Jelle Spanjaard

Red Dead Koyaanisqatsi

The Chasm

“One possible theory; chimpanzees care more than humans about peanuts.”

Counter‐intuitive illusory contours © Bart Anderson

(University of Sydney, Australia)

2nd Prize winner in the Best Illusion of the Year Contest.

In many natural scenes, portions of occluding surfaces and contours can be camouflaged by having an identical color as their background. It is now well known that the visual system will often generate illusory contours and surfaces in order to fill-in this missing information. It is widely believed that the visual system does this in order to provide the best overall “explanation” of the images that form in our eyes.

In this illusion, four circular disks are simply translated back and fourth over a thin square outline. Although all of the image data is fully “explained” by the visible disks, the visual system generates a strong and clearly visible additional illusory contour inside the square outline. This illusion cannot be understood with any known mechanism or theory that has been proposed to explain the formation of illusory contours. This quicktime movie is best viewed by downloading it and playing it in “loop” mode.

Gil Scott-Heron’s Me And The Devil from his recently released album I’m New Here. 

I’m new to his music.

Here’s what the man himself has to say about the way you should experience his music. Printed on the inside of his record sleeve.

There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investement.

Music, for example. Buying music is an investement,

To get the maximum you must

LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS.

Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset.

Take it home.

Get rid of all distractions, (even her of him).

Turn off your cell phone.

Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles. 

Make yourself comfortable. 

Play your LP.

LISTEN all the way through.

Think about what you got.

Think about who would appreciate this investment.

Decide if there is someone to share this with.

Turn it on again.

Enjoy yourself.

Gil Scott-Heron

Early 1900s in Colour.

Promotional video for a newly created city district by +1 Amsterdam.

The city district Amsterdam Osdorp recently merged with Slotervaart and Geuzenveld-Slotermeer and was given the name Amsterdam Nieuw-West. This change also meant the end of 20 years of restructuring urbanized areas. To celebrate everything achieved, a book was published. ‘The Metamorphosis of Osdorp’ gives an overview of the architectural highlights. We were asked to create an intriguing video, featuring the buildings we find most characteristic.

Restructuring urbanized areas isn’t all about aesthetics. That is why we chose to put emphasis on the architects and especially it’s inhabitants and the surrounding of the buildings. To achieve this, we decided to combine live action video with 2D- and 3D-animation. Herewith we were able to complement reality with our interpretation of the most important factors of restructuring urbanized areas.

…big robots can be loaded with masses of software that guides their actions – no such luck at the nano-level.

The two new studies have solved this problem by programming the robots’ actions into their environment rather than their bodies.

When the [nano] spider steps, it leaves a trail of cut, unattractive DNA behind it, with paths of fresh, enticing strands ahead of it. Its legs could land anywhere but they stay for longer on a piece of track that hasn’t already been stepped on. Even if it steps randomly, it should eventually move to new terrain and by making the track narrow enough so that it can only go in one direction, Lund could steer its steps. It’s a fiendishly clever system – the walking spider shapes its environment in a way that controls its own behaviour.

Welcome to the exciting future of nanotechnology.

curvedwhite:

“Everybody needs a Hero” series by Anthony Lister

haydenhunter:

Apollo 11’s Saturn V launch filmed at 500fps, because the camera shot at such high speed this clip’s 8½ minutes represent just over 30 seconds of actual time.

Error level analysis is a quick and easy image forensics method, allowing one to determine if an image has been modified by programs such as Adobe Photoshop.

It works by resaving an image at a known quality, and comparing that to the original image. As a jpeg image is resaved over and over again, its image quality decreases. When we resave an image and compare it to the original, we can guess just how many times the image has been resaved. If an image has not been manipulated, all parts of the image should have been saved an equal amount of times. If parts of the image are from different source files, they may have been saved a number of different times, and thus they will stand out as a different colour in the ELA test.

The Times Online writes:

Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.

But Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said that experiments with potential consequences beyond national borders needed international regulations.

PSFK adds:

But the scientists involved in the research believe that, with the Climate Summit in Copenhagen failing to secure any international agreement on cutting greenhouse gases, they need to urgently develop technology to protect the world from global warming.

I avoided Queensday here in Amsterdam the other day by going to London for the Museumnext conference with my colleague’s from the n8. It was a short trip, but we managed squeeze in a visit to Tate Modern. My first time there.

Jason Kottke:

You might worry that Adams’ piece is out of date, but it’s one those evergreen bits of wisdom that will apply right up until human consciousness is absorbed into the digital cloud.

Adobe, You Brought An Advertisement To A Gun Fight

I recently decided to revisit what used to be called WorldsAway, and is now Dreamscape as part of the larger VZones network. It’s been more than 10 years since I decided to spent my time elsewhere, but everything looks exactly the same. I’m amazed they kept this world alive for this long.

This was all part of testing VMware’s Unity mode of course…

There’s a new game in town:

Using video showing the movement of oil spewing from the well, mechanical engineer Steven Wereley of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, estimates that the well is losing 70,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s equivalent to an Exxon Valdez disaster every four days, and more than 10 times the 5000 barrels a day estimated by BP.

Meanwhile; President Obama slams finger-pointing by oil firms:

“I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings,” 

A machine that dispenses gold was unveiled at the Emirates Palace hotel yesterday.

An absolutely beautiful and horrible world.

Limbo won the Excellence In Visual Art and Technical Excellence award at the IGF earlier year and is coming to XBLA this summer. Too bad I don’t own an Xbox.

[via. Creative Applications]

Viewing my Mac Mini’s screen at Full HD resolution on a 13 inch Macbook display through Screen Sharing wasn’t really working for me, so I was very pleased to find this wonderful tool:

teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs. Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your keyboard. The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs.

Like the psychological thriller Heavy Rain, released earlier this year, it says that games really have grown up: they can present us with moral choices, they can make us experience living virtual worlds.

Next level.

To help keep your Facebook account as safe as possible, we can notify you when your account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that you haven’t used before.

[via. Lifehacker]

Apparently, Flash is outdated.

[via. @plestik]

Among the initial titles available tomorrow will be Runic Games’ critically acclaimed Torchlight and the awesome Portal, which I still haven’t finished on the Playstation.

In addition to bringing the online functionality of Steam to the Mac, Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.

Great news.

So far, in just over 7 days, 115,662 generous contributors have put down an incredible $1,048,959. Of this, contributors chose to allocate 30.97% to charity: $324,912 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity.

Now with an extra Samorost 2 bonus.

This resource is to educate the public about the operation of the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft.

Just so, you know…

Human survival depends on a wet-bulb temperature of less than 35 °C.

”The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan,…”

minimalmac:

em:

Woah. Totally forgot that Apple’s Dictionary App has Wikipedia built in.

I always forget this too but it is very handy when you are looking for more than just the spelling. Very handy indeed.

All of the above…

This is not simply a case of using infrared light, a camera, and eye movement to move a cursor and click buttons: Text 2.0 infers user intentions and enhances the reading experience in far more complex ways. Reading certain words, phrases, or names can trigger the appearance of footnotes, translations, definitions, biographies, even sound effects or animations. Ask how a word is pronounced and you get a verbal answer. If you begin skimming the text, it fades out the less important words. If you glance away, a bookmark automatically appears, pointing to where you stopped reading.

Given the constant bombardment of trivia and data that we’re subjected to in today’s mediascape, it’s little wonder that noisy, Manichean arguments tend to get more attention than subtle, policy-heavy ones; that funny, snarky or willfully provocative assertions often gain more traction than earnest, measured ones; and that loud, entertaining or controversial personalities tend to get the most ink and airtime.

“Serendipitous encounters” with persons and ideas different from one’s own, he writes, tend to grow less frequent, while “views that would ordinarily dissolve, simply because of an absence of social support, can be found in large numbers on the Internet, even if they are understood to be exotic, indefensible or bizarre in most communities.”

One result of this nicheification of the world is that consensus and common ground grow ever smaller, civic discourse gets a lot less civil, and pluralism — what Isaiah Berlin called the idea that “there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and sympathizing and deriving light” from “worlds, outlooks, very remote from our own” — comes to feel increasingly elusive.

An interesting read on how the Internet has transformed our culture.

By holding no one accountable for past abuse, and by convening no commission on what did and didn’t protect the country, President Obama has left the telling of this dark chapter in American history to those who most want to whitewash it.

By using buildings as mirrors, it will be possible to identify a target vehicle from radar reflections.

Nano Trek.

“But the relationship goes even deeper, at least for some. A quarter of the students said they see the iPhone as an extension of their brain or being. Almost 10 percent said they sometimes pat their iPhone, 3 percent have named it, and 8 percent have suspected at one time that their iPod is jealous of their iPhone.”

Jonathan Keats — a San Francisco-based experimental philosopher who has, over the years, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (he sold a hundred and seventy-two extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day) made an attempt to genetically engineer God.

Fiber Power

Accordion

“The great Trans Siberian Railway, the pride of Russia, goes across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. During the trip, you can enjoy Russian classic literature, brilliant images and fascinating stories about the most attractive sites on the route.”

Scientists aren’t sure how the fear is passed down, but they speculate that stressful events like predator attacks trigger the release of a hormone in the mother that influences the development of the embryo.

Arachnophobia.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve returned to my iPhone after using a Blackberry Curve for a while. It’s still the 1st gen, and while slow and not very stable, it does what it’s supposed to do.

After constantly rearranging my icons for the past few weeks I think I’ve finally settled for this home screen.

Not sure if I’m willing to step away from my beloved 1Password, but this sure does sound interesting.

In school, I was taught that if you use a calculator, you need to know enough about a problem to be able to tell if the answer you are getting is plausibly correct. Well, now we have a whole generation for whom a good chunk of the world is so alien, and so inaccessible that they literally don’t have the frame of reference just to verify that things are as they should be.

Interesting perspective on the tech divide in our technology-based communication society. An issue that has been discussed at great length since the release of the iPad.

The question is therefore not if, but when, he is convicted as a war criminal - in his lifetime or posthumously.

That iPad owners will likely consider taking a razor to the plastic SIM cards inside their iPhones, just so they can use the same portable data plan they’re already paying for, should tell you everything you need to know about the wireless data industry.

“New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

One personal friend of Sulzberger said a final decision could come within days, and a senior newsroom source agreed, adding that the plan could be announced in a matter of weeks. (Apple’s tablet computer is rumored to launch on January 27, and sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy.) It will likely be months before the Times actually begins to charge for content, perhaps sometime this spring. Executive Editor Bill Keller declined to comment. Times spokesperson Diane McNulty said: ‘We’ll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best possible business approach. No details till then.’”

Looks like I’ll have to start paying again.