Trawling The Net

"Project Gustav is a realistic painting-system prototype that enables artists to become immersed in the digital painting experience. It achieves interactivity and realism by leveraging the computing power of modern GPUs, taking full advantage of multitouch and tablet input technology and our novel natural media-modeling and brush-simulation algorithms. Project Gustav is a great example of how Microsoft's research efforts are leading to exciting new technologies to support creativity. About Typically the experience of painting on a computer is nothing like painting in the real world. Real painting is actually a very complex phenomenon - a 3D brush consisting of thousands of individually deforming bristles, interacting with viscous fluid paint and a rough-surfaced canvas to create rich, complex strokes. Until fairly recently, the amount of computing power available on a typical home computer simply hasn't been sufficient to attempt simulating such a real-world painting experience in any detail. Project Gustav aims to leverage the increasing power of the PC and ever faster graphics processors and combine that with a natural user interface, to bring a rich painting experience to a wide audience including hobbyists and professionals alike. The result is a prototype system that contains some of the world's most advanced algorithms for natural painting. Image Gallery Here are a few images that were created by users of Project Gustav, and demonstrations of some of the realistic mixing and blending effects enabled by Project Gustav's new painting algorithms. Project Gustav user interfaceProject Gustav user interface (click for hi-res) Project Gustav user interface with palette openUI with mixing palette open (click for hi-res) Pastel fish Pastel clouds - (Cloud computing??) Glossy streaky oil paint rendering #1 Glossy streaky oil paint rendering #2 Oil hand Streaky horse Fall maples Pastel Rose Smearing effects Multitouch Promo in Gusta

I felt like posting this in HBSN would be a bit too random.. ..though it's somehow appropriate^^

Cool! Cool! Cool! Thanks, Facyla!

Hey Facyla, feel like a lone nut today?

The dangerous problem of cars accelerating without a driver's input has put Toyota in the headlines - and brought the giant carmaker's executives to congressional hearings. But unintended acceleration has been a problem across the auto industry, according to an NPR analysis of consumer complaints to federal regulators. The NPR News investigation finds that other automakers have had high rates of complaints in some model years, including Volkswagen, Volvo and Honda - in some cases resolving the apparent problems through evolving technology and recalls. The analysis covers about 15,000 complaints filed over the past decade, covering cars back to the 1990 model year. The complaints were filed with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety.

An Army sergeant on Tuesday sued the makers of Oscar-nominated film "The Hurt Locker" five days before the Academy Awards, claiming the central character in the film is based on him. Master Sergeant Jeffrey S. Sarver believes screenwriter Mark Boal based "virtually all of the situations" in the film on events involving him and claims he coined the phrase "the hurt locker," according to a statement from lawyer Geoffrey Fieger in Southland, Michigan, who is representing Sarver.

Caleb Charland is a Maine-based photographer who combines a love of scientific experiments and photographs into wonderful and amazing photographs. If Isaac Newton or Benjamin Franklin were into photography, their photographs might look something like these:

Kids are always decorating their clothes, whether it's drawing on Vans, or, in the 80s, sticking Gummy Bears on their shirts, to complement the blood spilled from getting punched by kids who draw on Vans. For a guy whose tinkering's taken on a hellacious bent, check out custom hats from HellBilly Delux.

A great commentary on generic TV commentary. Who else but the BBC would do this?

A great commentary on generic TV commentary. Who else but the BBC would do this?

"Back in 1995, Clifford Stoll, PhD wrote an article for Newsweek about a emerging thing called the internet. According to him, it was going to go nowhere. It's almost humorous how wrong he was. Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping-just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet-which there isn't-the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople. Link "

HAH!

As Chilean and international rescue forces work through the rubble cause by the massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit near Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city, users of social media the world over have undertaken their own rescue measures. Twitter, Facebook, and several of Google's properties aren't trivial, now. They're life-saving, informational tools. An eye-rolling bit of gossip about one of those Kardashian girls can explode through the Web in minutes--and now, news about those in Chile is traveling over the same digital pathways, with the same speed, reaching the same vast amount of people. These are a few ways social media is being used in the wake of the quake.

Hoping Giorgio's doing ok...

I really like the look of the Guppie multitool, which turns a carabiner into a multidriver, adjustable wrench and utility knife (there's even a pocket-clip that doubles as a money-clip if you want to carry it in a front pocket). Hell, it's even got a flashlight! And a bottle opener! I haven't tried it (I've been scared off of carrying anything with a blade by the fear that it could be used as a pretence for some Orwellian shakedown if I'm stopped by the cops here in London), but I want it.

but how do you cut the guy hanging off you's line when the knife is on your carabiner?

You don't cut him off--you shoot him with your class 7 plasma rifle.

Yes! Yes!

cept your friends ll eat up your 1 GB limit in a half hour and you'll end up paying $6000 a month - oh sorry, that's in Canada where there is no competition

Ooppsss!

Artist Nemo Gould is selling this stupendous octo-sculpture he made out of a found guitar and other bits: "The sculpture hovers off the wall about six inches allowing the florescent bulbs installed within to bathe the wall with green light."

And I needed the same thing ...

Hahahahahahaha....

"Darkness can conceal identity and encourage moral transgressions; thus Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in "Worship" in The Conduct of Life (1860), "as gaslight is the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity." New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that darkness may also induce a psychological feeling of illusory anonymity, just as children playing "hide and seek" will close their eyes and believe that other cannot see them, the experience of darkness, even one as subtle as wearing a pair of sunglasses, triggers the belief that we are warded from others' attention and inspections."

We know eye witnesses aren't always reliable, but police composite sketches almost never really look like the perpetrator. Remember the Unabomber? He looked nothing like the stylish, mustachioed, aviator-wearing hoodlum he was made out to be. All kidding aside, these are some of the worst police sketches we have ever seen. Whether they look like they were drawn by a third-grader or one of the guys in Times Square who does the big-headed caricatures, if anyone should be arrested, it's the artist responsible.