Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Meetings and reconstruction

This week I started with casework and some work related on our projects. Since I did not have enough time on working on the R&D-projects, we tried to hire someone. This worked out well, since we managed to find someone for the projects within several days. Of course it would take some weeks before he could start working, since there is a security clearance needed for that function.

I was looking into a case and the digitization, for our project on CODECS. It appeared that when I stored a DV-signal with Premiere, with different viewers I had different results. With mediaplayer I could not visualize the videofile. With Quicktime the quality was less then with Premiere or Realvideo. This means that there is something with the CODECS within the software. I was wondering what could happen in court if someone visualizes mediafiles with different kinds of software and was convinced that this project is worthwhile to work on.

This morning I went to a meeting with one of our directors for the union. It was very hot today also in this room, and the atmosphere during the meeting was good. Next week I would start to chair a committee for the union on recertification and other procedures around that, since there is discussion going on a system for personal certification. Other thing were as usual, the procedures for overtime work that did not work, which should be less bureaucratic, however due to the rules and accountants could not be modified. Of course the expanding number of DNA cases and how to deal with these requests are standard as topics, and our move to a new building in October. And then the idea that the HRM-department would stop to work the way it works now, since our managers should be integral HRM-managers, and the HRM-department would be replaced by a shared service center for the government. This means that the department would be replaced by computer screens with web interfaces.

This afternoon a reconstruction of a length measurement. Length measurement is always difficult since there are many factors influencing a person length on a CCTV-image, and it is even worse when the images are of bad quality (which is often the case with those systems). However we managed to get some reference images and did also some validation tests for the system. To work this case out and make a 3D model could take several weeks.

It rained this evening after the heat of the last days, so that was a good thing.