As you may have already noticed through my twine feed, the IDC 2008 final competing teams have been selected, and the application demos are now available to watch through the IDC website. Similar to previous years: 5 teams, 5 fantastic demos, and 1 heck of a dilemma when it comes to voting, which you can do as of the end of June. =) The competing teams this year are Cocoon, Fairlight & TBL, MFX, Inque and Still. As for how I feel about the demos, well, I really can't tell yet. I've watched each demo 3 times so far but I still have quite a few more rounds to go. But so far, I can say this, Still always has a way of making me glad I watched the demo [hence the pic!], and to top that, they brought in the duckie again! =D I have to add that the demos are not available for downloading as of yet, but I will let you know as soon as they are. So for now, go watch some demos and enjoy!
P.S.: Does the "fat guy" in Cocoon's demo remind any of you of "Baron Vladimir Harkonnen" of Frank Herbert's "Dune"? Cause that's who he reminds me of somehow! =)
UPDATE: Well, I think Optimus' comment just confirmed my suspicion. The application demos are almost all parts of previously released demos, except for some reason [I could be very well wrong about this] the Fairlight & TBL demo seems newish! So lets just wait and see if there will be other demos popping up.
A lot has happened and I've been way too busy to post, and lets confess, the small little bits of time that I usually find here and there to do some blogging and similar stuff, have recently been all eaten up by Twine. =P [Yes, blame it aaallllll on Twine! =D] Oh by the way, apparently I have a new set of Twine invitations. If anybody wants to be invited, let me know. [if you "really" want it though!]
So last Sunday we watched the entire broadcasting of Phoenix's landing on Mars via the NASA JPL website. I have to admit, it was incredibly exciting. In those last 7 minutes my heart just about exploded out of my chest, and when it finally landed and sent through the "ok" signal, I had tears in my eyes. Since then I've been constantly on the watch for new pictures and data received from the lander. A large number of pictures taken by the lander can be found here. Do check it out! =)
This video amazed and impressed the heavens out of me. In a way it's sort of like a wild demo. The animation has been created out of paintings on public walls. Do check it out. =)
Earlier I had posted a few lines in regards to ASIMO's conduction of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performing "Impossible Dream". Today I received an email from a good friend of mine notifying me that the video for the performance has just been released and it's currently available on blip.tv. So, here it is, and it's profoundly cute. =D Enjoy!
Well apparently his majesty the royal cuteness Honda's ASIMO robot is planning on mesmerizing the audience by conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performing "Impossible Dream". This is going to be the opening for cellist Yo-Yo Ma's performance. Read the whole story here. Cool ha? =) I have been tracking the improvements and basically the process of "growing up" of this little creature from the start, as he's pretty much the "Dream Come True" of Robotics enthusiasts such as myself. And I even had him as the topic for the papers for a couple of my engineering design related courses. Now I wonder if the videos for this performance are going to show up on YouTube, cause I have to say, I so badly want to see this! =D
Below is the "Cuss-O-Meter" result for my weblog. =) Apparently I'm not doing that much cussin' around after all. I imagined, considering all that's been going on recently with BlueHost and Rogers and all those other monster companies that I hate with passion, my cussin' level would be somewhat higher than this. Ah well. I guess I should work on it!
Admittedly, I've never been a fan of the singer Pink. But today, my Mom emailed me the link to this YouTube video that took my attention quite a bit. Have a look...
Has any of you folk, reading is blog, heard about Twine yet? I guess I could start with giving you some background as to what this is about. You know how I have this habit of digging around the web for..well.. for everything? Including useful tools to add to my website for organizing this and that, and the latest big bangs of the web world? Well last night I was looking at my own blogger profile and the ton of interest links that don't exactly do much.. and then I thought to myself, that maybe just like my little link organizer, I should fix a little something of my own that would give me the ability to organize my interests in a somehow more useful way, instead of just having a repeated bunch of words in every profile that I have on every website, including my own. But then... organize the interests to do exactly what with it? For example on my blogger profile, if you click on each listed interest, you get a list of other people with that interest. That's kinda cool, but not so much since a good many people using blogger never really create a profile. And half of what you do get is actually pretty outdated anyways. Not much of a good way of figuring out exactly who may be able to help me out with my Pliant problems [the programming language that I like and somehow nobody else does]. And I have to add this, the "interest search" feature in most of the networking websites isn't exactly much better either. So, I figured I needed some ideas, and the googling started. My first query was "organize your interests online", and the first result that popped up was this article on techcrunch.com talking about something called "Twine". Following the link to the Twine website and having a look around, I figured that this, is probably the 10000 times more advanced version of what I was looking for. The ultimate way of organizing what you're into, and finding out that you're not quite the only person with that certain weird interest that you think nobody else in the entire universe has. So, marvelous all of that, lets give it a try! But hey, not so fast apparently. Just when I wanted to sign up, I saw that tiny little banner saying that this a beta and invite only. Meh. Now my interest is boiling and I can't get inside this thing. Ah well, I thought I should probably ask my friends! I got into every other invitation only beta by asking friends! But no luck, nobody has even heard of this. Ok then, lets ask google again. Maybe I can find something. And yes, I should probably post an article about it, maybe someone gets back to me. So I was halfway writing this post when I found this weblog: Minding the Planet. The latest post on that blog says that if I write an article about Twine, and send the author of that blog the link to it, and if it passes all tests, I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiight get an invitation. Of course it's a pretty big "might" since from what I read, there's a good 30,000 people waiting out there for an invitation. But well, I already wrote this, I may as well send it in and see what happens, right? =)
About an hour ago I came across this article titled "Beliefs that bother me", in Optimus's blog. I have to say, it's been a while since I enjoyed reading a blog post this much. There's loads of truth in this article, the kind that most people tend to simply ignore. I'm not gonna say more.. just check the article out...read for yourself, and pay the whole 100% of your attention while reading it.
By the way, since this is about an article in another blog, I'm closing comments. You can leave your comments in the original blog.
Also, look what I just dugg up! The article just amazes me, check it out! :)
"It's a bird. It's a plane. Or it might turn out to be a little like both. Researchers are aiming to find ways to enable aircraft to change shape during flight to improve performance or efficiency. The University of Dayton project is funded by a $580,000 defense contract to further the development of "morphing" aircraft..."
Since this seems to be the topic of the week, I might as well create a new post and share some news with you. A whole bunch of you have been asking for the soundtracks for a couple of Vantage demos. And it seems like some of you are not much for waiting. :D Anyway, I just captured the soundtracks for "A Simple Way" and "3 Cows Ahead" [click to download]. As for how I did it, well "3 Cows Ahead" is an avi so it's a simple matter of an audio extraction. However, I tried a whole bunch of extractors and played around with whatever options available, but the result is never perfect for some reason. Specially the beginning of this one sounds far from what you hear on the avi. Keep in mind the fact that I'm no audio expert anyway. :"> So if you know of an extractor which could do a better job, please let me know. "A Simple Way" was of course a different story. I came across this demo capturing software called "kkapture 0.01" a while ago (on pouet.net BBS). It's an easy to use application which does a pretty darn impressive job capturing both the audio and the video. So I used this to capture an avi of the demo, and then did the same mp3 extraction. The resulting audio quality is rather good. So...enjoy, and I'd certainly appreciate any bits of technical info that you might wanna throw at me. :>
Update: Wheee! Amoivikos [amv] of ASD has just posted a comment containing some very interesting information regarding a number of great scene tracks. Check it out! Always the best info, does this guy rule or what? :)
Update: Sorry guys, there is no full version of the "3 Cows Ahead" soundtrack. It was never finished.
WOW. That's all that comes to my mind right now. Big red WOOOOOOW. Possibly with a cherry on top....or something in those lines. You know how sometimes you're looking for a certain something and then what you come across is completely off topic? Like when you're Googling for some MOSFET data sheet and you get a soup recipe instead? Well the same thing happened to me today...searching for something I came across something else...and one thing linked to the other...and I ended up HERE. Check out what I've found. This demo, called Iconoclast, has been released on July 2005 but I hadn't seen it before, and if it wasn't for this freak accident I would never have seen it, and that would have been the loss of a life time!! So that's what the WOW is for, this demo ROCKed my world so hard. Do check it out, it's bloody amazing to put it lightly. And hey, I was not looking for demos today. ;)
Update: Well I ended up registering an account in that website to leave a (+) for this demo. You might want to do the same!
Update: Hey hey hey people people! Comments regarding how kool this demo is, are NOT to be posted here! By rights they should go THERE! There's a forum in there right?
Update: Quit asking what I was looking for...... :P
Update: The "Shout Box" is open now. Feel free to say whatever....
UPDATE: EVERYONE DO CHECK OUT COMMENT #52 ON THIS POST! UPDATE: EVERYONE DO CHECK OUT COMMENT #72 AS WELL!
Seriously! I think I'm totally in luv with this pretty little piece of technology. What am I talking about? Well I'm talking about what u see here in this picture. SONY's FJ series notebook, and specifically the one in sky blue [what a surprise eh? :P]. It's actually very cute, and very light. I've been using this baby for a while now and I don't think I've ever been so happy with any of my systems before....believe me when I say the interior is even more impressive than the exterior. To name a few of the features that I'm really happy with: the motion eye camera with built in microphone, the comfy keyboard, the double layer DVD+R, the 1.86GHz processor, the 100GB hard drive, the XBRITE LCD and so many more. U can have a look @ the complete specifications here. To anyone who might be planning on buying a notebook: make sure to have a careful look at this one, u won't regret it!
A couple of days ago a friend of mine told me something about Google banning the BMW website. Then I read the same thing in an email, and then I saw an article on digg.com about it. It seems that the public opinion on the matter is quite diverse. Some are enjoying this and some...well....not so much! But me, well I'm a bit confused. I mean I don't quite get the argument that's going around! First of all, not BMW, but BMW.de has been banned. Well they tried to use doorway pages and they got caught, isn't that so simple? I mean I don't understand why some people are getting ticked off with Google for stopping cheaters!! If u owned Google and someone tired to take advantage of it in some unethical manner, wouldn't u try to stop them?? And hey, what's this got to do with being big and powerful? Some people seem to think that Google is trying to show off it's power by banning BMW.de, and that Google is starting to show the "MS symptoms"; well this is like saying that spammers should be allowed to take over the web and anyone who tires to stop them is trying to show off their power! Come on, does that make sense to u? I honestly don't know where Google is going with the current speed, but I know one thing for sure, stopping doorway users is in no way a sign of becoming the new big bad.
The IEEE website has a new design. I don't know how long it's been there, less than a week probably, but I noticed it last night. The significance of this? Well....just that I really "disliked" the old one. It was quite disorganized, the design of each part of the website sang a different song and certain parts of it were quite ugly! Altogether I thought that for an organization of such size they could probably do better, and since this thought kept coming to my mind every time I visited that site, it was nice to see they actually did something about it. The new design is nice and well organized, so....good job to whoever took care of it! Now was that "significance" enough? Or is it that there's about 15 minutes left to my next class and I'm just incredibly bored?? And yes, I'm posting this from ENG406, on the 4th floor of Ryerson Engineering Building. :P
OH....MY...GOODNESS....Just have a look @ this! The cutest little Robot ever! Pretty natural moves too. Very impressive indeed! "We've all been waiting to finally own a True Walking Humanoid Robot, Kyosho of Japan will release MANOI, the "Ready-Made" Robot (that's right; no assembly required) for about $1600. Wait til you see him Stand on One Leg and Do the "Wing Wave".....you'll want one too!!" And yeah, I DO want one too! :P read more | digg story
Look what I just found on digg [again!] If u're an engineer, studying engineering [like me! :S], are interested in engineering, don't like engineering and don't want to have anything to do with engineers, read this....it's pretty kool! "The Engineer of 2020 Project byt the National Academy of Engineering centers on an effort to envision the future and to use that knowledge to attempt to predict the roles that engineers will play in the future. Very interesting read." read more | digg story
Well...I already know where I stand with this! :P I mean...if I wake up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night, I check my emails too on my way to bed...Anyway, check it out: "It seems that the Japanese always have some newfangled idea that it appropriately spun to sell product. For only 2980 Yen (this mouse that'll nag you about addicted to the Internet you are. Alternatively, your boss can use this mouse to record how active you are at work on your computer." read more | digg story
I just found this article on "digg". Been looking for something like this forever!! "Tunatic is a software that listen to it and get you the artist's name and the song's title within seconds." Here u can read more about this software or dig this story.
I've been looking for a "good" feed aggregator [aka feed reader] software for quite a while. There are a lot of online aggregatorz and some of them seem to do a good job, but somehow I feel more comfortable with the onez that I can have on my desktop. It'z probably because there'z more u can do with desktop aggregatorz than online onez, plus they're simply faster and easier to use. However, obviously not all the available desktop aggregators are so great! I've used THIS RssReader for quite a while but I've never really been happy with it. - It'z not compatible with all versionz of RSS/Atom - For some reason it finds errors in feed formats that really contain no errors (!!) - It exports the feeds in an XML file that's not compatible with any other aggregators [seemz to contain errorz!] and no OPML outputs whatsoever [so what'z the point of having an export feature like this anywayz??] - Worst of all, somehow it managez to jump up to about 106MB mem usage in no more than 2 secondz after it'z run! And these are only a few of it'z problems, but since I couldn't' find any better desktop aggregators I kept using it until today....yes... today I finally found THIS. It'z called RSS Bandit and so far it seemz to be the best one I've seen. It'z: - Light - Fast - Easy to use - Compatible with all sortz of feed formatz - Low in mem usage - Got OPML import & export And so many other kool features. Plus, I gotta admit, the little bandit smiley face tray icon is cute! So if u're looking for a good feed aggregator too, make sure to give this one a shot.
I) I got this pretty kool article yesterday in my RSS reader...it'z from Robots.net. Apparently there'z this new robot that can tell the difference between a mirror image of itself, and another robot looking exactly like it. It is said that this breakthrough can lead to creation of robots that are capable of emotion. Interesting eh? Somehow I can't stop thinking about this....
II) Last night I started up on Greek grammar. [So far I know the alphabet, I've developed an understanding of the pronunciations and how things are supposed to sound like, and I know a bunch of words and short sentences.] U know what's interesting? The grammar actually seems to be not so difficult. Then again this could be only the beginning..... I'm also having so much fun with the Greek vocabulary. I don't know how to put this in words...things "sound nice" in Greek! Also a lot of Greek words seem to have found their way into other languages, including Spanish and Persian. [In case of Persian I still don't quite know which one has found its way into the other, although I've been doing a lot of "history" homework!] As a result, a lot of these new words are not so new to me!
Sunday, June 01, 2008
As you may have already noticed through my twine feed, the IDC 2008 final competing teams have been selected, and the application demos are now available to watch through the IDC website. Similar to previous years: 5 teams, 5 fantastic demos, and 1 heck of a dilemma when it comes to voting, which you can do as of the end of June. =) The competing teams this year are Cocoon, Fairlight & TBL, MFX, Inque and Still.
