Analysis of Attention-aware Foveated Rendering
A paper coming out for Siggraph 2023 that analyzes the mechanics of foveation models and how that might be used to improve foveated rendering.
Shakespeare in the Park
The Original Practice Shakespeare Festival puts on free Shakespeare plays in local Oregon parks. It’s quite a prolific group – they do multiple shows per week at a variety of local parks each summer. It appears the cast is volunteer and they do carry small scrolls in case they get lost but what they lack in technical skill they make up for in theatrics and good fun. So, it can be a somewhat rag-tag operation at times but it’s definitely a fun and cheap way to catch some Shakespeare.
Tour Edo-period Japan
The Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Museum is an outdoor museum where historically valuable buildings are relocated, restored, and exhibited along with most of their interiors. It’s a collection of over two dozen reconstructed houses, shops, and restaurants that feels like you’re going back into time.
It recently got even more amazing museum’s Downton Summer Evening event, in which its Shitamachi Nakadori section will remain open after sundown and offering night events where the whole street is lit up.
Pond cooling
AIO water cooling and heatsinks are so last year. DIY Perks takes a brand new i9-13900K processor, mounts all the major components with water cooling bricks, encases the entire PC in a waterproof acrylic tube, and runs all the cooling through external copper tubing. How does it cool it? Using a pond.
And it turns out to be extremely effective – reaching only 20C (only 5C more than standard) at full load after an hour. Dang.
How much should I make if I switch to company X?
Besides using Glassdoor, Levels.fyi can be an invaluable job seeking tool for tech workers. It informs you which level/grade/rank/etc at one employer would translate to the equivalent in another company. It also gives you a salary comparison for those levels for various roles at most major companies.
2015 Subaru Crosstrek maintenance schedule
This page has a great rundown of the 2015 Crosstrek maintenance schedule.
Grab your kopecks and play some games
With locations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines is filled with vintage arcade machines that date back to the Soviet era. They also have a museum of smells, old phone booth and mail boxes, and soda machines. Go along with Real Russia to check it out.
Remove Subaru Crosstrek window switches
If you have a 2015, 2016, 2017 Subaru Crosstrek and need to pull/replace your window switches – this is a good video on how to do it. You have to unscrew the door panel screw in the inside handle recess and pull the door panel off to access the 2 screws and the wire harness you’ll need to access to remove the trim piece and associated windows controls.
Ocean’s 11 shot analysis
Ocean’s 11 is an amazing movie – one of my favorites. It has a fantastic style and creates a unique feel and atmosphere. Besides the fun, unique, energetic soundtrack by David Holmes, it has a really slick visual style that really accentuates the characters. CinemaStix shows how Steven Soderbergh uses a series of seemingly simple shot and cut decisions to enhance the actors’ unique energy to create the rhythm of the movie.
It’s surprising how much of a movie’s feel comes from simple choices in how it is cut (or not cut) . I can appreciate it because I know that a ton of the feel of my landscape photos comes during the post and editing phase.
The Solar System in your living room
Quantum Solar System (QSS) features miniature replica planets that float and orbit around the Sun using magnetic levitation technology.
Some of the neat features:
- The positions of the planets are in real time, synchronized with NASA.
- You can position the planets at any date: Past, Present or Future. For example, you could observe the position of the planets at any historical date in the past or in any astronomical event of the future.
- You can observe the evolution of the orbits in a shortened time. Ex: you can convert 6 days into 1 second to speed up the movement of the planets.
- If you want to relax watching the movement of the planets, you can move all the planets at the same time and at the same speed, in this way all the planets move maintaining their position relative to each other, it is as if the platform rotated on itself.
- The Sun is a lamp. Sunlight will illuminate the planets.