Mark Sabino

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'MAZE

We know it’s shopped, but we can’t tell because of the pixels. PhD student [Kevin Karsch] along with a few other friends will be presenting their methods to render objects into preexisting photos at SIGGRAPH Asia next month.

The paper (PDF…) covers how [Kevin] et al. go about putting impossible objects into photos. The user first defines the geometry of the picture; legs of tables are defined and the table top is extruded from these legs. The lights are then defined by drawing a bounding box and with a little bit of algorithmic trickery, a 3D object is inserted into the scene.

Comparing the results to the original picture is jaw-dropping. For us, photoshopping a bunch of billiard balls on a pool table would take hours, and it would never look quite right. [Kevin]‘s work for SIGGRAPH can do the whole scene in minutes and produces results we couldn’t dream of.

There’s no downloadable software yet, but the algorithms are there. Check out the video demo of the techniques and results after the break.

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kukunonomoku?!

Photo by Orr Marshall

Welcome to Tofugu’s first-ever Halloween week! With Halloween only about a week away, we thought we’d treat you guys with seven days of posts about scary, spooky, and creepy Japan-related things.

Halloween was originally a European holiday, with roots in Irish and Roman traditions. Over time though, the original meaning of the Halloween has been transformed from honoring the dead and celebrating autumn to dressing up and getting tons of candy from strangers.

So as you might imagine as a European holiday, Halloween isn’t really celebrated all that much in Japan. Generally, there’s no trick-or-treating (although Japanese people might be polite enough to give you candy anyway), there aren’t really a whole lot of costumes or anything like that. Usually only Japanese university students do any sort of celebrating, and even then it’s pretty limited.

“So Hashi,” you might be asking, “If Halloween isn’t a big deal in Japan, why are you writing about it?” Well disembodied voice, that’s an excellent question.

We here at Tofugu are based in the United States, and celebrating Halloween is as American as apple pie. We wanted to do something to celebrate Halloween on Tofugu, and what better way than combining celebrating Halloween with our love of Japan? And secondly, theme weeks are awesome, and we don’t get to do them often.

So keep an eye out this week for posts about terrifying J-Horror movies, swarms of killer bees, deadly robots, and all things spooky, scary, and creepy.

P.S. What do you want to see in Tofugu’s Halloween Week? Let us know on Twitter.
P.P.S. Can’t wait for Tofugu’s Arbor Day Week? Like us on Facebook.

Related posts:

1. Five Scary Japanese Things For Halloween
2. Scarier Than Shark Week: It’s Kanji Week On Tofugu
3. Tofugu’s Japan Week in Review 1: Fukuda, Elevators, & Mochi Death

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This is ace!

We present the Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera which captures a full spherical panorama when thrown into the air. At the peak of its flight, which is determined using an accelerometer, a full panoramic image is captured by 36 mobile phone camera modules.

[Via @Johl; Images courtesy of Jonas Pfeil, CC]

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Aerogel is amazing. It looks blue. But its colourless. Like the sky!

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Hah

Well, it does collect private info

Symantec has withdrawn an update to its Norton consumer security software that branded Facebook a phishing site on Wednesday.…

Guess what it says about IE 9

Microsoft has unveiled a website aimed at raising awareness of browser security by comparing the ability of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome to withstand attacks from malware, phishing, and other types of threats.…

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Facepalm

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:(

Four-year-olds who watched nine minutes of the fast-paced cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants showed temporary attention and learning problems, researchers found.

Illustrations by Andrew Kolb

…

This capsule was curated by Stevyn Colgan

Andreas Englund originally hails from Falun, Sweden, but is currently based out of Stockholm. Englund creates an absolutely hilarious series of oil on canvas paintings of a beloved superhero on the wrong side of 40 just trying to get by in his twilight years. We’ll all see to that day ourselves at one point in our lives. None of us live forever. Who wants too?

“Humour can be the carrier of messages that are otherwise hard to convey. For me, it liberates my thoughts and ideas from pretentiousness while at the same time it opens doors to new routes and angles.”

http://artofdala.com

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/6/7588254199

Talk to the hand option

Mountain View has added an "Ignore" option to its gestating Google+, just at the point when interest in the company's social network seemed to be on the wane.…

Gulp, the world’s largest stop-motion animation, was shot using a crane-mounted array of three Nokia N8 smartphones on location at Pendine Beach in South Wales by Sumo Science at Aardman. Capturing the record breaking 11,000 square foot set was a piece of cake for the N8′s 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Definitely check out the making of featurette below. The scale is truly impressive. [via HuffPost]

Bonus Making of:

Robs the robbers who rob the robbers

Hackers have created a fake tool especially designed to exploit the laziness of the most clueless and unskilled phishing fraudsters.…

Free Whitepaper: Implementing Energy Efficient Data Centers