Journals
Posting so I can say "I told you" when it happens.
First you have this:
Google has acquired the engineering company that developed Cheetah, the world's fastest-running robot and other animal-based mobile research machines.
Boston Dynamics, which contracts for the US military, is the eighth robotics company snapped up by Google this year.
[...]
Google has said it would honour the existing military contracts with Darpa.
Then you have this:
Instead of every robot building up its own idiosyncratic catalogue of how to deal with the objects and situations it encounters, Rapyuta would be the place they ask for help when confronted with a novel situation, place or thing.
In addition, the web-based service is able to do complicated computation on behalf of a robot - for example if it needs to work out how to navigate a room, fold an item of clothing or understand human speech.
Throw in a bit of this, which Google has been doing with everyone's Android phones for years already:
Computers have been such a prominent, dazzling force in our lives for the past few decades that it’s easy to forget that subsequent generations might not even consider them to be technology. Today, screens draw constant attention to themselves and these high-visibility machines are a demanding, delightful pit into which we pour our waking hours. Yet we are on the cusp of the moment when computing finally slips beneath our awareness – and this development will bring both dangers and benefits.
[...]
Our relationships with computers, in this context, may come to feel more like companionship than sitting down to “use” a device: a lifelong conversation with systems that know many things about us more intimately than most mere people.
[...]
Such invisibility begs several questions. If our computers provide such firm answers, but keep their workings and presence below our awareness, will we be too quick to trust the information that they provide – or too willing to take their models of the world for the real thing? As motorists already know to their cost, even a sat-nav’s suggestions can be hopelessly wrong.
[...]
Yet as computers slip ever further beneath our awareness, it is important that we continue to ask certain questions. What should an unseen machine be permitted to hear and see of our own, and others’, lives? Can we trust what they tell us? And how do we switch them off?
And while we're at it, look at this:
Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot capable of crossing rough terrain and maintaining its balance on one leg even when hit from the side.
[...]
And WildCat, the four-legged robot that can gallop untethered at up to 16mph (26km/h).
[...]
"We do not know what military purpose it will serve but certainly it is a step towards a high-speed ground robot that could be weaponised to hunt and kill."
If this isn't Skynet going beta, I don't know what is.
First you have this:
Google has acquired the engineering company that developed Cheetah, the world's fastest-running robot and other animal-based mobile research machines.
Boston Dynamics, which contracts for the US military, is the eighth robotics company snapped up by Google this year.
[...]
Google has said it would honour the existing military contracts with Darpa.
Then you have this:
Instead of every robot building up its own idiosyncratic catalogue of how to deal with the objects and situations it encounters, Rapyuta would be the place they ask for help when confronted with a novel situation, place or thing.
In addition, the web-based service is able to do complicated computation on behalf of a robot - for example if it needs to work out how to navigate a room, fold an item of clothing or understand human speech.
Throw in a bit of this, which Google has been doing with everyone's Android phones for years already:
Computers have been such a prominent, dazzling force in our lives for the past few decades that it’s easy to forget that subsequent generations might not even consider them to be technology. Today, screens draw constant attention to themselves and these high-visibility machines are a demanding, delightful pit into which we pour our waking hours. Yet we are on the cusp of the moment when computing finally slips beneath our awareness – and this development will bring both dangers and benefits.
[...]
Our relationships with computers, in this context, may come to feel more like companionship than sitting down to “use” a device: a lifelong conversation with systems that know many things about us more intimately than most mere people.
[...]
Such invisibility begs several questions. If our computers provide such firm answers, but keep their workings and presence below our awareness, will we be too quick to trust the information that they provide – or too willing to take their models of the world for the real thing? As motorists already know to their cost, even a sat-nav’s suggestions can be hopelessly wrong.
[...]
Yet as computers slip ever further beneath our awareness, it is important that we continue to ask certain questions. What should an unseen machine be permitted to hear and see of our own, and others’, lives? Can we trust what they tell us? And how do we switch them off?
And while we're at it, look at this:
Meet Atlas, a humanoid robot capable of crossing rough terrain and maintaining its balance on one leg even when hit from the side.
[...]
And WildCat, the four-legged robot that can gallop untethered at up to 16mph (26km/h).
[...]
"We do not know what military purpose it will serve but certainly it is a step towards a high-speed ground robot that could be weaponised to hunt and kill."
If this isn't Skynet going beta, I don't know what is.
I started my own Minecraft forum today.
Everyone is welcome to join, but the focus is on parents who play Minecraft with their kids.
You can consider this as the sequel to GamingParents.org
Everyone is welcome to join, but the focus is on parents who play Minecraft with their kids.
You can consider this as the sequel to GamingParents.org
My Windows 8.1 adventure:
Hour 1: Jesus backflipping Christ this is the worst thing I have ever used. Why is there no shut down button? Why is there no X to close windows? WHY ARE THERE NO WINDOWS IN A WINDOWS OS?
Hour 2: Fucking hell, I had to spend £5 just to get a proper Start Menu (off the great guys who made Objectdock which I've used for years, incidentally).
Hour 3: OK, most of my programs are re-installed or repaired... Seems to be vaguely working. But wtf is this metro shit? Right, disabling that altogether. Third party software required to do so.
Hour 4: Ok, so it took me 4 hours just to disable the password login at startup. I am the only person who uses this PC. I do not need a password screen preventing me from leaving it booting up. Why is this shit hidden behind a command prompt, 6 menus and a properties button?
Hour 5: OK, in fairness it does boot up incredibly quickly. The reason I know this, however, is because I'm having to restart every five fucking minutes as I make major changes to the UI. Also some things are crashing worryingly often and 'End Task' is as reliable as it was in Win7 (i.e. not at all) WHERE IS 'END PROCESS'??!?!
Hour 6: I very much enjoyed the simplicity of gadgets in Win7. They weren't pretty, but having a big clock and temperature readouts of my hardware on my second monitor was very useful. This is literally impossible in Win8 because Desktop mode is basically not supported. More third party software required. Went with the often-praised RainMeter and despite its terrible UI (For a UI changing program, go figure) it has actually done a pretty great job.
Hour 7: Win8 has a good App Store. Seriously, there're some really useful things like a dedicated Netflix app. OH THEY CAN'T BE USED IN DESKTOP MODE? WONDERFUL. Well, OK, I'll just make a shortcut to them that'll launch Metro. OH YOU CAN'T. Oh someone on Google has figured it out with an idiotically complicated shortcut available for download? Oh nice, it works. Let me just add the shortcut to StarDock because I enjoy an icon-free desktop. NOPE. DOESN'T WORK.
Hour 8: Watched Netflix on Chrome like usual.
SO much style over substance, that was horrible. It's pretty much in a workable state now, but that took a LOT of Rainmeter tinkering and disabling the Metro UI altogether. Managed to get Ultramon and Objectdock working again as well, so it's starting to feel more like my beautiful Win7 setup. I guess it's not as bad as a Mac because I was eventually able to set it up properly, but the fact that it TRIED to be as bad as a Mac and then hid all the advanced options to change it back is forecasting Windows going in a scary direction. Stick to your strengths, lads.
Hour 1: Jesus backflipping Christ this is the worst thing I have ever used. Why is there no shut down button? Why is there no X to close windows? WHY ARE THERE NO WINDOWS IN A WINDOWS OS?
Hour 2: Fucking hell, I had to spend £5 just to get a proper Start Menu (off the great guys who made Objectdock which I've used for years, incidentally).
Hour 3: OK, most of my programs are re-installed or repaired... Seems to be vaguely working. But wtf is this metro shit? Right, disabling that altogether. Third party software required to do so.
Hour 4: Ok, so it took me 4 hours just to disable the password login at startup. I am the only person who uses this PC. I do not need a password screen preventing me from leaving it booting up. Why is this shit hidden behind a command prompt, 6 menus and a properties button?
Hour 5: OK, in fairness it does boot up incredibly quickly. The reason I know this, however, is because I'm having to restart every five fucking minutes as I make major changes to the UI. Also some things are crashing worryingly often and 'End Task' is as reliable as it was in Win7 (i.e. not at all) WHERE IS 'END PROCESS'??!?!
Hour 6: I very much enjoyed the simplicity of gadgets in Win7. They weren't pretty, but having a big clock and temperature readouts of my hardware on my second monitor was very useful. This is literally impossible in Win8 because Desktop mode is basically not supported. More third party software required. Went with the often-praised RainMeter and despite its terrible UI (For a UI changing program, go figure) it has actually done a pretty great job.
Hour 7: Win8 has a good App Store. Seriously, there're some really useful things like a dedicated Netflix app. OH THEY CAN'T BE USED IN DESKTOP MODE? WONDERFUL. Well, OK, I'll just make a shortcut to them that'll launch Metro. OH YOU CAN'T. Oh someone on Google has figured it out with an idiotically complicated shortcut available for download? Oh nice, it works. Let me just add the shortcut to StarDock because I enjoy an icon-free desktop. NOPE. DOESN'T WORK.
Hour 8: Watched Netflix on Chrome like usual.
SO much style over substance, that was horrible. It's pretty much in a workable state now, but that took a LOT of Rainmeter tinkering and disabling the Metro UI altogether. Managed to get Ultramon and Objectdock working again as well, so it's starting to feel more like my beautiful Win7 setup. I guess it's not as bad as a Mac because I was eventually able to set it up properly, but the fact that it TRIED to be as bad as a Mac and then hid all the advanced options to change it back is forecasting Windows going in a scary direction. Stick to your strengths, lads.
A little late to the party but, Breaking Bad? Breaking Bad.
Quick question: What microphones do you guys use for voice and/or general recording? What would you recommend that I can probably get relatively cheap (Under $250) and at retail?
With coding, I have always been uncomfortable with abstraction, meaning letting the computer do the work for me without really understanding whats going on under the hood. Sure I can tell the computer to draw a cube at such and such coordinates, but how did it know HOW to draw the cube, and how the hell did it project this 3D object onto my flat 2D monitor?
Mappers need not concern themselves with such things, as the beauty of their work is dependent on the landscape, not the raw understanding. But someone looking to modify the game behavior will quickly find themselves lost in a world of vectors and quaternions.
Since playing (and mapping) DukeNukem3D (I was very young) I have been plagued by my lack of understanding of the 3D world. Half-Life made it all the worse. It wasn't until this year while day-dreaming during class that a thought struck me that a 3D object could be projected onto a 2D surface (in our case, the computer screen) by drawing lines from every corner of the object to the perspective point. A plane would sit in front of the perspective point, and where the lines intersected the plane would correspond to the pixel that corner would occupy on the screen.
Each corner would know what other corners it was attached to, so lines could be drawn after the projection.
To see if this would work, it seemed easiest to go ahead and choose corner coordinates forward of the XZ plane, and derive parametric equations using the XZ plane as the plane of intersection, with the perspective point being slightly behind it (in the negative Y section). This led to the equations:
Where the X, Y, Z coordinates of the perspective point are P1, P2, P3
and the X, Y, Z coordinates of the corner being projected is V1, V2, V3
(After testing, this only works directly behind the origin. Y is the only coordinate the axis the perspective can move along without distorting the object)
Following this, I used the Arduino Development Board in conjunction with the TVout library to create a 3D cube on my old TV (Inspired by the rotating cube that came with the TVout library sample).
Its not pretty, its not that impressive, but how can I understand goldsrc if I can't even make a cube from scratch?
3D graphics are really taken for granted these days, and I admit that goldsrc is not the prettiest to look at compared to modern engines. But goldsrc is extremely beautiful and innovative, and perhaps its not until you attempt to write 3D from scratch that you are able to realize that.
Mappers need not concern themselves with such things, as the beauty of their work is dependent on the landscape, not the raw understanding. But someone looking to modify the game behavior will quickly find themselves lost in a world of vectors and quaternions.
Since playing (and mapping) DukeNukem3D (I was very young) I have been plagued by my lack of understanding of the 3D world. Half-Life made it all the worse. It wasn't until this year while day-dreaming during class that a thought struck me that a 3D object could be projected onto a 2D surface (in our case, the computer screen) by drawing lines from every corner of the object to the perspective point. A plane would sit in front of the perspective point, and where the lines intersected the plane would correspond to the pixel that corner would occupy on the screen.
To see if this would work, it seemed easiest to go ahead and choose corner coordinates forward of the XZ plane, and derive parametric equations using the XZ plane as the plane of intersection, with the perspective point being slightly behind it (in the negative Y section). This led to the equations:
and the X, Y, Z coordinates of the corner being projected is V1, V2, V3
(After testing, this only works directly behind the origin. Y is the only coordinate the axis the perspective can move along without distorting the object)
Following this, I used the Arduino Development Board in conjunction with the TVout library to create a 3D cube on my old TV (Inspired by the rotating cube that came with the TVout library sample).
3D graphics are really taken for granted these days, and I admit that goldsrc is not the prettiest to look at compared to modern engines. But goldsrc is extremely beautiful and innovative, and perhaps its not until you attempt to write 3D from scratch that you are able to realize that.
Well those were fun.*
I'd be interested in doing something along those lines again, would need volunteers that could help out with the setup though. Also someone who could actually provide entertaining commentary instead of breathing into the mic heavily. >_>
What do you folks think? Game suggestions are welcome.
* "Some of the best times I've had with this community."
Booted up my 15 year-old Pentium 2 today, played some levels from from the Shrapnel City and a bit of NFS2:SE.
Yeah, piece of cake!
Yeah, piece of cake!
My son got me into Minecraft, and now I can't stop playing and thinking about the game.
Heh. Heheheh.
Not sure if this was intentional or not.
EDIT:
Heh. Heheheh.
Not sure if this was intentional or not.
Heh. Heheheh.
Raise your hands if you still connect via twhl.co.za in your browser
I just played treasure adventure game, a free game where you go on an adventure to explore islands and find treasure. It's a pretty fun puzzle platformer type of game and I kinda like the music as well. I think you all should try it and get stuck for half an hour figuring out what you were supposed to do. Maybe the treasure chest is on the top of a giant tree. Or maybe the giant cave to the west. Or was it hidden in Your Local Giant Corporation's ventilation system. The adventure takes you to all kinds of weird places and get high. Literally. Also pun intended. And there is an epically lol final boss that I think you should play for yourself (do not spoil it by going on youtube or something)
I got the game from gog.com, which is like an anti-DRM site, so that's a great bonus as well. Have fun!
I got the game from gog.com, which is like an anti-DRM site, so that's a great bonus as well. Have fun!
SSD SALE ON AMAZON! 40% off select drives!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R67FNA/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_1_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A1ZTZOG/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_0_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DTPYT78/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_2_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A9YQPME/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_6_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057VOVE8/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_7_ti
I'm thinking of grabbing a 120GB hyper-x
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R67FNA/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_1_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A1ZTZOG/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_0_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DTPYT78/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_2_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A9YQPME/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_6_ti
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057VOVE8/ref=pe_304210_61203120_pe_epc__1p_7_ti
I'm thinking of grabbing a 120GB hyper-x
Just finished a catalog cover for the company I work for.