What is perfection, anyway?

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I just saw a tweet from JJ Acouturier (@jjtokyo), re-tweet from someone else, linking to the following editorial article.

The original tweet by was:

ACM CCR had *no* peer-reviewed papers in July -- all were rejected! The editor's critique of reviewing is a must-read: ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p…

I thought I could throw in some comments about what the author (S. Keshav) wrote.
Continue reading →

HTKInPy, a python wrapper for HTK

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Introduction
I decided to write a wrapper for HTK, in order notably to be able to launch and use HTK to:

  • Extract features,
  • Train GMM/HMM’s,
  • Classify/Recognize.

    • This is the second time I am trying to use HTK.

    The first time, I mainly used the tutorial in order to get familiar with it. I ended up with pieces of code in shell scripts, python scripts and many files spread a little bit everywhere. Continue reading →

    Technical Interview: Parenthesis Problem

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    Problem Statement:

    I recently went through an interview process, for a software engineer position, during which the interviewer asked me to solve the following problem:

    Given N parenthesis, write a program that outputs all the valid parenthesis combinations.

    Explanations:

    Of course, for N odd, the program should output some error message. For N=2, the program should output something like {(), }. For other values of N:

    N=4: {(()), ()(), }
    N=6: {((())), ()()(), ()(()), (())(), (()())}
    etc.     Continue reading →

    Making Vamp Plug-Ins (for Sonic Visualiser)

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    I have recently been developing some of my research topic into a Vamp Plug-In.

    On this page, I would like to share this (sometimes painful) experience.

    This is still work in progress, but in case the “work in progress” would take too long, I decided to publish it while writing it. That good enough for ya? Continue reading →

    Reading the Bogdanov’s

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    I have just read “Le visage de Dieu”, by the Bogdanov brothers. Interesting! Although I would actually recommend the books by Stephen Hawking instead: they are less “oriented”.

    Indeed, my feeling about this Bogdanov’s book is that, beyond the words, the authors try to infer that there is something (or more likely “someone”) behind the Big Bang. That s just a very diffuse feeling about it, though, I won’t develop more there… But I guess one should be warned about that!

    And, frankly, I do not think their writing skills are so great – but who am I to judge my research fellows

    ? At least, this book opened my mind to this field, the cosmological research. Maybe one day…

    Edit (22/05/2011): Shortly after the Bogdanov’s, I came to read Stephen Hawking’s books (thanks, dad!). That probably is a much better choice to start with. Surprisingly, Hawking manages to be clearer, while saying much more and going much deeper into the implications of the theories that are around.

    Zelenka on archive.com

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    Some time ago, I saw that youtube movie of a guy playing music with himself (the piano and the drums). I thought, “why should I not try to play a trio-sonata for 2 oboes and a bassoon all by myself?”

    And there I recorded myself, with my alto saxophone and my oboe, the first trio-sonata from Jan Dismas Zelenka.

    I put the files on archive.com there. I know, it s noisy, and the perform

    ance is a bit less than average. But still, there s some spirit to it, no?

    New 2010 article

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    We are trying to publish one last thing about my PhD work, with Gaël Richard and Bertrand David, at the forthcoming IEEE journal on selected topics on signal processing, in the “Music Signal Processing” special issue.

    Edit (22/05/2011): the article got accepted!

    only need to correct some details and package all the necessary sources!