At this point, I think it's safe to ask who has not heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge. This cartoon struck my funny bone hard. The New Yorker published an interesting read titled "A Quest to Understand What Makes Things Funny." (Note that it was published on April 1st.) In my view this cartoon is funny because it's a stress reliever (and somewhat slapstick).
After stumbling across Eyewire--a game that maps the brain--the other day, I began wondering how many science projects there are for ordinary folks to help with. Answer is--a lot. Wikipedia lists many citizen science projects. (Wikipedia itself invites people to help; check this page for information on Wikipedians.) LearningScience also has a list of projects that invite you to help scientists do real science.
Of the projects listed at LearningScience I selected the following, which are presented as games. Note that the tutorials are important.
At Nova Labs you can find a number of labs/projects: RNA, cloud, sun, and energy. Below is a screenshot from the RNA Lab. This is a point-and-click game with lovely effects, especially sound.
Foldit is a portal for protein folding. When you play you're predicting how a protein will fold; this is important because--
This structure specifies the function of the protein. For example, a protein that breaks down glucose so the cell can use the energy stored in the sugar will have a shape that recognizes the glucose and binds to it (like a lock and key) and chemically reactive amino acids that will react with the glucose and break it down to release the energy.
Also, knowing how a protein folds helps in the design of new proteins to to combat disease-related proteins and cure diseases like HIV, cancer, and Alzheimer's. Currently Foldit is in beta and you must download a client. Since I haven't tested it, I don't know if you must log into the portal to play the game or what gameplay is like.
Phylo is a puzzle game of matching colors that contributes to genetic disease research. You can simply start playing when you load the site, but must sign up to get credit for your progress.
A hard one is Eyewire, a game to map the brain. The path of a neuron can trick the eye and the player has to work 3-dimensionally. There's a leader board and a chat window with ongoing comments, requests for help, and conversations.
If you're tired of gaming, how about some big game. You can sign up for a wildlife conservation holiday at nonprofit Biosphere Expeditions, a gateway for a variety of expeditions and projects. One example of a 2-week expedition is tiger volunteering in Sumatra, Indonesia.
Take for example Guardians of the Galaxy, which cost $170 million to make. Watching the credits, I was amazed and mystified to see how many people and groups of people worked on the production. Why so many?
To get an idea of what the process for producing a movie with CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), take at look at DreamWorks Animation's slide show describing the production process. In the introduction DreamWorks talks about making How to Train Your Dragon:
He, and his world, were created by a team of artists using a delicate marriage between creativity and technology. Every detail, every leaf, tree, blade of grass, rock and cloud; every shadow and shaft of light; every thread of clothing and lock of hair (or fur), was imagined and brought to life by our creative teams over the four years or so that it takes to complete an animated film. So, how did we do it?
CGI processes listed at DreamWorks site for producing digital imagery and animation are modeling, rigging, layout, character animation, surfacing, effects (like fire and explosion), and lighting. Of course there are other important functions like scripting and sound, but today the topic is imagery.
At Animation World Network (AWN) producers Catherine Winder and Zahra Dowlatabadi give an interview on the 3D production process. They call it the "production process pipeline." Here's a quote:
It is important to keep in mind that unlike traditional 2D animation, which follows a fully established path, CGI production is still in the midst of defining and standardizing its processes. Depending on the style of the CGI show -- for example, cutout animation versus 3D -- the software used and the actual production process is different. The following is a basic outline of the production steps involved in setting up a 3D CGI project.
The Credits site gives a lot of information about the characters.
Referring again to the Wikipedia article on Guardians of the Galaxy, fourteen visual effects studios are listed as contributors to the film. One of the teams is Method Studios. Here's a video that shows CGI breakdowns for several of the films they worked on, published on YouTube by The CGBros.
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To get a better idea of what breakdowns are, check out this collection of them at The Film Stage.
The events in Ferguson have released a wave of editorial comments about the current state of policing in the U.S. Or is it the current police state? Of the opinions below, take your pick.
So Obama golfs. So did 18 other presidents. Here's a little perspective: Obama's Played 100 Rounds Of Golf; Which Presidents Beat That?. Note that in the photo he's golfing with former president Clinton; could it be that he's asking a little advice from a veteran?
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Obama & Clinton golfing, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, NPR
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Meanwhile, the cartoonists are having a field day with the topic.
Adding channel art to your YouTube channel can be a challenge. To address the different sizes of displays that YouTube can be viewed on--cell phone to TV--it's necessary to upload a very large image. Google suggests 2560 X 1440 pixels. At 72 dpi an image that size is about 3.5 Megabyte. The upload window at YouTube says that 2 MB is the maximum file size. What to do?
By using the service available at Image Optimizer I was able to compress my image to a little over 1 MB. The process is easy. Upload your picture, type in the dimensions desired for the result (in this case 2560 width and 1440 height), and click the Optimize Now! button. When the optimizing is done, download the result, now renamed with the term "Optimized-" added to the original filename. You can also download the Image Optimizer. BTW, it's always a good idea to scan downloads for viruses. Remember to donate, if you take advantage of the service. (Note that their site currency is British Pounds (GPB) and at today's rate 5£= $8.54.)
Then upload your optimized image to YouTube.
There is a hitch in that different devices will show different parts of the image. Images that have the main feature oriented horizontally and centered will work best. In my case the image--a screenshot of Moon and water from Landmark Game--is oriented vertically and the Moon is not visible on the YouTube webpage or a cell phone. You can see what I mean by visiting my channel,
To get to the page that permits you to add channel art, browse to the Home page of your channel andclick Add channel art near the top of your channel. For more instructions and the guidelines, try Google's help page.
The other day my attention was caught by this Picasso quote:
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. (Brainy Quotes)
It's so true, but more about this later. To acquaint yourself with Picasso's paintings, take a look at Wikiart, where the Picasso entry shows all of his works (at least that what the site says). Picasso's works number in the ten thousands. "8 Things You May Not Know About Picasso" gives some interesting facts about him. Ironically, I like this painting from his early period, where he painted more realistically.
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Picasso, Portrait of the artist's mother (1896), Wikiart
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To paint like a child is, to me, painting from inside. What we see when we open our eyes is a world rendered in full 3D. It's a beautiful world, granted. But overwhelmingly so. And it has been painted over and over without touching what's going on in the mind and emotions of the painter. Often the works most technically true to life are the most lifeless. As an example, compare Bouguereau's work with that of Toni Shulajkovski, a frequent poster on Google+.
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William Adolphe Bouguereau, Work Interrupted(1891, bougereau.org
Toni definitely doesn't paint like a child--there's a lot of technique in his paintings (and of course there's technique in Picasso's more childlike works). But he does paint what he feels. Here's one he did that's more thought-provoking. ***
Even painting in the abstract genre doesn't touch what I'm trying to say. (Warning: sermonizing imminent.) What I'm trying to say is be present with your work: artwork, coding, writing, whatever. Let the work evolve on its own, not just follow someone's convention or even what your eyes see in the 'real' world. And if the juices stop flowing, step away and come back later. If the work has merit, a break from it will help--a lot.
Here's another quote from Picasso:
Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.
On the American homefront, there are many tributes to Robin Williams. In this one Jonathan Winters is speaking. I, for one, was deeply affected by Robin's death and already miss him.
My machine is a dual boot system with Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I use Ubuntu to test web development before being released to a public server for further testing. All has gone well for several years, except for disagreements between the clocks on each operating system (OS).
The best arrangement for a local web server is to mimic the setup on the hosting service or machine. Servers facing the internet that are Linux-based often use CentOS, a derivative of Red Hat which requires a paid subscription. Since Ubuntu has been developed to be user-friendly, I opted to use that. But my versions of Apache and MySQL agree with my host Bluehost. My version of PHP is in keeping with Drupal 7.
It's worth noting here that hosting companies often operate on older, known reliable, versions of software. Introducing new versions requires a lot of testing and there may be some users who can't upgrade for one reason or another.
All was going well until I clicked on the button to update Ubuntu to 14.04. Now I have a Linux OS that runs the next version of Apache, which is 2.4, a very different animal. (Far as I can tell, this new version of Ubuntu will only run Apache 2.4.) PHP is not currently working (still have to check to see if it's not turned on or not installed). Needless to say, my test sites no longer work.
So the questions at hand are--do I learn Apache 2.4, role back to Ubuntu 12.04, or migrate to CentOS? If I choose a rollback or migration, as with any major change in an OS, the current file system must be combed through to see what needs to be set aside and saved and to produce a list of what applications to re-install or substitute.
Are space and time (aka spacetime) a continuum? Einstein thought so, Petr Hořava, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, does not. Quoting from the article, Splitting Time from Space, in Scientific American:
Physicists have struggled to marry quantum mechanics with gravity for decades. In contrast, the other forces of nature have obediently fallen into line. For instance, the electromagnetic force can be described quantum-mechanically by the motion of photons. Try and work out the gravitational force between two objects in terms of a quantum graviton, however, and you quickly run into trouble—the answer to every calculation is infinity. But now Petr Hořava, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks he understands the problem. It’s all, he says, a matter of time.
More specifically, the problem is the way that time is tied up with space in Einstein’s theory of gravity: general relativity. Einstein famously overturned the Newtonian notion that time is absolute—steadily ticking away in the background. Instead he argued that time is another dimension, woven together with space to form a malleable fabric that is distorted by matter. The snag is that in quantum mechanics, time retains its Newtonian aloofness, providing the stage against which matter dances but never being affected by its presence. These two conceptions of time don’t gel.
Evidence for Hořava's theory is offered in this followup.
So why are we including gravity in a discussion of spacetime? This article at Einstein Online explains Einstein's geometric gravity.
Well, at least it's not wars and rumors of war this week. Instead we have the Republicans approving Boehner's lawsuit against Obama, threat of bodily harm by the Ebola virus, and Russian hackers stealing more than a billion usernames and passwords. Also there's a comment on whether junk food is cheaper than healthy food.
Just the day before beginning summer recess, Republicans voted to sue Obama. I think the following cartoon adequately describes the U.S. Congress' actions since Obama entered office.
With reports of war, aggressive actions, tyranny, children in distress and increasing violence of all sorts multiplying exponentially, it's time for some psychological self-preservation. One could just turn off the TV and radio and stop reading, or at least tune out the news, but that seems somewhat self-defeating. And, considering the current state of the world, it may be dangerous not to have some warning.
Stephen Colbert's presentations in the Colbert Report are similar to Jon's but more clearly satiric, in that you're often not quite sure whether he's being serious or sarcastic.
This video posted on YouTube by the Science Channel caught my attention and started me thinking about how we view time. This video is part of the series Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.
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To say most of us view time as a linear progression appears to be true, and some people value time's linearity, as explained by Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The video below was posted by Viral9.
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Many cultures and belief systems see time as cyclical, as noted by the Wikipedia article Time Cycles. This ties in with the "study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe" (Wikipedia) called Cosmology, which presents many interesting views from around the world.
Practices and viewpoints concerning time in a variety of cultures have been analyzed by anthropologist Edward T. Hall. You can find some of his views at Changing Minds.
