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Month: September 2023

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

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Sirrandalot is not the first person to use a film-grain/film-like shader effect to give a certain feel. He is, however, the first to use Blender’s Cycles path-tracing engine to create a highly detailed physical modeling of a 3D camera body, simulate the various properties of a glass lens (then multiple lens system), the properties of chemical film, and then render scenes through this highly complex setup to generate real film-like images. Check out the final not-photos here or on Imgur.

You can download the camera and play with it yourself.

3d printed mathematical models

3d printed mathematical models

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Henry Segerman is a mathematician who likes to help visualize mathematical principles using 3D printing. He has a book that pairs the ideas and topics with 3D objects you can print out.

His YouTube channel covers an amazing number of topics. Different kinds of irregular dice (slant, skew, dLX, wild d6’s, and others) that are fair but look very different than the standard regular polyhedral style dice. He makes interesting puzzles, visualizing 3D printed objects of higher dimensions, impossible geometry, interesting gearing, topology, and many other cool topics.

What’s great about his channel is that he’s a mathematician so you get a healthy dose of the theory that makes the objects possible.

Classic Ghost Story channels

Classic Ghost Story channels

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It’s fall – my absolute favorite season. That means cooler weather, shorter days, and crisp brisk nights under starry skies. It also means it’s perfect time for a good classic ghost story next to a crackling fire at the end of the day. You can keep your modern low-budget gory, cheap jump scare movies. I prefer a good Victorian/Edwardian era ghost story on a cool fall evening.

Here’s some of my favorite places to get some great ghost stories read to you.

Bonus: Sherlock Holmes

  • Magpie Audio – Greg Wagland gives one of the undisputed best renditions of the complete Sherlock Holmes collection of stories. He voice acts the various characters magnificently. I think it’s far superior to even paid versions. Absolutely worth a listen. He also has stories from G.K.Chesterton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, H.G.Wells, and many others of the era.
Halloween Drive-in Cinema of Horrors

Halloween Drive-in Cinema of Horrors

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At the Clark County Fairgrounds in October, Cinema of Horrors sets up a temporary drive-in and puts on a few weeks of scary movies.

I’ve gone in years past and it’s a lot of fun for what it is. There are a few small booths with food carts, merch, and people walking around dressed in scary costumes. They have classic scary movies (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, etc) as well as a few family nights (original Ghostbusters, Casper, Beetlejuice).

Definitely fun for fall.

Sub-ambient cooling

Sub-ambient cooling

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Most PC cooling solutions cool your CPU/GPU/memory using fans or water that exchange the generated heat with the surrounding air. This means you can never cool the components to any lower temperature than the surrounding ambient air temperature.

There are people who push those boundaries to hyper-low temperatures by pouring liquid nitrogen or other hyper-cool liquids into specially designed heatsinks; but it introduces a new set of issues. A big issue for cooling below ambient temperature is condensation.

As soon as a surface is cooler than the surrounding air temperature dew point, then water from the air may start forming as condensation on the surface. We see this every summer on the sides of iced drinks. As anyone with electronics experience knows, water and electricity don’t mix.

Many people have experimented with sub-ambient cooling solutions before. The latest is EKWB with their EK-QuantumX Delta TEC EVO water block. Instead of using just a normal water block connected to a radiator, this solution uses a Thermoelectric Cooler (TEC) with a controller that then dissipates that heat through a radiator.

It’s an interesting, and surprisingly complex problem.

Cooling chips with Silicon not fans

Cooling chips with Silicon not fans

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Frore Systems has developed a cooling chip it calls AirJet that sits on top of a heat-generating chip and cools it without the need for mechanical fans. It’s 2.8mm thick and uses pulsating inlets to suck air into it and exhaust it out the sides.

The AirJet Mini looks like a credit card, and measures 41.5mm long by 27.5mm wide and 2.8mm thick. It can remove 5.25W of heat while consuming just 1W with a very quiet 21 dBA of noise. The AirJet Pro for x86 is a bit larger, naturally. It measures 71.5 mm by 31.5mm at the same 2.8mm thickness. It can exhaust 10.75W of heat while using just 1.75W.

The mechanism works via membranes inside that vibrate at ultrasonic frequencies. This vibration sucks air into inlets at the top of the AirJet. Once inside the device, air is then transformed into “pulsating jets” as the air removes the heat from the heat spreader. It is eventually exhausted out of the sides via integrated spouts.

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Building a video wall

Building a video wall

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Live Production Mastery shows how they make a 90 foot long, 17 foot tall (56 panels wide, 10 panels tall) 120fps video wall. It is run by 4 Unreal engine computers and they include all kinds of interesting details about power, networking, mounting, etc. Everything you would need to build your own.

Luxury cars in Portland

Luxury cars in Portland

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Ever want to buy a $100,000+ Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, or other semi-super car in Portland? Or maybe you just want to look at how the richer half lives.

If so, you might look at Grand Prix Motors in Portland. They have tons of interesting expensive cars to browse through on their website. They actually have what appears to be decent prices and move a good quantity of inventory so it’s always fun to browse through things you might never afford or want to actually spend your money on.

They also have some pretty wild cars that randomly migrate through their consignment sales section too for additional spice.

Science fiction to science reality?

Science fiction to science reality?

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Have you ever heard of a movie about an advanced AI based defense system that becomes sentient? After being handed full control, it expands on its original nuclear defense directives to assume total control of the world despite its creators’ orders to stop.

It’s not War Games or Terminator. Nope, this movie is from 1970 and it’s called Colossus: The Forbin Project and it’s available on Vimeo for free. Maybe give it a watch before it becomes reality.