| Phil's profileFelipe.Luis.Naranjo (phi...PhotosBlogLists |  Tools  Help |
|
5/20/2007 Beach Ball Sat AntennaThis is one of those brilliantly simple, yet elegant ideas that is likely to gain wide adoptance: "The antenna is made of a flexible, high-strength plastic lined with conductive mesh inside a large (six- or eight-foot) sphere constructed of a material similar to that used for racing sails. A valve from a small compressor directs slightly more air pressure to one side of the antenna, giving it a parabolic shape. At first, Gierow and his business partner, William R. Clayton, worried that an inflatable sphere might just blow away. But the GATR-Com's spherical shape actually deflects air twice as efficiently as rigid disks do and protects the internal antenna's shape from being distorted by gusts." "...With inquiries from a wide range of potential clients, Gierow regularly puts in 70-hour workweeks in his warehouse office/lab. But last summer he managed to take a week off to bring his family to the beach. Not surprisingly, the antenna came too. "I was the nerd on the beach with the really big ball," Gierow says, "and the T1 connection." http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/ 8d81e8ee82c82110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html#video 4/30/2007 More guerilla art at Olympic Sculpture ParkThe PDL art collective (Jason Puccinelli, Jed Dunkerley and Greg Lundgren) strikes again at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park. At 12:30 PM on Sunday April 29th, a crew of workers in white overalls installed a swing set. The accompanying sign boards read "Ouch! Even the lightest touch harms the art. Scratches and residue cause major damage over time. Help the art survive. Please do not touch." Within minutes, the crew was gone leaving a puzzled bicycle security guard shooing people away from the swing set. By 2:30 PM, park officials had already removed the guerilla art installation. Most recently, the collective installed the baby eaglets sculpture in the same park next to Calder's Eagle piece. 3/15/2007 Space Radiation a Mars Mission-killer"Glory would be certain; early death a strong probability. Shielding options include placing the spaceship in a large protective mass, such as huge sphere of water five metres (16.25 feet) thick, which would provide similar protection to standing at an altitude of 5,500 metres (18,000 feet) on Earth." From Seed Magazine: Copyright 1998, University of Illinois 3/4/2007 Burning Man 2007 - First Lunar Eclipse on the PlayaFrom Tribe.net: Burning Man -- August 28, 2007: "It will be a total lunar eclipse right on the full moon; very visible while we're in BRC (Black Rock City) . It will not be the best seats on earth, but certainly the best on this continent, and we should get darkness for as much as an hour or so. This lunar eclipse is the highest magnitude lunar eclipse since July 2000, and the next highest magnitude won't beat this until June 2011 and July 2018 (neither visible in North America). As for BRC, the Burn has never seen a lunar eclipse. " Wasabi Spill on ISSFrom Space.com: "The spicy greenish condiment was squirted out of a tube while astronaut Sunita Williams was trying to make a pretend sushi meal with bag-packaged salmon. The three space station crew members are given a certain number of bonus packs of their favorite foods to help endure their months in space where most meals are the equivalent of military MREs." “We finally got the wasabi smell out after it was flying around everywhere,'' Williams told her mother this week in a conversation arranged by Boston radio station WBZ. “We cleaned it up off the walls a little bit.'' "Unfortunately for Williams, the wasabi tube has been banished to a cargo vehicle where it will stay packed away." 2/19/2007 EagletsSome friends up to their guerilla art wonderfulness at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park: 2/15/2007 Legends of the FallCheck these photographs by Denis Darzacq: http://denis.darzacq.revue.com/la_chute/index.html 11/28/2006 Second Life's First Millionaire...This is sure to spark a speculative virtual land buying frenzy. "In just 32 months, Chinese language teacher Ailin Graef has transformed an outlay of $US9.95 into virtual assets worth at least $US1 million in real money." Read the article.
Tulips anyone?
11/15/2006 Payphone Warriors - The next street gameUrban golfing is soooo 2005. NYC's cool kids are payphone warriors": "...You and your teammates must dash across the blocks around Washington Square Park in a bid control as many payphones as possible. You simply make a call from a payphone to the game system and enter your team number to capture a phone. For each minute your team controls that phone the team scores one point. Grab more phones for more points." http://payphonewarriors.com/11/12/2006 "V" Visits DC"On Monday, November 6, 2006, “V” visited security check points at the White House, the main Treasury, IRS and Justice Department Buildings and the Capitol. “V’s” purpose was to deliver the People’s Petitions for Redress of Grievances relating to the Government’s violations of the war powers, tax, privacy and money clauses of the Constitution, and to inform key Government officials that at least 100 more “Vs” would be at their doorstep on November 14th expecting a response to the Petitions." 11/1/2006 911 Temporary Public Art (Lot's Tribe, Salt Witnesses)My friend Mike is giving a lecture about a powerful 9/11 temporary art project he created which received some local (Seattle) media attention. Form/Space Atelier Lecture Series With Michael Magrath November 22, 7PM 1907 2nd Avenue Seattle, WA 98101-1101 Contact: Paul Pauper 206-448-2302 Michael Magrath: Temporary Public Art Michael Magrath will speak at Form/Space Atelier November 22, 7PM, sparking a dialogue about temporary public art. Michael Magrath is a sculptor and UW art professor in Seattle, where his temporary salt sculptures, Lot's Tribe, Salt Witnesses were installed in a city park. Magrath will talk on the inception and execution of a large-scale public art installation utilizing an untried media on an impossible schedule with insufficient funds. He will also discuss the potential of temporary, site-specific public art and the special challenges of artistic collaboration with good-hearted and untrained voluntary assistants.. "Temporary art has the advantage of being in time with us," says Magrath," not aloof with pretensions to eternity, but embracing its inescapable decay and degradation, erosion and loss, as we all do. It has the potential for a striking tenderness. In its creation we collaborate with the wind and rain and beating sunlight, sure in its eventual fate, yet no more able to predict it than the weatherman. Lots Tribe is the first in a series of planned installations of this type, trying a vulnerable art against the vagaries of public will." You can learn more about the conception, casting, and installation of the piece at http://lotstribe.typepad.com/lots_tribe/. 10/29/2006 Zero G and I Feel Bug-FreeEver wonder about the code used on the space shuttle: "...This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors." The specs and DCRs are nothing to sneeze at: "...Take the upgrade of the software to permit the shuttle to navigate with Global Positioning Satellites, a change that involves just 1.5% of the program, or 6,366 lines of code. The specs for that one change run 2,500 pages, a volume thicker than a phone book. The specs for the current program fill 30 volumes and run 40,000 pages." 10/10/2006 Massively Single PlayerWriter Steven Johnson recently interviewed legendary Sims creator Will Wright about his new, highly anticipated game 'Spore.' I hadn't realized that the game will not be a MMORG in the traditional sense:
"...When you land on a new planet in the game’s final stage, it may be teeming with multiple exotic species, all of whom have evolved separately on other computers around the world, guided by the tastes and imagination of complete strangers. But these creatures will, crucially, have lives of their own once they have found their ways onto your machine. They will not be controlled by other players as you interact with them on your screen. Once they have migrated to your computer, they will act autonomously, based on the procedural animation and artificial-intelligence algorithms of the Spore software. By the same token, the creatures that you have lovingly brought to life will spread throughout the alternate universes of other Spore players, struggling for existence on their own, independent from your direct control."
"...Instead of a single shared world with millions of active participants, Spore promises a million alternate worlds, each occupied by a single player. You will meet creatures invented by others, but ultimately you are alone in your own private universe. Wright calls Spore 'massively single player.'"
9/25/2006 Hypoallergenic, Allergy-Free KittyFrom Emaxhealth.com, the world's first hypoallergenic, allergy-free kitty: "Dr. Sheldon Spector, a leading allergist and clinical professor at UCLA, has designed a protocol and conducted an independent exposure trial that attests the hypoallergenic nature of the ALLERCA(R) GD cat, the world's first naturally bred hypoallergenic feline.... Each ALLERCA cat is priced at $3,950 and a waiting list already exists. A payment plan is available to help with the cost of purchasing and owning an ALLERCA kitten." 8/10/2006 Space Hotel: Cluster of GrapesA Barcelona design firm and a group of Florida aerospace designers are developing a prototype of a space hotel, baptized the Galactic Suite.
The hotel resembles a cluster of grapes with a central nucleus. Each module has large viewing window and the hotel can accommodate up to thirty people. Maybe they'll use Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space modules...one was recently orbited. 6/12/2006 Soccer Ball DesignPingMag has a cool article about soccer ball design: factoid: "Soccer is not only played by the world’s top players, of course but by everyone. Sadly, nearly 80% of all handstiched footballs were made in Pakistan (mainly in the city of Sialkot) with child labor up until 1996, during the European championship, when activists successfully pressed this issue which led to the Atlanta Agreement. This agreement forces ball manufacturers to make sure no child labor is involved in the fabrication of their products." 6/6/2006 Asteroid Giveth, Asteroid Taketh AwayScientists recently discovered a 300 mile wide crater in Antarctica. Over 250 million years ago the asteroid impact triggered a mass extinction that made it possible for the dinosaurs to ascend to power. They reigned for a brief 185 million years until another smaller asteroid took them out. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060601_big_crater.html "The Permian-Triassic extinction, as it is known, wiped out most life on land and in the oceans. Researchers have long suspected a space rock might have been involved. Some scientists have blamed volcanic activity or other culprits. The die-off set up conditions that eventually allowed dinosaurs to rule the planet. The newfound crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub space rock is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide, the researchers said." 5/29/2006 GameOn!This weekend I went to a new interactive exhibit called "GameOn! - The Science, History, and Culture of Video Games" at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. On display, they've got virtually every home console ever made plus dozens of other more esoteric machines stretching back to 1968. You can get hands on with something like over 100 games/systems. Also, there's an exhibit from Rockstar Games which outlines how they develop characters, storyboards, and city maps for Grand Theft Auto. ...And no, GTA isn't running on any of the demo systems. Anyway, it's definitely worth checking out. Details: Now thru August 31st. http://gameon.pacsci.org/index.php?id=62 |
|
|
's+Blog+-+Windows+Live&referrer=){kind=small}
