Compound complex "up there"

I like the way this flash-driven assembly action works to view this image of the International Space Station. It allows naming and possible future research or review on the major pieces.

Is YOUR R2D2 or C3PO spying on you?

I just got my electronic copy of the December issue of Nuts & Volts magazine. On page 11, there is a link to a University of Washington study partially sponsored by the National Science Foundation that addresses whether or not any of three currently available home robots could be hijacked and made to spy on the home it lives in. Their findings are that all three were vulnerable to different kinds of attacks. The models of robots were: Erector Spykee, and the WowWee models RoboSapien v2 and Rovio. If you own one of these models or are considering purchase of a home robot, it might behoove you to check out reports on whether or not your trusted servant may be forced to betray your confidence.

Comments welcomed.

Matrix as a silent film

There's more than a hint of slapdashery extant in this adaptation (?) of "The Matrix" by a Russian spoof group. Enjoy!

Comments welcomed, though I had nothing to do with this.

Mars scapes

Wow. An old friend who is an astronomer and science fiction fan sent this link. If you have any interest in Mars, visit

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/martian_landscapes.html

for some awesome pictures of our neighbor!

Please look at them. Comments welcomed.

Bike trees!

The idea of storing up to 6,000 bicycles in one spot has hit Japan. Tired of bicycles piled all over the place and locked to anything that will accept a chain, some cities have responded by creating vertical parking spots for the handy vehicles. See this for one story on them.

Comments welcomed.

Fall Reflection...

On one of my favorite blogs today, I read this:
http://katry.blogspot.com/2009/11/all-windows-of-my-heart-i-open-to-day.html
and it made me think of how all of us who have gone through a possible half or more than half of an expected life probably ought to pause from time to time and reflect on what we've seen and done. If this does not lead to delight, then it might at least lead us to share what we've seen and done in some way with some or at least one other person. After all, sharing one's life is a valuable thing in the growth of ALL of us as humans.

Peace...

Comments welcomed.

Real is as real does

Photorealism is perhaps even more fun for me than realism in enjoying art. I recall my first and second shows of photorealism I saw in the U.T. art gallery in Austin during the last century. The first exhibit had every canvas containing some reference to aviation (as I recall, it was sponsored by an airline company). I was fascinated by one painting where there was an old, riveted and shiny-surfaced airplane, captured with all its reflections as in life. But the puddle below the wing of the plane (it was raining in the painting) captured the essence of a real rain puddle. It did not look like a painting of a puddle, but it looked exactly like I would see a real puddle. The difference is subtle but striking in the extreme.

The second show was even more wonderful...I recall three of the exhibited works from it like the show was yesterday: one was a canvas with a bright light shining from above the canvas from a wall-mounted lamp. The canvas was covered with painted droplets, each one captured in full, seeming three dimensions and the bright light from above was refracted in each droplet, just like the bright light above the canvas could have been expected to appear if the drops had been real.

The second work in this show was a 4x8' canvas that represented a piece of plywood, complete with grain, "boats" (the little replacement pieces shaped like boat bottoms to replace bad places in the thin sheets of wood that make up the surface of a piece of plywood), incidental drips of paint and wear places in the wood of the plywood. It was about as perfect as one could expect a painting to be. I loved it.

The third work in the show was a sculpture of a woman. This wasn't just any woman off the street: This woman had no clothing on. She was life-size, standing upright and relaxed with every pore and hair intact...right down to her eyelashes and arm hair. I would say that she attracted quite a crowd of folks who were intently trying to find some mistake on the artist's part and failing.

But this NPR photo blog piece on a modern photorealist artist, Ralph Goings, is about as good as it gets. It contains an interview with the artist on his reasons and thinking for doing what he does, and each of the eight paintings of his in the piece is preceded by the photo from his collection (he does his own photos to work from to produce the lifelike paintings) that inspired the canvas. After you see the blog piece, there is a link to small samples of the 40 years of his work on his own Web site.

Comments are welcomed.