Thursday, January 18, 2007

Too cool for words

It always used to bother me when I watched some crime fighting show and they managed to do all kinds of image enhancement from a shitty low res security cam. Or took a single image and somehow extrapolated a full 3d image from it (which they would feed into a computer to make a lifelike mask ala Mission Impossible 3)

This kind of crap just isn't possible!

Or is it?

Check out this video and be freakin amazed what they can do with only 1 photo. I did a search with the googles and found the website of one of the researchers which has more examples. There are all kinds of applications for this, some of them actually scare me alittle. What do you think?


Winter at Bag End

The sky was so clear the other day that I completely forgot what I was supposed to do and went outside to take some pictures of the pristine snow and ice. Image links to the gallery.

Vikings vs. Indians

If this idea appeals to your bloodthirsty nature you may wish to point your Interweb browser of choise to the following linky.

Yes, yet the viking armor and swords are all wrong. That typically kills it for me. Sci-Fi recently did a version of Beowulf (oddly called Grendel) that was so visually painful I could stomach no more that 5 minutes of it. But this film is different. It may not be accurate, but it looks good. For this I will forgive much. Anyone remember the Gladiator helmet the viking wore in The 13th Warrior? I forgive this transgression because it still LOOKS right and certainly remained true to the spirit of the Vikings.
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Okay, so maybe the Vikings are depicted as a bit bloodthirsty. The film does seem to be skewed to the "Spirit Warrior" crowd who have collectors plates depicting Palomino's and velvet paintings of hot Indian women next to wolves.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Sheer Evil Joy

I have been busy working on a few projects in the shop. Nothing to show yet as the first iteration is mostly a prototype (although the results are good so far).

Anyway in doing some research I came across the fantastic website of Doctor Steel, a mad scientist and musician. I highly encourage you to check out his Delicious site, which is filled with all kinds of evil World Domination Toys. You can view clips of his live shows, which don't just look cool, but sound cool. Poke around and you will find very funny animations in the lab, a web store (of course) Dr. Steel's personal computer (which works) and a lot more! I feel I will soon be purchasing some of his music through the tubes of the Interon.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Pardon me?

After reading the headline from thisUK article I was bit miffed, if not downright aggrivated:

Campaign to pardon Britain's last convicted witch


This is especially strange since she was convicted during WWII. Weren't we done with this nonsence by then? But it gets stranger once you dig a little deeper. Apparently the lady in question, seemed to have information about wartime ship sinkings that hadn't been made public. She was imprisioned for 9 months. Churchill did away with the laws after the war but the woman didn't get a pardon.

She seemed to know something. The Government, having no evidence she was a spy but fearfull D-day information might be leaked, silenced her. Of course it's pretty clear how we'd handle something like this today. Off to Gitmo for a good waterboarding.