Julien's fuzzy blog

After a new session of data acquisition with Dan and a long morning of calibration, I got some new images to show you, starring Benny .
As the colors of one camera were not very good (over-saturated), I've tried to use this camera only for 3D modelling, but not for shading. Some parts were not textured at all, so I decided to use this bad camera view only if there was no other texture available. In which case the upper body shading is much better, but the legs are quite problematic.

I just come back from a conference... no comment.

My parents sent me the full-size pictures of the UTMB, thank you ! They're online within the UTMB 2005 article. I've also added my speed along the trail a couple of days ago. I guess I've now finished with this article. Enjoy.

Odile's father, Yves, managed to finish the Grand Raid de la Réunion - la diagonale des fous (the diagonal of the fools). 140km and 8500m of elevation gain on highly technical terrain in 50 hours as you can see here. Well done !

Today Kim, Odile and I went to walk a bit of the North Downs Way, from Folkestone to Dover. The weather was quite good so Kim was brave enough to bath her feet at Dover beach. The path was mostly following the edge of the cliffs and we could see easily the French coast. We saw lots of kestrels.
Funny moment of the day: Odile managed to loose her train ticket in the air conditionning system. I had to get it back, liing down under the table using Kim's hairpins. Great fun !

Last week-end, Karim and I went to Amsterdam to visit and to run the marathon.

The city:
Amsterdam is quite ... special. It could be a kind of romantic city, with its lovely canals and small bridges everywhere. But it seems that nobody really cares about that and most the banks are not particularly attractive.
Beside that, of course there's Red Lights District, where our hostel was located. It's a quarter of rather explicit sex shops, a quarter of coffee shops that perfume all the streets with hemp, a quarter of restaurants, and surprisingly a quarter of typical British/Irish pubs. With Sky Sport, of course, no English would miss Chelsea vs Bolton because of a week-end trip to Amsterdam. Beside that, there are of course the prostitutes behind their windows and the drug dealers everywhere.

The race:
As the title suggests, the marathon attemp was awfull due to my dodgy stomach. The first 15km were painful, as if I had a big ball in my tummy. Then I threw up a couple of times and things got better for a short while, although I couldn't really drink or eat. I guess none of my breakfast neither the water I got at the food points stayed with me. Hypoglycemia and dehydratation started logically. Somehow I managed to run another 10km, eyes closed half of time, not really conscious any more, starting to walk more and more often. Then I sat down on the grass at km 27 and "Het Nederlandse Rode Kruis" picked me up... Dank u wel ! End of the story.
That's really sad, because everything was really nice. The organisation was very good: the pastas at the pasta party were excellent, the route was rather scenic (canals, windmills), and they even provided nipples protections The weather was good too and the people much more friendly than in other marathons. Anyway...
A funny bit was the return to the hostel with my tiny short. Everybody was stairing at my parts, without hiding themselves at all... I had also to take the train to the airport and to check-in like that before I could find a shower ...

What is this stomach problem ?
So what causes this stomach problem I got in Belfast and Amsterdam ? Here are some info about the distances over a marathon I've run:

run	distance	breakfast at "home"	pace	stress	over feeding
Paris 2003	42.195	yes	slow	+++	+
Paris 2004	42.195	yes	average	++	+
Belfast 2005	43.375...	no	a bit fast	+	+++
Lakes training	50 (trail)	n/a	slow	-	-
UTMB 2005	158 (trail)	n/a	slow	+++	+
Amsterdam 2005	42.195	no	a bit fast	-	-

My guess would be an unusual breakfast that my stomach doesn't appreciate, combined maybe with a fast start. Next time I take my cereals with me ! Any more idea ?

Note: although I got some minor stomach problems during the UTMB, it was something completely different, that disapeared quickly.

I've closed today the my fundraised UTMB against AIDS through the AVERT charity. I've raised £503.02. I really hope it can help to make the difference.
A huge THANK YOU to all my sponsors and supporters !
Tomorrow I'm flying for Amsterdam. I'm about to run this marathon without an amazing motivation I reckon. I feel physically pretty well, but I'm elsewhere. We'll see.

After correction of a bunch of bugs and hole filling.

The back is still strange, because this part of the fish is viewed rather tangentially by only one camera. Therefore the resolution is not sufficient for a proper reconstruction. Its right eye is probably blurred do to some inaccuracy in the camera calibration: images don't match perfectly.

Two German students (from Saarbrucken) have invented an electronic beer-mat that calls automatically the barman when the glass is nearly empty ... Proper useful research in South-West Germany !
Article in Libération in French and the approximate translation by google.

My first results with Image-Based Visual Hulls. Not perfect as you can see, but I'll try to improve them. This is mostly due to an inaccurate camera cross-calibration. Also results using images of myself and my red T-shirt are not beautiful enough to been demonstrated


blended textures from various cameras (according to their positions)


texture of the nearest camera

Yesterday Mommas and I went hiking on the east side of the South Downs Way. We walked the ending loop starting from Eastbourne.
We started by the inland part in the hills, mostly covered in meadows and woods to Jevington, Alfriston, Litlington and Westdean. Then we headed to the grassy coast (Birling Gap and Beachy Head). The white chalk cliffs offer really great scenery, but it was a bit too crowded for me. Also, we saw a large number of hill-runners all along the route. Gives me some ideas .
The weather was really sunny, but also windy and quite cool. Perfect for hiking ! This was supposed to be a long day hike (around 35km), but we ended up with a rather traditional 9am-5pm day . I guess I'm not very good at evaluating speed on rather "flat" terrain.

A pretty nice picture of Beachy Head on wikipedia.