During my trip in USA, Prof. Tang demonstrated a new product of Microsoft Research Asia to me: The Digital Effects for MSN Messenger. It is very amazing.

 

Please refer to the following address to download it:

 

 

 

I recorded a video for of my using the software. You can see in the video that I become a pig! Don't miss it and click the following link to see the video:

 

 

 

Guest, where am I ?

 

I am now writing this blog over 30000 feet over the pacific ocean. What a wonderful experience to access the internet through wireless service in a plane!

 

 

This morning, I presented my oral paper in CVPR 2006 conference, held in New York City.

 

 

Before the formal presentation, Prof. Tang has made a rehearsal with me and offered some suggestions.

 

Basically, the presentaion is successful. David Fleet, the associate chief editor of PAMI, come to congratulated me for the talk. He said it is a great talk, simple, elegant and hitting the key. He also talked with me on the PhD application and recommended to me that the machine learning group in Toronto Univ. is very prestigious, comparable to MIT.  Another guy also said that it is clear and enlightening.

 

Nonetheless, other voices also exist. In some one's eyes, the work is not worthy. A researcher said that such works are outdated ten years ago.

 

An interesting instances occured before my presentation. According to the schedule, I am the second one to present. However, after the first guy finished his presentation, the microphone suddenly crashed. It has not been fixed when I went up to the rostrum. They told me to wait for several minutes. So I kept standing there with nothing to do. I feel so embarrassed with so many eyes focused on me while I just did not know what I should do. Several minutes later, the microphone is still not ready. They told me to come down. After another several minutes, the system restored, I went up again and started my talk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As in previous conferences, I would like to give a first-day report on the conference.

 

I reached New York City yesterday night. In the view from the plane, it is a rather huge city, comprising many large islands. I know from a guy here that the population in New York, nearly the largest city in the world, is over 20 million.

 

The conference is held in Kimmel center, NYU. This morning, I got up quite early, and walked to the conference site. It took me about 25 minutes' walking, across about 25 blocks. On my arrival, I saw a long queue waiting for registration. It is my honor that my boss is also queuing with me there. Nearly nothing is given to the attendees, except for a small pamphlet.  It seems that prof. Tang is quite unsatisfied with the conference arrangement. He said, ICCV 2005 is organized much better than this one. (Prof. Tang is the local arrangement chair for ICCV 2005 held in Beijing).

 

The invited talk given today develops some new yet insightful perspective into the biometric systems, strongly challenging the conventions in this field. Some aspects that are not optimistic are pinpointed. However, today is not very exciting generally. The quality of the works presented in the workshops is not high. That is why I go out to write this blog:-)