30-story Hotel Assembled in Two Weeks
To say this is an incredible feat of engineering approaches understatement. I purposefully used the term “assembled” in the title since the parts of the hotel are prefabricated elsewhere. I’m sure that the prefabrication process will add a significant amount to the total time required for this 30-story hotel to come into existence.
Still, though, imagine living in that area, going on vacation for a few weeks and then returning home to see a 30-story hotel.
I Want To Live!
Though this is only a tech demo showing the “emotive capabilities” of a game engine on the PS3, it is an amazingly succinct and poignant narrative on the birth of self-awareness within a “newborn” android.
I also thought that embracing the “uncanny valley” within this context was a smart move. Since the featured character is an android, our expectations are lower for lifelike emotion—we are pleasantly surprised and in awe when we do see emotion. That subtlety drives the power behind this short film.
Enough of my chatter. Watch this film!
via BoingBoing via EuroGamer.net
Are Mobile Devices Destroying Your Body?
I’ll admit that I exhibit addictive behavior when it comes to my mobile device(s). If you think you fall into that category, the infographic below may be of some use.
via Lifehacker via How-To Geek
High Speed Video of Canon DSLR Shutter
Here’s a great video showing the mirror and shutter mechanism in a Canon DSLR. The action begins 60 seconds in.
Keep in mind that the entire real-time duration of the mirror swinging up, the shutter coming down, the exposure, the shutter coming back up and the mirror swinging down is .213 seconds.
Great find, Tom!
Google Store View
My favorite camera store, B&H Photo Video, is one of the first businesses participating in having virtual tours of their stores via Google’s Street View technology.
If you look up B&H Photo Video on Google Maps, you can step inside.
via Wired.com
Capturing video at the speed of light — one trillion frames per second
So what kind of camera do you have? How fast can it shoot? 1/4000th of a second? 1/8000th of a second? Pshaw. What do you think of a camera that can shoot 1/1,000,000,000,000th of a second? That’s so fast that it can capture light traveling in slow motion!
MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. That’s fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom.
via MITnews
Symphony of Science
I approve the use of auto-tuning in these brilliant videos.
Thanks for the link, Angelo!
RIP Steve Jobs
(image from GETTY)
Thank you, Steve, for being a pioneer in marrying design and technology.
via CNN
Steve Jobs Resigned From Apple
Considering that Apple is a company that feeds off of the singular vision of its CEO, I’m very curious to see what the new CEO, Tim Cook, has in store.
Thanks for the head’s up, Tom!
The Physics of Culture
I’m sure that many of you are aware that companies such as Netflix and Amazon run software that tries to predict what movies you like or what your next purchase should be. You may even joke about it or laugh at the suggestions that are proposed. What it comes down to, though, is that there are software algorithms out there trying to describe you. This software is trying to figure out a deterministic formula for you.
Think about that.
Kevin Slavin says:
This isn’t Google. This isn’t information. These aren’t financial stats. This is culture. And what you see here, or what you don’t really see, normally, is that these are the physics of culture. If these algorithms, like the algorithms on Wall Street, crashed one day and went awry, how would we know? What would it look like?
Kevin explains in this wonderful TED Talk how we are writing algorithms that we no longer understand and are unable to predict. In essence, we’ve created another “force of nature".
via BoingBoing
-
Recent Comments
