The future is here and it always is. Now we’re almost about to see 3-d holographic displays everywhere. Well, not everywhere. Just where they would be useful and entertaining.
The Graphics Lab at the University of Southern California has designed an easily reproducible, low-cost 3D display system with a form factor that offers a number of advantages for displaying 3D objects in 3D. The display is:
autostereoscopic - requires no special viewing glasses
omnidirectional - generates simultaneous views accomodating large numbers of viewers
interactive - can update content at 200Hz
The system works by projecting high-speed video onto a rapidly spinning mirror. As the mirror turns, it reflects a different and accurate image to each potential viewer. Our rendering algorithm can recreate both virtual and real scenes with correct occlusion, horizontal and vertical perspective, and shading.
While flat electronic displays represent a majority of user experiences, it is important to realize that flat surfaces represent only a small portion of our physical world. Our real world is made of objects, in all their three-dimensional glory. The next generation of displays will begin to represent the physical world around us, but this progression will not succeed unless it is completely invisible to the user: no special glasses, no fuzzy pictures, and no small viewing zones.
“The White House lost a case in the Supreme Court about the need for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. So the EPA made new rule. And now the NYTimes reports that the White House did not want to get these new rules from the EPA about greenhouse gases. So they did not open the email.”
Are you looking for a new job or, like myself, looking for employment that is more your style? Well take this into account….
With the coming recession, I get a lot of questions about whether it will be increasingly difficult for freelancers to get new clients and, more importantly, projects that pay appropriately.
Over the past eight months, the following industries have proved extremely lucrative for freelancers. I categorize them into Spheres.
The industries in the extreme sphere are those that are currently crashing or booming. Why would a crashing industry be a good industry to find clients in?
If you’re a freelancer, you’re less expensive and easier to handle for a struggling entrepreneur or business than an employee would be. Additionally, if you provide marketing services or can help them secure a presence online, they need you.
A recent global study by McKinsey & Company demonstrated that online marketing drastically out-pulled traditional offline marketing in results. 62% of participants rated online marketing as very or extremely important to their company.
Struggling industries must invest in direct profit-producing services like marketing and online tools to survive.
Then it goes on to list said industries. Check it out.
Jeff Atwood has a very detailed post over at Coding Horror discussing the ideals of practicing skills outside of their everyday usage in order to improve yourself. It definitely applies to more than just coding.
Contrary to what you might believe, merely doing your job every day doesn’t qualify as real practice. Going to meetings isn’t practicing your people skills, and replying to mail isn’t practicing your typing. You have to set aside some time once in a while and do focused practice in order to get better at something.
I know a lot of great engineers—that’s one of the best perks of working at Amazon—and if you watch them closely, you’ll see that they practice constantly. As good as they are, they still practice. They have all sorts of ways of doing it, and this essay will cover a few of them.
The great engineers I know are as good as they are because they practice all the time. People in great physical shape only get that way by working out regularly, and they need to keep it up, or they get out of shape. The same goes for programming and engineering.
Daelan lives in Canada and routinely gives his camera to his 3 year old son. I was surprised by some of the pictures this little boy took. Check it out.
In this Instructables a person can gain the skills to forecasting the weather by looking at the clouds in the sky. This should really be something everyone should know how to do, but in the age of the lazy and moronic Idiocracy seems to become the law of the land.
Cirrus clouds are white wispy clouds that stretch across the sky. By all accounts, cirrus clouds indicate fair weather in the immediate future. However, they can also be an indication of a change in weather patterns within the next 24 hours (most likely a change of pressure fronts).
By watching their movement and the direction in which the streaks are pointed, you can get a sense of which direction the weather front is moving.
Kogoro Kurata isn’t your average ironsmith. He doesn’t hammer out swords or forge bridges; rather he produces massive, awe-inspiring structures of myriad purposes and forms. Kurata creates 4-metre-tall robots and gothic restaurant interiors; he produces sombre stage sets, stop-trick animation and quirky, insect-like musical instruments. And there are also his weird, machine-like creatures which began as typewriters, Fiat cars or chandeliers! He also helps out in the local community with projects such as statues and monuments. PingMag went to Kurata’s factory in Soga, Chiba, on the edge of Tokyo to see how he does it and to hear about his obsession with iron.
George Carlin kicks the bucket at 71. He pushed the envelope in ways that other comedians were too afraid to. Lets have a moment to regard this situation in the only way to give good memory.
Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water.
The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car’s tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. Genepax, the company that invented the technology, aims to collaborate with Japanese manufacturers to mass produce it.
Miika Saksi is an artistic director and illustrator. He specializes in illustrations, photo manipulations, and graphically design art pieces. Lets let his work speak for itself. Follow the link for more goodness.
A very impressive mix of typography body painting and video display. Its described as “part of a campaign to promote writing on designated graffiti walls rather than someone elses property.”
‘3D Girls and Guns’ features three-dimensional works by Jason Snell. He employs methods ranging from early stereograms, View-Masters, two-colour anaglyphs, to linear polarization.
For a microcosm of public health we’re taking the rest of the day off from posting. We’re also taking tomorrow off. See you on monday for more to come. Shareholders and all to be meeting with.
Anyone who has been backpacking knows the fear of getting lost. Luckily two wonderful ladies were found after being in the middle of “we have no idea where the fuck we are” for FIVE days.
Lost for five days in Denali National Park, a Gaylord, Minn., woman and her friend were ferried to safety after a surprising cell-phone call.
Searchers had scoured hundreds of square miles of Alaska wilderness for a young Minnesotan backpacker and her friend for five days and found not a trace.
Then, on Wednesday morning, a cell phone rang.
Eight hours later, Abby Flantz, 25, of Gaylord, Minn., and Erica Nelson, 23, of Las Vegas were safely back at park headquarters, hungry but unhurt, hugging emotional family members, thanking their rescuers and looking forward to a shower, a hearty meal and, Nelson said, “maybe a beer.”
In this case technology saved them. With a GPS device they wouldn’t have been in the situation in the first place, but where is the fun in that. Now that we have ‘tech’ camping all it’s doing is making people dependent on those devices we rely on. All I can say is one has to walk before they can run. That is especially true when it comes to learning backcountry survival.
Thanks to the global economy and virtual office space the lingo we hear around business meetings and thrown into email is, like everything else, becoming homogenized. This does have a benefit to where we can all complain about those ‘phrases we love to hate’.
5. “My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let’s touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure.”
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England
32. “My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely ‘out of the loop’.”
April, Berkeley, US
38. “I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work.”
Ian Everett, Bolton
I’m in agreement that ‘talking about it offline’ is my least favorite of the 50.
It yet another shining example of why science rocks scientists have announced that they’ve taken significant strides in curing a formed of skin cancer, melanoma. This was accomplished by taking cancer-fighting cells, cloning them about five billion times, and then injecting those cells back into the patients body! Wow.
Scientists claim they have cured advanced skin cancer for the first time using the patient’s own cells cloned outside the body.
The 52-year-old man involved was free of melanoma two years after treatment.
Advertising for sex safety in bars and pubs is as age old as the contraception business itself. Image polishing off a pint in your favorite pub as any fine gentleman or lady would only to see that the bottom of your glass has been sold off to the highest bidder..
Now I love how creative advertisers can be when it comes to proper product placement in the right locations. I do agree with the original blogger who posted about this though that maybe the prank may be on them with it being a real condom. Checking the bottom of the glass is always a good call.
With this out in the wild we’ll be seeing more advertising in this fashion. Hell, people should be checking for falsie and chic glasses in this day of the cheapest business model winner… which is now our newest contest! Submit what you think is the skimpiest business and why (pictures would be grand) or prizes to be discussed at a later time! Gotta flesh out that idea… yes I’m writing this a bit hung over. It helps I tell ya.
Although I wouldn’t apply this rule to anyone of dating material no matter how tempting it may seem, making your bike physically unappealing is a great way to prevent it’s theft. Make realized this as well publishing an article about it in volume 11 of their magazine. The concept is to make it look tacky with stickers and a bad paint job while at the same time pho-ing unkemptness issues like rust and mud. It might be a bit too much to fake the dirt since that is unavoidable, but if you live in an area with high bike theft this would be something to look into. Cheers.
Reports are stating that download day for Firefox 3 was successful with over 8 million downloads. They’re still pouring over the data before passing it off to Guinness, but it’s looking like they’ve made the record books. This is good since they’ve already found a major flaw in Firefox 3 that they’re keeping secret. Expect an update soon for that bug fix!
Have you ever wanted to just modify a Google map instead of going through a long process of screen grabs and working in Paint or Photoshop? Well QuikMaps is a free mashup that allows you to do so. They also include tons of custom icons, text labeling, and other tools that makes it my new favorite map maker.
