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Over the weekend, I encountered OECake, a demo application of a 2D physics simulation called the Octave Engine. It models gravity, particle interactions, and momentum, as well as evaporation and condensation of water particles. So, I made a steam engine.
via Open the Future 3D Animation of the Phoenix Lander, due to land on Mars in about 17 hours. This expedition promising interesting results. It’ll be our first chance to sample soil beneath the Martian surface as it carries on board a digging arm capable of digging a trench half a metre deep. In addition,… Read More »
Recently, I’ve encountered two ways in which evolutionary principles can be applied to medicine. Rather than using brute force to kill pathogens, these are more subtle, systemic approaches. Viruses and bacteria evolve, just like all other living creatures. The difference is that they do it really fast. This means we can use evolution as a… Read More »
via Open the Future; A set of photos taken during the recent earthquake in Sichuan province, China, by a wedding photographer who’d just begun taking photos of the bride and groom when the earthquake struck. Two strike me in particular – one of masonry falling off a church, the other of the bride, resplendent in… Read More »
At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a rather macabre exhibit has been on display. Entitled ‘Victimless Leather’, it’s a miniature ‘leather’ jacket made from living mouse stem cells growing on a polymer matrix. As art, one interpretation could be that it shows how artifacts currently made from dead animal bits can instead… Read More »
For those who like pretty astronomical pictures.. ESO has a press release out with several photos of interesting solar phenomena, including the rare green flash and even rarer blue flash, both caused by the earth’s atmosphere acting as a prism when the sun’s light hits it with a very low grazing angle at sunrise or… Read More »
I’m surfing a rather strange mood right now. I got home from gaming 20 minutes ago, feeling strangely bemused and disappointed with the world, largely for broad social and political reasons than for anything one particular thing. I’ve been grappling a little of late with the troublesome conflict between ideas of social fairness and communal… Read More »
via George, An amusing take on what entertainment might be like 50 years from now. How plausible is full sensory experience and interface like this by the date offered in the video (2062)? Right now, it might look like far future fiction, but I’m fairly sure that’s not the case. Enabling technologies necessary for virtual… Read More »
Finally, it is time to rest. Last Wednesday, I randomly wandered in to visit Seth‘s office, where he’d just discovered a design competition for applications using Google’s new programmming environment for smart phones, Android. He had an idea of sorts which turned out to be similar to something else I’d been working on, and was… Read More »
I’ve been sitting in on Robert Kraut‘s online communities course. He’s a visiting lecturer from CMU with a background in social psychology, and consequently, the course is heavy on theory and empirical studies. In it, he discusses how theories of social psychology can help us understand and build online communities. So far, we’ve covered community… Read More »