World Builder

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Another superb video hosted on Vimeo. A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves. This award winning short was created by film maker Bruce Branit. It was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.

How to create a digital human in 18 minutes

Amazing TED talk about the technology behind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Impressive stuff!

Talk of the Steamie

There is a Glaswegian phrase "Talk of the Steamie": this refers to the chatter that people (almost exclusively women) would have while washing their clothes in a communal wash room. As you may surmise, the expression dates from the time before individual washing machines in the average home were commonplace. I always think that the Web is the ultimate steamie: providing a truly global forum where ideas and opinions can spread with breathtaking rapidity.

One of the things that is the talk of the steamie just now is Google Latitude. I have always admired Google's relentless innovation. I love Google Mail, Google Calendar, and Google Earth. However, I'm not so sure about Google Latitude. People in the UK, it seems to me, are monitored to an increasing and disturbing degree. I believe there is a higher number of CCT cameras in the UK per head of population than practically anywhere else in the World. The so-called War on Terror has led the government to propose that they should be able to read every e-mail and text message that we send, and have access to details of every web page that we visit. Although, I don't feel I've got anything to hide, my instinct is to oppose stubbornly these creeping infringements of our civil liberties. I can't really imagine why anybody would want to allow themselves to be tracked using Google latitude and it seems I am not the only one to have concerns about its privacy implications.

Clearly, use of this application is voluntary, but if it becomes widely used I would be concerned that systems like this could develop into yet another way for Big Brother to watch us.

Texting the Obvious?

I was not previously a fan of sending text messages. My old Nokia phone had predictive text, but I could never get the hang of it. As a result, I needed to perform multiple key presses, making sending even the simplest of messages a slow and painful chore. Wosog is quite a dab hand at predictive texting, as are my children. I believe my daughter's friend can even text at amazing speed using predictive text on her phone without looking at it! How the Hell does that work? Anyway, I've now got a BlackBerry Curve smartphone with a separate key for each letter, so texting is a dawdle.

I've heard of text messages being used for a few medical purposes: reminding patients about their clinic/ surgery appointments; reminding asthmatic children to monitor their peak flow measurements etc. This article on the BBC website describes a trial of the use of text messages to warn patients with seasonal affective disorder of impending overcast weather. To quote the article:

"Under the pilot project, alerts are sent to participants before gloomy days warning them to spend 20 minutes in front of their light box, and to read the accompanying advice that day.

This should help them to prepare for the dark weather and know what to expect when they draw the curtains."

Maybe I'm being stupid here, but unless these folk have very thick curtains (which would not seem a good idea in someone who craves light exposure) can't they get a pretty good idea what the light level outside is by examining the light coming through the curtains?

The Emperor's New Laptop

Hot on the heels of the sexy MacBook Air comes the even more orgasmic iNvisible iBook.

Our Hero Steve Jobs has really surpassed himself here, but I'm not sure if I'm cool enough or smart enough to even see today's ultimate gadget. I would certainly agree it's a steal at $2,999.

It could be enough to make me forsake the joys of Windows Vista: and that is serious!

Shock Tactics

On this date in 1903 Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant called Topsy. He was making a lot of money from the patent for direct current and this was threatened by the proposed use of the new-fangled alternating current. He had embarked on a series of staged electrocutions of various unfortunate animals in an attempt to show how dangerous alternating current was.

Topsy the elephant had squashed 3 handlers in 3 years, and park officials at Luna Park on Coney Island decided that enough was enough. They considered hanging the poor beast, but the SPCA vetoed this. Edison was only too glad to provide an alternative means of execution.

In order to ensure that Topsy definitely died, she was fed cyanide-laced carrots moments before a 6,600-volt AC charge. Officials needn't have worried. The elephant was killed instantly and Edison, in his mind anyway, had proved his point. The "event" certainly provided a lot of publicity: a crowd put at 1,500 witnessed Topsy's execution, which was filmed by Edison and released later that year. Ultimately, of course, alternating current proved superior and became the standard.

Greed is a terrible thing, isn't it?

Robosexuality

I've been fascinated by robots since I had a teenage interest in science fiction. Isaac Asimov, who wrote "I, Robot" was one of my favourite authors. At the time that I was reading these science fiction books I don't think I considered it likely that many of the things the stories prophesied would come about in my lifetime. I've posted several times on this blog (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) about robots, referring directly or indirectly to the amazing progress currently being made in robotics.

One of my other obsessions is the website Wordie, and it was there I first came across the term "robosexuality". There was a link to the Uncyclopedia on the subject from the Wordie page, and the whole thing was treated in a lighthearted manner. Imagine my surprise, however, to read in this article that a Dutch artificial intelligence expert is predicting humans marrying robots by 2050! "At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky" he says. I'm not sure that "geeky" would be the first adjective that would spring to most people's minds. Again according to Levy, "It may sound a little weird, but it isn't. Love and sex with robots are inevitable."

The Dutchman seems extremely sanguine about the prospect of romantic and sexual relations with these machines but I'm not so sure. He sees it as a dream come true for people who for one reason or another have difficulty forming close relationships with other humans. On a more lighthearted note, he sees it as a solution to the "randy husband-wife with headache scenario".

Postscript: For those who want to read more on this subject there is an interview with David Levy here.

For the Person who has Everything

Some time ago I blogged about a hi-tech toilet seat that I had come across while on holiday in Kefalonia in Greece. The seat in question rotated when you left and cleaned its surface, protecting you from all the hazards of bum-transmitted infections, and the unpleasant "calling cards" of males with aiming problems . I thought this was the ultimate in toilet seats but science never sleeps, and I have just stumbled on a quantum leap in toilet technology: the washlet.

Up till now we have had to be satisfied with toilet paper to do the necessary after we have done the inevitable, but according to the Toto Website, toilet paper merely "moves the problem around". To feel truly happy about your personal hygiene you really need a very sophisticated electronic device to---lets be frank---wipe your bum. The site is very nicely designed with friendly music, and pictures of attractive bottoms and faces. Buttons on the webite direct you to every facet of the washlet you could possibly want to know about. The gadget doesn't just clean the relevant area with scientific precision using water at the prefect temperature, it also dries you at the right temperature, and even controls the rate at which the toilet seat goes down. I think you still do have to remember to put the seat down yourself, though!

I love the bit in the technology section where the guy says that the washlet toilet seat "has more in common with your laptop computer than any toilet seat you've ever come across". When you think about it that's not saying much! The nice folk on the Toto site cover several racial groups and they all seem so happy and secure that their personal hygiene needs are being taken care of.

I really don't know if bog roll is going to be enough for me any more.....

PS If you think there is something fishy about the washlet, try this!

Global Worrying

Reasons to be Cheerful
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

I have previously confessed to being a terrible worrier. It should be fairly obvious from my various geeky activities that I am also a great enthusiast about the internet, and other forms of mass communication. Acres of text have been produced in the last year or two about the perils of Global Warming, but I think Global Worrying is an equally disturbing modern trend.

War is awful, and every death in combat is a tragedy for the person involved and their family, but deaths in war are inevitable. Modern mass communications mean that if even one or two British soldiers are killed in Iraq it is splashed across our newspapers and computer screens almost immediately. You could argue that this is a good thing, and makes us constantly aware of the reality of the conflict, but there is no doubt in my mind that it also raises anxiety levels in the countries affected.

Recently, concerns about the American mortgage market led to huge effects on stock markets throughout the Globe within days. Central banks have felt obliged to pump huge amounts of money into the system to stabilise the situation. Opinion is divided on whether this is a temporary blip or represents a fundamental weakness in the US economy. Only time will tell, but the speed and the magnitude of the short-term effects only serve to remind us what a connected World we live in.

Sometimes it's true that "ignorance is bliss".

If a thing ain't broke...

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front for the last few days, mainly because British Telecom has been doing its best to screw up my internet connection. I have been quite happy with the service that they have provided up till now, but for months they have been badgering me to get something called a BT Home Hub. This is a trendy white box that doesn't just act as a router-modem, it also has an internet phone attached and gives you access to lots of other wonderful "services" (or so they say). I had resisted their approaches because I thought there was a potential for creating problems where none currently existed. Last week I finally gave in and agreed to "upgrade" my system.

The trendy white box with its dinky white internet phone arrived on Thursday. The documentation was comprehensive, but I phoned up to check that I didn't need to uninstall my existing hardware before connecting up my wonderful new hub. I was told by a nice lady that this was not necessary. I unplugged a perfectly functioning old system and plugged in the new system to find that it detected no broadband service at all. Despite, literally, hours on the phone to the helpline, and numerous bizarre manoeuvres the f---ing device is still not working. We even had it sitting between 6 pm last night and 6 am today supposedly updating itself. This involved all of the lights on the front of the thing flashing in an extremely irritating way. At 6.05 am I finally pulled the plug on the annoying little piece of junk, reconnected my low tech old broadband router modem and, fortunately, resumed flawless surfing.

The extremely polite, pathologically cheerful BT technician is due to phone me (from India, I suspect) at 4.30 pm today to see how things have gone.

In my extremely impolite, pathologically morose way, I'll be telling him, in fairly detailed anatomical terms, where he can stuff his BT Home Hub.

The End Is Nigh

I've never been in the habit of buying a newspaper on a regular basis. They seem to me rather doom-laden publications that presumably service the insatiable appetite for schadenfreude. I'd far rather get my news from a combination of radio, television and, of course, the Internet. However, it seems from this article that the prophets of doom have been at work again and they are forecasting the collapse of the Internet.

In the olden days, IE in the early 90s, Internet users were quite happy to exchange a few e-mails. Less than 10 years later picture-rich sites and the arrival of the mp3 file led to increased strain on the Net's infrastructure. Fast forward to the era of YouTube with streaming videos, and some are suggesting that collapse of the whole edifice looms.

As you can see from the article, threats to the system include not only increased use and the resultant increased strain on routers and the parts of the network made from old-fashioned copper. We also should be losing sleep over the possibilities of terrorism and natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Jings, and I thought global warming, mortgage interest rates and bird flu were all I had to keep me awake!

Bear Necessities

No, it is not April Fool's Day. It's actually true that the US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear-style head to help carry injured soldiers away from the battlefield. Its even got a snappy acronym: Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot IE BEAR (geddit?).

Apparently, the "friendly appearance" of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease.

I'm sure having these gangly machines wandering about the battlefields of the world will make them altogether much cuddlier places to be!

A Threat We Must Ignore

I note that Abdalla El-Badri, who is the secretary-general of Opec (the oil cartel), has stated that investment in biofuels could push oil prices "through the roof". If that isn't a threat, I don't know what is.

Opec members control about 40% of the world's oil production, and El-Badri warns that moves to use biofuels would make his members consider cutting investment in new oil production.

This sort of rhetoric demonstrates the ridiculous position we have got ourself into with our worrying dependence on fossil fuels. The only way out of this, in the long term, is to expand the use of alternative fuel sources.

We cannot afford to be bullied by international gangsters like this.

Positively Agricultural!

Views from the Empire State Building 3
Originally uploaded by Son of Groucho.

I was fascinated to read in this article about the idea of using the rooftops of New York to grow food. New York Sun Works claim that if hydroponic systems were installed on the city's 14,000 acres of unshaded rooftop, the setup could feed as many as 20 million people in New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area year round!

Apparently New York, unlike some other major cities, ships in practically all its food. The group make the point that growing local produce could cut carbon emissions by reducing the need for trucks to deliver vegetables from long distances.

Just think how different the view from the top of the Empire State Building would be if most of the rooftops were covered with hydroponic greenhouses!

I can't see it happening in my lifetime!

I Feel Quite Queasy Already

It may surprise you to find out that I am not much of a thrill-seeker. As a child I was never really a fan of fairground rides. Even going on a fairly sedate Ferris wheel in the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow as a teenager made me feel sick, and the idea of subjecting my body to various unnatural forces at somewhere like Alton Towers fills me with horror.

Bearing this in mind, you will not be surprised to discover that this new attraction at the Kennedy Space Center would definitely not be my "cup of tea". Astronauts are paid (quite well, I suspect) to have their bodies thrown around in this manner. Why anybody would pay the center for the experience of "being in a dragster, peeling out from zero to 100 in three seconds, then keeping your foot to the floor for a full six minutes until you reach 17,500 mph." is quite beyond my ken! According to the Wired article, "Inside the capsule, riders are subject to an onslaught of 13-channel sound, from the roar of the engines to the commander barking instructions. Low-frequency sound vibrates the riders' chests, evoking the feeling of being unable to breathe." Now that's what I don't call entertainment!

But then I am an old fart.

A phone is a phone is a phone

I've never been able to get excited about mobile phones. I concede they are quite handy things for making telephone calls on, although even performing this function I often feel my phone makes me too available. The other things that modern phones can do leave me totally unimpressed. I hate text messaging and as for taking pictures with a phone----that's what cameras are for! Obviously, certain enterprising individuals have made millions from providing ringtones for people to download: what is that all about? Even thought the current technological marvels now play a reasonably musical version, why would I want my calls to be signaled by the latest "pop classic"?

The young folk are, of course different. For them it is essential that their every thought is packaged in a text message and distributed to their friends immediately. They have to have the latest phone, which is, of course, music to the ears of the likes of The Carphone Warehouse. Gsog, for example, has had numerous phones. His current one seems perfectly serviceable to me, but only the other day he was muttering about getting yet another one. Gdog has had 3 different phones in the year that she has stayed in our flat in Glasgow.

Anyway, I think I've finally found the ultimate phone for them. Only one small problem: they'll have to get an awful lot of overtime at Tesco to pay for it. The price tag is, after all, $1 million!

Your favourite transformer?

Some of you may remember the advert on televison a while ago for the Citroen C4 in which the car appeared to change into a disco dancing transformer robot. Video clips like this tend to spread like wildfire on the Internet these days, and often spawn slightly less impressive spoof versions.

In this case, however, the geeks have gone further and produced a real dancing transformer robot. Looks as if it is made out of Meccano to me, and it doesn't have quite the sense of rhythm of the Citroen C4 version. I suppose we should really be impressed that it can dance at all, but I'm afraid it doesn't fill me with enthusiasm! What do you think?

PS My friend RobotJam has since pointed me in the direction of this transformer, which I think is the best. There's something a bit creepy about it, though!

Animal Magnetism

I firmly believe that you can buy anything over the Internet, if only you know where to look. Those searching for straightforward things like cameras, iPods and computers probably need look no further than Amazon or Dabs.com. DVDs and CDs can often be found on CD Wow. For more obscure things, especially if you don't mind second-hand, I suspect eBay is the place, although I've never actually searched the site, believe it or not. However, if I ever have the sudden urge to try and source a rarity like, say, fluff from Elvis Presley's natal cleft (look it up), eBay is probably where I would start (after a Google search, of course). On the dodgier side, I'm sure if you know where to look, tissue type-matched kidneys are out there somewhere!

Specialty sites are a boon to those with strange interests: take United Nuclear for example (Supplier of the Most Powerful Magnets on Earth). The warnings on the site make ownership of neodymium magnets look as exciting and potentially hazardous as ice climbing or bungee jumping. The question that occurs to me, though, is "Who buys these things?". Having said that, the supermagnets do sound like fun, if somewhat pricey. They can apparently affect every computer in a room, and may cause loose magnetic objects in the room to fly towards them: just like in the cartoons! Handling 2 supermagnets at one time sounds like a job for, well, Superman!

I've got a birthday coming up next month, so if I come out some morning and find the postman pinned between a parcel and my car I'll know that Wosog has been reading the blog again!

A Good Christmas

Well was Santa good to you all? He was certainly very good to me. As well as my iPod, which came as a total surprise, I got a Crumpler Formal Lounge. Believe it or not, this is a bag made by a company in Australia that has one of the most eccentric websites I know. Their bags tend to have strange names, but they are widely regarded as among the best camera bags available. The formal lounge is really well designed: both from the security and the ergonomic points of view. I'll just need to get more equipment to fill it now (hint! hint!).

To come back to the iPod, I'm really impressed with the sound quality and I've also started looking into what podcasts are available. So far I've only listened to the New Scientist's podcast, and I think it's one I may well subscribe to. I downloaded a video podcast just to try out the video capability of the machine: simply amazing! It's like being able to carry a tiny televison around with you.

Got lots of other nice presents too, so all-in-all I'm feeling quite smug.

iHappy At Last

I'm finally getting an iPod for Christmas: a trendy little black one. You probably wonder how I can be (a) so confident, and (b) so specific. Well the reason is that I ordered it myself from Dabs.com. Wosog won't even let me look at it until Christmas----she can be so cruel at times!

iPods have become such objects of desire that people who can't afford one have resorted to making there own. I don't think the sound quality from these will be up to much though!

Another iPod-related phenomenon has been the burgeoning list of iThings: iPod-related artefacts. I wonder if the limit of this has been reached with these iPod-ready underpants?

Maybe you know better?