Posts Tagged ‘technology’

The (technological) Singularity

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

So it seems like Kurzweil’s dreams/predictions are getting a few steps closer to being fulfilled. Wired has news of scientists at Columbia University, designed “Adam” a ‘robot scientist’, capable of “carry[ing] out the entire scientific process on its own: formulating hypotheses, designing and running experiments, analyzing data, and deciding which experiments to run next.”. At pretty much the same time, a computer program developed by researchers at Cornell, managed to ‘discover’ the laws of physics in 1 day without any previous input (or knowledge?).

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

Read the Wired articles here and here.

Rhino Wenatchee

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

I recently found out that Rhino is in current development for Macs, and the WIP version can be downloaded for testing.

Download it here and go do that, test it!

Really?

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Erratica - Macbook Pro

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.

Switch?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Erratica - Macbook Pro

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.
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Make it Work

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Erratica - Make it Work

I made it last Friday to the Make it Work exhibition at the Center for Architecture. The exhibit was sponsored by Arup (among others), and it included work they’ve done with architects around the world and how they’re pushing new technologies/techniques/materials to achieve those projects. The show included a prototype of the Trusset, devised by Phil Anzalone and Corey Clarke. Our good friends Robert Pallman (who works at Arup) and Troy Zezula from Pratt (worked at Arup over the summer) had to do with some of the projects.

View more images after the jump below

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Oblong’s Minority Report OS

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

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

Our New Toy

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Erratica - Laser Cutter

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.

Bucky Fuller

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Erratica - Buckminster Fuller

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.

Radiohead’s House of Cards

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

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]

Holographic Display

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

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 .