Vection

I think that would be interesting to play with Vection in video games. Vection is the perception of self-motion induced by visual stimuli.

4 am sirens

Usually it's pretty quiet out in the country, except for a passing train horn, and the wind pressing on the siding. Woke up to hear a lot of sirens in the morning, must have been this fire at the elementary school. I just hope it's not really arson. Who is that messed up? It's difficult enough for local governments to get funding for education as it is.

Brain Games

Love this show, Brain Games, especially the "gentleman thief" Apollo Robbins. To test one of the visual phenomena, I created this quick canvas experiment, braingame01. The flashing white to black dots continue at the same rate, but when a border is added, they appear to alternate.

Github: Calendar Service

Calendar Service is a github Jersey/java project. In it, I'm making a webservice for serving up links for iCalendar documents. I'm thinking of using iCal4j as the API.

Star Trek: Disaster

Similar but not exactly like the script, "Then I shall appoint you my executive officer in charge of radishes."

However, we never find out what Marissa's science fair project is.

Blue Angels

The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds summer appearances might be cancelled due to sequestration. What they inspire in terms of skill and teamwork is awe-inspiring and I wish that Congress would make the decisions necessary to keep the government working in a steady-state, for the programs that really matter, create, build, and inspire.

Van Halen - Dreams Douglas A-4F Skyhawk II version

Dreams F/A-18 version

FC Kahuna - Hayling - "Don't think about all those things you fear. Just be glad to be here."

The Taste of Tea

Borrowed The Taste of Tea from the library this weekend. Interesting, long movie that only captures a little of everyone's characters, but very relaxing view of life in the countryside in rural Japan.

The Haruno family is an interesting group of individuals. The littlest girl, Sachiko keeps viewing massive versions of herself, daydreaming, such as seeing a giant version of her head in the back of the classroom. There are other odd interactions such as bumping into a couple of costumed characters in a train, a ghost Yakuza, a man buried alive in mud, and a throwdown fight between the sister and her co-worker.

They all have life-changing conflicts and face important changes during this time. The little girl has trouble with gymnastics. The young boy wants to make a girlfriend. The grandfather wants to create pop music. The mother returns to artistry in anime. The uncle readdresses a relationship he skipped out on earlier.

At the end it feels like a life tale - sunsets are beautiful, birdsongs are soothing, even if life seems difficult, it's not really that bad (except for the couple Yakuza related scenes).

FOLK

Found out John Elliott is in FOLK.

Success Kid

The Chip

Picked up The Chip by T. R. Reid at a Hudson bookstore. Interesting historical, limited technical look at the steps leading up to the invention of the silicon processor chip. Before each of several inventions several things happened, the people had worked on similar more fundamental problems elsewhere, so they were versed in what had been attempted and what to stay away from, they were motivated by engineering limitations of cost, numbers, and size, and they had a gap of time to work on the problem "in the lab".

Blakes 7 on SyFy?

A new version of Blakes 7 may be arriving soon. Hope it is interesting. I loved the original.

Star Frontiers

Supplements for Star Frontiers