Here are some of my favorite new releases from 2008 and 2009. Although I posted in 2006 and 2007, I skipped last year. As a result, 2008 will also be featured in this post.

2009

• IQ — “Frequency”
• Porcupine Tree — “The Incident”
• Transatlantic — “The Whirlwind”
• Dream Theater — “Black Clouds and Silver Linings”
• Blackfield — “Blackfield NYC” (CD release)
• OSI — “Blood”
• Riverside — “Anno Domini High Definition”
• Glass Hammer — “Three Cheers for the Broken-Hearted”
• Knight Area — “Realm of Shadows”

2008

• Frost* — “Experiments in Mass Appeal”
• Ayreon — “01011001″
• Steven Wilson — “Insurgentes”
• The Pineapple Thief — “Tightly Unwound”
• Demians — “Building an Empire”
• The Tangent — “Not as Good as the Book”

Enjoy!

This is a bit late, but on April 17, 2009 I had the opportunity to give a second graduate seminar for the Department of Computer Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology. You can watch my talk, “Image Retrieval Using Visual Attention”, online:

http://media.fit.edu/load.php?clipid=3276

My previous talk at FIT is also online.

Harris press release
McAfee press release
Orlando Sentinel article

NPR plays interesting short clips of music between segments known as “buttons”. I heard one during All Thing Considered on Friday that really surprised me. You can find a list of all past buttons, organized by program and date on NPR’s site (including other shows such as Morning Edition and Wait Wait).

The site has the same audio sample from the radio ready to play on demand and links to purchase the music (purchases made through the site support NPR).

From the brief clip I heard on Friday I though they were playing the song “Harmony Korine” from Steven Wilson’s upcoming album, Insurgentes. A visit to the site confirmed it! Not only is it a great song, but the album hasn’t even been released yet (a digital version is available if you preorder, but the physical CD doesn’t come out until late February). Insurgentes is the first solo album from Steven Wilson. His other projects include Porcupine Tree and Blackfield.

On Friday, October 17 I presented an invited talk at the Florida Institute of Technology as part of their seminar series. I spoke about “Image Retrieval Using Visual Attention”. You can watch the talk online (WMV format). There’s also a direct link to my lecture.

Watch out for the surprise ending…

My Ph.D. dissertation abstract was recently included in the ACM SIGMM eNewsletter. The “FAU Salient” image database is also in the issue.

Next week I start my new job with Harris Corp. in Melbourne, FL. Harris is a communications company with about 16000 employees worldwide (approximately half are at the headquarters in Melbourne). Melbourne is near Orlando and Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s Atlantic coast. There are about 530000 people in the vicinity of Melbourne.

On Friday I formally received my Ph.D. from Florida Atlantic University. The day began with a reception hosted by the College of Engineering and Computer Science, which was followed by the actual commencement ceremony. I’ve posted a picture from just after the ceremony on the photos page. A video is also available:

The final version of my dissertation, “Image Retrieval Using Visual Attention” is now available (PDF, 6MB).