Google Maps 8 Bit
I’m sure everyone is aware of this now … I wasn’t expecting the Street View to follow in style :)
A blog at the crossroads of culture and hi tech.
Adobe Releases Photoshop Touch For iPad 2. Eager to try this out.
Piccolo
Small CNC bot, potential drawing machine for only $70. As you can see in the video below, it is capable of some interesting things:
Piccolo is a pocket-sized stand-alone CNC platform. For under $70, you will be able to assemble your personal Arduino-compatible kit for tinkering, and playing with basic CNC output. Be it plotting a quick graffiti, printing a one-off business card on the fly, or multiple Piccolos working together to create a large mural, this kit provides a platform for experimenting with 2D or 3D digital fabrication at a small scale.
We are currently refining the Piccolo prototype into an open-source design that is simple, quick to assemble, and easy to use, and is entirely composed of digitally manufactured components and inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware.
The Piccolo project includes Arduino and Processing libraries, to use Piccolo in a variety of ways such as moving autonomously or responding to sensors and data, whilst providing an accessible educational tool and a new output for Processing sketches.
Piccolo isn’t available yet, but you can be notified via their website here
Zork (or Dungeon)
I recently rediscovered Zork, also known as Dungeon, the first video game I ever played (and loved). Although it was written in the late 70s, I was playing it in the 90s on our first Macintosh when I was still in the single digits, and apparently devotees still play it today. Originally it had no graphics whatsoever, but eventually it came to have still shots of relevant scenery like this one:
This is one of the early prompts in the game. You type something like, “Open it,” and it would respond that you’ve opened the window. Then you type, “Go inside,” and it would respond that you’ve gone inside the house and would detail the scene for you. In other words, its a second person narrative.
I found a link to an online PHP emulator. Try it out! Link
Mini Internet Printer
Printer that lets you print things out from the internet - like tweets, your facebook wall, or a news feed - without a screen. Reminds me of those old stock tickets they used to print out. Link
RNDRD, an architecture concept resource,
from prostheticknowledge…
Moshi Monsters!
(Source: thetaoofdana)
the uncanny valley
From Wikipedia: The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.
The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s human likeness.
