Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 30th, 2006
I’ve seen examples of multiple pictures being stitched together into panoramas and even three dimensional models, but this work from Carnegie Mellon is particularly impressive in that it builds models from a single photograph. Be sure and check out the little movies on this page.
Somehow this makes me think of a cybernetic version of the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 28th, 2006
Guy Ottewell, astronomy writer and eccentric polymath, writes a well-regarded annual astronomical calendar. His Astronomical Companion is the best single book I’ve ever read on astronomy. As an inveterate teacher, he also created an exercise called the Thousand Yard Model, in which the size and relative location of the nine planets is made graphically apparent [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 23rd, 2006
The US is out of World Cup contention, but we all knew the fun had to end some time. See you in four years! In the meantime, there’s still plenty of great soccer to watch. Ben Hammersley’s blog alerted me to a lovely Argentinian goal from their game against Serbia and Montenegro. The game was [...]
Posted in Astronomy on Jun 22nd, 2006
Happy solstice, that day on which the location of sunrise stops and reverses direction. I’m going to put another link to my Sky Clock here because I’ve added a few improvements to it. The yellow sun line can be seen crossing the blue line labeled “SS” (for summer solstice), thus signifiying the day. It must [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 20th, 2006
Years ago I knew some folks who were obsessed with the Bungie game Marathon. Relative to first-person shooters today like Half-Life 2 and others, it was almost unimaginably primitive. Still, at the time it was cutting edge stuff, and it let you do fun things like play with the physics of the game. You could [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 16th, 2006
Four years ago, I picked up a copy of the new SEED magazine (tagline: “Science is Culture”). I was unimpressed and convinced that it would speedily vanish. I was wrong. I still think it’s an odd mix of a magazine and rarely buy it, but beyond the magazine, the parent Seed Media Group has built [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 12th, 2006
They always tell you not to point your camera toward the sun if you want good pictures, but every now and then you get lucky. Take a look at this APOD picture of sunspots in ultraviolet light: APOD: 2006 June 11 - Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
It’s incredible to think that this is what that bright [...]
Posted in Maps on Jun 9th, 2006
When you’ve got good data, heat maps can be a particularly gorgeous way to take it all in. Following links back from Paul Kedrosky’s blog to Valleywag and then Zillow, I came across these beautiful real estate price heat maps of some of the most expensive places on the planet. The folks at Zillow have [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 7th, 2006
I have become accustomed to pictures from around the world. Even the lush, lovely, well-taken photos from exotic places.
Here is something rarer and more emotionally immediate: well-recorded sounds from around the world. The Quiet American is a collection of raw and remixed sounds by San Francisco traveler and artist Aaron Ximm. We hear extremely [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 5th, 2006
As a big fan of Frank Capra’s Bell Science films Hemo the Magnificent and Unchained Goddess, I have a soft spot in my heart for fifth-grade level instructional films. This goof on that genre is a good one. The set-up is a little long, but the last sequence is worth the wait.
(spotted on Wired.com’s Table [...]
