devilDroid

My supervisor asked me to fill out a career map, complete with long-term and short-term goals.  Since I don’t have aspirations to become a manager, I thought I’d more clearly define my user interface design goals.

Since that long-term bit is in there, I thought I’d see if I could factor in artificial intelligence.  Not necessarily the personal, 3d talking head idea of AI.  More of Google’s personalized search, home page, and contextualized advertisement ideas.

As I was jotting those notes down, it occurred to me that the next step would be to create one user interface (per user) which interfaced with all of our applications.  It could query those applications in much the same way that search/data mining works.  It could not only display data from disparate sources, it could correlate it in to charts and graphs.  It could also correlate it with outside data available via the internet.

Once it had the data, it could actually do something with it.  Users could perform all tasks without having to learn new interfaces. 

Way spiffier than personalizing your color scheme.

So, I started a search for “Google AI.”  An article by George Dyson was one of the first articles that popped up:  http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson05/dyson05_index.html

I thought he was rambling a bit to begin with, but then it boiled down to this:

“However, once the digital universe is thoroughly mapped, and initialized by us searching for meaningful things and following meaningful paths, it will inevitably be colonized by codes that will start doing things with the results. Once a system of template-based-addressing is in place, the door is opened to code that can interact directly with other code, free at last from a rigid bureaucracy requiring that every bit be assigned an exact address. You can (and a few people already are) write instructions that say "Do THIS with THAT" — without having to specify exactly Where or When.”

I think I just had a UI/AI Zen moment. ~~~~~ ;o

Laser outline-based motion capture works without ping pong ball markers.  Also captures secondary motion of clothes.



Make sure to watch the video:
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn14007-motioncapture-system-adds-costume-to-the-drama.html

Step-by-step visualizations by William Beaty:
http://amasci.com/elect/poynt/poynt.html

Animated visualizations from MIT:
http://web.mit.edu/8.02t/www/802TEAL3D/visualizations/magnetostatics/

Via Danny:

" The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, on Monday issued a call for research proposals to develop the National Cyber Range, or NCR, a virtual network environment for cyberwar simulation.

In other words, Darpa wants to build something along the lines of The Matrix, Star Trek's holodeck, or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse to test cyberwar strategies and drill cyberwarriors. That's not to say Darpa is aiming for a visually immersive world to entertain people; rather, it wants a place to pit hackers against simulated machines."

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=207601201

From Jon:
"Russia’s Red Army Choir sings “Sweet Home Alabama”… I shit you not."
http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3114&Itemid=76

                                                      ...this is your cat on schizophrenia...


The slow demise of Louis Wain's sanity...

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/nbb421/student2003/epl8/Blank%20Page%202.htm 

NY MOMA Exhibit
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/



Sonumbra
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/253

Possibly my new ride...

Rocket Action!
Budget Price!

Brochures:

http://www.fvn.no/amcar/brochures/olds/old56/old56.html
http://www.fvn.no/amcar/brochures/olds/56oldy/56oldy.html

Commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrcMXCTU_DQ&feature=related

http://xkcd.com/413/

This pic is from last year's event.  Yes, that's a chick dancing with a glowing hoola-hoop in front of NASA:



This year's event is Saturday, April 12th. 
http://laughingsquid.com/yuris-night-bay-area-2008-a-world-space-party-at-nasa/

"Yuri’s Night 2008 is a worldwide celebration of Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the earth and Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2008 takes place on Saturday, April 12th at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field near Mountain View. This year will also be a celebration of NASA’s 50th anniversary and will be the largest Yuri’s Night ever, featuring talks by Will Wright and Stewart Brand, art and sculpture by The Flaming Lotus Girls, Michael Christian and Cyclecide, performances by Capacitor and Amon Tobin, as well as the debut of Telstar, featuring Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead."

"Mars, Red Dwarfs, Astronomy meetings, 2001, Forbidden Planet, Dr Who, aliens that could hide their solar system and more."



Carnival of Space Week 48 from Next Big Future

Kinematic models, multimedia, tutorials, and references...



" KMODDL is a collection of mechanical models and related resources for teaching the principles of kinematics--the geometry of pure motion. The core of KMODDL is the Reuleaux Collection of Mechanisms and Machines, an important collection of 19th-century machine elements held by Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering."

http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/
Multimedia model tour:  http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/tour/

Build your own home fabricator from a kit for $410.  Software is free and open source.  Drool~~~


http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/kobask8/Categories?category=Fab%40Home

I've been meaning to do a post on karakuri for a while now...

  "Karakuri ningyō (からくり人形, Karakuri ningyō^?) are mechanized puppets or automata from Japan from the 18th century to 19th century. The word 'karakuri' means a "mechanical device to tease, trick, or take a person by surprise". It implies hidden magic, or an element of mystery. In Japanese ningyō is written as two separate characters, meaning person and shape. It may be translated as puppet, but also by doll or effigy.^[1] The dolls' gestures provided a form of entertainment.

Three main types of karakuri exist: Butai karakuri (舞台からくり, stage karakuri^?) were used in theatre. Zashiki karakuri (座敷からくり, tatami room karakuri^?) were small and were played with in rooms. Dashi karakuri (山車からくり, festival car karakuri^?) were used in religious festivals, where the puppets were used to perform reenactments of traditional myths and legends."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakuri_ningyo

Spiffy karakuri kit from Make:  http://store.makezine.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=GKSSTSR

Too bad I'm so frakin lazy...



http://dvice.com/archives/2008/03/dvice_scificom.php

I finally found a cylon action figure but it only comes packaged with two other lame ones. :(


http://www.diamondselecttoys.com/store.asp?p=item.asp%3FItemNo%3D59721%26CategoryID%3D369

"It is a creation from Christophe Masclet (aka Chrismaker) which named it 'LEGOTIC-Hand'. It's like an android or humanoid hand, made of LEGO parts. Mainly TECHNIC, MINDSTORMS and Bionicle parts.

Thanks to the use of pneumatic cylinders, it's possible to actuate the wrist and the four fingers. Each finger at this self-adapting hand, has the ability to adjust itself around an object."

http://technicbricks.blogspot.com/2008/03/android-legotic-hand-by-chrismaker.html

"This little LED-lit cube is much more than just a paper lantern: It's a translucent and flexible thin-film electronic circuit that hooks up a battery to an LED, limber enough to be folded into an origami box. And the coolest thing about circuits like these? You can make them at home."

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/papercircuitry

53 episodes of Lost in Space!  http://www.hulu.com/lost-in-space


http://www.hulu.com/

http://www.handiedan.com/collage/pin_ups.html
via juxtapoz:  http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2771