NSF’s bi-weekly “CS Bits & Bytes” featured UW CSE’s “Rome in a Day” project back in December. (An email version went out then, but the web version only just became available due to a snafu.)
“The University of Washington team, with the help of NSF funding, has been able to create a computer program that includes a “parallel matching” system that can match massive collections of images very quickly to create 3D reconstructions. The team ran 150,000 images from Flicker.com associated with the tags “Rome” or “Roma” through their matching algorithm, and the images organized themselves into a number of groups that corresponded to major landmarks. In one example, the computer analysis was able to take 2,106 photos of the Colosseum in Rome, map nearly one million points on those images, and reconstruct a 3D image of the Colosseum. Other 3D images reconstructed included Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and St. Peter’s Basilica. This computer matching and reconstruction from Rome took a total of 21 computer hours and near 500 computer cores, or central processing units. In addition to Rome, the project reconstructed 3D models of landmarks in Venice, Italy and Dubrovnik, Croatia.”
Read the post and watch videos here. Read more →
“Jeff Dean facts aren’t, well, true. But the fact that someone went to the trouble to make up Chuck Norris-esque exploits about Dean is remarkable. That’s because Jeff Dean is a software engineer, and software engineers are not like Chuck Norris. For one thing, they’re not lone rangers—software development is an inherently collaborative enterprise. For another, they rarely shoot cowboys with an Uzi.
“Nevertheless, on April Fool’s Day 2007, some admiring young Google engineers saw fit to bestow upon Jeff Dean the honor of a website extolling his programming achievements. For instance:
- Compilers don’t warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers.
- Jeff Dean writes directly in binary. He then writes the source code as documentation for other developers.
- When Jeff Dean has an ergonomic evaluation, it is for the protection of his keyboard.
- Jeff Dean was forced to invent asynchronous APIs one day when he optimized a function so that it returned before it was invoked.”
Read more here. Read more →
Hopefully the fire marshal is otherwise occupied …
IMPORTANT: Babak Parviz’s Friday talk about Google Glass has been moved to EE125 to provide additional space. Friday, 2:00-2:30, EE125. Read more →
UW CSE invites you to join in celebrating the career of David Notkin at Notkinfest on the afternoon of Friday February 1.
- 4:00-4:30 – Colloquium, EE 105: Michael Ernst, “Software evolution then and now: the research impact of David Notkin”
- 4:30-6:00 – Reception, Microsoft Atrium, Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering
- 5:00-5:20 – Brief remarks
Please join us!
Post-event information – photographs, videos, the establishment of the David Notkin Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Computer Science & Engineering – here.
Read more →
UW’s new Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design (MHCI+D) is offered by leading UW faculty from four units: Computer Science & Engineering, Human-Centered Design & Engineering, the Information School, and the Division of Design.
MHCI+D is seeking a Director. Learn more here. Read more →
We join all of Seattle in remembering an outstanding educator and an extraordinary human being.
Read a lovely Seattle Times article by Katherine Long here. Read more →
“At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, manufacturers tantalized consumers with new electronics soon to hit the shelves. But what does that do to the prices of current models that are being replaced? Is this a golden buying opportunity? …
“Decide.com, which tracks the price of electronics, studied what happened to the cost of TVs and laptops in past years after C.E.S.”
Read more here. Try Decide.com here. Read more →
On February 1, UW alum and former UW EE professor Babak Parviz, co-creator of Google’s Project Glass, will describe that project. Babak’s Google colleagues Nirmal Patel and Bob Ryskamp also will participate.
2:00-2:30, EE125.
[CSE Ph.D. students: See separate information sent by email on January 26.]
IMPORTANT: This talk has been moved to EE125 to provide additional space. Friday, 2:00-2:30, EE125. Read more →
On January 28 at 6 p.m. in EEB 125, two Googlers will discuss Google X (Google’s “skunkworks”) and the Google Driverless Car Project.
UW CSE Ph.D. alum Adrien Treuille, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon on leave at Google X, will begin by providing an overview of activities at Google X.
Then Nick Hobbs, a graduate of Olin College and a PM at Google X, will discuss the Driverless Car Project.
Plan on roughly 60 minutes of presentation and 30 minutes of Q&A.
Please RSVP here! Read more →
On January 10 we announced the launch of the “Levytown” effort to provide badly-needed additional space for UW CSE.
Imagine our surprise this morning when we opened a small crumpled envelope and discovered, rather than the $40 he had pledged, a $1M bill from Ph.D. alum Marc Fiuczynski.
Unfortunately, the UW development office is closed on weekends, but we’ll be hustling over there first thing on Monday morning.
Read more →
