Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
28.6.08
technical difficulties
i am currently trying to redesign this blog, and it turns out that the application that i was using to "make things easier", has only gone and screwed the blog up.
please bare with me as i try and sort it out.
this may get ugly.
14.4.08
interesting
One of the weirdest computers ever built forsakes traditional hardware in favour of "gloopware". Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England, UK, can make interfering waves of propagating ions in a chemical goo behave like logic gates, the building blocks of computers.
The waves are produced by a pulsing cyclic chemical reaction called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.
Adamatzky has shown that his chemical logic gates can be used to make a robotic hand stir the mixture in which they exist. As the robot's fingers stimulate the chemicals further reactions are triggered that control the hand.
The result is a sort of robotic existential paradox – did the chemical brain make the robot's hand move, or the hand tell the brain what to think? Eventually Adamatzky aims to couple these chemical computers to an electroactive gel-based "skin" to create a complete "blob-bot".
The waves are produced by a pulsing cyclic chemical reaction called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.
Adamatzky has shown that his chemical logic gates can be used to make a robotic hand stir the mixture in which they exist. As the robot's fingers stimulate the chemicals further reactions are triggered that control the hand.
The result is a sort of robotic existential paradox – did the chemical brain make the robot's hand move, or the hand tell the brain what to think? Eventually Adamatzky aims to couple these chemical computers to an electroactive gel-based "skin" to create a complete "blob-bot".
30.3.08
too long
not much inspiration happening to me currently.
i have been spending most of my free time trying to reorganise my new house, and also obsessing over my music collection.
a lot of my experimental stuff is residing on miscellaneous hard drives that are scattered around the house.
i promise you that i will post more frequently when i start to amalgamate all of my data in to one place. i have my eyes on a ONE terabyte hard drive right now, but i will be away in montreal for a week.... so perhaps once i return.
anything in particular you guys want to see more of? less of? or just some fresh ideas for me to mess around with?
in the meantime - here is a video of a sunset from steve & ang's place that i captured this summer. in time-lapse :
i have been spending most of my free time trying to reorganise my new house, and also obsessing over my music collection.
a lot of my experimental stuff is residing on miscellaneous hard drives that are scattered around the house.
i promise you that i will post more frequently when i start to amalgamate all of my data in to one place. i have my eyes on a ONE terabyte hard drive right now, but i will be away in montreal for a week.... so perhaps once i return.
anything in particular you guys want to see more of? less of? or just some fresh ideas for me to mess around with?
in the meantime - here is a video of a sunset from steve & ang's place that i captured this summer. in time-lapse :
26.2.08
iRant

my friend rich, has a post on his blog asking people for advice on what computer to buy. below is my response to him.......
here is my three cents.
get a mac.
and then run ALL THREE operating systems on that machine.
alternatively, you could buy a cheap PC, and install the mac os on it. HERE is one version of it, although i have seen various working models, including one installation on a $400 laptop.
now to convince you that you really should only buy a mac.......
i have been using macs since their first model back in 1984. i have used all kinds of other computers with all kinds of different OS's on them. i even used to have a xerox computer at home, (which was where apple got the idea for THEIR OS).
i studied computer programming, and network architecture on PC's.
i have used atari computing systems for generating music, and also used them for sequencing and slow, simple audio editing.
at the end of the day, i ALWAYS looked forward, when i could go home to my trusty mac.
it's not like the other companies are incapable of building a decent machine, but they simply just DON'T. dell/gateway/HP build computers with parts supplied by the lowest bidder. if they run out of a particular part, they substitute something else equally cheap.
microsoft strictly builds operating systems. not machines. one of the reasons their system crashes so frequently, is because they have to try and build a system that will work well with perhaps a MILLION combinations of bits of hardware.
apple builds the system, and it runs on an incredibly small variation of bits and pieces. it is this reason that makes them such stable machines to run. they may cost a little more to purchase outright, but if you try and build an equivalent windows-only PC, you will spend the same amount of money, if not more.
sure, there is more software available for a PC. that only makes sense, since the windows OS is so ubiquitous. but does this mean better? the answer is a simple "NO". the best way to prove my point is by using television as an example. is 600 channels of programming better than 30? nope.
600 channels means that all the programming that you would get from 30, is just spread out across ALL of the channels. and the content that you wouldn't normally get from only 30 channels, (meaning original programming), is so diluted and weak that it can hardly be considered worthwhile programming.
so just because there are more titles available for windows, doesn't mean that you are better off.
and guess which laptop runs windows the best? i posted about this one previously on my own blog.
anyway..... that's about all i have to say about that.
anyone care to comment?
17.12.07
bad names

here's a list i found online, of some funny URLs, where the designer didn't thinking about how people would read the name of the site:
http://www.whorepresents.com
http://www.expertsexchange.com (now extinct)
http://www.penisland.net
http://www.therapistfinder.com
http://www.molestationnursery.com (now offline)
http://www.gasheating.co.uk
http://www.powergenitalia.com
here are some other bad names for websites that i was able to track down :
www.graphicartsexchange.com
www.dollarsexchange.com
www.gotahoe.com
www.scatissue.com
www.penismightier.com (odd site now)
www.hiscockransom.co.uk/
www.fagray.com/
www.modelstalking.com
Go Ogle
bonus points to you if you can figure out where that photo at the top of the post was taken.......
29.11.07
a life less oblivious
apparently i can't keep up with the news.

(click on the image to enlarge)
the above image was sitting in my email inbox this morning, compliments of the RSS feed from wired magazine's "gadgets" news.
anyway - thought it was funny, so decided to post it.
life, (and apparently in some cases, a lack of), seems to just keep going on around me......
ttys
ps - to anyone who has left comments recently - i apologise for not responding more quickly. any time i went to respond, i couldn't log in, and my browser seemed to have forgotten how to log me in automatically. anyway - i responded here.....

(click on the image to enlarge)
the above image was sitting in my email inbox this morning, compliments of the RSS feed from wired magazine's "gadgets" news.
anyway - thought it was funny, so decided to post it.
life, (and apparently in some cases, a lack of), seems to just keep going on around me......
ttys
ps - to anyone who has left comments recently - i apologise for not responding more quickly. any time i went to respond, i couldn't log in, and my browser seemed to have forgotten how to log me in automatically. anyway - i responded here.....
27.11.07
what was i thinking?

the other day, i decided to do some LONG-overdue purging.
this meant getting rid of my vintage computer collection.
i almost barfed.
the picture above was a casualty, that wasn't meant to be a casualty. i almost wept when it happened.
here is the rest of what i threw out.
yes there are duplicate computers, but they are NOT duplicate images. and by the way, this is not all of what i threw out, nor is it everything that i have.........
i am still going through post-partum depression.
:(
28.7.07
keep still boy, no need for static
29.6.07
night lapse
.
the other night i just COULDN'T sleep for some reason. i tried every trick i have, and nothing worked, so i just eventually got out of bed and started messing around on the computer.
that is when i had the idea to set the computer for time lapse, and have it record the onset of daylight.
this video was recorded from between 0300 and 0600, with some of the boring darkness edited out of the version you see here. i also edited the last 3 seconds of the video to make it go more slowly, so you could catch a glimpse of me after being up for 24 hours. the camera was set to capture one frame every second.
hope you like it.
Labels:
camera,
computers,
experiment,
macbook pro,
macintosh,
photography,
technology,
time lapse,
video
23.6.07
just a quickie
this is just something i did while bored one night. nothing too exciting, but i can tell you that it managed to eat up a LOT of my time. it is surprising how long it took to create this little clip.
not sure i like the stop motion stuff, because i am far too impatient.
Labels:
art,
camera,
computers,
creative,
experiment,
macbook pro,
macintosh,
stop motion,
video
16.6.07
you've got mail

2.6.07
how i stay alert
work was a little more boring than usual today. so i decided to fool around with the camera built in to the computer, and see what kind of cool stuff i could do.
you get to see me at my most bored. and a couple of times you can see me get incredibly sleepy, and there are a couple of times you can see me giggling. one of them is because i was flicking little balls of tape at my friend marta, through a little opening, (really not funny unless you are tired, like i was).
i am pretty impressed with the results.
let me know what YOU think!
edit : i just noticed, while showing a friend the results of my "time-lapse" movie, that there is a spelling mistake. i wrote "py attention", instead of "pay attention", and it is driving me crazy that i know it is there!!!!
edit 2 : i fixed the video ending, for the whiny complainers, (looking at you, dickcherry), that couldn't figure out that the video had ended when it went to black, but music kept playing. but i couldn't be bothered to fix the spelling mistake. it meant i had to re-edit the whole movie. and really couldn't be arsed, since it is just a cheesy video anyway!
16.5.07
it ain't easy, being green
so i was messing around with the camera in my phone the other day, and managed to capture a really neat photo of myself. i projected some light on to my face, and switched the camera to "negative" mode, (which is how i take MOST of the photos with my phone), and the result was, to me, pretty impressive.
then, while working on a client project, i was messing around with a specific style of dissolve for their logo, and came up with an interesting dissolve technique, and i decided to use the same approach with the photo i captured of myself a couple of days previous.
as always, no manipulation of the photo was done after it was stored on my phone. here is what i ended up with........
Labels:
boredom,
computers,
creative,
experiment,
technology,
video
29.4.07
the babies of boredom
this video is what happens when i am suffering from extreme boredom, and can't be bothered to do any of the work that i really should have been spending time on.
16.4.07
major mishap

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