Ohmu! The multi-eyed monsters from "Nausicaa"

 [source]

More news about cold fusion (it's snowing after all :D )

''Rossi--a lone Italian inventor with no real credentials and a history as a convicted scam artist--has convinced a small army of researchers that his box can harness a new type of nuclear reaction. What if they're right?

... To my astonishment, after three days of asking every cold-fusion researcher in the house, I couldn’t find a single person willing to call Rossi a con man. The consensus was that he had something, even if he didn’t understand why it worked or how to control it. The more I learned, the more confused I became. Could Rossi actually have something real?

...Rossi’s past demonstrations were tightly controlled affairs. A month after the botched investor demo, when he debuted his 1-megawatt (mW) E-Cat for the public, he made people stand outside in the cold, inviting them in one at a time for a five-minute glimpse. So I was surprised when he left me alone to poke around his warehouse for hours.

... That very morning, he said, the Swiss industrial certification firm SGS had completed safety tests of the 1mW plant. He didn’t have the actual paper certificate from SGS to show me (he expected to receive it by mail in August), but he did have new customers—sort of. Two more plants would be going out the door in September.

... I managed to reschedule a visit with the ringleader of the skeptics gang, Ugo Bardi. Bardi is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence. ... Bardi and his colleagues believed there was something to the story. 
“For a while, I must admit I had some revolution in my mind that told me maybe this guy invented something special,” Bardi said. He smiled ruefully. “It’s a scam. It doesn’t work.”

... “So they’re all wasting their time?” I said.
“Yes,” Polosa said, “exactly.”
“They are not serious insofar as doing a sort of religion work rather than doing science,” Ruocco said at one point. “They believe in something and they want to demonstrate that.” '' [source]

The magic of global warming...

'' Arctic Ice Melt Could Mean More Extreme Winters For U.S. And Europe '' [source]

So now global warming predicts colder winters for half of the planet.
Or: the planet gets warmer AND it gets colder, so if you go out and find any kind of weather, it is still consistent with global warming...
Terrific way to present a scientific theory :D

Today: a new robot landed on Mars.

'' Emotions are strong in the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., as the hours and miles race toward touchdown of the car-size Curiosity at about 10:31 p.m. PDT tonight (about 1:31 a.m. Aug. 6, EDT).
...
At the critical moment of Curiosity's touchdown, controllers and the rest of the world will be relying on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to provide immediate confirmation of a successful landing. Odyssey will turn to point in the right direction beforehand to listen to Curiosity during the landing. If for any reason that turn maneuver does not work, a successful landing cannot be confirmed until more than two hours later.

The landing will end a 36-week flight from Earth and begin at two-year prime mission on Mars. Researchers will use Curiosity's 10 science instruments to investigate whether Martian environmental conditions have ever been favorable for microbial life.'' [source and details here]

Kinect + top-down projector = portable tangible computing!

'' Company uses Kinect to create a touchscreen out of any surface (w/ Video) '' [source]

'' Mobile Surface
It is a novel interaction system for mobile computing. Our goal is to bring Microsoft Surface experience to mobile scenarios, and more importantly, to enable 3D interaction with mobile devices. We do research on how to transform any surface (e.g., a coffee table or a piece of paper) to Mobile Surface with a mobile device and a camera-projector system. '' [source]

''  Audio d-touch is a collection of applications for real-time musical composition and performance, with very special user interfaces.  '' [source, build it!]

''Explay’s Tiny Projector Goes on Show'' [source] 

'' Cube Laser Virtual Keyboard for iPad & iPhone ...
The Future Has Arrived
Remember when you were promised all those amazing future tech innovations? '' [source] 

Terrific 360' panoramas... interactive! :O

'' AirPano.com • 360° Aerial Panorama • 3D Virtual Tours Around the World '' [source]

Funny, weird pictures

LEGO Dunes [source]

''...Star Trek's Red Shirts are the true Expendables.'' [source]

Functional programming ... in mainstream languages

JAVASCRIPT

''An Introduction to Functional Programming in JavaScript '' [source]
and
'' Functional Programming ... from Eloquent JavaScript'' [source] 

PYTHON
'' Charming Python: Functional programming in Python, Part 1... [source] 


 And to understand monads, check out this great article (with code in javascript):
''Translation from Haskell to JavaScript of selected portions of the best introduction to monads I've ever read'' [source]
Terrific examples!

Non-Turing-Complete languages

''Practical non-Turing-complete languages?'' [source]

''... BlooP and FlooP are simple programming languages designed by Douglas Hofstadter to illustrate a point in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach.BlooP is anon-Turing-complete programming language whose main control flow structure is a bounded loop (i.e. recursion is not permitted). All programs in the language must terminate, and this language can only express primitive recursive functions.'' [source]




Perhaps the many editor and environments to define games in a high-level fashion can also be considered non-TC languages :)

Bloxorz remake in 1D on its way...

This is an initial attempt to recreate a bloxorz-like game, but with only 1 dimension.
The trick here is to find a way to transpose the key elements and play dynamics of bloxorz to a poorer, 1D  space. [game]

"Mu" :p

Two of my favorite books EVER, free online!

''101 Zen stories'' [book]

''The Gateless Gate'' [book]

PS I'm not a mystical person, but while reading GEB I got interested in Zen from a philosophical/computer scientific view point (if such a thing exists :D )...

One of my favorite story has to be Joshu's Dog: MU really is a fascinating concept. Working with scientific research myself I can see that many times it is more a question of getting the question right than actually finding an answer.

Final note: I also got a very nice feeling of understanding yet not being quite there, reading the 10 bulls. I think if one reads it keeping a possible mapping open between one's experiences and what is written, the book really seems to talk about familiar sensations and problems, even if it was written ages ago. Quite a nice achievement for such a short text :>

3D printing ... in many different ways

'' Hello, I am Origo. I am a 3D printer for ten year olds.
You can draw your very own things in 3Dtin and I’ll build them for you in plastic. '' [source, video]

'' Cube®
A 3D Printer for the home.
Express yourself in 3D.
Simplify with WiFi.
Starting at $1,299'' [source, video]

'' LEGO 3D Milling Machine - "3D Printer" '' [video]

Brian Josephson on Meeting With Andrea Rossi

'' [...] Brian Josephson, retired professor of physics at Cambridge University, and 1973 Nobel prize winner for physics. Dr. Josephson recently met with Andrea Rossi in Miami. [...]
I find it difficult to imagine a conversation with a scammer having proceeded in the way that it did during our meeting, and feel that factors such as those listed above are much the more likely explanation for his behaviour. There is no reason why an inventor should adhere to the standards demanded of scientists and academics.'' [source]

1D games

'' What's this? A one dimensional game? Impossible!
That's how most people have reacted. Yes, a game in only one-D. Not 2D, not 3D, but 1D.
I thought about it and thought it jack. Everyone argues that having it even a single pixel wide would make it the second dimension. Some people argued that it was even, along with every game, in the fourth dimension, Time. But nay!
You see, the thing is, a game that classifies as 2D is only that because that's the depth of the imagery. Sure, on paper, if you draw an image, you call it 2D. And you know why you discard the fact it's actually 3D, that there's an actual depth to the paper itself? Because there's no change to the image through the third dimension. '' [source]

Examples:

''  In 1992, Wolfenstein 3-D revolutionized video games and created the 3D first-person shooter genre. Now, after decades of development, Wolfenstein 3-D has been converted to breathtaking, epoch-making 1-D. You can now play the game in a single, dazzling one-pixel line.  '' [source]

'' 1D Game idea came up when chating with my friend. We tought that a game that can be played in just 1 dimension would be interesting. It doesnt offer fun or true gaming experience, altough it took just couple of hours to make. '' [source]

'' Ever wondered how would it be to see everything through a scanner, one line at a time?
In Eye-Scan the challenge is to discover exactly what is hidden behind the single line you can see from an object being scanned.
Hidden objects can be letters, numbers, symbols, shapes, anything you imagine! '' [source]

Don't study too much... or you'll go blind :>

'' East Asia's nearsighted-child epidemic: Is over-studying to blame?
A new study finds that a shocking 90 percent of schoolkids in Asia's obsessively school-focused big cities have myopia 
...
In most Western nations, 20 to 40 percent of children have myopia, the technical term for nearsightedness. In the cities of East Asia, that number jumps as high as 90 percent, according to a new study in the British medical journal The Lancet.

...
In the major cities in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, 80 to 90 percent of teens had myopia upon leaving high school. More worrisome, 10 to 20 percent of the high school grads were afflicted by high myopia, a more serious strain that can lead to blindness. The main problem, say the researchers, is lack of exposure to sunlight.

'' [source]

Victorian 2D worlds and games

''A Game With A Point – Flatland: Fallen Angle. ... I have no idea if triangular noir-adventure Flatland: Fallen Angle was specifically inspired by 2011′s meme-tastic Bastion, but I do suspect we’re likely to see quite a few games that borrow its narrate-as-you-play mechanic over the next year or so. ... Made in just 96 hours (over the space of three weeks) it’s very much a shortform piece and suffers from a slightly wobbly combat mechanic (death seems to come suddenly and randomly, but the idea is you can only cause damage by hitting an enemy with one of your points), but it’s atmospheric, smart and does a great job of the unusual melange of simple line-art, breathless Pac Man-esque outrunning of foes and a doomy, nuanced narrative. ... It’s free, but there is a $1 ‘appreciation version‘ with dev commentary and an arena skirmish mode, should you wish to provide it with a digital hug. '' [source] ''Flatland - the book'' [source] And you can read the book for free (since it's way past copyright expiration!) here or at Project Gutenberg. There are a couple of follow-ups to Flatland: 1- Rucker's The Fourth Dimension [source] 2- Flatterland: like Flatland, only more so (2001) [source] by Ian Stewart A new movie is coming about 1984, only steampunked! '''1884' Terry Gilliam presents '1884 Yesterdays Future'.'' [source]
And some interesting discussion about a 2D version of the Tardis can be found here (why not! :D ).

Was there life on Mars? (the planet not the snack)

'' Decades after analysis of data from soil samples obtained by NASA's Viking probes concluded there was no life on Mars, new analysis has led to conclusion that the first analysis was flawed and that the probes actually found evidence of life on Mars.
...
The two 1976 NASA space probes, Viking 1 and Viking 2, had brought back photographs and conducted three experiments on Mar's air and soil samples. The experiments looked for evidence of life on Mars. Only one of the experiments called the Label Release experiment found evidence suggestive of life. The Label Release tests found signs of CO2, a gas produced by all living organisms in the soil. But scientists ignored the evidence from this experiment and concluded that though there were signs of geological activity, there were no signs of biological activity on Mars.
The latest analysis by Miller et al., took a different approach based on the idea that biological processes, being more complex than known non-biological process, are associated with greater complexity. ... '' [source]

2D + water = 3D

'' Printed 2D Tissues Transform Into 3D With Water, Suitable For Blood Vessels And Robots 
...
Researchers have determined how to control the shape of a polymer system at the micro-scale with a technique akin to half-tone printing.

The polymer they use swells like a microscopic sponge when exposed to water, however printing 'resist dots' in the polymer substrate creates points that will not swell (1). When all resist dots in one area are the same size, the area undergoes uniform expansion and the structure remains flat (2). When the dot size changes, however, buckling occurs from the mismatch in growth from one area to another (3). With a proper half-tone pattern of resist dots, almost any 3-D shape can be achieved.'' [source]

Interesting way to generate complex 2D drawings

'' Geometric patterns design with recursive pursuit relative motions 
...
Recursion is the concept of the well-defined self-reference, and a way of specifying a process by means of itself.
...
In the relative motions as the solar system, we can assume the Sun serves as the initiation of an absolute coordinate system, which does not move, and the Earth serves as the termination of a coordinate system, which orbits the Sun. Compared with relative motions, recursion is a operating mechanism that initial coordinate system orbits the termination, and the termination also re-influences the initiation.'' [source]

3D printing and fractals

'' ... intriguing software tool that can be used to develop incredibly cool 3D models. It's called "SUBSTANCE", from NeuroSystems. Here's NeuroSystem's tagline:

NeuroSystems creates and provides leading edge, high quality applications in the fields of realtime 3D simulation and Computer Graphics. One of those applications is SUBSTANCE, the Evolutionary and Organic Art Creator. '' [source, and details]

Some examples of drawings based on fractals.

 

Example of practical design application of fractal structure: a fractal table