Category: Cool sights

Frets of Fire – free Guitar Hero style game for PC

(via MAKEzine blog)
It had to happen sooner or later.  Nearly every great game for consoles has someone in the open-source or freeware world try to recreate it on the PC (e.g. StepMania from Dance Dance Revolution).  The latest game to get this treatment is the incredibly popular (often referenced by Bill Harris as the greatest game ever) Guitar Hero, now mimicked as Frets of Fire.  Although designed to be played via keyboard, I expect this will soon be setup to work with a Guitar Hero controller, as the hook-up to PC mod has already been worked on.

Frets on Fire is a game of musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible.

fretsonfire1.jpg

A video demonstration of the game is available at YouTube.

[tags]Frets on fire, Guitar Hero[/tags]

A slew of animated kitty goodness

In my recent web meanderings, I’ve stumbled upon a huge number of animated GIFs and stills. I’ve been collecting these. Some of my favorites have been the stickfigure animations and the kitty animations. I’ll do a big post of some of the good and not-so-good stickfigure animations soon, but right now, I wanted to get the kitty animations in place first. Some of these are WTF is that? animations, some are moronic looking, and some are funny. You decide which is which for you. Hit the read more link below to see all of them.

kitty-boxer.gif kitty-attack.gif kitty-in-bushes.gif

Continue reading “A slew of animated kitty goodness”

Amazing new algorithm to remove photo-blur

While working on adding Digg functionality to articles on my site, I saw this little gem on a new photo-deblurring algorithm recently demonstrated at Siggraph on the Digg main page. This was of interest to me because my moderate hand tremors mean taking good pictures is always a tough thing for me. To compensate for my lack of steadiness, I tend to take multiple pictures of whatever I want to get. This new algorithm is specifically designed to help clear up camera shake blurriness, which should help me.  The bad news is this isn’t likely to show up for another year or two in popular photo-editting software.

camera-shake.jpg In a seminar entitled “Removing Camera Shake from a Single Photograph,” the MIT – U of Toronto research team presented an algorithm to correct high-level blurs at the world’s largest electronic and computer graphics conference today, which hosts “the best and most senior minds in technological innovation,” according to Siggraph spokesperson Brian Ban.

. . .

The algorithm is based on the principal that slight hand motions of even only a few millimeters cause camera rotations, resulting in image blur according to researcher and post-doc Rob Fergus in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

. . .

Geared for users of small handheld cameras, the new post-production technique could eliminate the need for bulky tripods or help camera owners who lack popular (and costly) anti-shake features in newer point-and-shoot cameras. “With lighter, newer cameras, [blurry images] are a common thing. We normally delete them because we don’t know what to do with them,” said Fergus, but the “photos you really care about” can be saved.

The mathematical model, however, cannot correct other kinds of blur, including inadequate depth of field in which images are out of focus. The model also cannot compensate for slow shutter speeds for fast moving objects such as cars.

[tags]Camera blur, SIGGRAPH[/tags]

Get the latest playlists around the country

(via LifeHacker)

If you have ever wanted to see every song played on every radio station in the US (or at least every station that makes playlists available online, I suppose), then you need to check out yes.com. Using a flash interface, yes.com shows what stations across the country are playing via song name pop-ups in the location played.

yescom.jpg

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Break-dancing animals

No, no – not Break-dancing animals 2: Electric Boogaloo. This is just a small animated GIF of some costumed people, dressed as animals, doing some dancing. In fact, there’s no real break-dancing in here. But that’s the name of the image, so I put it in the title.

animalbreakgroupgif.gif

My younger son absolutely loves this picture, so I thought I’d share it for others who have young children.

[tags]Animals dancing[/tags]

Wikipedia picture of the day

Yes, I’ve been on a bit of a photo-of-the-day kick lately.  It’s just a phase, I’m sure.  As I have more time to catch up on news, I’ll be posting fewer images.  This latest image posting is the Wikipedia picture of the day for August 3, 2006.

600px-london_eye_twilight_april_2006.jpg

Seen here from the rear at twilight, the London Eye, also known as the Millennium Wheel, is the largest observation wheel in the world at 135 m (443 ft) high. The wheel carries 32 sealed passenger capsules and rotates at a rate of 0.26 m/s (about 0.9 km/h or 0.6 mph) so that one revolution takes about 30 minutes to complete.

Click the image for a full size view.

[tags]Wikipedia, Picture of the day, Millennium Wheel, London Eye[/tags]

Astronomy picture of the day – 2006-08-03

astronomy-potd-20060803.jpg

M27: Not A Comet
Credit & Copyright: Rick Krejci (RicksAstro Astrophotography)
Explanation: While searching the skies above 18th century France for comets, astronomer Charles Messier diligently recorded this object as number 27 on his list of things which are definitely not comets. So what is it? Well, 20th century astronomers would classify it as a Planetary Nebula … but it’s not a planet either, even though it may appear round and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is now known to be an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula created as a sun-like star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star’s outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star’s intense but invisible ultraviolet light. Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This intriguing color composite view was recorded through narrow band filters sensitive to emission from hydrogen atoms (shown in red) and oxygen atoms (shown in blue/green).

And while I consider myself quite an authority on gaseous emissions (heheheheh), I hadn’t ever heard of this style of nebula before.  Click the image for a full size view.

[tags]Astronomy picture of the day, POTD, Gaseous emission[/tags]

The Sharp Lumiwall

(via TechEBlog)

Some things just don’t need explanation for why a geek would want them. This, I believe is one of those things. Shipping next year is the Sharp Lumiwall. During the day, it appears to be smoked glass. In reality, it is two pieces of glass with a transparent solar panel in between. This panel absorbs the sunlight, storing energy from the process. At night, the Lumiwall works as an illumination device, glowing softly using the energy stored during the day.

lumiwall2.jpg

[tags]Sharp, Lumiwall, Transparent solar panels[/tags]