Written July 20, 2008 and published in Random | 0 Comments
Posted in December last year. Possible future stress relief? This shows how developers are tackling the problem of unexpected forces applied to a system. Very useful if a robot happens to be carrying something for you.
Written July 20, 2008 and published in News and Rumours | 0 Comments
Nintendo has revealed a new accessory for it’s Wii console called ‘MotionPlus’ which adds a new level of tracking for the Wii remotes. This accessory “…lets the Wii register the exact position, angle, and movement of the controller and translate it to a game”.
Sound familiar? For those of you who are aware of Johnny Chung Lee from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, you may remember a year ago he posted a video on YouTube with spacial head-tracking for better 3D immersion into a virtual reality environment. Watch the video below and let Mr Chung Lee explain it for you.
So is this the kind of thing that Nintendo will be introducing? I imagine it will be some variation of it considering that the sensor is an attachment for the Wii remote itself and not directly in line with the user’s line of sight with the TV.
Just one more thing to set the Wii apart from the competitors who seem so intent on copying the motion detection technologies just for the sake of it and not with any real purpose.
I have just completed an electro house mix which you can listen to by clicking on the podcast links to the right. The iTunes one downloads it in iTunes (obviously) and the Google one opens it in a streaming flash player in Google Reader. You can also listen to it online here or download the mp3 directly here.
Playlist
Peter Paul – Count Drak
Steve Forest – Freed From Desire [Chriss Ortega Big Room 2008 Mix]
Wink – Higher State of Consciousness [Dirty South & TV Rock Club Mix]
Andrea Bertolini – Electro Setup
Pam Pero – Shaker [Club Mix]
Stereo Palma – Dreaming [The Viron Ltd. Remix]
Digital Freq – Rock Brain
Reaves and Ahorn – Shifting Lives
Written July 16, 2008 and published in Random | 0 Comments
I discovered a nice little tool today that allows you to open mailto links in Gmail and not Outlook or another specified mail client. Now there are many things around that function on the GreaseMonkey add-on and intercept mailto links within a web browser and redirect them to Gmail.
Great, but what if you need to open a mailto link that is not in a web browser? I had this problem today and so set about googling. G-Mailto is a tool that you install on your computer which adds a clever bit of code into the registry that essentially adds a program to windows as an option for handling E-Mail but opens up Gmail rather than a program like Outlook.
Problem solved. The site even gives you details about what to do to make your own if you wanted to try and improve or add to the program.
Written July 12, 2008 and published in Degree Stuff | 0 Comments
For the third year I want to experiment more with the physical and not the virtual (although I am quite partial to the virtual). So with that in mind I have been thinking about some things that interest me that I would like to investigate further.
Mood Furniture – like mood rings but furniture that changes colour depending on your mood.
Reactive Seating – using something like thermo-chromic ink or tracking and LED displays, the seat changes colour where you have been sitting on it as a gradient. The more you stay in one place the more the colour changes showing just how you have been sitting. Ideal for a club / bar / social environment.
Musical Typing – a communal project using keystrokes provided by volenteers which is then converted into note and played back. The keys are recorded and the user then submits the information to hear it played back. It is not a real-time keyboard.
I would really like to look into multi-user experiences and social collaboration. Using multiple user’s to create something larger than the sum of it’s parts. Each user adds something which is incorporated into a larger idea. I am trying to think about cumulative art or music as a starting point, each user adding to the ‘canvas’ or ’score’ in some way and then hearing / seeing the complete result.
This is something I will be updating with more ideas when they come to me. Got to keep the ideas flowing.
Written July 12, 2008 and published in News and Rumours | 1 Comment
I was just having a browse through Apple’s film trailers as I normally do and I was taken aback by a film titled ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’. Considering that the 1951 film of the same name is one of my all time favourites I was hoping that this would be a remake rather than a completely unrelated film. To my delight it turned out that it will be a remake but now the problem is whether they will do the original justice or make a hash of it instead.
The original film was based on a book by Harry Bates called “Farewell To Master” and the film obvioulsy uses some creative license and includes things not spcifically in the book and also leaves out something at the end (Gort reveals he is the master and not Klaatu). The 2008 remake is rumoured to follow more closely to the book but should be a pretty accurate representation of the original film set in the present.
As sci-fi films often reflect the current social / political climate showing the hopes and fears of that generation it is no surprise to find that the film is about escalation of violence and what the consequences of that hold considering the times at wich the original was made. The original film was made after WWII and the remake will be released with the war on Terror being at its most prevailent.
I am looking forward to this (released December 12th) but I feel that it won’t be quite as good as the original but should be visually stunning. Oh and Keanu Reeves stars as Klaatu.
I found this amazing YouTube video in which someone draws a werewolf from scratch in Photoshop. I wish I could do this!
Simply put, it is the best animated film I have seen in a long time.
To say this film was a long time coming is an understatement. I was dubious about the storyline when I first saw the trailer over a year ago but as usual I was side-tracked by the beautiful animation and comedy that Pixar put into their films.
Last night I watched Wall-E and was amazed that a film lasting 90 mins could have held my attention with virtually no speech throughout. All the emotion that you feel when watching the film is a result of gesures and ‘facial’ expressions. With The story being about robots it was astounding how Pixar managed to translate human expressions, inflections and movements onto various robot counterparts.
An overview of the story (without spoiling it) is that humanity left earth as it was too contaminated by waste and while they are gone they leave Wall-E robots to clear up the mess. The story picks up 700 years on and follows the only functioning Wall-E’s journey. Being left alone for so long he has developed a personality and curiosity which often gets him in trouble.
I was surprised at how serious the themes were in the film, tackling such issues as climate change, recycling, social boundaries, technological complacency and corporate monopolies as well as friendship, love and self-discovery.
There are many funny moments in the film and the storyline is entertaining. The best part about the film for me was the myriad of different robots and how they all seem to have their own personalities and character traits, good and bad, and how they react to Wall-E.
I will be buying this when it comes out. Well done Pixar, you’ve done it again.
5/5
Written July 5, 2008 and published in News and Rumours | 0 Comments
Microsoft has recently purchased Powerset, a small company that deals in semantic search engine technology and released a proof of concept through Wikipedia. The principle is inline with other Microsoft Live Search goals, which is moving searching beyond matching mere keywords and phrases but actually understanding the meaning and the context of the search terms.
The possibility is that people will be able to ask a question and get a list of results based upon what the question relates to even if the best match doesn’t contain the keywords. This would probably never happen but it gives you an idea as to what can be accomplished. It means people get results more in common with what they are actually looking for and not just a bunch of web pages that happen to have the same keyword. This could revolutionise the internet but I fear that Microsoft’s proprietary attitude will undoubtedly lead it to be less than it could be.
The reason Google is so successful is that it is simple and quick. More recently Microsoft has attempted to emulate this with its Live Search which I must admit is quite good, but is no where near as good as Google’s. One good thing about the semantic search might be the removal of search results that are just putting your search query into another search engine… VERY ANNOYING.
Will this sematic searching bring them to the next level? Possibly, but I am left wondering what the next level for the Google search will be. It seems as case of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it’.
Written July 1, 2008 and published in Photography | 0 Comments
Last night I decided to be pro-active with my photography and took myself, my camera and my tripod down to Maidstone town center. I had already planned in my mind where I was going to photograph so I started by the Millenium Bridge and walked down past two more bridges, crossing the last one and walking back.
I was surprised as to how much there was to photograph and I was constantly packing up my tripod only to find another great opportunity only a few meters down the path.
Below are two pictures from the collection. The top is an HDR photo that I tried, comprised of three photos of the same location but with three different exposure settings to give real depth and contrast. It needs some fine tuning with tone mapping but as my first attempt I’m very happy.
Click the pictures to view the full set in Flickr.
