I spent most of vacation relaxing at my parent's house by the beach. We did some exploring along the coast between Chennai and Mahabalipuram. We found a cool place with a network of pools surrounded by rock cliffs. After Christmas we took trip to Kerala for a few days. We stayed in Kumarakom and explored the backwaters, lake Vembanad, and a bird sanctuary. I was hoping to spend a few days on a house boat, but unfortunately we were visiting at the peak of tourist season so it was impossible to reserve one for a decent price. We took several boat rides and even rented our own canoe. Kerala is an incredibly beautiful place so I made sure to take plenty of pictures.
For Christmas I got a PS3. I managed to get video output to my monitor after buying an expensive HDMI to DVI cable. I have been having trouble trying to get the audio working. There are three audio output options: RCA, TOSLINK, and HDMI. I have a cable which converts RCA to a male TRS connector. If I want to get audio to my speakers/headphones, I need a female connector. Using the audio in/out ports of my computer would do the trick, but unfortunately I am having sound card driver issues in Ubuntu. If I fail at fixing the driver problems I'll need to buy another cable.
On my way to India I worked on a new version of Swarm. On the way back I worked on a vectorization program (see this blog entry). Neither of the projects turned out as well as I was hoping. I have now abandoned releasing the new version of Swarm since it isn't much of an improvement. The vectorization program is slow and does not seem to do a very good job. Here is the Mona Lisa with 100 triangles:
Original image:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WDum7yzqxFgFwfOP77LsZH5uAedd-vXrxIcJNxiXCgkiG6suQ7F6U6vYy-BMYNeoNcsc0CIQPino0CMrJdycXmm8JqX1qS6X31puj6HK4UgqYmWxsHws9kJZ-ExLK0z6vKAb/s400/mona-lisa.jpg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoQLZJcSK9CrKaHNHAa8_-SqKWsa9rww-oI8F8WgIcxAOBUKXRe2FVl3wfg_yb2rUmCs5UgUDNzfJE_wh8PDG2BQ8vovT6GA8a3n2ECxSNt17eXZoXCZJKANeBwN17suNNCjzG/s400/10.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWG2utEfabaOi9NG1253cFYfyKZC7qpDWj6ts1Hv3HpOkah_D-Go6OXsh9TWnibpgYSfYFxdnSi372VMwS_iQh-_Ctz3LhGi292G3mkZhXKGxq29TpqOmqeyf2JG4hORF5aHG6/s400/50.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf__aw95jObpo0Vqyv348vejbc98cJ79ASMvqJbQR2_IeEB_kPtqUjYeoDGS2FHGDEU2WyG60Eh6hm_1F6847ZUZv8RMER5W0upNfp6xsSwtbDUqtX0Ly_1141DOtGAirzJvmq/s400/150.png)
I have finally finished reading Anathem. Overall I thought it was a great book, although I got really bored by some of the long philosophical discussions. Since I didn't bring GEB to India, I have started reading A Game of Thrones.
No comments:
Post a Comment