interesting article on how pixar reduced rendering time for each frame of the movie Cars from 10 hours to 1 hour. seems they solved it by switching from their “woefully inadequate” NFS (network file system) to a much more practical solution - a linux based SAN (storage area network). the story was found via digg, which has some interesting posts on the topic. i seem to remember something like that taking place at ILM many moons ago on the podrace sequence for phantom menace. but i believe that was solved by john knoll re-writing some code to speed up rendering times specifically for the podracers. but i could be wrong. i was a modelmaker (practical, not digital) back then … your hi-tec CG world still frightens and confuses me …
Archive for the 'science/technology' Category
cool use of technology. i could see this becoming more and more common. check out this story of robots in the classroom: robots keeping hospital-bound boy a presence in his school classes. 13-year-old Achim Nurse suffers from a severe skin rash brought on by a case of bacterial meningitis and must remain bandaged and in a hospital bed until he’s better. Using a pair of robots - one named “Mr. Spike” at his bedside, and another named “Mrs. Candy” in the classroom - Achim can keep up with his schoolwork and his friends for the months he will be hospitalized. Achim can push a button on his control console at his bedside to have his classroom based robot raise it’s hand to answer a question at school. very cool. the program that makes this possible is called PEBBLES (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students) and was created by telbotics. read more press about the PEBBLES & Teleprescence program via the telbotics news page.
science time! from eepybird comes the The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments. a series of beautiful scientific tests that combines 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos (the freshmaker) mints. the results are lovely and messy. and there’s lots of other videos to watch of experiments (or is it experi-mints?) from eepybird as well. well done lads - well done!
Experiment #6
Experiment #137
brought to you by military research and development, new modular carbon fiber wings enable paratroopers to travel distances of 200km (over 124 miles) from one high altitude jump. The new wing jump system is reportedly 100 percent silent and difficult to detect using air & ground radar systems.
no, that’s not the name of a fancy new wax job. i’m talking about the discovery of what is being called ‘the brazilian stonehenge.’ located on top of a hill, 127 large rocks of stone where found in the state of amapa, brazil. the stones weigh several tons each and appear to have been laid out to help pinpoint the winter solstice.
all the hullabaloo about the new apple macbooks seems to be missing an important point: there’s still no right-click. waah-wah. why aren’t any mac laptops built with a dedicated right-click button? how can that be overlooked - especially with macs now capable of running windows XP? yes, yes, yes - you can get a ‘right-click menu’ on a mac laptop by ‘control-clicking‘ (hitting the button pad and the control button at the same time). this is always pointed out as a solution when it is so not a solution. that’s hitting two buttons when only one is needed. and for me & my lovely apple desktop, the apple mighty mouse and pro mouse were never quite right-click friendly. which meant buying another mouse (something mac users may be familiar with). back to the macbooks: so why then? why not just install a dedicated right click button? how hard is that? people will herald apple as truly inventive and steve jobs as a genius if this is done. doo it now! i love macs, but it’s time to focus on the practical: decicated right click buttons on your laptops. if apple is going to pay attention to something as unimportant as shiny screens, then please do away with the single mouse button laptops. it will more than make up for still unaddressed yet obvious terrible shuffle program on itunes (yes, it’s true). and, as a mac fan & user, i will even forgive the horrid hocky puck mouse.
here’s a really lovely music & sound experiment using flash actionscript called the whitney music box - brought to you by the talented jim bumgardner of krazydad.com and coverpop.com. read more about the whole process and thought behind the whitney music box on krazydad’s blog entry on visual harmony. my favorite is variation 6: 48 tones in one octave. the whitney music box is based on the theories of john whitney (more on john whitney here and here) and his book digital harmony. the cool thing about the whitney music box is that while john whitney was interested in turning musical ideas into motion graphics, jim bumgardner’s whitney music box does the inverse - turning one of whitney’s key animation ideas back into music. very very cool.
wanting to be all environmentally conscious and switch out your energy & cash eating incandescent bulbs for efficient and longer lasting compact flourescents? good! but you find your still stuck with using incandescent bulbs for any lights on dimmer switches? well, you are stuck no more. greenlite is a canadian company that makes and manufactures a 23 watt dimmable compact flourescent bulb. and there’s also litetronics that makes a 3 watt dimmable flourescent bulb too! they are pricey, but over time they will save lots of money. and use much less energy. link via meta-efficient.
cool posting on tattooartists.org on some lovely UV blacklight reactive tattoo ink. the tattoo appears invisible on your skin until it’s exposed to UV light. the ink is made by chameleon body art supply and it’s been heavily tested by the FDA. read more on the safety of the UV blacklight ink and also see the MSDS info on the ink. story found via metafilter.
yo yo yo, evolution in da’ house!!! what’s up everybody? my name is tiktaalik roseae, but my friends call me croco-fish. i’m roughly 385 million years old, about four to nine feet in size, and i have lots of hobbies! i enjoy walking up from water to land, hanging out in canada, learning about evolution, developing bone structure and a skeletal system, and secrets! and some say that i blur the boundry between fish and land animals. what can i say, dudes - it’s all true! so if any of you other single devonian period tetrapod-like ladies would like to get together and take that first step, call me! i’d love to hook up!
what the heck is a counter rotating ring receiver reactor recuperator, or CR5 for short? it’s an invention in the works with a whole new way to make hydrogen to power automobiles and homes. created by inventor Richard Diver, the CR5 invention splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, using a two-step thermochemical process. plans for a prototype CR5 are in the works. original link via treehugger.
there’s a great read on the site seedmagazine about prions called the prion anomoly. i started to learn about prions a wee bit while reading about mad cow disease. this article goes even further in talking about how prions control stem cell growth and how prions may pass on genetic traits - challenging the theory that genes are soley responsible for inheritance. and be sure to click the link to the related article on prions called the bipolar protien. it goes into how prion-based disease spreads and how prions work to ’signal’ other cells.
wanna play .avi files on your mac? DIVX & XVID encoded .avi files? look no further than the robust little cross platform VLC media player. it’s brilliant and plays a ton of audio & video formats. available for mac osx, windows, and many flavors of linux. and it’s free! i dig it. thank you rafael for the tip.
from march 13th, great article on SFGate about a UC berkeley grad student doing research on developing paper-thin solar panels. working with chemicals to arrange inorganic crystals a thousandth of a human hair in width into structures that could possibly conduct electricity. worth a read.
astronomers have reported an unprecedented elongated double helix nebula near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. the double helix image was captured by the infared spitzer space telescope. The double helix ‘twist’ shape has formed due to magnetic forces at the center of the galaxy.
We see two intertwining strands wrapped around each other as in a DNA molecule,” said Mark Morris, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, and lead author. “Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm. Most nebulae are either spiral galaxies full of stars or formless amorphous conglomerations of dust and gas — space weather. What we see indicates a high degree of order.
more on the double helix nebula can be read at space.com and also in the march journal issue of nature.
no, wait - the robots are here. soon to be everywhere. no, wait - they are everywhere. from the monkey using brain signals to control a robotic arm to crazy robot exoskeletons (some big and some bigger). robots are on the rise. it’s crazy all the robot news and videos circulating these days. like the ’soft and cuddly’ RI-MAN robot cradling a human in it’s arms? or that freakish robot pack mule a.k.a. big dog? whenever i see these video clips, i have this hunch i’m seeing future military equipment in early developement. scary. like when i see this cute ‘the power of dreams’ ad for Honda’s Asimo robot running & playing with kids, i picture Asimo with m16s strapped to his arms and the kids are screaming and hiding for their lives instead of laughing and playing. but hey - that’s just me. and why does asimo move like a human that has to go to the bathroom really really bad? odd. for video clips, there’s a robot fish, that robot pack mule, dancing robots, robot ballet, robots that transform into little cars, robots that play the flute, robots that conduct a symphony, ‘life like’ human robots (some that look like nagel prints), and humans that move amazingly like robots. robots robots robots. in fact, i can hear one climbing up the side of my house right now. yikes. gotta go!
so the recent developements with ye old timey avain bird flu - where the H5N1 deadly disease strain has been passed to a cat and now a weasel (technically a stone martin) - have been reminding me about the story premise for the movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. yes. in the movie, a terrible disease has killed off the world’s cats and dogs, leaving humans with no animals to keep as pets, except monkeys and apes. in reality, birds and now cats and ferrets/weasels are all capable of carrying the deadly bird flu strain. so what i’m saying is the basic setup for eventual ape domination is beginning now. just thought i’d mention it here first. this sci-fi moment has been brought to you by nothing-to-blog-about.biz.
wow. from treehugger, a great post on a stylish little diesel powered car that get 157 miles per gallon. hello! the car is called the Loremo AG. it weighs less than a thousand pounds, seats 4, diesel fuel powered (no hybrid technology), aerodynamic, has a modest 2-cylinder, 20 hp turbo engine, a top speed of 100 mph, and does 0-60 mph in ten seconds. no, it’s not a sports car. but who the fuck cares? did i mention it gets 157 miles per gallon? oh, and is anticipated to cost around $13,000? i’m sold. it hits the european market (wah!) in 2009. so cool!
giantmonster does love all things yeti. so when we heard reports that a lobster with white furry arms had been discovered, we knew two things: 1) aliens have been breeding sasquatches with other earth species (you knew that though). and 2) someone somewhere would get around to calling this new found hairy crustacean a type of yeti (if not, at least half-italian). behold - the yeti crab! found south of easter island near an underwater thermal vent. bbc news has the biggest photo i’ve seen so far.
one of the biggest and most complete/intact giant squids ever found is on display at london’s natural history museum. measuring 28 feet in length, the giant squid nicknamed archie resides in a 30 foot long tank full of preservative solution and is part of the behind-the-scenes Darwin Centre tour. here’s a pic of archie in his custom built display tank. mmm … fleshy & gross. so much calamari, so little time.
wow - this is dope! no really. it really is dope, in every sense of the word. it puts the ‘high’ back in hi-tech. witness the ultimate hidden secret (well, not so secret & hidden anymore) underground lair for growing marijuana on a massive scale. 50 yards underground actually.
The entrance was through a secret hydraulic door in the garage that led to a concrete ramp that went about 50 yards into the ground. Inside the cave was living quarters and a secret escape hatch that led you through a tunnel that exited via another hydraulic door that opened up a rock on the outside. It was very elaborate. The set up allowed them to harvest every 60 days which resulted in multi-million dollar sales.
the underground pot lab was located in tennesee, no less. all done dirtless using hydroponics. nifty disguised main entrance with the fake shelf above. and dig that massive door! and the secret escape hatch! soo crazy! link via boingboing.
with little bright lights, i am like a moth to flame. so i’m happy that this project is a fairly easy to build process. check out this lovely step-by-step instruction on making small magnetic LED throwies featured on instructables.com. cool! the LED throwies were developed by the graffiti research lab. with the addition of magnets, you can throw them (hence the term ‘throwies’) and they’ll stick to metal & cars & such. and you can click here to see a video of the LED throwies in action. link found via boingboing via makezine.
hmmm. just had a very minor earthquake here in the south bay (morgan hill, ca to be precise). small shaker - house made some quakey-noises. ground shook for about 1 second at around 8:25pm.
UPDATE: here’s a screenshot of the quake area. looks to be in the 2.0/3.0 range. quick image provided by the USGS earthquake hazards program for northern california.
tired of how long it takes to do your nurb modeling? then maybe a home 3D scanner from next engine is what you need. a small desktop scanner for $2,500. that’s pretty crazy! connects directly to your PC using a USB port. system includes an autopositioner and a parts gripper to help everything match up. having used a few 3d scanners before, this is impressive (if it works). you could always just spend a mere $70,000 to $240,000 on something more robust. link via futurefeeder.
a very cool, highly functional, & quiet design for renewable energy coming from england. the quiet-revolution is a vertical-axis wind turbine capable of generating 6kW. because of it’s blade design and single moving part, the quietrevoltion is not only quiet, but it allows for some cool lighting effects as well as display/advertising options. link via treehugger.
these may look like ordinary letters. they are. and well, they really aren’t. these letters were created by machines using multiphoton absorption polymerization (MAP). the machines are so small you wouldn’t be able to see them. in fact, the letters are thinner than the width of a human hair. and, for the first time using this MAP process, they are able to be coated in metal:
A human hair is about 100 microns wide. Each of these micro letters, created in the Fourkas lab, is 30 microns tall and 20 microns wide. With their new method of incorporating metal, the Fourkas team was able to coat the”U” and “D” with copper.
the work is being done at the university of maryland (hence the UMD) and will pave the way for intricately smaller machines, switches, and devices. please read the article on physorg.com when you get a chance.
wow - this is lovely. for some great anatomy illustrations and historical archive on anatomical drawing, check out Dream Anatomy. make sure not to miss the semi-creepy yet highly beautiful gallery of anatomical drawings. there’s quite a bit to see on that website, such as children’s drawings, modernists takes on anatomy, and realists take on anatomy. lots! link found via boigboing. also, if you’re into this sort of thing, browse the national library of medicine’s vast historical anatomies on the web for more anatomical illustrations & resources.
forget the bird flu - time to catch sasquatch fever, malaysian style! apparently there’s been a rash of bigfoot or ape man or sasquatch sightings in malaysia recently. big footprints found too! does the mighty sasquatch have a malaysian cousin? sounds exciting! so much so that the government of malaysia has began a search expedition to find the malaysian bigfoot. no, this is for realsies! it’s even listed on bfro.net (that’s the Bigfoot Field Reseachers Organization). i am excited.
so .. a thought. ever since a swarm of bees made it’s home inside one of the walls of my house 2 years ago (this is common for old houses i guess) i’ve been thinking about being an apiarist (a beekeeper, yo! raising honey bees ‘n shit). not with the bees in my living room walls - no. those bees were safely taken away by a beekeeper a while back. raising bees is just a thought. and also a damn fine reason to invest in a rad costume for my honeybee-raising business! hell yeah! but would raising bees on a rooftop or backyard be doable when i move back to SF, or any major city for that matter? apparently so. according to a study by a French beekeepers’ association, city bees are healthier and more productive than country bees. from the BBC news article:
Urban bees enjoy higher temperatures and a wider variety of plant life for pollination, while avoiding ill-effects of pesticides, the study said.
who knew? anyway, this news makes me happy.
check out this beautiful photo of the cartwheel galaxy taken with the galaxy evolution explorer (GALEX). the cartwheel galaxy is 2.5 times as large as the Milky Way. it’s lovely pulsing cosmic jellyfish look was caused by a collision with a smaller galaxy, creating the rippled effect. from new scientist space:
The galaxy probably came by its distinctive shape when a small galaxy – possibly one of the objects at bottom-left of the image – collided with it head-on 100 million years ago. The crash set off ripples in the large galaxy’s gas that led to concentric rings of star birth.
other photos available via astronomy picture of the day, SEDS, GALEX site, and astronomy.com.