klog

03 11 2007

today’s ANN goals

Posted by: Kae Verens, in ajax, areyoumad, javascript, neural networks, php, programming, sqlite

I’ve been doing well over the last two weeks - I started with an ANN which can balance a pole, and upped that by then creating a net which could recognise letters.

The plan for today is a bit more ambitious. I’m writing it down here in case it takes longer than a day to write it. In general, I want to write a PHP application which will allow you to upload images, which the ANN will then try to recognise. If it gets it right, all well and good. If it gets it wrong, you can correct it.

Some milestones for the project:

readers can upload images and have them tested and/or added to the training sequence
extraction of image pixels using <canvas>
automatic creation of new neurons as they are required
best net is stored on server, so new readers always start with a working net

I think this may grow into a damned cool thing - I’m already thinking of other cool features like distributed nets, or background nets which can be placed in other pages of a site so the thing can continue training even though the user is not actively viewing the thing (that might be a bit cheeky though).

Anyway - now that I’ve written what I intend to do, I suppose I’d better actually do it.

Comments 1 Comment »

27 09 2007

fckeditor vs tinymce vs everything else

Posted by: Kae Verens, in ajax, fckeditor, javascript, web development

A few questions for the webdev community - especially javascript coders

Which is easier to use, FCKeditor or TinyMCE? Which is less buggy? Which has the better developers? Which is easier to extend? Are there better editors out there?

I’ve been working with FCKeditor for the last few years, and am getting a bit tired of it.

Almost two years ago, I extended their file manager by providing the ability to delete files or rename them. I submitted the code back to them, and …two years later, you still can’t delete files in the FCKeditor file manager.

Yesterday, I discovered that FCKeditor’s HTML-standards are a little restrictive - it assumes the code will be directly embedded in either the <body>, <noscript> or <blockquote> element. This means that the following code is illegal according to FCKeditor, even though it is legal according to the W3C specifications (if embedded in, say, a <div> element):

<p>some text</p>
<img alt="" src="http://www.fckeditor.net/images/logos.gif" />
<p>some text</p>

I have written some pretty complex code for FCKeditor in the past, including the ability to drag elements from an external list into it, and the ability to create and destroy instances pretty much on the fly, for AJAX apps.

The last paragraph is probably the only reason I am wary of swapping to another WYSIWYG like that *snaps fingers*. I don’t look forward to having to rewrite that functionality - it was hard enough in the first place…

However, today, I spent hours trying to track down a reason why plugins were not loading even though the rest of FCKeditor was. I’m preparing to jump ship now. It’s just too exhausting fixing this editor. I’d prefer to work on a simpler, more robust editor.

I’m tired of its bloat and slowness and am asking you all out there in the web world to tell me what you use, why you use it, and would you recommend it.

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26 09 2007

return of the autocropper

Posted by: Kae Verens, in ajax, javascript, php

Yesterday, I remembered a little demo I announced almost two years ago and tried it in IE6 to find it did not work.

I’ve fixed it up and the source is now available. Very very simple source (I wrote it two years ago - it’s not the prettiest in the world), but it does the job.

the demo (sources)

It’s a simple trick for automatically curving text around an image.

before
before
after
after

How to use: add the script to your document’s <head> section, making sure that the hard-coded URLs in it (to the .php and the .gif) are correct.

The images you want cropped, give a class of autocrop. The image must have a float set as well.

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