I’m very happy this evening because after much hassle I’ve managed to generate my first prototype three dimensional (3D) hyperbolic visualisation for my project using the excellent Walrus graph visualisation tool:
Basically this shows how 20 random nodes are linked together on the network. I know it isn’t much to look at but believe me once I have a bit more data it will look very cool, probably something more like this.
The last few days I’ve been awake from 7am through to around 1am, I really feel in of need some sleep now but I think there’s enough time for some linkage:
How Much is Inside? - This has got to be the coolest waste of time ever. A bunch of people have gone to some extraordinary lengths to answer this age old question of various items and miscellanea. One of my favorites has got to be how much blood is in a human!
Anti-Laser Contact Lenses - Something we could all do with I think, especially for when a lecturer gets a bit excited with their laser pen! Unfortunately the only people who will be getting this any time soon are the US military!
Gnome 2.8 - What’s new and cool. Like you need any more reason to convert? I’ve been running it since it came out and can vouch for its stability and quality - there are still a few rough edges but nothing significant.
–
For those who have asked about the status of Red Ted’s mission to Tokyo the truth of the matter is that I have no idea where he is right now. I’m still awaiting confirmation from Yukari-san. Hang on in there RT, wherever you are!
I’ll leave you with this rather freaky photo of an eye I’ve been playing with - which is better, the colour or black & white version? I’d be inclined to go with the latter but would be interested to hear what other people think.
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
ShareThis
As anyone who knows me will probably testify, I’m a bit of a sucker for beautiful visual effects in film, hence my love of films like The Matrix, Hero, Ghost in the Shell and Koyaanisqatsi. There is something intrinsically spectacular in the way these films manage to turn every frame into a work of art which captures the imagination.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of watching the remade version of Shirow Masamune’s ‘Appleseed‘ which was recently released in Japan. Although my copy doesn’t have any English subtitles it didn’t matter because the story was secondary to this visual feast of hybrid cell-shaded CGI animation!
From what I’ve read and gathered from watching it the story has something to do with a band of the last remaining members of the human race who are locked in a war with bioroids, an army of machines who once were domestic servants in the year 2131 (sound familiar?). Yes it’s clichéd and over dramatized but this doesn’t really bother me because it just looks stunning.
Both the camera and animation motion dynamics in this film are incredible. As the action unfolds so the camera fluidly sweeps through it all in such a way that live action films can only dream of. The detail of the animation is very stylized and practically unique from what I’ve seen, having a simplistic but very modern feel to it. It does not try to imitate photo-realism like some other high budget anime films. It’s also worth mentioning the soundtrack which is also pretty unique in its used of industrial techno which is very fitting to the mode of the piece.
Overall this film may not be as deep or sophisticated as some of the other films I listed at the beginning but it doesn’t half look good. I can’t wait to see it again with English subtitles! You can watch the trailer for it here. The official site (in Japanese) can be found here.
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
ShareThis
Went for an early morning wander around Durham today (just after 6am!) with the intention of taking a few snaps as the sun came up. Unfortunately it wasn’t the nicest of sunrises but I still got a few nice snaps of the local landmarks.
Durham Castle
Castle from other side
Durham Cathedral
All were taken using manual exposure settings on my digicam. The rest of the photos can be found in the gallery here. Also if you’re interested, here is a montage of various photos taken at different times of day from my window which I quite like 
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
ShareThis
Thought I’d post a collection of rather abstract wallpapers today I recently put together from some of my favorite photos taken in the last couple of months:
The choice of photos here is not coincidental - can anyone spot the connection(s) between them? In case anyone wonders the photo in the top-right was taken in Tate Modern, this may or may not be relevant!
They can be downloaded here at full size [1024 * 768] - if anyone wants them at a higher resolution please ask.
The previous collection of ‘Primary Colours’ wallpapers can still be found here.
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
ShareThis
Haven’t had a tech update in a long while so here we go…
One of the most interesting technologies to emerge in the last couple of years with the rise of the blog has been content feeds which allow for quick and simple syndication of information from sites which provide them (mine included!). This basically cuts out the time involved in checking whether or not a site has been updated and allows for information aggregation and almost instantaneous indexing (search). There are two main competing standards for doing this - RSS (Really Simple Syndication) & Atom. RSS is currently the dominant leader in this field (rightly or wrongly) and basically defines an XML grammar (a set of HTML-like tags) which might look something like this for a set of news items.
This can then be passed by an RSS news feed reader and processed in a variety of different ways. If you use the excellent ‘Firefox‘ web browser then you already have an RSS/Atom feed reader built in called ‘Live Bookmarks’ - see here for details of how to use them.
This links nicely into a cool email I got the other day from a reader (yes, I was amazed people read this thing too!) who sent a photo of them reading my site on a 3G iPod (of all things!) via the magic of RSS. Another example of pervasive technology out in the wild! If you want to do likewise take a look at EphPod which lets you synchronize feeds with you iPod along with a lot more.
Enjoyed this post? Please subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date.
ShareThis
Recent Comments