This is the view after a short hike in Runde, Norway. For the full picture go here.

After the fact, I learned that this area has some interesting history. In 1725, the Akerendam shipwrecked off the coast of Runde. The following summer four chests and other parts of the cargo were salvaged. In 1972, three sports divers rediscovered the long forgotten wreck. The finders were allowed to keep 2/3 of the found treasure. Here is the story from Wikipedia.

I have succesfully defended my thesis work: Localized statistical shape models for detection of osteoarthritic changes of the trapezium.

I developed a method to obtain a localized statistical shape model similar to the method proposed by Alcantara. However, this new method has a smooth optimization function and can be applied to much denser models. The image below shows the difference between using principle component analysis (left) and the new method. The red region shows the area effected by a particular mode describing the deterioration of surface as a result of osteoarthritis.

Pictures from the Buiten Lekker Onder Water day with the dive club.

For the full picture go here. 

Due to having moved around a lot while growing up, I have a number of distinct groups in my social network on Facebook. For my data visualization course I decided to extract the data from Facebook and create an application to visualize it. A short video can be found here.

This is an artistic impression of the rover that we designed for our final BSc project. It is designed to fulfill the requirements for the Google Lunar X-Prize.

More info at: reachforthemoon.nl

These are pictures from our first days in Cuba. As you can see we have had some good and some bad weather. The first day we went into Havana with clear blue skies, but after about a hour the sky turned dark and rain started coming down.

On day two we went to two local markets to buy veggies. In the afternoon we had our second tropical thunderstorm.

Day three was spent at Club Havana on the beach. Swimming, snorkeling, beach volleyball, and some frisbeeing. And of course we all turned different shades of red.

Day four we dropped off Guido, Miriam, and Lennert in Havana Vieja to walk around. We were supposed to go to the airport to pick up my dad, but since his flight was not correctly confirmed he lost his seat on the plane. So he’ll be back a day later.

We have some cool movies of the rain storm.

I’ve been back in South Africa for little over a week and a half. And I must admit that it is nice to be back. The weather is starting to cool down, winters coming, but it is still warm enough to lay by the pool and do nothing. Which I was planning on doing a lot of while I was here. However the first day I was here we were invited to go watch a rugby game between the Jo’burg Lions and the Pretoria Bulls. It was the first time that I have been to a rugby game, but my brothers friend explained it well enough to be able to follow what was happening.

Saturday we traveled to the picturesque town of Vreren to have lunch with the Vos’n. After a nice lunch of freshly caught salmon we went for a leisurely stroll in fields around the Vos residence.

After our walk we were pleasantly surprised with a home made chocolate mouse cake made by Lene. After which we had to rush to Tongeren to finally get a glimpse of baby Jules. Jules was absolutely adorable, with his tiny little mouth and nose. And of course it was also nice to see all the old housemates again.

This is a sample image for the project that I have been working on. Basicly the project goal is to see if Synthetic aperture radar images can be used to monitor tidal flats. The region of interest is the Waddenzee in the Netherlands. For the project we received 121 images that were taken since 1992. The raw data has to be extracted and converted to amplitudes. Using these amplitudes we can make images. As you can tell from the picture, you dont actually get a true color image but merely a representation of how much light is reflected back to the satellite.