It all started around … hmm let me think, what, 2 years ago, during a very hot summer in Tokyo where I was playing around while reading a very poor book on OpenCV. OpenCV as you may already know is a superb library to do image manipulation and analysis, as well as video streaming and real time Augmented Reality things.
The fresh white wine along reading was superb, people passing-by around looked like they were enjoying the summer as much as they could and reading a book always is relaxing.
But that book was not so good a read; the examples were too simple, not with great results, did not explain how to build on those examples and finally the only thing after each of those examples was just a list of available functions without much explanations on how to deal with the parameters and also the timing.
So I decided to try to rewrite those examples in Clojure, and whenever possible hide the complexity and the redundancy of the code presented. The Clojure code was ok, but then I was always trying to find out where each method was hidden in which class and so finally came up with a generated wrapper, origami, that was doing all the painful work.
That was it, the wrapper could rewrite any of the example available and was in many cases easier to read and write than their native C or python equivalent. Wouhou.
But to get pass through the first excitement of having something to show to people you really need a channel to actually present your work, and for this I really had a lucky stone. Nikhil is always listening to propsed ideas and got excited (you were right??) when I talked about the subject.
We worked on the proposition together and once accepted I got introduced to a fantastic lady named Divya also at Apress, who would lead the project at the speed of light, and we actually finish the writing part in … what .. 2 months ?? It was definltey shorter than three!
The content of this new book, is of course about programming and using OpenCV but is also a trip into creation. Handling pictures, moving them around, combining, creating videos and looking for oranges and cats … Writing this book has been my most pleasurable writing experience so far. The amount of work that went into this book is simply enormous and I would not have been able to finish all this on time without the help of my daughter and family who helped in reaching the final deadlines.
Now is the time to be part of this book, grab it, glance over it, read it, have some wine, and go and create.
I really hope you enjoy the reading and the adventure.
The book is available on Amazon and of course Apress.
Yours,