Wednesday January 19, 2005

2006 Honda Civic to debut at Chicago Auto Show

vtec.net -> edmunds.com

Above : unconfirmed spy photos of the 2006 Civic.

The eighth-generation version of the popular Honda Civic will go on sale in the fall, with lots of choices for consumers. Honda confirmed this week that the 2006 Honda Civic compact sedan will be unveiled at the Chicago Auto Show, which opens February 12.

The Civic, the eighth-generation of the popular small car, goes on sale in the fall, said Takeo Fukui, president and CEO of Honda Motor Co. The new Civic will be offered with two, three, four and five doors and will be produced at Honda's six regional operations around the globe. In the US, the Civic will be equipped with all of the same standard safety features, including side curtain airbags and antilock brakes, as the current Accord.

Fukui said the Civic will come with four new global powerplants in its first year — an industry first. They include a higher fuel economy, lower-emission gasoline engine, a compressed natural gas engine that is made in Ohio, a gas-electric hybrid with significantly higher fuel economy and performance and, for Europe, a diesel engine.

See also :

1. 2006 Honda Civic

2. New Safety, Environmental Initiatives: Honda President/CEO Takeo Fukui

"... the 2006 Civic will be powered by the newest and most advanced generation of Honda's i-VTEC engine technology to achieve even higher fuel economy and lower emissions. And a new Civic Hybrid will feature enhancements to Honda's IMA hybrid technology to achieve significantly higher fuel economy and performance. The natural gas Civic GX, powered by the cleanest internal combustion engine in the world, will continue to be made in Ohio."

3. Remarks by Takeo Fukui - 2005 NAIAS Auto Show

"This fall, we will begin launching an all-new Civic. This will be the 8th generation Civic ... with total global production now approximately 16 million units. And it remains a benchmark among compact cars. In order to exceed these global customer expectations, the next generation global Civic lineup will include 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-door models. It will be produced in all six of Honda's regional operations.

... Civic will offer four advanced powerplants in its first year on the market. This is an industry first. The new Civic will have Honda's latest i-VTEC engine ... with new technology that achieves even higher fuel economy and low emissions. This means every Honda and Acura sold in the U.S. will have a next generation engine. We also will introduce the Civic Diesel in Europe with Honda's award-winning diesel engine. The natural gas Civic is the cleanest internal combustion engine in the world and will continue to be made in Ohio. And a new Civic Hybrid will have a hybrid system with significantly higher fuel economy and performance."

(2005-01-19 17:08:30 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

Autostitch

I live around here - click on the thumbnail for the larger image :

This is a panoramic view from the rooftop of the Sengkang Community Hub (formerly Sengkang Community Building), looking due south. On the left, you can see the Compass Point shopping mall, and the Sengkang LRT line which leads from the integrated complex to the apartment blocks in the distance. On the right are the HDB apartment block numbers 300+ and the Shell petrol station at the road junction.

A series of 5 photos were taken using my Canon Powershot A70's "panoramic mode" which let me line up the images correctly from left to right, using the same exposure settings for each shot. Then I looked around for a good panorama stitching software - which was surprisingly hard to find. Finally came across this forum thread where the moderator recommended Autostitch. It's created by a PHD student, Matthew Brown, from the The University of British Columbia, Canada. It's currently a non-commercial freeware and freely downloadable.

Here's a news blurb :

We spotted news of some rather interesting research from the University of British Columbia this morning which promises to make the process of creating panoramas a whole lot simpler.

Anybody who's spent much time making panoramas knows that it can be a tricky process requiring you to carefully frame and overlap photos correctly for the best results, then spend time ordering the photos in your panorama software manually. Matthew Brown, a British PhD student at UBC, certainly noticed - and set to work on fixing the problem. As you'll see on his website, the results are rather impressive.

Brown built on research by UBC's Professor David Lowe to create Autostitch Panorama - software that can analyse a group of images, identify similarities between them, and then automatically order, arrange and stitch the images within several minutes. The software can handle 360-degree panoramas, and if we're understanding Matthew's website correctly, can even understand when a group of images contains image sets from several separate panoramas. If that's the case, you're presented with separate stitched panoramas, with unrelated images having been ignored altogether - a rather useful feature that would (for example) let a photographer return from a vacation and with a few mouse-clicks, process all their photos to let the software find and create multiple panoramas at once.

(2005-01-19 13:08:35 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

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