We saw the “Los Mallos de Riglos”, Grand Canyon high rock formations that grow vertically out of the middle of a small village. It was around noon and nobody was in the street, because of the heat. But we were not the only vistors. Nearly invisible to the naked eye, I  found two little dots with my 400mm lens on the rock wall.  Two climbers were at the middle of their way up, when I just wanted to get back inside the air-conditioned car.

Then we visited the national park “Hoces del Duratión”, where we nearly decided to turn around after we arrived on a small, empty parking space after 45 minutes of driving on a gravel road with potholes with the breakneck speed of 5 to even 10 km/h. There was nothing to see but dust and a small map of the area. Fortunately we decided to give it a chance and followed the only road, that led us into a canyon, that we could not see from the parking space. We were impressed by the sudden change in view, when we suddenly noticed a “swooshing” like sound, similar to an airplane far away. Out of nowhere two large vultures passed us in 15 meters distance to glide slowly into the canyon, riding on the thermal lift. Our eyes wandered up and we finally realized that there were more than one hundred vultures circling high above the area.

The artificial waterfalls in the “Monasterio de Piedra” managed to top itself several times. We arrived there around noon and it was  hot again. But the whole park area is located in a large pit, that is exceptionally green, with it’s own mild climate, created by lots of trees and lots of water. It started with a small water stream flowing down little rocks in several paths. The water is redirected in several directions and there have to be several springs natural or artificial, because there is water everywhere. There are several destinations, each with a new kind of water “installation”, differing in a way the water is streamed or splashed around, over or beneath it.  After the 10th water fall it started to get a little boring. The last climax was a nice 30 meter water fall with a rainbow beneath it and I thought it could not get any better. The way led as above the waterfall and we passed some more stone water installations when we heard a thundering sound in the distance.  We approached the grand finale, an over 50 meter high water fall. At the side of the edge of the water fall was path carved into mountain that led us down to an alcove that allowed us to look from the left side on the water, midway of it’s way down. From there on everything just felt like a dream, as the accumulated sensory stimulus satiation of the whole day resulted in a trance like state. More dark and steep stairs inside the mountain led us to a bright opening. We were thrown back by a mixture of green and balck stone shades, covered with specular highlights and our faces were covered by cold spray of water, that prevented us from completely drifting away. We stood in a big cave with stalactites and moss directly behind a big white wall of water and I cannot remember if I had my mouth closed or not. Remembering the same expressions on the faces of the other visitors, probably not.

It is quite rare that I manage to finish the pictures of one of my trips so soon afterwards. There are lots of pictures waiting to get published on my hard drives from destinations like Portugal, France, England and Indonesia. I will try to catch up on that work so stay tuned.

I needed a replacement. Unfortunately there is no 13 inch successor for the P300. There is the Acer Aspire TimelineX 3820TG but it has no fast connectivity ports like USB 3.0, eSata or a PCI Express Slot. Moreover I need a Nvidia graphics chip with at leas 1 gig of Ram and 96 shader cores to unlock the hardware acceleration of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. I was only left with options in the 15 inch size category. The Apple MacBook Pro did not make it again, because of its old graphics chip, lack of USB 3.0,  and way too high prices. I considered an Asus N53JF and X5MJ but then I saw the new Dell XPS 15 line. Dell had the better display and a 3 year warranty for a reasonable price. I found my best price/value winner.

Nearly one month after the LG broke, I am now working on the new Dell. If it wasn’t for a very impolite and incompetent Dell phone operator, who messed up two phone orders, I would have had the machine earlier (final online order on November 24th and delivery on December 10th). I decided for the dual core i5 560 processor because the quad cores are still lacking an Intel integrated graphics chip to save power when the Nvidia chip is not needed (the rest of my configuration: Bluray Reader, Bluetooth 3.0, Intel 6200, installed my old SDD 128 Gb, installed 8Gb Ram, HD Display).  Moreover the 560 has AES acceleration, TrueCrypt really flies with 875 MB/s (5mb Buffer)

Unfortunately my first tests to get the hardware acceleration in Adobe Premiere CS5  up and running were not successful. After adding the line “GeForce GT 420M” to the file cuda_supported_cards.txt in the Premiere install folder, I got past the GPUsniffer tool test but the acceleration option in Premiere was greyed out. I had the Dell provided Nvidia drivers, that were not up to date, under suspicion. Unfortunately the drivers from the Nvidia website cannot be installed, as they do not accept the Dell 420m hardware id. But good news, I managed to install some drivers with the a modified inf file from laptopvide2go.

Update 24.01.2011:

I do not reccomend to install the modfied drivers  from above anymore. They are not signed correctly. You get around the windows driver protection but it leads to strange software hangups e.g. Hugin does not find the correct program paths and windows live writer just hangs on start. Yes this does not sound plausible, but it is the only thing I found to solve those problems. Fortunately there are new Nvidia Beta drivers that work flawlessly.

Optimus seems to work at least that’s what the gpu activity monitor tells me. The Adobe Premiere CS5 mercury engine uses the Nvidia 420m successfully, and hd audio bitstreaming to my Onkyo SR 608 works too.

I cannot tell anything about the 3dvision part, as I do not have a capable 3d display.

I can hear the clicking noise of the subwoofer, that was reported in some forums,  too. It is connected to the sound card turning on/off the power saving mode . My old LG P300 had this too, but it was not that audible, because there was no subwoofer build in. You can turn powersaving off in the dell audio menu or turn off all the windows status sounds, they are annoying anyway. By that the sound chip is only turned on when you start an audio track, where the clicking is not that obvious.

The cooling fan kicks in during surfing but not constantly and i do not think it is loud or disturbing. There is no CPU whine, that could be found in the old core2 XPS series.

Overall i am quite satisfied with the laptop even though I do not like the inner design (keyboard/display) that much. The outer design is nice. I wish there would be a 13 inch version, but the high resolution 15 inch display is great.

You can see the library in action in my WordPress theme Physical, which i have created for my portfolio. Most of the code was written by me or by following some physics articles and papers. The resolution of contacts and collisions in real-time in a system of stacking objects is very complex and an area of on-going academic research. Thanks to Erin Catto of box2D for his notes and code samples about his sequential impulses algorithm. Credits for the line drawing algorithm go to Mathieu Henri from p01.org, who had the same Idea like I did, just seven years before me. I modified his implementation.

Why should you use this library and not the JavaScript port box2D? I think it is a little less complex and ready to use with graphical HTML objects. More over there is not the overhead of calculating the angular momentum, as it still will take several years until most of the web users have a browser that can rotate HTML objects. Then there is the possibility to use scriptaculous effects on the objects of the physics engine. The scale effect even works on all children HTML elements that are inside the parent HTML element. If you want to draw connection lines between your particles to form a mesh, this works out of the box.

You can download or fork the source at Github. Moreover you can test the demo application that comes with the source to see more of the functionality and effects of the library.

Main Characters:

Dr. Sara Bright and Dr. Ian Summers:

They form the leading research team in the run for the first artificial life forms, similar to humans. Sharing the same passion for their work led to an intense relationship between them. Sara and Ian have been a perfect couple for several years now which, besides their capability, is perhaps another reason why they succeed in their research.

Sara is a 30-year-old neurotechnology specialist and she also knows her way around in informatics and biology. Sara is known worldwide for her key success in establishing the first data connection between a computer and the human brain, utilizing the neurosynaptic interface she developed. She is strong-minded and reasonable, but still passionate, passionate in her work as well as in her relationship to Ian. Deeply in love with Ian, Sara could never imagine being separated from him.

Ian is an expert in the fields of cybernetics and robotics. Only 34 years old, but already a living legend among his fellow researchers, Ian built the first robot that resembles a human in his looks and agility. His newest prototypes nearly could be doubles of Sara and Ian. Though they are equipped with raw processing power, his inventions still lack an artificial intelligence comparable to the human mind. Ian could be a second Mc-Gyver (a former television series hero of the 1980s), there is no problem he can’t fix. At the worst he at least finds a quick workaround. It’s no surprise that he is the more intuitive of the two. Ian, as reasonable as Sara is, has never thought he would ever find the girl of his dreams. But he was proven wrong, because with Sara his dreams came true.

Setting:

In a near possible future, in the course of technological advance not only positive new inventions like Sara’s’ neurosynaptic interface emerge. Unfortunately also new devastating weapons like subspace radiation bombs are created. There is no place to hide from these weapons, killing any organic life form in their blast radius. Mankind is facing itself, standing at the edge of total obliteration. All it needs is one more simple act of aggression.

Story:

Exodus:

Sara and Ian are perfecting their new robot prototype, when a colleague, bringing the latest news from holovision, suddenly interrupts them. Out of unknown reasons China started attacking targets all over the world with subspace radiation warheads, starting a chain reaction of nations taking counter measures and even attacking their surroundings. It will just be a matter of minutes until the first missiles would reach their country too. Panicked, the colleague runs out of the lab, but Sara and Ian know that there is no safe place to run to. They look in each other’s eyes, and it seems as if they would think the same. It is Ian who dares to say it out loud: “We have no other chance! Let’s do it!” Sara agrees, knowing that there is no other possibility to stay together than taking the risk to perform their untested experiment they planned for several months on themselves. Frightened but focused, they run out of the room.

Genesis:

Slowly she opens her eyes. The bright lab lights cause a feeling of pain as it hits the neurotech photoreceptors for the first time. After a second of adaptation inside the receptors, the vague figures become clear. Robotic arms, which move around fast, close the last open service ports on her chest by synthesizing sensiskin over them. “Where am I? Damn, who am I? What’s this all about?”, she thinks. Finally the arms drive away and the interface to the neuronet on her left temple is unplugged. The room seems so familiar to her, when she is suddenly struck by a flashback.

She sees herself running out of the room, following a man in front of her. She has a deep feeling of insecurity and fear. She is afraid of losing the man in front of her, but who is he? Everything happens so fast. She runs and tries to keep up with him. As fast as the pictures came, they disappeared.

Even more confused, she decides to take a look around. Carefully she tries to stand up from the service station she is lying in. But as she steps on the floor, her feet bend away under the weight. Grabbing the armrest of the service station, she pulls herself up. Slowly she adapts to the response of the servomotors inside her knees and ankles. Eventually she stabilizes herself and she is able to get to the next door. The door leads her to a similar room with another service station with a man lying in it. Cautiously she approaches the station, and as she sees his face, another flashback hits her.

She has a vision of a man looking similar to him. They meet at a restaurant, she feels attracted by his looks and his intellect. Then she sees another picture where they are working together on a neurosynaptic interface. Now she recognizes him, he is the one she already saw in her first flashback. She knows that there is a connection between them, but still she has no idea what happened. With that in her memory, she is thrown back into reality.

The man is not awake. The robotic arms were not moving and the service port on his chest was not closed. It seems that something with the service station is wrong, and somehow she knows that the man was in danger. Again she feels that fear of losing someone important to her, the same feeling she had in her first flashback. She has to do something. She turns to the monitoring holoscreen and without even thinking, her fingers slipped over the touch panels, typing program commands she never heard of. Then she unplugged his interface. Bending because of the neurosynaptic shock caused by the sudden disconnection from the neronet, his body awakens to life. With wide-open eyes he stares at her. Disoriented, not knowing what occurred to him, he asks her “Who are you? What happened?” She says: “Gosh, you look so familiar to me but,….No..…I am sorry…. I cannot answer your questions. I neither know what happened….. nor who I am.”. For some seconds they keep looking at themselves. He also feels like he already knows her, that he could trust her. So he decides to say:“ Then let’s see if there is anyone else around here, perhaps someone can answer our questions.”

In the beginning he has the same problems staying on his feet like she had, so they slowly move from room to room. But soon he adapts his movements too, and they widen their search. The elevators don’t work anymore, so the two have to take the stairways to the other floors. But they find nothing but devastated rooms and dead bodies. They go from floor to floor, but nothing. There was no one alive, no one able to tell them what happened. In the end they reach the damaged rooftop of the lab. Facing a beautiful sunset, they look downtown. Struck by the view presented to them, they look back at each other and another flashback rumbles through the neurotech net inside her head.

Again she sees the man running in front of her. Passing several doors and running up the stairways, they reach a room with two neurosynaptic interface beds. In a rush they type several commands into the holoconsoles, starting a preprogrammed linking sequence. Only for one moment they hold in, wasting precious time for a last kiss. Tearing themselves back into rationality, they let off from each other. They lie down on the beds and the neurosynaptic interfaces position over their heads. The transfer starts. Already falling into unconsciousness, she still recognizes the strong light beams, passing through the sunblinds of the window. She sees the whole room lit by an incredible flash. Then in a loud clash the window breaks and the whole building shakes, when the pictures of her memory fade out.

She grabs for his hand, searching for some hold. Now she remembers what happened. Now she knows who she is, who she was. Now she knows the meaning of what they see from the rooftop. There is a large circle of complete destruction in the city core. Nothing moves. There is nothing but complete silence. They are probably the last life forms left on earth.