continue
When it came to
FYP 2, I started to realize that I had limited time to develop my Face
Recognition application in which I had to begin from scratch and learn new
things.
The first week of
the semester, of course, I did nothing than just Youtube-ing not related
videos, reading news, blogwalking and et cetera. I really love bikes so most of
the times I spent my precious hours watching bloopers videos. Again, even the
first week, I had initiated no contact with my supervisor and so did him. I do
not know what happened between us, it looked like he did not really care about
me or he was waiting for me to approach him? Never mind about that. Hehe
The following
week, I began searching on face recognition, open source code, videos and
completed products. My supervisor advised me to develop the application using
open source platform as it is easier to be marketed since no license or
approval needed. But then, I just started using MacBook since June 2015 and was
not really familiar or know how to setup the environment of this laptop so that
I can start coding. There is this one guy in my class that is quite good with
programming (he was sent to Japan for IT Exhibition) and using MacBook, he is
Wira Azharan. I went to him and asked him on the applications that needed to
develop my project. Just in a day, I settled everything!
I found a website
that teaches and provides a simple example of face recognition application. The
explanations on the website are understandable but a problem arose when I try
to run the codes via XCode, it always gave me errors like missing bla bla bla.
I googled the errors to solve my problems because yeah, now everything can be
found in Google. There were many suggestions on the problems but for Mac
specifically, I was required to install extra modules of OpenCV. Then, I simply
downloaded the files needed and followed all the installation procedure. Still,
it could only solve partial of the problems. “contrib.hpp is missing” That was the error that I got every single
time. I tried all the suggestions and got cornered by the same problem.
I gave up. I did
not touch the coding for a week. I really felt bad about myself because of
choosing a topic that was beyond my capability. Many things worried my then. I
need to graduate, pass the Final Year Project and maintain my CGPA.
Day after day, I
talked with my friends about changing my topic and they suggested me to seek
opinion from my supervisor. The only idea came up was to build something that
is really basic and simple like website. I learnt Website Development in my
first year and it was not that hard. Plus, there are many templates available
online. So, one day, I texted my
supervisor to meeting him but he was busy and only free after 5 pm. I was a
scumbag so I cancelled the meeting last minute and went deafening silence after
that. Haha Silly me.
Obviously, I am
not a programmer and to develop a sophisticated application like face
recognition sure is impossible.
Some of the
seniors suggested me to hire an external party to develop a completed
application for me in which I only have to do the documentation and
presentation part. But then, I will learn nothing if I simply outsource the
project from A-Z.
I still remember,
it was week 6 and I was struggling with the coding. I had 4 weeks or a month
time window until the first submission and Pre-Sedex. I tried to develop the
application on my own without any helps and of course, I was stuck at the same
problem which was the execution. I had sleepless nights. Every time I went to
bed, I always got myself thinking on how to solve the looping, the function and
et cetera, and I ended up sitting in front of my laptop trying to fix things
up. I skipped few classes. I lost my sleeping pattern which I only slept after
7am until 12pm. Still, those were fine until I started ordering Pizza Delivery.
God. If you look through my online transaction, I had ordered numerous number
of junk foods within a week. The Pizza, Pepsi, Chicken Wings, Chicken Fingers…
Name it. Haha Not just that, it was like almost every night I spent my midnight
at Mamak for “Supper” and the expenses incurred for food those days were
tremendously higher than before.
Well, luckily, a
man, who does not want to be acknowledged, he is an American based in
California, he had helped me by providing his past project and guided me to
understand every single line that I could use or implement in my project. He
segregated all the functions into smaller piece which was easier for me to read
and understand, and of course my project was merely based on his project but I
did some improvements as his was really basic. After weeks, I finally managed
to develop a complete face recognition application, was not that hard though as
MATLAB has all the functions that I needed and the only thing that I had to
know was the syntax. The “man” had taught me the basic syntax, functions and et
cetera.
Though I have
managed to complete the development, I was still not done with the
documentation. I simply used the only report since I did not have any major
changes on my project scope, all I needed to do was to delete the unnecessary
parts. For the documentation, I had to update only one chapter, Chapter 4 :
Results and Discussions, where all the results of development and testing will
be placed under.
Alhamdulillah, I
have presented my final presentation last week (VIVA) with internal Madam
Mazeyanti and external Mr. Ashok Sivaji from MIMOS. They were both quite happy
with my project and recommended me to join any conference to exhibit my
project. They liked the concept of low cost solution in which only using simple
method for face recognition instead of complicated and “hardcore” programming.
So, that is it.
Hahaha I have finished my FYP 2 and everything went very well.
Thank you to all
especially Dr BS (Californian) for the helps and guidance.
**p/s : My English is not that good but i'll brush it up. So, don't take it serious ;)
