Just wanted to show everybody where I’m at in Blender proficiency. I’m still an infant, but it’s a powerful graphics tool if you have the time/patience to learn to use it. Unfortunately, most of the tutorials seem to be by non-native English speakers and can be a bit confusing. Essentially, the attempt I made (below) is one of the hardest things to model - the human face. Blender has some interesting features whereby vector wire frames can be created, sub-divided, and modified to get the general shape of whatever you’re trying to model. Then, a function called “SubSurf” creates a rounded, organic looking, 3D surface model within the wire frame thereby taking on the frame’s basic shape. Ah well, it’s going to be a bit of a learning curve!

I’m definitely not the first person to write about this game but it’s so good that I must post about it. It will take your breathe away and it demands to be replayed again and again. If you don’t believe me then watch this trailer

Prepare yourself for GLORY!!!

For those less seasoned gamers, here is the walkthrough

That’s right, you get to listen to me beat it… These experiments were created with Hydrogen. Who knows, with some more time and practice (and more samples) I might make something that actually sounds good! Blessed be open source linux software that makes people look good! …. Oh by the way… spooge..

Recently I went to a concert hosted by the Regina Folk Festival Independent Music Series, the concert featured Tons Of Fun University a spoken word/music trio. I cannot even begin to explain the greatness of this performance. I am not a fan of poetry but had heard about the T.O.F.U experience and wanted to take part. I was not disappointed. Tons Of Fun University combine storytelling, music, beat boxing, harmonica and poetry into one fantastic listening and viewing experience. Every emotion was tapped as I laughed, cried, experienced joy and was even disgusted beyond all measure.

Tons Of Fun University is a troupe made up of some of the most brilliant modern poets North America has to offer. Shane Koyczan is a Canadian poet from Penticton, British Columbia. He is the first Canadian to win the Individual Championship title at the National Poetry Slam in 2000. Shane had a solo during the concert and had the most beautiful and inspiring tale of a child sick with cancer. His portrayal of this young man’s courage was so amazing that I was crying while he spoke. At the end of his song not only was there not a dry eye in the club, but he himself was tearful. I was later told that he always cries at the end of that particular song, its refreshing to hear that he invests so much devotion to his work, every time. Mighty Mike McGee is a native of San Hose, California. He has also won the Individual Championship title at the National Poetry Slam in 2006 as wells as various other Poetry Slam titles. Mike brings a comic presence to the trio. One of his solo acts was a love poem to “Pudding.” His facial expressions, the tone in his voice and his ability to laugh and make fun of himself also brought tears to my eyes, however these were tears of laughter. Lastly, but definatly not least, C.R. Avery, the musical, beat-boxing, harmonica playing middleman. His whispy, low, laid back and very sexy voice brings T.O.F.U. together. C.R. Avery has toured the world bringing his eclectic style of music to the masses.

Their music is direct, witty and packed full of intellectual thought. Should anyone be interested in a fantastic performance I would highly recommend going to a T.O.F.U. concert near you. You can also look them up on their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/tonsoffununiversity

ENJOY!

Cicero once commented that it was impossible for any two members of the College of Augurs to pass one another in the street without bursting into laughter. Any well educated member of the academic elite - so long as their self-aggrandising megalomania is kept in check - realizes that the same can be said of ’scientists’. In many ways scientists are becoming the priestly class in our society supported by a complicated scaffolding of esoteric knowledge. The primary function of the scientific cultural institutions we are taught to revere is not to disseminate reality to the masses, but rather to comfort the uneducated. Upon joining the academic world as a researcher one of the first things learned is that the intellectual giants are just people who haven’t a got a clue about anything even in their own field. The difficulty becomes admitting that because we are enculturated in such a way that we rely on the institutions we create in order to make sense of our world. Here I’m referring to my own culture because trying to assign that same ‘need to know’ about the world to other groups opens a whole other can of theoretical worms. In many ways the institutions of science have replaced the ‘churches’ and organized religions although many would be infuriated by the idea. It is plain to see if you take a look at even the last five years of publication in any academic journal. Ideas that were seen as foundational and well constructed have been assaulted and turned over. Apparently, depending on who you ask, the human genome consists of only 1/3 of the number of genes originally predicted before the mapping began over a decade ago. One of the results is that the function and operation of ‘genes’ has become increasingly difficult to pinpoint. Even an agreed upon definition of the term is impossible to find and it has only become a way of speaking to the public (the uneducated masses seeking comfort) about ’scientific’ discoveries. Only a few months ago the BBC ran a segment on obesity and a ‘fat gene’ was referred to. It takes no fewer than 3 or 4 alleles to make up your eye-colour. How many do you suppose it takes to affect your body weight? Even the once deterministic view of genetics made popular in the 80s has been abandoned by prominent science, but the wholly incorrect view of genes being ‘responsible’ for anything is held onto like a safety blanket by the public. If the venerable ’scientists’ can’t define it, what intellectual right do laypeople have to use it in common discussion? As was mentioned previously, chemotherapy is used as a treatment for something thought of as a flaw in a cell’s genetic sequence that tells it to stop dividing. There is no guarantee whatsoever that this is the only or even the primary cause for cancer. The line between genetic and environmental influence is continuing to blur as genetic research carries on. So, if we can’t define gene and we don’t really know what cancer is - why it starts, exactly how to stop it, etc. - and the treatments we use are only effective a % of the time (another easy to understand example of the intellectual fallacy - if we actually understood it, we should be able stop it 100% of the time) then what does that say about the ‘ivory tower’. Once you’re there you realize that the people in it - the ’scientists’ - really are like Cicero’s members of the College of Augers. The majority of the population is akin to children asking what the stars are made of. The child doesn’t care what the answer is so long as it is delivered with authority and provides some comfort that their world is understood. If we can understand it, we can control it. Therefore, in many ways science has become the place to turn for those who refuse to believe in the divine or don’t want to participate in organized religions, but still desperately want to sleep at night believing in something. The word ‘belief’ is, itself, a historically specific Christian development suitable for another discussion. So, ’scientists’ throw on the white lab coat, speak with an authoritative voice, and whisper into the ears of the populace that they are safe and ‘mommy and daddy love them’.

While I’m on the subject of robots, I had better mention this little guy.

He drives around his environment until he finds something to drum on, then he drums on it. Like a little robot version of me. Excellent.

Seriously though, this thing is awesome, it has a sampler on board that it uses to record the sound it makes while tapping on things, then he plays it back and drums along on top of it. Amazing.

Found him over at letsmakerobots.com.

Here is some info from the project page:

What it does? Basically:

• Navigate around, collect some data, avoid obstacles, until it finds something “worth playing on” (a single isolated object or a wide flat surface that it can find an angle onto)
• Snakes into place
• Plays some beats on what it have found, and samples this, checking it has a “good sound”
• Based on data collected in the area, and sample just made, then compose a little rhythm, and plays this along with the sample

Why? Well.. I was sitting thinking what I should do for my next robot, what it should do.. Listening to music.. making a rythm with some robot-parts.. Thought; “Hey, I will make a robot that drives around and plays on stuff”

Wicked.

Here is a much longer video showing him navigating around the creator’s home. It wasn’t until I saw this one that I realized he had a kick drum (that floor tapping thing).

Here’s a quick rundown of the specs:

Cost to build:
$120
Time to build:
20 hours

* Actuators / output devices: 6 geared motors in total, 2 speakers, sound sampler
* Control method: autonomous (very)
* CPU: Picaxe 28
* Operating system: Picaxe basic
* Power source: 4 AA batteries
* Programming language: Picaxe basic
* Sensors / input devices: SRF05, microphone
* Target environment: where ever there is something to play on

I was stumbling around trying to find more info on how it generates the music for a while. Like are they premade beats and that, or is it just making that shit up as it goes? Turns out he programmed the robot to know the basics of rhythm and that, what makes a good beat, timing, etc, but it’s basically just making that shit up.

The beats are - however - semi-pre-made. Just as the navigation is semi-pre-thought; you decide that it should not just drive into a wall (unless it is for playing it), but you do not decide weather it should turn left or right when facing the wall. That descission is up to how things are looking to the left / right, and where we just came from, and where we are trying to get, and what we are doing now as well (are we reversing, for instance).

Same way with the beats; There are rules to what is “good behaviour”, what makes a good beat. There are “examples”, and there are setup to make everything play in sync. There is input; how does it sound when sampling, and there is such things as speed, shuffle and combinations, that are put together based upon inputs made when we got to this particular place to drum.

So.. basically and in reality it is just completely random.. But I know “in my heart” that it is not; there are reasons - But I cannot predict what it will play.

I love this thing!

Holy shit, have you guys seen this yet?

Panelists sit and discuss whether robots have too much control in our lives, some concerns about the automated police force, and comments made by President Executron in his latest speech.

“That’s what the cavity search robot said this morning at the office”

OMFG, lol

I stumbled accross these a while ago and have been meaning to post about them. The models have been drenched in what appears to be blood, then the models themselves are edited out of the image. This creates some amazing imagery, of which the above picture only scrapes the surface.

The artists name is John Ross. For more like this, as well as the rest of his portfolio, check out his site here. Unfortunately it is one of those horrible flash sites that you can’t link to individual pages on, and it’s a chore to navigate. Luckily the quality of the work more than makes up for any unpleasantness one may experience. I’m still in awe of some of the images he has created with such simple things, such as paper, balloons, various liquids and dyes, and even the human body. Enjoy.

There is no shortage of war songs in our time. Since the Vietnam War, artists have written about war in one way or another and we have gotten some great songs and some supremely crappy ones. For me, a key element of a war song is how timeless it is. That is to say how it can be applied to any war not just the current one. Its pretty obvious that Brothers is about kids going off to fight in the Iraq War but it never states it. Instead this song starts by building vague characters: kids on a beach in what I assume is the north east US. They are spending a night at the beach until a storm comes and they have to leave.

The next part of the song delves right into the war theme. It talks about the role parents play in preparing kids to go into the military and how they get scared when a war actually happens. In the best lyrics of the song, Jesse Lacey sings about how there will never be enough troops until ‘half our names our etched out in the wall and the other half ruined from the things we saw’. This lyric isn’t subtle but it doesn’t shove the horrors of war into your face either. It just tells us that even those who make it back aren’t the same and never will be.

The last important thing to note about this song is the clearly anti-war chorus. Jesse never wants his brother to go to war and in one powerful line he reminds us of that. This is another reason why I believe this song is timeless; because there will always be brothers and sisters going to war and there will always be family left behind that are scared that they will never see them again.

Only just over a century ago ‘doctors’ used to inject mercury into the urethras of sailors with a large metal syringe to treat VD (venereal disease). Today we inject various tissues with radioactive material to treat cancer. In both cases the level of understanding regarding the condition was in flux and hardly warrants(ed) the use of any treatment if you stop to think about it. As the Victorian Era doctors were certain that mercury was the cure for what we now would call a bacterial infection we too are made to believe that certainty exists regarding modern treatments. Using only the example of mercury and VD, we can reason that due to the constantly changing state of human knowledge, the culturally constructed manner in which scientific knowledge is generated and disseminated, and the simple, yet distressing, fact that we know very little about anything as a species it is possible to reason that modern medicine is faulty. Scientists today are flailing about in the dark just as much as a poor sailor with metal syringe in his pee pee after sticking it where it doesn’t belong. It happens to be a property of mercury that it kills organic life. So, if your VD (a term originally used to describe a host of infections and viruses) happens to be a bacterial infection primarily located in your urinary tract then filling that tract with an agent that kills organisms would do the trick. However, imagine that it only works 30% of the time - although no such trials and publications were being made at the time - is it really a cure for anything? The mercury is also poisonous to the human organism. Similarly, modern scientists would say to the public that chemotherapy works - a percentage of the time if you read the medical publications. So, is chemotherapy really a cure? It’s poisonous and doesn’t always work. What will science uncover tomorrow about the nature of cancer and the relationship between radiation and cancerous cells? Tomorrow we may me reprobating the irradiation of our bodies as a ‘cure’ for anything. It may simply be the case that radiation has a deleterious effect on cancerous cells a percentage of the time for reasons as yet unknown giving the impression that it is a valid treatment. Now, all that being said, there is something else to consider before abandoning the system altogether. At the time, there was no understanding of the nature of VD (today we’re still working on it and likely haven’t got many more answers comparatively although we think we do). Our options as a society are limited not only by our state of understanding, but also by our responsibility to at least try. The question becomes simple. Do we allow people to suffer and close down the hospitals because we do not yet have perfect knowledge (assuming for a moment that we ever would)? Do we stop treatment of cancer with chemotherapy and offer no treatment because science can only see a correlation and does not understand the causative relationship between the ailments we suffer from and the cures that they cause us to suffer with? Just some food for thought…