028Systems

Random Idea

2010-11-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

Idea: lets build satellites on the moon and shoot them in to eath's orbit.

Once the mining and manufacturing facilities are established it should cut costs of getting things in to orbit since the moon has a lower escape velocity.

There is iron and titanium up there? Plus some unknown quantity of water that can be processed through electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. And since the escape velocity is 20% that of earth's it would take dramatically less fuel to get off it's surface once an off-world base is established. So that'd be like 2.38 km/s... hmm, no atmosphere to put a plane up in... magnelev launch system? We could do it Orion style with nukes since we wouldn't have to worry about fallout affecting civilian populations?

all speculation, probably should be in one of my notebooks since the idea is in its infancy.

2560p?

2010-09-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

A 4550x2560 24" display. It sounds crazy right? It should.

The largest monitors resolutions we have now 2560x1600 (though only 1920x1080 is the highest commercially viable resolution) are and densest resolutions we have are around 96 ppi.

For the longest time I thought we'd reached an impasse. But then I saw the new iPod nano. It is only 1.5" yet has a 240x240 screen. That equates to a 220 ppi resolution! You think that is a lot? Look at the iPhone 4, it sports a 326 ppi 3.5" display! But lets stick to 220. If you do the math, a 24" 16:9 monitor with 220 ppi resolution equates to a 4550x2560 display (i.e. 2560p or 11.7 mega-pixels)!

Now, just in case you are not a numbers person let me put it this way. Do you remember the "big screen" TVs of the 80's and 90's? Do you remember how many people thought that they looked beautiful and nothing could visually surpass them? Put one of those next to a 1080p HD television.

Okay got that visual? Now imagine a TV that makes that HD TV look like a 1950's tube. Can't do it? Wait a few years and you won't have to; they will be a consumer reality.

On a closing note, if you would like to make a considerable return on an investment, buy stock in the company that makes LCD screens for Apple.

Wildcard Bitches

2010-08-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

There are times when you know something is a bad idea. But that doesn't stop you. Why? Because we are human. We are governed by strange forces called "emotions". Even if there are ineluctable facts right there in front of you about a how bad of an idea something is, if you're emotions say jump, it's hard to say no. They are one helluva wildcard.

Quick side note, Google accepts "helluva" as a properly spelled word? Really?

Anyways... I'm not saying emotions are evil. They can be beautiful things and really make life worth living. This post serves simply to remind future me and other humans, not to get caught up in the flight of a dream without taking a moment to stop and make sure that you are not pretending not to see the facts that might just be staring you right in the eye.

Every problem has a solution.

2010-07-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

Cali-forniuh Day 1

2010-07-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Well day one was actually yesterday, but its okay. I'm on a week long trip to Cali with my best friend Nick and I figured this is pretty blogable.

I'm not gonna incl. every detail because no one cares, instead, some comments...

Virgin America is the first Airline on which the fight crew actually seemed to be enjoying themselves

Also, I unlocked the achievements "Mile High Whiz" and "500mph Piss" (icons enroute)

My first impressions of Los Angeles

Less obesity than Washington
Palm trees are their evergreens
LA is the very definition of urban sprawl
The places in Seattle that we'd put art on, LA puts advertising... everywhere and
Gas prices are worse than the middle of nowhere in eastern, wa ($3.25+)

That thing on the soda can "CA CASH REFUND" actually matters here
Not to state the obvious, it's hot.

The home we are staying in is the home of Nick's Grandparents. Its a nice, two story stucco home in a gated community in the valley. Oh and the whole community is pretty rich and has horses.

That's all for now, Today we are headed to be tourists at Universal. Stay classy.

57 Questions

2010-07-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

What am I pretending not to see? Am I mad enough to keep her? Is there a point to this? Where am I going? Is it worth the risk? What if I fail? What makes me special? Is there anyone out there? Will she ever comeback? What do I need? Why did she choose me? Will she change her mind? Why is it hard for me to trust anyone? Why can I think one thing and do another? How am I going to afford this? Is it worth it? Am I ready for any of this? What if I never moved as a kid? Why do I care? Do I care? Is someone screwing with me? Why me? Does anyone have a plan for me? Why can't focus? Who can help me? Why can't everything just disappear? What if I wasn't me? Why does it matter? Can I be satisfied just following what I think others think I should do? Is it really that bad? Where did time go? What is time anyway? What do I want from life? Why does it have to end? What happens then? Why is society so deterministic yet vague? Where is the money? Why do we need money? Why can't I make it all workout? Is there someone that has been here and can help? Why do I have so many questions? Will I ever have answers? Is the point of a shrink just to relieve you of blame so you can go on messing things up more without worry? Why am I so worried? Why can't I tell anyone anything? Am I normal? Is it all bullshit? Does anyone understand? Am I wasting time and recourses on nothing? When our things going to start looking up? Can I change? Do I need to? What does 'stay the course' even mean? What is the course? What makes me happy? Why would something make me happy? What’s the point of happiness?

Mr. Walker's Coffee Workout!

2010-06-30T19:08:00.000-07:00

CIE: Programmer Shout-out

2010-06-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that not too many people have read my post about my idea for comparative image encoding, or at least I haven't hit my key demographic.

I am not the fountain of all knowledge. I claim to know very little. I have a question for anyone familiar with programing.

Put simply, I have an image and a set of data. I want to embed that data into an image by slightly augmenting colors (i.e. #4EFF67 >> #4DFE68) and producing an augmented image with a program.

Then I would like to have a second program that can then take a copy of the original image and the augmented one and be able to pull that source data out of the image.

What language and method would serve this project best?

What is actually real? '09 Repost

2010-06-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

What is actually real?

     People
           Everyone
     Territory
           Land
     Things
           Natural Resources
           Food
           Transportation
           Creatures
           Time
     Ideas
           Feelings?
           Morals?
           Technology?

If you can own all
things real, what does that look like?

     People
           Everyone
                 Slaves
     Territory
           Land
                 Property
     Things....
           Natural Resources
           Food
                 Groceries
           Transportation
           Creatures
                 Pets
           Time
                 Is that even possible?
                       I guess being incarcerated is away to
                        have time taken form you?
                             But you still have time, it's just
                              nearly worthless?
     Ideas
           Feelings?
                 Songs?....
                 Intellectual property
           Morals?
                 Religion
                 Moral Codes
           Technology?

What is power/control?

Power
is the ability to take away and give People, things, which can include ideas
and territory, based on Ideas. So the ability to influence people’s Ideas is
power?

So then what’s money?

So if money lets you own stuff, and power
is giving and taking based on ideas? What is money? A thing? An Idea? Or is it
Power?

Time is Money?

Well, the jury is
still out.

Final thoughts?

Well, the best things in life are free, and money can’t buy me love. But that in itself is an idea and if it influences you, it is power. So then is it money?

Banana Crunchers

2010-06-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

So, I was just sitting here, reading about C++ programing for my Comparative Image Encoding when I got a little thirsty. Upon arrival in the kitchen I threw some water on the stove for tea and ate a few fresh picked cherries. It was at this moment I knew chamomile just wasn't enough.

I looked around the room and found...

an over-ripe banana

chocolate syrup

and cap'n crunch

And might I add, they go very well together in a bowl, eaten with a spoon. FYI we call this "Banana Crunchers" at my house.

Step on it! I got to get there in less than 1.31 seconds bro!

2010-06-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

Light-speed. The Speed limit of the universe. I'm not going to get into the physics of that in this post so, read a wiki on it if you can't wait.

One thing about me you may not know is I hate limits. Whether they be socioeconomic or source engine physics, if there is a limit, I believe it can be bent or even broken. The key to doing so is analyzing what the limit is derived from.

In our case the speed limit is 299,792,458 meters per second. You may ask, "How are we suppose to break that down, its a speed". Yes, but for you I have two questions.

What is a meter? To which I'd hope you'd respond, a unit to measure distance and What is a second? A measure of time. Now, are either of these absolute? Do we not completely understand these concepts?

No. Time is distorted depending on an observer's speed of travel and distance or space can be bent, flipped, punctured, inflated and deflated.

Today, lets look at breaking space.

In this image, each square represents one unit of distance (say 200 kilometers?) The space here is being distorted by some force, perhaps a primordial black hole's gravity in Logan County Nebraska.

If I wanted to get from the big green dot to the big red one, and my objective was fuel economy I would chose a path similar to the blue arrow. But since my objective is not to get any where but to simply go faster than the speed of light lets look at the unrealistically straight yellow arrow. If I were to follow the distorted line from purple to orange, the distance traveled by me would be greater than that of the yellow arrow. Thus if I took a little short cut, at nearly light-speed, I could cover a long faster than light.

There a blinding flaw in this idea of course. This perceived faster-than-light travel only appears to be FTL along that line. I intentionally left this flaw to leave you with this; If that distorted line was not a line in 2D space but space itself, where would you take a shortcut though?

YOU'RE GOING TO CRASH THE MOON NASA!

2010-06-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

Remember a while back when a some of the less intellectual members of our society thought NASA's plan the break some ice on the moon would cause it to come crashing down?

As you may've noticed, the moon is right where we left it. But, what if, I, with unlimited resources and a vengeance against humanity, decided I wanted to bring old luna to earth? How would I do it?

The obvious choice for most people would be a enormous nuclear explosion on the far side of the moon.

Sure, If you have an ungodly enough explosion you could accelerate the moon towards the earth. Unfortunately, if not large enough, you could do just the opposite, pushing the moon away from us (and elliptifying its orbit). Short physics lesson...

The moon is moving fast. Really fast. We're talking over One kilometer per second! But why doesn't she just fly off in to space? Gravity. Gravity constantly accelerates the moon towards the earth. Put simply, the moon is constantly falling but, since shes going so fast, the moon can sustain an orbit. If the moon was not moving so fast, she would fall to earth.

Thus in order to "crash the moon" all we'd have to do is counter it's 1 km/s velocity by detonating a slightly less ungodly nuclear weapon ahead of the moon, just enough to make her velocity equal zero.

There you go Steve Carell. And one last note, the moon is really, really far from us.

(To scale)

What's the Big Deal? Who cares about Comparative Image Encoding?

2010-06-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

If you are a part of the small minority that read my last post about Comparative Image Encoding (CIE) you may have some questions. Who cares? What is the big deal? What can this idea do? I'm glad you asked (if you did, if not read on anyway).

Imagine, I am a government agent who wants to slip secured information to my agency but I am under tight surveillance. Any zip or text file I send could be intercepted and decrypted by enemy agents. But lets say I send a png back to my contact. It is intercepted. They open it to find a picture of something harmless (a lol cat?). They don't pay it much mind and don't investigate further. I send a second copy of the image to another contact on the outside. The enemy sees it and lets it pass once more.

Little do they know this image is slightly different. My contact, whom is already aware of CIE runs the images through a simple program, extracting the invisible data from the images. Viola! Your man on the outside has the enemy intel (or the url of where to find more lolcats) and your mission is a success.

Sure this is a bit of an extreme exaggeration but it shows us some interesting things about human nature. We do not look for something that we don't know to exist.

Now for some interesting stats (which we will explore the math of in the next post)

A pair of 5 mega-pixel images could contain 11,904 140 character tweets.

The ~3 pixels per character base concept, can be optimized to store more data in less pixels

It is possible to hide data in a single CMYK image

Thank you for your interest, please post comments with questions, comments and if you are a programmer interested in helping with this project, email me at zac.pontrantolfi@gmail.com

Comparative Image Encoding: The Concept

2010-06-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Comparative Image Encoding is the storing of data in images that is invisible.

There are two facts that make Comparative Image Encoding possible.

The human eye cannot perceive minute differences in color

i.e. #ffffff and #feffff look identical to the human eye; even in print.
Furthermore most monitors cannot display all 16,777,216 colors of the 8 bit RBG color system

Any data can be displayed as strings of zeros and ones

The Idea is to encode data into a modified version of an image that when compared to the original, would allow us to recover that invisible data.

Next week, we will look at a few of my conceptual methods of Comparative Image Encoding.