A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
During a segment of The Hour (one in which I was very lucky to be a part of) they showed a backwards clip of a man singing Stairway to Heaven in reverse. Here is OneManSho doing the same thing, but with a more patriotic song. All the activities he preforms are to add a little spice to the reverse section of the piece.
[What Song is this? – YouTube]
I don’t know if this would count as truly backmasking, but it’s close enough that some of you may find it interesting.
(via)
Even better than the homemade touch screen hack, Johnny Lee has come up with a head tracking hack that could certainly be turned into many REALLY cool games.
[Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote – YouTube]
Despite repeated emails and Christmas cards that continually expound the details, I can’t seem to regurgitate my parents’ plans for Christmas except in the most general terms. I’m expected in Medicine Hat on Sunday? Food will be eaten? Religious differences will be tolerated? The important details just don’t stick in my mind.
However, ask me which questions I couldn’t answer on my 4th grade aptitude test to see if I qualified for AIM, and boy, do I have a list for you!
For the record, I didn’t answer “Christopher Columbus” because my fellow test taker, Christine, who finished it the day previous, told me, “contrary to popular belief it was Captain James Cook that discovered America.”
Why WOULDN’T I believe her? And to be honest, I don’t even know if Columbus is the answer they were looking for—what about the Vikings? And while we’re at it, do the First Nations people count for anything?
Don’t lose any sleep over it. I got into AIM anyway.
In case you’re curious, AIM was this once-a-week afternoon program they had for students who were high achievers. While my peers at George Davidson were learning about the First Nations (Native American Indians as they were called then) and the settlement of Western Canada, I was busy across town learning advanced science, math, and computer skills.
In AIM they taught us about negative numbers, statistics, and among other things how to use a word processor—this was a pretty big deal considering that in 1988 most people hadn’t even heard of word processors. I still remember typing away in front of those state of the art monochrome green monitors. Our teacher Mr. Freeman insisted typing would be a useful skill later in life. Who knew he’d be so right?
And even though this might sound pretty cool, I hated AIM.
One of my complaints was that I wasn’t interested in learning how to type. Computers were for games! and as any 9 year old of that time will testify, learning about home row is significantly less entertaining than Lode Runner.
They also demanded too much homework. Any extra homework, is too much. The weekly afternoon assignments at AIM more than doubled my load for the entire week. And to make matters worse, I was completely stressed out that I wouldn’t do a good job.
Homework wasn’t the worst part though.
The worst part was that none of my regular teachers had ever gotten around to teaching cursive handwriting. Mr. Freeman, liked to mix his chicken scratching with cursive shortcuts. Basically I was in a class of geniuses and I when it came time to read our homework off the board, for all intents and purposes, I was illiterate. Talk about HUMILIATING.
Mr. Freeman wasn’t exactly understanding either. There were a few of us in the same boat and he lipped us off saying that if we couldn’t read his writing, that was our problem. It was the next week that I began skipping. (How did you think I found out what everyone in my regular class was up to on Wednesday afternoons). Shortly after that I ended up dropping the program&8212;but I’ve kept the guilt.
And in so many ways, I can’t help but feel like my performance in AIM has been a reflection of my life in general. If only my circumstances had been different… if only I had a half decent teacher, or someone to inspire me… and besides whatever it is I should be doing, it’s significantly less entertaining than any number of my daily distractions.
At least I can take a break from my worries with some holiday cheer.
Using a couple of homemade infrared pens, a Wiimote, and some software he wrote, Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University has come up with, what must be, the coolest Nintendo Wii hack ever. Since the Wii tracks IR lights, Lee found that practically any surface — a projector screen, a tabletop, an LCD screen — could be turned into a multi-touch screen reminiscent of the iPod Touch or Microsoft Surface.
[Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard using the Wiimote – YouTube]
For those do-it-yourself types out there, the software can be downloaded here.
The other day I came across a neat collection of “Heraldry Brushes” by MrTentacleGuy on deviantART. I was disappointed to find out that the brushes were actually in vector format and while great for resizing and maintaining their original integrity in Illustrator, not very handy for quick and dirty Photoshop work where a brush set (.abr) is all you really want.
So I took his heraldry vector collection and made it into a brush set. I’m releasing it under the same Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Here is a little sample I threw together using the new brushes (sorry the red background is not part of the set).
Download the Heraldic Brush Set (.zip)
There are over 70 high resolution brushes in this set! If you use it, please leave a comment and don’t hesitate to link back to your work as well.
I play the occasional game of street hockey with friends, and my heart has been known to skip a beat during playoff season. While I wouldn’t consider myself a hard-core fan, I’m into hockey just enough to have entertained the thought that a grossly obese man might be the world’s most effective NHL goalie.
As strange as it may sound to anyone with a sense of decency, there is actually sound reasoning behind it. Because of the geometry of the game, the potential for one mammoth individual to change hockey is staggering. Simply put, there is a goal that’s 6 feet wide and 4 feet high, and a hockey puck that needs to go into it in order to score. Fill that net completely, and no goals can possibly be scored against your team. So why hasn’t it happened yet?
In hilarious fashion, Todd Gallagher answers the age old question once and for all: Could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?
Is there a connection between how smart you are and the genes you inherits from your parents? Or do social, cultural, and economic factors play a more important role in how well one ranks in intelligence quota than the nature of his make-up?
Malcolm Gladwell adds his perspective to the Race-IQ debate in this weeks New Yorker with his insightful article, None of the Above: What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race.
The Canadian government is about to bring down Canada’s version of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and it promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world. It will contain an anti-circumvention clause that prohibits breaking the locks off your music and movies in order to move them to new devices or watch them after the company that made them goes out of business and it will follow the US’s disastrous lead with the DMCA in that there will be no exceptions to the ban on circumvention, not even for parody, fair dealing, time shifting, or other legal uses.
Basically, in the US, it is illegal to even pick the locks of anything that is keeping you from accessing the content, EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO SO.
In plain English? You can’t rip songs off YOUR CDs to play on YOUR iPod. The company who runs the DRM system goes out of business? Too bad. Want to unlock your cell phone to run on another network? Nope. You want to copy an eBook that is in the public domain? No way. You want to use a clip from a documentary DVD in your own commentary? Fat chance. You want to backup anything copyrighted that you bought? Think again.
The list goes on and on.
I’m not sure if it can be considered sci-fi, since Bubble City takes place in the real world involving potentially real technology, but it’s got enough techie panache and thrilling conspiracy that make it the most fun fiction I’ve read in awhile.
Bubble City, a serial novel currently being written by the brilliant Aaron Swartz.