Misc

Stuff that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else.

  • PhotoSketch – freakin’ amazing

    Hours Categories Art, Misc
    Comments 8 Comments

    To quote Mashable, it “transforms basic stick-figure drawings in to a photograph.”

    In one example of the technology, a basic sketch, showing the rudimentary outlines of some boats, seagulls and a kissing bride and groom, is transformed in to a beautiful image showing an embracing couple against a sunset backdrop. In another, a diagram of a man throwing a Frisbee, and a dog leaping to catch it, is turned into an action-packed picture.

    via PhotoSketch picture software wins plaudits – Telegraph.

    The video walks you through how they do it. Totally cool.

    Sketch2Photo: Internet Image Montage from Tao Chen on Vimeo.

  • Twitter hurts your brain

    Hours Categories Misc
    Comments 3 Comments

    Dr. Tracy Alloway of Scotland’s University of Stirling, says her study shows using Facebook stretches our “working memory” our short-term or recent memory, while Twitter, YouTube and text messages tend to weaken it.

    Alloway studies working memory and has developed a training program to increase the performance of children – ages 11 to 14 – who are slow learners. She found:

    • Keeping up-to-date with Facebook improved the children’s IQ scores
    • Playing video games – especially those that require planning and strategy – and Sudoku also were beneficial
    • Using Twitter, YouTube and text messaging does not engage enough of the brain to be helpful, and actually reduce attention span.

    via HigherEdMorning.com » Blog Archive » Study: How Twitter is hurting students.

    which was via @Dusanwriter on… Twitter. 🙂

    At this point, it is completely unsurprising to see yet another validation of the ways in which games and puzzles can help the brain. It was interesting to see, however, that Twitter and the like may simply be more akin to the random reinforcement dopamine jolts of addiction.

  • Even our brain is a small world network

    Hours Categories Misc
    Comments 16 Comments

    I still follow stuff about small world networks and power laws… and look, here they pop up again. Your neurons have 13 degrees of separation!

    That isn’t really what the article is about, of course; it’s more about the way in which this sort of organizational structure allows the brain to live at the very edge of chaos, tipping between stability and chaos as we think — and that in fact, the chaos maybe what drives the classic definition of intelligence.

    The balance between phase-locking and instability within the brain has also been linked to intelligence – at least, to IQ. Last year, Robert Thatcher from the University of South Florida in Tampa made EEG measurements of 17 children, aged between 5 and 17 years, who also performed an IQ test.

    He found that the length of time the children’s brains spent in both the stable phase-locked states and the unstable phase-shifting states correlated with their IQ scores. For example, phase shifts typically last 55 milliseconds, but an additional 1 millisecond seemed to add as many as 20 points to the child’s IQ. A shorter time in the stable phase-locked state also corresponded with greater intelligence – with a difference of 1 millisecond adding 4.6 IQ points to a child’s score.

    — Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain – life – 29 June 2009 – New Scientist.

    Now, of course we know this isn’t the only sort of intelligence. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating result, and the article also ties it to research on autism and schizophrenia.

  • CompuServe Classic is shutting down

    Hours Categories Misc
    Comments 6 Comments

    The whimper at the end of an era.

    CompuServe, the corporate entity, dates to 1969 but the CompuServe Classic online service for consumers debuted in 1979. In 1987 it was the flagship of online services with 380,000 users. A 1991 TV commercial trumpets CompuServe as the only online service with more than a half-million members.
    Unfortunately time, and its acquisition by AOL, has not been kind to CompuServe. In recent years it has barely been marketed. Its Web site looks like a throwback to the (gasp!) 20th century. The “build” date on version 4.0.2 of CompuServe for Windows NT, the latest version of the access software for CompuServe Classic, is January 11, 1999.

    — The Paper PC: CompuServe Classic: So Long, Old Friend.

    I was never one of the hordes of truly hardcore gamers who hovered around the CompuServe and GEnie games — no money, you see. I was in high school at the time. Every once in a while I could sneak on for ten minute snatches — my dad was always horrified at the bill. He used TheSource too, because it was “more useful and had less games and distractions” I seem to recall.

    CompuServe 2000 will still be around, but I am not sure anyone cares. 🙂

  • Lockhart’s Lament

    Hours Categories Misc
    Comments 18 Comments

    Mathematics is the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of disvovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion — not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don’t understand what your creation is up to; to have a breakthrough idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it. Remove this from mathematics and you can have all the conferences you like; it won’t matter. Operate all you want, doctors; your patient is already dead.

    — A Mathematician’s Lament, by Paul Lockhart (PDF).