So this is a bit more refined version of the P(h)ixel. For one, the structure is now laser-cut plexi and way less embarrasing than before. Second, it allowed for the test with the latex, which, is already giving me nightmares. I’m calling this thing my-own-private-videodrome.

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A few things to resolve:
Re-centering the vertical element.
Lowering production cost (servos are clunky and gets expensive fast!).
Create a field!

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A zoom inside a CPU. I *knew* this was how they all worked…

Mate these two and you’ll get a pretty smart cookie.

Read the Wired articles here and here.

Download it here and go do that, test it!

Smart Cities vehicle prototype.

We just got back from Boston after being invited by MIT to give a lunchtime lecture. My good friend Daniel Cardoso, a PhD candidate there was kind enough to show us around the media lab, where a few -very generous- people showed us some of their work. We had a chance to see the fabrication labs and some of the robotic work being currently done there, and it was absolutely mesmerizing. Dimitris Papanikolaou gave us a full presentation on his Mobility on Demand (MOD) project for the Smart Cities group, not only was that incredibly generous, but an amazingly interesting solution to urban mobility. What I think was among the most interesting thing -not only of his project but of the lab in general- is the reality of it all. A lot of the research being conducted there is for real applications / products / solutions, which is very refreshing to see after having been involved in architecture school for some time now, where a very small percentage of what is produced has real-world implications. We had as well the opportunity to meet up with our friends Carlos Rocha (ex-Media Lab and current Honda scientist) and Skylar Tibbits.

View a few more images after the jump below.

Dimitris Papanikolaou and a MOD vehicle prototype.

Daniel Cardoso showing us some of the work done at the S.A workshops.

Carlos Rocha, Daniel Cardoso and Mike Szivos post lecture.

The Millennium Falcon
ps. Daniel sent me this brief history or the MF.

This is as futuristic as the past can be…

Besides, who said that 100k Euros won’t make you look cool?

via [engadget]

Went back to the Apple store last night and, after being helped by one of the concierges there, had a dickish genius at the “Moron Bar” tell me that this type of damage is NOT covered by the warranty, the reason: You would need ‘excessive’ force to do this type of damage. This is a 1 week old computer don’t forget, and everyone knows that any rational human being who has spent more than $1,000.00 on some laptop would type with a hammer for the first week. There is NO possible way that 1 key out of the gizillion keys they manufacture is defective right? And how much is excessive force anyways? 1 psi? 10? 500?

Sam, the genius there, of course must have tried to jam the key in or something (I don’t know what he did because he was out back) but insured that the hooks, which were cracked, are now fully broken. This means that now I’m not able to put it in the keyboard and have it stay for more than 1 click (which it did before).

Update 021409: Finally, resolution… The girls and guys at the 14th street Apple store finally pulled it through. After a week of much frustration with the absurdity of the issue, you won’t hear about it again. Until the next key breaks that is…

That quick? My old Dell lasted 4 years without a hitch. 1 week and the MacBook Pro has already begun to fall apart… (singing the alphabet, as per the previous post).

Update 021209 9:40 am: I just got in from the Apple store @ 59th Street. I was told I basically had to leave the laptop in for repair, 5 – 7 days…FOR A BROKEN KEY! So far I’ve spent 1 hour on this, we’ll see how much longer this takes.

Repeat with me: this will be the first and last Apple computer I will ever purchase.

Update 021209 1:06 pm: Got off the phone with someone at Apple Support…No dice. Apparently the only option is to either send it back to Apple or take it in to the store/service providers for repair. Am I crazy or is this just insanely stupid? How about just mailing me the damn keycap? I SWEAR I’ll mail the broken one back! This was pretty fast, so it took about 15 mins total.

Update 021209 3:42 pm: Just came back from Tekserve…had a very helpful guy help me out, but once again, no dice. Well, he did give me a (different semicolon) key from a different (older) computer, so I could definitely put it in its place, but that seems like so reasonable after shelling a chunk of change on this thing doesn’t it? I guess I’ll have to take it in, have it’s keyboard be fully replaced and be without a computer for a whole week.

Pff.

It has been a long time, loooong time since I’ve been using dear p.c’s. About 2 months ago my Dell Inspiron expired so I figured, if I’m going to cling to the idea that pc’s are the bestest thing since sliced bread, I’d have to give Macs a try. I’ve never owned a Mac before, and I’m not afraid of admitting that I’m absolutely a Mac dummy: I have NO idea how to go about the most mundane tasks…
So, in order to change that, I ordered a 15″ Macbook Pro which I received today, and, the sexiness factor I’d say is about a 10 (out of 10). The laptop is absolutely gorgeous, and Apple’s packaging is oh-so-beautiful. I’m also loving the trackpad, it’s incredibly responsive, intuitive and easy to get used to. So far, I’m not really sure what to think of it performace-wise: I’m sure it’s perfectly fine, but I haven’t gone beyond opening the browser to log into my blog and post some of the pics.
View more of them after the jump below.

I will mention that I immediately rushed down to the NYU Computer Store today after finding out that they sold arduino boards. It’s the only place in the city that I’ve been able to find so far. They really have a great selection of parts and reference material at good prices. The guy helping me even gave me a list of packages they offer from the “Basic Tool Kit” to the “Basic Parts Kit” which includes an arduino and all the bits you would need for a long time, including various resistors, LEDs, semiconductors, capacitors, and switches.

Finally, I did pick up two reads while there:

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark

&

Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects by Tom Igoe

more later…

It’s called g-speak. Too bad that dude isn’t as hot as Tom Cruise.

Check out our new toy at the studio: a Universal Laser Systems laser cutter: PLS 6.60, with a 60 watt laser and air assist with an 18″ x 32″ bed. Yumm.

Buckminster Fuller’s exhibition at the Whitney is fantastic. On the first floor is the Dymaxion car, which, cool as it is, is surpassed by the beautiful technical drawings for it.
The fourth floor is where the main exhibit is, and there are some incredible drawings and models of experiments and projects of ranging scales. There were quite a few projects and many drawings, sketches as well as footage of Fuller that I had never seen before, and it was truly a treat.

I left the exhibition feeling a bit uneasy though: there has to be some level of insanity in someone that has such faith in technology as the savior. His completely ‘technocratic-utopian’ view seems in a sense harmless (even naive), yet it displaces man so swiftly.

Don’t miss the fantastic model and drawings of the floating city, the incredible sketch for the World Fair and his geometric models.

For their latest video from the album In Rainbows, Radiohead has gone super hi tech, by not using cameras at all, and instead relying on Geometric Informatics and Velodyne Lidar (?!) technologies … I won’t try to explain it in my own words, so I’ll just quote from the Pitchfork article quoting from the press release:

“The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render the performances of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the female lead, and several partygoers. The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute, capturing all of the exterior scenes and wide party shots.”

via [Pitchfork]

Almost without exception, secret service organizations have thrived in times of turbulence and, conversely, have seen their power vanish as turmoil slows. For this reason, they survive by inciting social turbulence, spreading rumors and inventing imaginary enemies, fifth columns, and bomber and missile gaps. They need to keep society in constant alert, in a generalized state of fear and paranoia, in order to sustain themselves. This has led to the development of a gigantic “espionage industry, ” whose entire existence is based on a bluff few governments dare to call:

The agencies justify their peacetime existence by promising to provide timely warning of a threat to national security… Over the years intelligence agencies have brainwashed successive governments into accepting three propositions that ensure their survival and expansion. The first is that in the secret world it may be impossible to distinguish success from failure. A timely warning of attack allows the intended victim to prepare. This causes the aggressor to change its mind; the warning then appears to have been wrong. The second proposition is that failure can be due to incorrect analysis of the agency’s accurate information… The third proposition is that the agency could have offered timely warning had it not been starved of funds. In combination, these three propositions can be used to thwart any rational analysis of an intelligence agency’s performance, and allow any failure to be turned into a justification for further funding and expansion*.

Shouldn’t this be mandatory reading in every country at a very early age?
This is an incredible book. Go buy it.

*Knightley, Second Oldest Profession., pp. 6 and 389.

The ICT graphics lab at USC has brought us a step closer to holograms. By using spinning mirrors, DLP projections and as the article puts it, ‘very precise math’ they have created a 3d image that stays in place, allowing different points of view as well as occlusion.

Now they’ll just have to build R2D2.

Read the Wired article here .

The New Yorker has an interesting article on Buckminster Fuller’s vision and (failed) projects, soon to be on display at The Whitney Museum of Art here in NYC. It poses the question of WHAT is it exactly that is relevant -yet so hard to pin down- of Fuller’s trajectory.

Read the article here.

Read the Wired article here.

I’ve just come to discover Flock a new social web browser which is based on the Firefox technology. It allows you to have all those apps you don’t really want to have so easily accesible at hand: Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, RSS feeds, Del.icio.us, Twitter, etc etc etc. The can all be opened within your browser window and, heres the coolest (for me at least) you can post directly to your own blog through the web interface. It has a bunch other cool features that I’m just starting to check out.
This is the Beta release (it’s been very recently launched) but it still handles very well. This will be my first blog post directly through it so I’ll let you know how that worked out.

>> The picture uploading I ended up doing via the WordPress CMS. Flock will upload it (apparently) through whatever other service you have – it was going to upload via Facebook for me – which I don’t really want to do. It would be neato to have an extension that allows you to upload images directly from your computer without going through other services.
The tags are also added through Technorati, which create a whole new format for the tags below the posting. It’s not bad at all, it’s just not how I have it all formatted. In all, I think I’ll use it for direct text only posts. Anything with pictures I’ll keep doing via WordPress. Very cool though.

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I made it earlier today to the MoMA preview of Design and the Elastic Mind. I couldn’t really take enough time to look around, but it is definitely an impressive selection of interesting work..

I’ll post something more complete once I make it back to the museum and actually get to spend some time in the exhibition. But for now, here are some low quality phone pics for now.