Mike Brinker

Diamond...

Diamond Multimedia is returning to the graphics card market. Why? I have no idea, but they seem to think they will be able to compete. I won't believe it 'till I see it. Specially after dealing with them oh so long ago.

From my home away from home...Sysopt

Simulation

Roughly 1/3 of the American population suffers from myopia or nearsightedness (trouble seeing distant objects). I myself have it pretty bad and need new prescription lenses every so often. For my simulation project, I decided to simulate my spectacles...althought it turns out that I simulated "better vision" and not the glasses themselves. Here is a pic of my glasses that I wear around a lot.

So, I decided to simulate better vision through the use of something called pinhole glasses. Essentially, using some wire, paper and a thumb tack, I created the following...

and a close up...

The results are a surprisingly better, clearer image of the world for us myopic folks. The results vary drastically from daytime inside to daytime outside use, outside being the best because of the daytime sunlight. After a little research however, these things are simulating better vision but aren't correcting it in the least. The following few diagrams clear up the mystery. Figure 1 shows what a myopic eye does, which is to focus the image too far in front of the back of the eye, creating a blurred image.

The next picture shows what corrective lenses (prescription glasses and contacts) are supposed to do, which is correct the focal point of the image, so that it displays exactly on the back of the eye, making images crisp and sharp.

The final picture shows what pinhole's and pinhole glasses do. It's a hack, as is most of my creations, but essentially all it's doing is creating less of a blur. This expirement can be performed by just punching one tiny hole in a piece of paper and holding it up to your eye.

And there you have it, a simulation of what glasses do, give you better vision!

Perry Final #3

Susana mentioned a project she wanted to do earlier involving sound, pictures and piano's. I have been toying with the idea of a similar piece that would incorporate much of the same imagery, yet would give more information about the performer and their personal history. Imagine for a moment...

A small midi keyboard at which one person sits, playing. As they play, an image is projected onto a nearby wall that the performer and audience can see. Each image is tied to a key on the keyboard and so is a sample sound. As the performer plays, the images shift and change with each key, as does the noise. The noise itself is random, but is a localized database of sounds involving a certain geographic location.

So, before the player even begins playing notes, they must tell the system where they are from. This could be as simple as picking from a list of city's, states, countries and then playing.

The idea is to give the audience and the performer a little more in depth knowledge about their own existance as well as someone elses, more of a nostaglia trip for them, but also for a viewing audience. I think this project could have unlimited boundaries.

Perry Final #2

Take the popular Furby toy and reverse engineer it. Instead of cute, weird random noises coming out of it, fill it's inards with a feed back system that plays the following voices...

The Arnold Sounding Board

Space

Space is a place...it occurs everywhere.

My favorite spaces are those that appear to have no boundaries. Like being in the middle of the desert or looking up at the sky through trees. Another space I find interesting is the insides of things, like the toaster or a computer monitor.

Inside a computer monitor looking out:

The inhabitants for my space, be visible or invisible leave a footprint in most cases. Those inhabitants that are visible are only visible within a limited field of view, bound by the edge of the screen; field of vision; distance of GPS accuracy, IR range, pixel range, rendering fov, simulated camera or actual camera...etc. Those inhabitants that are invisible but noticable leave a footprint; shadow; artifact; arc of light; noise.

Visible boundaries are defined by the edge of the screen; the mezanine or curtain so to speak is made up of electrical components that drive the monitor (see fig 1a). The invisible boundaries are what lie beyond the visible ones. IE, what physical environment beyond the monitor, in the narrative, the participants boundaries and so forth. Those that are 'off camera'.

Geography is the visible playing area of the participants, mainly humans. The participants can be synthetic as well, generated by the stage as a forground. The invisible geography is the space directly below the monitor or any space that supports the activity of the participants that may change invisibly. The invisible geography is any place the monitor has been prior to the current view.

The rules: Visible rules are simple. The space does not necessarily move. Anything can move in and out of the space. The first rule of the invisible rules is that there are no invisible rules!

The history: The visible history can be things like smudges left on the screen from fingerprints, empty potato chip bags laying around, headphones, cd's, etc. The invisible history is that of who owns the monitor, who uses it, etc.

The signs: Visible signs include user interface objects, circuit boards and keyboards. Any object that is tangible and relates back to camera and or view. Not sure about the invisible signs…

The allusions: The visible allusion is the monitor viewpoint itself, the text displayed backwards, the characters that move on and off, the videos or animation that unveils itself on the pseudo screen. I am not sure there are invisible illusions, do they even exist?

Prop1

Here is my final proposal for Perry. Since discussing it in class, I think there will be some drastic changes to it. I am still toying with some ideas, but the concept will probably remain the same. Hopefully I won't toss it all together.

Paper

and

Sketch

Really Destroy that Data

All I have to say is that THERMITE is way COOL. Tech TV actually did somthing interesting for once, and you can find it all right here. Look for the two video links on the page for the actual clips, and I would suggest number 2 as the best. Thermite burns at approximately 3000 degrees C which is about 5500 degrees F. A very useful way to destroy your HDD and your computer all at once! Courtesy of the JD community, mad props to my boyz back home for this one.

Yikes...

Guess we shouldn't have bought G5's. I didn't really fully grasp how fast the AMD 64's were going to be. Check out these simple benchmarks here as posted on slashdot of course.

ADDENDUM: I am sure our G5's will be quite sufficient in handling many of the applications and programs we want to use, especially those that don't run on a PC. I was just stunned by the speed comparisons.

Welcome...

A great article by Jim Caple from ESPN's page here. "Welcome to the Terror Dome" is a funny article about what happens when one man where's a sporting teams T-shirt in the opposing teams stadium. If anybody appreciates this article, I know it will be you Will.

PS This has nothing to do with Interactive Media, but I enjoy articles that are humurous that have to do with peoples reactions to their surroundings. Maybe somthing interactive will spring from it....hmmmmmm....

Second...

I now have a Second Life. Which says a lot about my first one. After spending nearly four hours with it, I am convinced that the possibilities are very much open ended. Except of course that you can't loot, pillage, plunder, rape and be an overall baddy. I guess that's what FPS's are for...oh wait, thats this too. Definitely give it a look see. I will be completeing my assignment/glossary for Peggy Weil in it. My SL name is Koonthul Sklar.

So far, I think the most interesting social conventions revolve around the displacement of the user as their avatar. Many of the relevant ways of communicating are sort of cross bread with a conventional 3rd person over the shoulder, FPS, 2D file drag and drop interface. This can be annoying and jarring at times, but makes up some very funny user/avatar behavior! Essentially, it gives a whole new meaning to "talking with your hands". The community 'air' so to speak is always an un-nerving optimistic one, but that drives the potential monitary policy up, so it is also unusually productive, even in the 'unsafe zones'. Come watch me demonstrate my 'second life' this Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm in the IML. Should be interesting!

New Comics

As promised, more have been made. These next two feature Kurt and Will. Thanks guys. Some of these aren't going to make as much sense now that I have attached them to an assignment I am doing, so I will try and make things as clear as possible.

Comic Number 2 - Deals with the frustration of Artists as programmers. Coincides with my phrase "Syntax Descriptors" which is: Levels of communication, ie: Programmers = Programming languages = Low level
Artists = Artistic works and interpretations = Medium Level
All others = English, Spanish, Chinese, etc. = High Level

Comic Number 3 - AR Quake. Deals with my term "Reverse Transparency" which means: Users can make choices but are unaware of what those choices are until a response stimulus occurs, eliciting a reaction from the user. OR “indirect action results in a choice and reaction” I.e.: Cosmic Osmo.