Category: looky

something cool I found on the internets

Venison!

looky

Last night I had venison- I had bought some frozen “medallions” (actually they were 4 oz steaks… why did they label them medallions?) a week ago on impulse. Much richer than beef, plus it doesn’t make gaping holes of rot in your brain.

I had intended to just roast them or something… but Diane, even though she doesn’t really eat meat, was suddenly inspired and I ended up having roast venison with a pepper rub, served with caramelized shallots and shiitake and organic potatoes in a port reduction.

Actually last night is kind of a haze- I went to Berkeley Bowl and bought a lot of pretty crazy things. I have a policy of buying one completely new thing each visit… and let’s just say I went way over quota last night.

For “dessert” after my venison I had St. Benoit yogurt. I can’t really recommend this (bland, expensive, bad texture), but it did come in a ceramic jar. A single serving of yogurt, with plum flavor in the bottom, in a ceramic jar. Are you intended to just throw the jar in the trash? You can’t recycle it. Reading their site, apparently you are supposed to bring it back to the store. Isn’t that precious.

Bah! I’m sticking to Brown Cow “cream top.” Mmmm fat.

LiveStrong

looky

There is this fad here in San Francisco of wearing these rubber bracelets… so here’s my story:

I was in a cafe eating breakfast with Samir. We were working on a script or something, and waiting to get into The Black Rider, when I notice he has a yellow rubber bracelet on. Inscribed in the bracelet are the words “LIVE STRONG,” in big block letters.

“Okay, okay,” I interrupt Samir, “what is the deal with the bracelet?”

AARON: this is going to be some form of self-denial isn’t it

AARON: is it a reminder to avoid premarital sex?

Samir rolls his eyes- “oh this… it’s Lance Armstong’s charity. They were giving them out at the club last night.”

I’m not sure about the rest of the country, but Lance Armstrong is sort of a celebrity in the Bay Area, and has been for a while now, even before winning all these bicycle races… I think the reason is because cycling is getting more popular here, and the cancer aspect appeals to the more health-minded west coast attitude. But that is just a theory.

Samir was telling me, “these bracelets are really popular… in fact I bet other people in this room are wearing them.”

I look around… sure enough, the woman at the next table has one on too. The guy she’s eating with… also has one on.

I look behind me-

AARON: i keep expecting this to turn into a scene from Invasion of The Body Snatchers

the people at the next table also are wearing them. I look around faster and faster- everyone in the room is wearing these damn things except for me.

It was exactly the opportunity for the Hitchcock shot- where the camera dollies in and zooms out at the same rate- the subject in the center of the frame stays the same size, but the background recedes from the person, giving an impression of alienation and being isolated.

Meanwhile violins do the pizzacatto noise you hear when something creepy and frequently spider-related happens in horror or action movies- plink plink plink plink!

So anyway… it’s a SF fad. There are other colors now too, for different causes.

Today I ordered a spoof one from LIVE WRONG – it’s black of course. I was thinking of having a bunch of these made with a brief nihilistic slogan on them, but it was too obvious an idea and it looks like these guys have done a great job anyway.

Oh, just to reassure you that nothing has a happy ending, you know who makes a killing off of the LIVE STRONG bracelets? Nike, since I hear they make the bands. So when you buy the yellow band… you are supporting child labor! Yaaay!

Hapland

looky

A stateful puzzle which sort of reminds me of GROW.

In this one, the object is to light the torches on the big ring.

Hints:

  • The tricky thing about this puzzle is figuring out which things are clickable, so just click on everything to start out.

  • clicking multiple times on things does indeed matter. Example- click on the light bulb 3 times.

  • Open the hatch and click the arrow to release a man and get started

Web link of note: Hapland
(At http://www.foon.co.uk/farcade/?page=hapland)

Jim Campbell

looky

Yesterday Kelly and I went to see the Jim Campbell exhibit at the Hosfelt Gallery. It was pretty cool.

There were some photos which were digitally composted images of the protests in New York for the Republican Convention. Those were kind of lame.

Jim Campbell sort of invented his own genre- In most of the remaining works, a grid of LEDs is mounted on a custom board. A frosted glass pane is mounted in front of them- the LEDs are a uniform, soft glow behind it. BUT the LED intensities change individually- forming a very blurry television image. It reminded me a lot of the kind of image you get from a televisor.

Ironically, the one Kelly liked the best was something in the back, which was just a few blue LEDs. It didn’t show a picture, just a random wave. I told her you could buy something like it at Target. She didn’t seem to care.

So, for fun, last night I worked out a simple mostly-digital implementation of the LEDs. My first version uses no processor, only ROMs, multiplexors, counters, a clock, latches, and a digital-to-analog converter. And a bunch of LEDs with transistors. Missing- the actual art part. The images you put into the ROMs.

My question is- how did he get the values for the images? Did he take every frame, reduce it to the given (very few) pixels, and then measure the intensity? Does he have a software tool he wrote to reduce video images to the new ultra-low-resolution format?

He probably didn’t do it “by hand,” since the wave movie takes at least three minutes to loop! At around 700 LEDs per frame, probably 24 frames a second, and 3 minutes = 180 seconds for the piece… that would be a lot of sampling!

Too bad I don’t know anything about image processing. Maybe there’s something in Java that could do that easily- group a big square of pixels, then find the average value of all of them. Yet another project I’ll never get around to doing. You’re safe this time, Campbell!

The works we saw included:

  • Library
  • (something like Library but with a street)
  • Wave Modulation
  • Reconstruction #1
  • Running, Falling
  • a still piece made with tones and a microphone- the tones play one at a time, and the pitch seems to indicate the intensity of the LED- the LED grid lights up, adding one light at a time. the LEDs make a face.

BioJewelry

looky

The project is seeking couples who want to donate their bone cells – a couple having their wisdom teeth removed would be ideal. Their cells will be prepared and seeded onto a bioactive scaffold. This pioneering material encourages the cells to divide and grow rapidly in a laboratory environment, so that the scaffold disappears and is replaced by living bone tissue.

Web link of note: BioJewelry
(At http://www.biojewelry.co.uk/)

GIPF project

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Anthony was playing “YINSH” today… it’s one in a series of abstract strategy games.

I think ZERTZ looks interesting, but apparently it’s been mostly “solved” – it has been played so much that hard-core gamers have figured out there are certain moves which will guarantee a loss.
Web link of note: GIPF project
(At http://www.gipf.com/)

AmyVille

looky

Nice site- I like the sushi beads.

Incidentally it’s sort of a pet peeve of mine that things get labeled “ASIAN” but in this instance it seems pretty necessary – Sushi is Japanese, Fortune cookies are Chinese. But for that matter, fortune cookies are actually Chinese-American, not Chinese.

Ah well.
Web link of note: AmyVille
(At http://www.amyville.com/)