Cool origami with Jo Nakashima
Jo Nakashima makes some cool origami. Even better, he has a YouTube channel where he shows you how to make some great creations. Give it a look.
Nakagin Capsule Tower comes to an end
Completed in 1972 the Nakagin Capsule Tower was a rare remaining example of Japanese Metabolism (alongside the older Kyoto International Conference Center), an architectural movement emblematic of Japan’s postwar cultural resurgence. It was the world’s first example of capsule architecture ostensibly built for permanent and practical use.
The capsules that make up the main structure of Nakagin Tower were designed to be rotated and replaced every 25 years. However, lack of funds resulted in rotation and replacement of capsules that never took place and ultimately led to a deterioration of the structure.
Inside Japan did a fabulous video that toured the inside of the units and talked with one of the remaining owners.
The building, however, fell into disrepair. Only around thirty of the 140 capsules were still in use as apartments by October 2012, while others were used for storage or office space, or simply abandoned and allowed to deteriorate. There is the additional problem that the structure no longer adheres to modern earthquake standards in quake prone Tokyo.
Now the tower’s time has come and the building is now officially being dismantled. There is one bright spot: the current owners, Tatsuyuki Maeda, explained that a team is trying to preserve some of the capsules and regenerate them as accommodation units and museum installations around the world. Maeda’s statements are based on an announcement by the Kisho Kurokawa Chiyoda-ku Office of Architects and Urban Design that it aims to dismantle the iconic architecture and reuse its capsules as accommodation units and museum installations. Nakagin Capsule Tower A606 Project is extracting and preserving various unique unit components and extracting unit A606 to put on display with all of it’s original equipment.
If woodworking was like chopping lettuce
Pretty clever use of stop-motion animation and sound effects.
DALL¡E2 AI generated music video
DALL¡E 2 is a pretty astounding new natural language AI system that can create realistic images and art from simple written descriptions. It can also combine concepts, attributes, and styles – all by simply typing in what you want in text.
Below (and on the website) are some examples of what the AI generated from the simple text description.
1. “An astronaut riding a horse in a photorealistic style”
2. “A bowl of soup that is a portal to another dimension as digital art”
3. “Teddy bears shopping for groceries in the style of ukyo-e”
Short summary of current AI techniques
A decent video that covers the state of recent AI developments. It presents capabilities a bit more advanced than the ground-level truth, but it’s a good summary. This video doesn’t even touch on some of the more interesting/frightening deep-fake technologies that can create nearly undetectable faces, facial animations, and chat, forum, and news writing bots (GPT-3).
I do not, however, like the recent trend of this sort of AI coverage that claims there is any ‘consciousness’ to these systems. Even after thousands of years we still don’t even know what makes us conscious, or if that is even a real thing. Despite our advancements, we don’t even have a good definition of life. AI systems are all run on standard Turing based computers operating on nets of what usually break down to linear regression models. Yes, they achieve really amazing feats but technical achievement doesn’t indicate consciousness or intelligence. Your pocket calculator can calculate values better and faster than the best person in the world, but nobody would say their calculator was conscious because it exhibits abilities better than a human’s. Even a single cell found on Mars would be considered ‘life’ – despite the fact it might not be capable of doing more than moving a bit, ingesting minerals from dirt, and splitting.
I have no doubt that AI based systems will be able to match human behaviors so well that they will be indistinguishable from living humans on all fronts: speaking, writing, singing, movement, making art, etc. However, that is not the same as arguing for consciousness or having life – a nut that we haven’t even cracked in the thousands of years we have tried to understand it in ourselves.
Cars of the future
Lots and lots of interesting innovations coming to a car near you.
Interesting Mercedes concept car: the Mercedes AVTR.
Or this new Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 concept car:
Or maybe the BMW Vision Next 100 with sealed wheel wells that morph and shift as you steer.
Audi Skysphere Roadster
There’s also some more whimsical and interesting stuff coming from mini that incorporates more of the idea of a lounge space:
Or uses side panel lighting effects to highlight interaction with the car:
Or give a look at this list of other equally interesting recent concept cars.
Glass instruments
Dennis James shows us around 2 of the more unusual musical instruments – ones that require wetted hands that make their glass parts sing. The Cristal Baschet and Glass Armonica are fascinating historical glass instruments.
The Glass Armonica was invented by Benjamin Franklin and was purported to be dangerous to both players and listeners by driving them mad or even killing them.
The Cristal Baschet was developed by the French brothers Bernard and Frncois Baschet as a sculpture that could be played to produce music. They also invented an inflatable guitar and an aluminum piano.
PC from old portable TV
Lucas Dul loves to repair old typewriters and other gizmos. But this is one of the cooler builds he did. He took an old portable B&W TV and converted it into a PC! He even got the old CRT in the device working with the setup. Head over to the link to read more about how he did it.
Knight Rider filming locations
As a kid, I LOVED catching the latest Knight Rider episode each week. Besides the episodes with KARR, one of my other favorites as a kid was the episode that featured Michael’s evil twin Garth and Goliath: a giant semi with the same protective shell as KITT.
I love visiting locations where my favorite films and TV shows were filmed, and it turns out someone found the filming location for the Goliath episodes. How cool is that?
Out-horse your work!
Want to outsource your work? Consider out-horsing your work instead!
Some clever folks in Iceland created a giant keyboard and let a few of their Icelandic horses play on it.
You can even get them to write your out-of-office email response as well.
Hekla frĂĄ ĂorkellshĂłli generated my most recent out of office email for me. High quality!
