Johan Rijpma created this time-lapse video of clear tape rolls gradually gave in to the forces of gravity. The sounds made as each roll breaks free are wonderfully satisfying.
Tape Generations from johan rijpma on Vimeo.
The Macula gives the astronomical clock situated at Old Town Square in center of Prague their usual augmented treatment on it’s 600 years anniversary.
Considering I was just there last week, I found this kind of fun.
When you’re in college, many people fantasize about getting a ‘travel job’. Well, now that I’m in my 40’s, I’ve done a lot of business travel over the years. Most of the time I have at least one overseas trip a year – sometimes two. I also have any number of domestic flights – maybe 5-10. That’s about the max I’m happy with. It seems very romantic to travel for work, but in the end, it’s really work you’re there to do. You might get a few hours a night after work – but that’s not the time many things are open – or the sun even up if it’s winter.
There were times, however, when I was flying once every week for months on end. That is a completely different thing. You start entering this different state of living – a sort of half-living in an altered state. You waking wherever you are with just what fits in a day pack, run to an airport, parking and security, flying somewhere, eating airplane and hotel food, then perhaps catch a brief nap while flying. Then you wake again – on a plane this time – what city? What time zone? Then collect your stuff and unload, rental car and transit to the site where your day really starts. Work 8 hours with new folks while the clock ticks on you until it’s time to leave for the airport or maybe a hotel. Everything is institutional and commercial – with fancy designer metal, leather, 800 count bed sheets and hotel restaurant food – all pretending to be like a home. Maybe you work another day, then it’s in the rental, return to the airport and figure out returns. Getting to the terminal, security, and a flight back home. Another brief chance at rest before you unload as you awake – where again? What time? Collect things, unload, take airport transit to your car, then home. Home? Is it just another room?
One of the best clips that captures the experience is from the movie Fight Club:
But now there is a new player. The video for the song ‘Let It Happen’ by Tame Impala does another great job. It appears to be about a business traveler that is having a heart attack, but it captures that constant sense of going to sleep and not knowing where you’ll wake up next. I found it fascinating. I think there is something interesting here that might make for a good writing/art project…
Great little article write-up here. Definitely worth a read.
Money is not evil. Good and evil actions come from the hearts of those that are making decisions about money. That is why sifting and knowing your motivations and reasons are critical to a well-trained soul.
Here’s a quick summary of when money becomes a tool of evil in your life:
Saturday morning rolled around and I headed into the office only to find what else but, blinking text. It was on the screen blinking in all its glory, and in the browser. How could this be, you might ask?
RAID systems on home servers and PC’s has become more common now. While we have been in a period of stubbornly elevated prices (from a historic standpoint), hard drives are always doubling in capacity on a regular cadence and improving performance.
There are several things you need to consider when setting up a RAID system. Will this set be my boot drive? What capacity do I need? How much fault tolerance do I need? What performance do I need?
The answer to these questions determines which RAID configuration you should set up. For my setup, I need fault tolerance and performance. This means I will continue to run RAID 5.
Question is, can I do better? There is software RAID available from Microsoft in Windows 10 called Storage Spaces. Also included with most Intel-based motherboards is a hardware RAID. So which should one choose?
Turns out someone has done the analysis between them, and done a good job too. Long story short, stick to hardware RAID, and RAID 5 is still the fastest and most fault tolerant configuration.
https://foxdeploy.com/2015/10/30/windows-vs-intel-raid-performance-smackdown/
My 3 brand new 4TB 7200rpm drives are about to thank me. 🙂
Adobe Photoshop has an amazing feature called context aware fill. But it was only available on still images. Now you can do it with video. While I do see a small tick here or there, it does a pretty good job with temporal smoothness.
From the Ars Technica article:
Intel has announced the 8th-generation H-series mobile processors will have a feature that’s nothing short of astonishing: they’ll integrate AMD GPUs.
The chip package will contain multiple pieces of silicon: an Intel CPU, a custom-built AMD Radeon GPU, and stacked second-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2). Connecting the GPU and its memory is Intel’s new “Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge” (EMIB), a high-speed, short-range interconnect that Intel has designed to join different chips within a single package. Intel says that EMIB enables the creation of faster, thinner packages, enabling the multi-chip module to fit into slimline laptop form factors.
EMIB uses pieces of silicon to join the chips, rather than the circuit board traces found in conventional multi-chip modules. These pieces of silicon enable much denser packing of the interconnects. Overall, Intel claims that using EMIB shaves about 2.9 square inches (1,900 square millimeters) from the system motherboard and halves the power usage of a traditional design.
The company anticipates using EMIB for all kinds of integrations, such as processors with embedded FPGAs or other specialized chips. This AMD integration will be a good showcase for using the technology at scale. For AMD, it gives access to a market that tended to lean on Nvidia. Single-chip integrated graphics, even those found in AMD’s newly announced mobile Ryzen parts, just don’t offer the same performance as discrete parts with dedicated memory.
British humor can be pretty thick stuff at times, but boy can it can pay off.
For example, Mornington Crescent is an improvisational game featured in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, a series which satirizes panel games. The game consists of each panelist in turn announcing a landmark or street, most often a tube station on the London Underground system. The apparent aim is to be the first to announce “Mornington Crescent“, a station on the Northern line. Interspersed with the turns is humorous discussion among the panelists and host regarding the rules and legality of each move, as well as the strategy the panelists are using. Despite appearances, however, there are no rules to the game, and both the naming of stations and the specification of “rules” are based on stream-of-consciousness association and improvisation. Thus the game is intentionally incomprehensible.
It also appears to be an inspiration to the Mitchell and Webb series game NumberWang:
Yesterday was the final clash of the 2017 League of Legends World Championships. Before the games started, Riot Games put on a massive opening ceremony including a giant trophy, a live performance of Worlds theme “Legends Never Die,” and a freaking dragon.
During the ceremony, an augmented reality dragon flew in, soared around the arena, and let out a good roar before taking off again. Apparently it was a little awkward for the fans in attendance because, well, they can’t see it. Which means you’re looking at one of the stream feeds on the giant screens instead of the live performers and spectacle that’s happening in the corporeal world.
Still, this sets a new bar. I wonder when we’ll be donning AR glasses at concerts and sporting events.