Friday, October 24, 2008

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

With or without color

The people with Albinism have little or no pigment in their eyes, skin, or hair. They have inherited altered genes that do not make the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin, which is responsible for the color. The principal gene which results in Albinism prevents the body from making the usual amounts of this pigment.

It is not a disease, infection and cannot be transmitted through contact, the thing is more complicated.

“The genes for Albinism are located on “autosomal” chromosomes. Autosomes are the chromosomes that contain genes for our general body characteristics, contrasted to the sex chromosomes. We normally have two copies of these chromosomes and the genes on them – one inherited from our father, the other inherited from our mother. Neither of these gene copies is functional in people with Albinism. However, Albinism is a “recessive trait”, so even if only one of the two copies of the Albinism gene is functional, a person can make pigment, but will carry the albinism trait. Both parents must carry a defective albinism gene to have a child with Albinism. When both parents carry the defective gene (and neither parent has albinism) there is a one in four chance at each pregnancy that the baby will be born with Albinism. This type of inheritance is called “autosomal recessive” inheritance.”

There are a lot of attitudes towards albino people in different cultures of the world. On Fiji Islands they are usually very respectful and high-ranking people, on the contrary in Africa their life is very complicated.
There is a belief in South Africa, that after death albinos are disappearing, like dissolving in the air.

All my life this phenomenon was associated with purity, transparency and tenderness. When I was a child I thought that these people were angels. Now, when I see their photos I think that maybe there is something there, and only the nature knows the answer.







Saturday, October 4, 2008

Seam carving

Seam carving is an image resizing algorithm developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. This algorithm alters the size of an image by intelligently removing pixels from (or adding pixels to) the image that carry little importance.
The algorithm determines the least noticeable paths from one side of an image to another, called seams, and cuts the image along those seams. These paths are not straight, but follow the contours of the content in the image. This is why the technique is also called Content Aware Image Resizing.
The importance of a pixel is generally measured by its contrast compared with its neighbor pixels. Additionally, it's possible to define areas of high importance in which pixels may not be deleted, and conversely, areas of zero importance which should be removed first.
With this technique, it's now possible to reduce or enlarge pictures and still retain the details.
Adobe has integrated this technology as an image transformation option in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Beauty around us

There is a building out of my office window. It has ugly façade, but has nice red roof. Usually it becomes pink in the sunlight and wine red after 7 p.m. There is a high tree behind the building as well. The top branches are bold and resemble human hands that want to reach the sky. The bottom branches are covered with small green leaves. The sky is very blue (R: 183 G: 216 B: 249) today with only one small ship-shaped cloud.

Most of the people can notice only the ugly building and usually keep the windows closed. I’m wondering, why don’t they notice the beauty around them?