Colors I see you

colours.icu ("Colors I see you") is a website I quickly made to test out an idea for an animated color blindness correction filter.

Normal color blindness correction filters will simply transform the color space of an image to make it possible for color blind people to distinguish between some of the colors that they normally can't. That also means though that in the "corrected" version they are unable to distinguish between colors that they normally could and also all the colors look completely wrong.

So the idea I had was to use animation to be able to present to the person both the base image in it's correct colors, while periodically flashing a second version of the image that causes areas to become brighter or darker depending on what color they really are. For example red details flash bright while green details flash dark.

For example take this image that someone posted on reddit:

It's a tree that hasn't become fully red during autumn yet because part of it was illuminated by that lamp. To someone with protanopia this looks like this: (if I implemented my filters right)

The distinction between red and green is gone. So what the website gives you is the following image:

 

 

The animation on the website is smoother, not a bright flash like in this GIF file, so if you want to see it properly just go to colors.icu and upload something yourself.

You can see that the red parts of the image are flashing brighter while the green ones and staying dark or becoming even darker.

I am still not very confident that I did all the math right and I plan to try a slightly different way to do the correction, especially for deuteranopia.

The site can also do correction for the anomalous forms of color blindness (when people are trichromats but with slightly wrong detection for one of the colors) but because there's nothing super scientific about the website, just try all the correction modes and find the one that works best for you.

Windows XP and Vista running on Ubuntu

Here is a new video that I uploaded to YouTube. It's my system running Windows XP and Vista at the same time, virtualized with VirtualBox on Ubuntu. The theme I am using is Ubuntu Satanic Edition (with a different background). You can also see the Desktop Cube that Compiz offers. :-)



Still not switched to Linux? ;-) You won't miss Windows this way...

PS: The FPS aren't that slow as they seem to be on the Video. Also, some horizontal red stripes that appear while rotating the cube are a glich in the capture and don't really exist.

BMPGlyph

Do you know what is this? No, it's not some random picture. It's a stereogram, more specificaly it's a random dot, diverging, autostereogram. It's a 2D picture designed to trick the brain into believing that it is a 3D picture if viewed correctly.

There is at least one program for Linux that creates that kind of pictures but I decided to make my own algorithm/program which I called BMPGlyph and works on both Linux and Windows. I uploaded a beta version which you can download by clicking here. Just read the instructions in the zipfile.

I will also try to make an algorithm that extracts the heightmap from an autostereogram. It will be very helpful those people that cannot see autostereograms. :-)

How to configure Compiz in Gutsy

Compiz is composite window manager for Linux. It's a program that manages the placement and drawing of windows on your screen. At the same time it uses hardware accelerated 3D graphics to draw effects for certain events (minimization, maximization, closing, changing desktop etc). Last March, Compiz and Beryl (a fork of Compiz featuring more 3D effects) were merged again and now there are two software packages available: Compiz-core and Compiz Fusion.

The good thing is that Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon comes with Compiz pre-installed. The bad thing is that they did not include the settings manager, leaving you with only three preset configurations (found in System->Preferences->Appearance->Visual Effects).

If you want more control over compiz (compiz is capable for much more things than those found in the "Extra" preset) will have to install compizconfig-settings-manager. To do this, use a console (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) to execute this command:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
(or use System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager to find and install the package)

Now go to System->Preferences->Appearance. It should contain one more option named "Custom":

Select it and then click preferences and start configuring the plugins you need.

If you have no idea how to configure them you can download my settings by clicking here. I use mostly the fire effect (because it matches with Ubuntu SE). If you move the pointer to the upper left corner of the screen you will get thumbnails of all open windows in all desktops. There are 4 desktops which form a cube that you are inside it. By touching the left or the right screen edge you can move to the next or previous desktop. Moving the pointer to the upper right corner will show you the four desktops. Take a look at this post as it contains two videos demonstrating the above.

To import my settings follow these steps:

1. System->Preferences->Appearance
2. Click the Preferences button on the Visual Effects tab.
3. In CompizConfig Settings Manager click on Preferences.
4. Create a new profile by clicking on the + symbol.
5. Click Import and select the downloaded file.

Salad Fingers 8th episode

I have already written a post about David Firth's creations. I wrote about Salad Fingers which I hope that you watched and "enjoyed". The reason I post today is that the 8th episode of Salad fingers has been released! It's called the "cupboard" and I found out about it today. So if you haven't watched the previous episodes, do so and then watch the 8th too.

I also found a little secret. After Salad Fingers (on the 8th episode) gets electrocuted by the radio and puts his hands down, you can hear a weak sound playing for some seconds. Well I don't know if it is meant to be a stomach growl but at least that is what Firth suggests:


To see this picture yourself use the trick that I described in this post (read the important edit carefully).

Image Analyzer

Have you got any old photos that need retouching? If you don't want to use expensive and hard to use applications then you should try Image Analyzer. It might not be open source but it is high quality freeware that runs on Windows and on Linux with Wine. It has some great features like texture synthesis which will cover holes and other defects of old photos. Just keep in mind that it is not a drawing program, it is clearly a photo editing program focused on having many different filters.

But apart from enhancing photographs you can also do more funny things with it. Take a look at this cow which I made using the texture synthesis tool of Image Analyzer:


Image Analyzer can also be extended with plugins, so if you are a developer you might consider writing one for it. Currently there are about ten plugins.

The only bad thing about Image Analyzer is that it has no documentation. There is a short tutorial on its website and a nice support forum though.

I hope that it gets open source soon... ;-) (some older versions are already open source)

David Firth's Animations

David Firth is a very talented flash animator. I find his animations really interesting. Most of them (maybe all of them) are surrealistic and, usually, resemble dreams or nightmares.

One of the best animation series that Firth has made is Salad Fingers. Salad Fingers is a creepy green masochist man that loves touching rusty spoons and other rough surfaces with his oversized fingers. He lives in a strange world that seems to me like the earth after a great nuclear world war. I won't say more. Just click here and watch the 7 episodes that have been until now released. It will give you the creeps but watch all of them very carefully. Salad Fingers is really well done and is one of the best animations on the Internet. It is just NOT another violent and disgusting flash animation.

(IMPORTANT EDIT: It seems that Firth changed the structure of his website and the following trick will not work correctly. To view the flash animation on it's own and not on a webpage you find it's name in the source code of the corresponding webpage and then copy paste it's address manually in the address bar. Another solution would be to save the page. This will save an HTLM file and a directory with files. Find a file with ".swf" extension inside this directory and open it with Firefox. Then follow the instructions bellow. The text in the square brackets [] was working with the previous structure of Firth's website, ignore it and do what I told you instead. If I confused you then please leave a comment and I will try to explain it better to you.)

Here is a trick that might reveal strange things or even easter eggs in some of his animations. While you watch an animation on fat-pie (Firth's website), [change the ".html" ending of the current page into ".swf" so that you view the flash animation not embedded in a webpage]. Now by resizing the browser you will also resize the viewport of the flash animation and therefore you will be able to see things which normally would be out of sight. Try resizing your browser into a short and thin window and then view this animation. After the kid that smelt funny is burned you will have to pause on the point when the headmasters door is shown. Now, look at the board on the right. It will be like this:


Normally the right part of this board ("DON'T READ THIS BIT YOU LOSER") wouldn't be visible. ;-) Please note that I tried this with Firefox on Ubuntu Linux. I do not know if it is possible with Internet Explorer or Opera. I would be pleased if I had some feedback on this.
Anyway, back to the point. Go now to fat-pie cartoon section and watch everything. They rock!

Old Program - StereoFreak

Stereofreak is a program that I wrote in Visual Basic. It helps you create stereoscopic photos. These are 3D photos that can be viewed with some special glasses (those that have a red and a green lens). For more information on stereoscopy you may read this article.

You can download Stereofreak by clicking here.

Here is a screenshot of the program:


And here is a 3D photo created with StereoFreak:

Old Program - Legend

Legend is a program which I made when I use was using Windows and Visual Basic. You give to it a picture, let's say a photo of a silly friend, and then a directory full of, for example, porn pictures. :-) Legend will create a photographic mosaic with the porn pictures that resembles the photo of your silly friend. It has an option to enlarge the resulting photo so that you can make it a poster. So print it and send it to your friends mum. ;-) Of course you can find much better uses for this program, like making a picture of a politician out of starving children or perhaps a picture of a flower made out of pictures from your holidays.

You can download Legend by clicking here.

Here is a screenshot of the program: