The plastic menagerie

An interesting fact about picture filtering

2011-12-07T04:00:00.001-08:00

Just the other day I was trying to explain to someone that the archetype of the "little Dutch girl" - a picture of a traditional Dutch attire wearing young girl is well known in many places and Greece is no exception.

Now, some other person in our company did not know what that term meant so I decided to use Google image search to demonstrate. I had strong picture filter on to avoid getting erotic/inappropriate imagery and I typed in Google image search the following (you can try it yourselves):

η μικρη ολλανδεζα

which translates to

the little Dutch girl

Now, if you use the English term you get picture of what I was talking about - the iconic image of a little Dutch girl dressed in traditional Dutch attire. But if you try the Greek term you get some highly inappropriate nude imagery.

I found out subsequently by a person in the know that image filtering is not done by doing image analysis but rather by performing term analysis and using other metrics (like what type of a website the image is hosted on).

Thesis availability

2011-10-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

Since I abandoned my old Internet space provider my Phd thesis (written in 2006) has not been available online but through my old University's website. For those interested in it, it can be found here.

Sigh...

2011-10-16T09:45:00.001-07:00

Ok, so by now it is painfully obvious that I am not updating my blog but I have very good reason - a bunch of good reasons actually which I will post here someday!

Until next time, please excuse the cheekiness and feel free to check back in a few months. Cheerio and good day!

Hello world!

2011-03-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

I am putting my picture up in case people are wondering if I am who they think I am. I will try to put some of my old posts up here if I can figure it in short order.

A new beginning (again)

2011-03-08T12:44:00.000-08:00

My old blog is now sadly, defunct. My web space provider increased their prices and I judged using their services to be unsound. Hello blogspot!