Hack the Future!

Peak Everything, the Crashing Economy, and the Future

2011-09-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

I have had my eyes opened by recent events. I had thought all I had to do was sit back and keep myself and my family alive and healthy until the Singularity, when pretty much every possibility would open; even the potential for immortality. Now I find that "future history" and the fate of civilization is a race between MANY downward - pushing factors: peak oil, high government debt, climate

Plans Goals Dreams

2011-06-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

I have a dream / goal of building up a fully capable workshop / laboratory from scratch using recycled materials and utilizing the best engineering and scientific principles to make it truly capable. I'd like to document the process as I go, perhaps making videos and writeups for my website. I'd like to go from nothing but dirt and rocks, a few recycled materials and some energy input, all

Amazing Science Archive

2010-11-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

As someone who is interested in science, and science experiments, labwork and demonstrations, I am pleased to find that Popular Science magazine has placed their articles into a searchable archive.One of my favorite authors of these articles is Kenneth M. Swezey. He used to set up the experiments, get volunteers to perform them, take photos and write it all up in the many articles he authored

Our Soylent Green Future?

2010-11-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

I find it both fascinating and appalling when I go out onto the Web and read about what this century has in store for us: On one hand, we face increasing climate chaos, possible drought or hurricanes, the rising probability of a massive earthquake in California, the end of cheap energy and along with it affordable food. We hear dire predictions of the mess that consumer culture will make of the

Science Tee

2010-09-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

stroboptics shopHey, I made this shirt and offer it for sale at Cafe Press. You should get one now!

Personal Portable 3D Printer

2010-09-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

Personal Portable 3D PrinterA new 3D printer is coming onto the market. Apparently it's a breeze to operate, and only costs $1500.If we couple this technology with vision technology that allows you to import physical objects into the software - scanning technology, if you will - then we have a system that can reproduce objects.Imagine the carnival novelty: get a 3D portrait in thermoplastic.

Manna not From Heaven

2010-08-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

Manna is the name of a management program that debuted on May 17, 2010, according to this fictionalization from Marshall Brain.Manna debuts in a fast food restaurant. All the employees wear wireless headsets, and Manna, residing on a PC under the former manager's desk. Manna replaced the manager and his assistants. All day long, Manna issues voice commands through the headsets, and the wearer

Science Carnival

2010-02-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

I volunteered to be the chair for the PTA's math and science night. Since last year's Art Festival was so successful when it was done on a Saturday, we moved our math and science night to a Saturday too.My motivation for volunteering was that I really dig this hands-on science stuff. I even have a website devoted to it but I really don't seem to make enough time to do much of it these days. Well,

atnmbl: The Autonomobile is Coming

2009-07-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering for a long time why the GMs and Chryslers of the world are so clueless about roboticizing our vehicles. Are they just stupid? Or are they locked into an irrelevant mindset, unable to think outside the box-on-wheels?I think it's too late for the Big Auto industry. But there is plenty of opportunity for creative designers and engineers, to integrate new technology to create

DIY 3D Printing Uses low cost materials

2009-03-31T15:27:00.000-07:00

Mark Ganter, Duane Storti and Ben Utela, from the University of Washington Department of Mechanical Engineering in Seattle, Washington, have developed a low-cost replacement for the materials their 3D printers use. AND, they've published their recipes.Now materials costs drop from as high as $30 a pound to mere pennies. The result is that the UW has been able to open its rapid-prototyping shop to

Hacking YOUR Future

2008-10-08T11:43:00.001-07:00

You click in the areas you want to work, such as "People" "People and Data" "Ideas" etc. and it helps find the appropriate career for you.It says I'm supposed to be a snail farmer, or maybe an earthworm or (stretching it,) frog farmer. Wow! It really picked up on those hidden desires!Here's the link: http://www.act.org/wwm/index.html

A Robotic Book Scanner

2008-09-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

In Vernor Vinge's "Rainbow's End" a corporation is rapidly scanning the contents of the Ted Geisel library at UCSD using innovative technology: The machines grind the books up, chopping them into tiny bits, and vacuums up this book dust. Each tiny book particle is photographed as it is disposed of, and all of the images taken by the system are later stitched back together by powerful vision

Doing Face Art with RoboRealm

2008-09-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

This video is one of what I'm calling "Face Art". My webcam is taking a view of me and my surroundings and then RoboRealm - a video processing program designed as a vision platform for robotics - is performing a bunch of transformations to the video. Things like motion detection, frame averaging, histogram processing, mirroring, and so on.It's fun, and not difficult to set up.Sorry, no sound

El Arbol de la Plaza

2008-08-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

Sony BMG disabled embedding, because they want their artists to struggle in obscurity, I guess.But here's a link to the video. I encourage you to watch it!VIDEO @ YOUTUBEWow, what is that?It's really scary. So surreal. Those airplanes in the sky - and that clown - really freak me out!But for some reason, I really like it.--UPDATE--The artist is Vicentico, from Argentina.The song is, as the post

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene

2008-08-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.Scientists at the University of Washington are pushing the boundaries of what can be done with video by computers. They can use a series of still images taken of the same scene a video was taken, and extract some of the superior qualities of the still images to enhance the video. Lighting, resolution, texture and camera

Excellent OpenCV Articles

2008-07-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

A series of articles by Robin Hewitt appeared in Servo Magazine last year. I had never heard of the magazine, but I was looking for information or tutorials about OpenCV, an open-source Computer Vision library. I am trying to get my head around the capabilities and usage of this library, and others, like RAVL (the Recognition and Vision Library).Here is the link:Seeing with OpenCVHave fun!

More Than "Just" The World's Oldest Cyborg

2008-05-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

I just noticed recently that Steve Mann, formerly of MIT and now a professor at the University of Toronto, has been actively involved in some of the things I am interested in, for quite a while. Not just wearable computers, which I am waiting impatiently for, but image processing and interpreting. He has developed a program - Video Orbits - for stitching together video into stills. One property

Arduino

2008-02-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

I've been playing around with a neat little micro- controller develop- ment board called Arduino. It has built in I/O for sensing and controlling the outside world. A great development environment too; it only takes moments to set up the software under Linux or Windows.So far I've lit up LEDs, generated a waveform for display on an oscilloscope, and run a DC motor using pulse width modulation.

More Spatio-Temporal Warping

2007-11-16T15:18:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple more demo clips from the team that brought you Spatio-Temporal Warping.In these clips, a video pan of a scene is converted to a panorama with all activity occuring at the same time.To really enjoy it, be sure to watch both the before and the after video. Link is in the title, above.

2D Video to VR Environment and Characters

2007-11-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

For the last few months, I've been thinking a lot about what I would ultimately do with the hours of video I have taken over the course of my children's lives so far. I can't imagine actually watching all of that video, or even trying to edit it down. I don't really want to experience it in a linear fashion. After all, I was there. And while I may have experienced it through the viewfinder of a

Lunar - Hybrid Awaken

2007-09-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to some wonderful music by an artist known as "Lunar". His whole album is available FREE for download, or you can buy a CD for 12 bucks. You can stream the music right from the website (link is in title, above).If you like the music, you will want to make a contribution to the artist. I did!

Spatio-Temporal Video Warping

2007-09-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

Check out the videos on this academic page (link in title).These investigators are inventing new tools for navigating the 3 dimensional data cube of a video stream, and rearranging it spatio-temporally. You will see a demonstration of several time-warping effects. In one, a panoramic video is created out of a pan of a waterfall. In the panorama, the water falls at the same time, even though the

Sentient Rights in Accelerando

2007-08-13T13:35:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting quote from Charles Stross's book, "Accelerando." "How you got here: The center of the solar system - Mercury, Venus, Earth's Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, and Jupiter - have been dismantled, or are being dismantled, by weakly godlike intelligences. [NB: Monotheistic clergy and Europeans who remember living prior to 1600, see alternative memeplex "in the beginning."] A

Of a Singular Mind

2007-08-09T19:52:00.000-07:00

I seem to be in a very singular mood these days. I've been listening to a bunch of podcasted talks from the Singularity Summit - and elsewhere - during my bus commutes from Lompoc to Santa Barbara and back. One of my favorites is Bruce Sterling's 2007 South by Southwest rant. It's a terrific talk that he begins by not inviting everyone to his home in Austin for a keg party. That's after he

Pas de Deux

2007-08-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

I first saw the Norman McLaren film "Pas de Deux" in high school in the mid 1970s. It inspired me then, and it still inspires me.McLaren worked for the National Film Board of Canada. What a gig! They really supported his work.Definitely check out the link above. It's buried in the post title.