of exams so am not sure if they even count :P). On another note, am putting the final touches on my graduation project already. That was one long week times an average of 10 work hours per day.

Today marks the start of possibly another week of documenting what I was doing. Am not sure which will be the harder part; creating the thing or telling people how it works! Anyway, I can have some good sleep before the next part kicks in :D

The project itself is beyond fine now, it's as much as I anticipated it to be last week. Am even starting to wonder if the docs at the presentation will actually get to comprehend all of it :S

Things in the university are surprisingly getting smoother; the competency test for Computer Engineering (my major) was canceled and some of the university lab work was taken off my shoulders. As much as I'd like to believe that all the extra time will be mine to possibly stay away from the project, it won't.

The next few weeks will be exciting, I keep wondering what will unfold ...

Graduation Project

5/8/2008 1:44:30 AM

Today am officially starting the work on my graduation project. My colleagues and I have finished building the circuit and am currently laying out the UI for the computer software.

We had much bigger plans for our graduation project, but things didn't work out well as we hoped. My friends and I have received a huge amount of funding from King Abullah II Fund for Development (KAFD) for developing a device under the supervision of King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau (KADDB). We are building a 3D Laser Scanner, a device that samples the surface of any real world object using top notch precision laser and uses the gathered data to construct a 3D model of the object.

We were intending to present this device as our graduation project. Unfortunately, we've faced tremendous trouble shipping the parts to Jordan. It's like three weeks till the discussion seminar now and we still haven't acquired any of the device parts!

Being so much behind schedule, we decided to switch to plan B; we'll present the hardware controller for the our 3D Scanner as a stand-alone university graduation project. The controller is almost ready, but will need further work to be presentable as a fully operative graduation project.

Our 3D Laser Scanner project will be resumed after graduation; we'll build the device in summer. I was really enthusiastic about letting you know how it works (the whole idea and design being my own) but I was advised by KADDB not to demonstrate the device's principle of operation as it's subject to acquiring a patent. Anyway, I'll get to publish all the details one day, be sure to check back here. You'll find something absolutely interesting :)

As for our graduation project, it'll be a programmable Multi-Axis Stepper Motor Controller. It is basically a controller that can drive multiple stepper motors at different speeds at the same time. It'll be running scripts designed by a computer software, much like a PLC.

Even though this project wasn't actually what I had in mind to payoff the past four years in university; it doesn't make it any less important. I'll make sure it includes intriguing ideas, on both conceptual and technical terms. After all, I won't be quitting university without leaving a remarkable memento ;)

Dreaming

5/1/2008 4:08:46 PM

I once read that dreams are some sort of fake consciousness simulated by our brains to keep us from waking up. When we're asleep, our brains interprets any signals received via our senses to be a part of this virtual reality in order to keep our bodies at rest. Sometimes we dream with little or no sensual activity. In this case, our brains tend to use our subconsciousness to generate topics or ideas to support the continuum of dreaming.

I don't like to think of dreams as mystical or theological signs. Although the definition and aspects related to dreaming are not clearly scientifically established, we can safely say that the latter type of dreams is a gateway to our subconsciousness.

Last night I had a couple of weird dreams. One of them got me wondering ...

In my dream, I was walking on a university campus. It wasn't PSUT, it was a new university. I was heading somewhere when someone shouted "GHAAAITH! WATCH OUT!".

Before I had any chance to react, I felt an object with an immense force hitting the back of my head and everything turned black.

I woke up at sunset in a house I've never seen before. My mother was there, she looked older than she is. I felt like I woke up from a very long sleep. My whole body felt like new, but the scene gave me the impression that something is terribly wrong. I looked at myself in a mirror and I was a man in middle thirties. I apparently passed out for years and woke up to be an old man, like in the movies.

What was interesting is that my mom wasn't actually thrilled or happy to see me awake. I realized I've been gone for too long that she didn't care anymore. I realized that everybody have their own lives now and I've become nothing but an old memory.

I was unable to cope with it and I felt completely lost.