March 2008

It is a very nice start of the month. However it appears that there is some bad weather, so going on bicycle from Zandvoort to Heemstede is not always possible. We have started new projects.

Currently two students are working on PRNU, Pixel response Non Uniformity, and we try to use these methods in court. I am always aware of validation issues, and of course it should be more easy to use for the common user, for that reason we make them publicly available in Java on sourceforge if it works out fine.

Also students from Hogeschool Amsterdam are working on several projects. The project defraser, which is also open source at www.sourceforge.net/defraser, is really developing. We asked students to write plugins for JPEG, AVI en perhaps rewriting it for Linux. The software works for the analysis of videofiles, such as 3GP en MPEG, and could be used as assistance for repairing files. Since I am project leader of the project and also the database, I am very happy it works out fine.

Another project we are looking into is ENF collector. Electric Network Frequency appears to vary due to large generators, as is described by Catalin Grigoras. Currently we are looking into Java-applets for the collection of these, and of course we also need to do some more validation.

This month I also have a meeting of FIDIS www.fidis.net in Berlin. Our deliverable on forensic profiling is nearly ready, and I am very happy with the good collaboration. Also the JIDIS journal is getting good shape now, and our proposal for a new deliverable on identification (PRNU and face comparison) is also getting shape now.

The casework is also good, and sometimes surprising to find new solutions. This month I finished several reports, and now we add a form were the reader of the reports can give comments to the readability, since that is always an issue, especially if we make Bayesian way of conclusions (which are certainly in case with many hypothesis less easy to read).

February 2008

The AAFS-meeting www.aafs.org in Washington DC was really nice. Finally the Section Digital Evidence and Multimedia got started this week, and I got elected as chairman. It was good to see that all green lights are on and all the efforts of many collegues in this field got rewarded, and it will be good for the forensic community to have this exciting field with fast developments within the scope. Also many presentations and one workshop where at the conference at this field.

January 2008

This month is just warmer than normal in many senses. With my website I had some issues with traffic and spamming which was difficult to prevent, and as always takes more time than expected, however now everything seems to work again.

Sometimes you experience that some training at work can help you in you household as well. When moving we had a safe where we had lost the key from. As I had done in the past some lock-picking training when I was a tool mark examiner, now it appeared to work. After one hour working it appeared I could enter this safe, so I was happy again.

We also had some results of the somewhat worse housing market when selling our apartments in Amsterdam. It appeared that the buyer could have his mortgage ready much later than expected, since the banks are not so easy anymore. For that reason it was several weeks later than scheduled that the apartment was sold.

We started with several students this year on several research and development projects. It appeared that the deliverable for FIDIS is also progressing now as well as some work for the encyclopedia.

In February I will go to the AAFS, and of course look forward to this. Washington DC is a very nice place, and for Europeans it is not expensive anymore.

Living near sea

December 2007

December was a busy month since we moved to near the sea from Amsterdam. It is more fresh air, and the view is beautiful. Also some casework had to be finished, however now I finished all casework I had to do this year.

As always many new plans for 2008. The AAFS www.aafs.org in Washington DC which is held in February should be prepared. I have the three presentations ready now. It will be a turbulent year with many changes, as far as I can see now.

November 2007

Last week I had to do an internal recertification for the NFI to sign reports. I had to defend eight reports for a committee with one external expert from the Forensic Science Service in the UK. Since all my reports in Dutch they are translated in English, which takes lots of time before the quality of translation is good enough.

I learned my lessons in the past, and did prepare this meeting in a proper way. I had all the files available, and it is also good to see if the files in archive are correctly, and they where ! I finally passed this exam with good resuls and now I am qualified for another four years unless of course there is a decision from the director or perhaps a change of law. It is good, however too much bureaucracy is involved in my opinion.

Now we are thinking on a new deliverable for FIDIS on camera and person identification. I hope to present some of this in the meeting on Monday.