Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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The Stanford Frankencamera to Help Further the
To help further the field of computational photography, a team at Stanford is working on a homebrewed, open source digital camera that they can sell at-cost to other academics in the field. Right now it’s pretty big and clunky-looking, but a camera that can be extended with the latest image processing techniques coming out of the labs would be very sexy indeed. There’s a recent press release that’s worth reading about the team, along with a video and an animation or two to explain the project.
Those that want to tinker with their existing store-bought cameras might want to check out the firmware hacks that are floating around out there, like the excellent CHDK software (GPL’ed, I think) that runs on most modern Canon digital point-and-shoot and dSLR cameras. With a little bit of elbow grease and some free tools you can add a lot of professional(ish) features and scripting support to your low-end camera.
(Via John Nack)
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Miha’s Sub-pixel Typography
Typophile user Miha is doing some awesome sub-pixel typography experimentation for making tiny text sharper (at least on LCD screens with RGB ordering – sorry CRT holdouts!). It’s this kind of hand-rendering and tailoring that makes this work craft, in the best sense of the word. Drawing out a legible, full alphabet with an x-height of 3 pixels? Impressive.
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Halloween Bat Clothespins
I’d buy these, Halloween time or not. Vespertiulium Clothes Pegs, by Art. Lebedev Studio.
(Via FFFFOUND!)
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Binocular Diplopia and the Book of Kells
How did reclusive monks living in the year 700 or 800 AD draw the intricate lines of the Book of Kells, rendered by hand at sub-millimeter resolution (about the same level of detail as the engraving work found on modern money), hundreds of years before optical instruments became available, hundreds of years before the pioneering visual research of Alhazen? According to Cornell paleontologist John Cisne’s theory, their trick was in the detail and pattern: by keeping their eyes unfocused on the picture plane, the monks could superimpose their linework and judge the accuracy against the template using a form of temporary binocular diplopia (sort of like willing yourself to view a stereograph or one of those Magic Eye posters).
That’s amazing.
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On “Goo goo g’joob”
One widely circulated tidbit is that Lennon was inspired by James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake while writing the song. This would fit nicely with the Lewis Carroll homage, since Humpty Dumpty figures in Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness masterpiece as well. (Finnegan’s fall from a ladder resonates with the fall of Humpty Dumpty and the Fall of Man.) According to Beatles lore, “goo goo goo joob” are “the last words uttered by Humpty Dumpty before his fall.” This was a popular notion among the conspiracy theorists who were convinced that Paul McCartney had died in a mysterious accident and looked for clues to his demise in Beatles lyrics.
The only problem with the Joycean theory is that “goo goo goo joob” does not actually appear in Finnegans Wake. The closest approximation in Joyce is “googoo goosth,” which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. There’s also no evidence that Lennon was actually reading Finnegans Wake at the time, so the imprint of Joyce is not nearly as clear-cut as that of Lewis Carroll.
The other tidbit that folks use to tie I Am the Walrus to the Wake, not mentioned here, is that the book’s protagonist Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker / Haroun Childeric Eggeberth / HCE, is described as a walrus of a man, for both his girth and his mustache. And that’s about it. Again, nothing particularly convincing, so I’m glad to see a good debunking. More interesting in this article is the speculation about which came first: “goo goo g’joob” or Simon & Garfunkel’s “coo coo cachoo” (or is it ‘boop oop a doop’)?
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Speed Projects Approved
Speed Projects, go! A good reminder/incentive from the FAT LAB crew to stop screwing around and get more projects done, faster.
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The 1949 Harwell/WITCH
The “world’s oldest [working] computer”, the c.1949 Harwell/WITCH, is undergoing restoration for display at Bletchley Park’s National Museum of Computing, and will be exhibited next to the Colossus Mk2. I’d make them play chess against each other.
(Via El Reg)
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The Full Moon Appears as a Tarte
“Harriot regularly corresponded with friends who were also trying out telescopes. One wrote to him saying that the full moon ‘appears like a tarte that my cooke made me the last week’.”
— A note from the “Cosmos and Culture: how astronomy has shaped our world” exhibit at London’s Science Museum, describing this first-ever drawing through a telescope, created circa 1610 by English mathematician Thomas Harriot.
Note to Austinites: the excellent Harry Ransom Center at UT will soon be opening their exhibit “Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works”, featuring some beautiful drawings by the likes of Cassini, Kepler, and Brahe. Can’t wait.
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Human uniqueness and the denial of death
[Geneticist Danny Brower] explained that with full self-awareness and inter-subjectivity would also come awareness of death and mortality. Thus, far from being useful, the resulting overwhelming fear would be a dead-end evolutionary barrier, curbing activities and cognitive functions necessary for survival and reproductive fitness. […] In his view, the only way these properties could become positively selected was if they emerged simultaneously with neural mechanisms for denying mortality.
[…]
If this logic is correct, many warm-blooded species may have previously achieved complete self-awareness and inter-subjectivity, but then failed to survive because of the extremely negative immediate consequences. Perhaps we should be looking for the mechanisms (or loss of mechanisms) that allow us to delude ourselves and others about reality, even while realizing that both we and others are capable of such delusions and false beliefs.We humans are an odd lot.
From Nature’s Correspondance section, “Human uniqueness and the denial of death”, August 5, 2009. doi:10.1038/460684c;
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The Xerox Star 8010 OS (1981)
The Xerox Star 8010 OS, an early GUI from 1981. I wish my desktop looked a bit more like this today. More interface awesomeness from this system on the DigiBarn Computer Museum site.
(Via)