Home » Archives for January 2010
Today the U.S. government announced that the inflation rate was 2.7% for 2009. That does not tell you that from March to October, we were in a period of deflation. The main cause of that deflation was lower energy prices, when compared with the same month in 2008. Now that energy prices stabilised and then risen somewhat, we are able to say that inflation has returned. However, inflation has only returned if you ignore the fall in the prices for houses, which is off 30% from peak. The Bureau of Labor Statistics conveniently ignores this, and instead uses Owners Equivalent Rent, which has declined only 1% from peak.
BillShrink has posted another infographic showing the countries with the highest global inflation rates. The data is somewhat out-of-date, and is somewhat speculative. Zimbabwe has the highest inflation rate in the world at 12,563%, but that is wrong. Up until Zimbabwe abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar, the inflation rate was in the millions of percents.
via BillShrink : The Highest Global Inflation Rates
Graphics BillShrink, infographic
BillShrink has an interesting chart showing government spending by state. The chart shows how much the government spends in each state, the percentage of the government spending as part of the gross state product, and a bar graph showing the total gross state product. Instead of going from left to right, the bar graph is reversed to go from right to left. That makes things a little confusing if you are not careful.
The middle section of the chart shows who received the most money from the stimulus bill when compared to the population. This is the least useful section, as the difference is just $31 per person between Utah, which received the most per capita, and Florida, which received the least per capita.
The lower chart shows the total state spending in billions of dollars on the positive y-axis, and the population of the state on the negative y-axis.
The best part of the chart is that it gives you a source for the data. If you do not like the chart, and I do think that it can be improved, then you can go to State Government Spendingin the United States Fiscal Year 2009
via BillShrink: Government Spending: State by State
Science BillShrink, infographic
Here’s the pixels for today:
Graphics pixels
The software development team at Colorfront, based in Budapest, Hungary, is being honored with a Scientific & Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences for their color grading system in Autodesk’s Lustre.
Colorfront’s managing director Aron Jaszberenyi commented, “To receive this accolade for DI innovation work is a great honour for our team. Their work had a dramatic impact on motion picture post, but the industry moves on and new challenges lie ahead. We use Lustre in our own DI grading theatres, complemented by the new software tools that our award-winning team are developing in-house to assist every aspect of pre-production, cinematography, dailies, conform, visual effects, DI and deliverables. Colorfront relies on these proprietary new technologies for a fast and efficient high-resolution workflow to serve our international production clients.”
Congratulations ! The full press release with some background on Lustre & Colorfront is after the break.
Read more…
Science ampas, autodesk, award, colorfront, lustre
The military has been experimenting augmented reality for a while, but a new project called ARMAR, Augmented Reality for for Maintenance and Repair, from Columbia University shows some great potential at reducing routine mantenance time.
ARMAR is the project of Prof. Steven Feiner and his student Steve Henderson at Columbia University. In the Marine Corps tests, the pair of researchers used 10 cameras in the vehicle to track three IR lights on the head mounted display (HMD). This tracking allows ARMAR to lead users to the target area and demonstrate the appropriate repairs needed in the current field of vision. ARMAR improved the efficiency of repairs when compared to an untracked HMD (56% faster) and a stationary LCD screen (47% faster) which provided similar information. The ARMAR team is looking to improve future models of the device by incorporating the viewing cameras onto the HMD, allowing it to function autonomously and with less setup.
The results of their experiment have been published by the IEEE, and also implements an interaction system called ‘Opportunistic Tangible Interfaces’.
See some videos of the system after the break.
via Augmented Reality To Help Military Mechanics Fix Vehicles (Video) | Singularity Hub.
Read more…
Hardware, Science armar, augmented reality, ieee
A pair of contests of interest to infographics people have cropped up today.
First off is related to yesterday’s announcement that Stephen Few would be keynote speaker at the PureShare User’s Group 2009. PureShare is now offering a chance to win a free pass to Stephen Few’s 1-day course to be held March 3rd. The course description:
Dashboards have become a popular means to present critical business information at a glance, but few do so effectively. When designed well, dashboards engage the power of visual perception to communicate a dense collection of information in an instant with exceptional clarity. This can only be achieved by applying visual design skills that address the unique design challenges of dashboards.
Learn these critical skills at an information dashboard design training session presented by Stephen Few, an author and leader in the field of data visualization. Stephen Few will expose the common problems in dashboard design and introduce effective dashboard design practices through examples that explain what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Huge IT investments are made to access and produce actionable information, only to have efforts fail at the very last stage of the process: the presentation of insights to those responsible for making decisions. Protect your investments and maximize your business and operational data by taking this course!
The second contest comes from CoolInfographics, who shows us how to win a signed copy of David McCandless’s “The Visual Miscellaneum”.
Second, and more importantly, it has sold out in the U.S. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and others all show the book to be Out Of Stock. David has what are potentially the last five copies of the first edition, and he is going to sign them and give them away for free.
Visit David’s site, Information is Beautiful, (you should bookmark his site while you’re there) and post a comment ON HIS SITE under his entry about the last five books. On Saturday, January 16th, David will choose five people from the comments to receive the free signed copies.
So go head over and see if you can win!
Science contest
Over at Animation World Network (AWN), Richard Kerrigan has a damning article on the possible crumbling of California’s Visual Effects industry. Continually being undercut by studios abroad, local strikes, and budget concerns, could California quickly find itself as the Visual Effects equivalent of Detroit? Take this story from the VES Festival of Visual Effects several years ago.
Hands were raised and soft, polite technical questions were tossed forward and easily answered. Another hand was selected and a strong clear voice asked. “How much do you guys pay?”. Suddenly the room became encased in a frozen moment of time. You could see a pin drop. The seven presenters looked like seven deer reset into Hitchcock’s Vertigo shot. As the question was on the tip of everyone’s mind the rightness of it relaxed tensions within the audience and shifted it to the contestants. The audience leaned forward and settled in awaiting the answer. The presenters blinked back. Responsibly (bravely…? foolishly…?) the gentleman from China started to shift and to make a noise. The audience tilted still more forward – rapt. His eyes glazed, he opened his mouth and out blew “Five hundred dollars a month”. It was the audience’s turn to go frozen deer.
What do you think?
via California Visual Effects Industry Gets Weaker Every Day | AWN | Animation World Network.
Graphics employment, vfx
Sony Pictures Imageworks has just released the Alpha version of their OSL, Open Shading Language, to the community. Unlike other shader languages, OSL assumes a system is capable of ray tracing and provides global illuminates and physical accuracy by default, much different from the situation when original shader languages were developed. Built in-house for their own productions, it includes work from Rhythm & Hues and others.
“We’re excited to be sharing OSL with the world,” said Rob Bredow. “Our goal is to follow the model of the most successful open source software by making our development public. This provides the very best opportunities for collaboration and adoption. Even though it's in its early stages, there is a lot of sophisticated groundwork already laid in OSL. We look forward to the response from the computer graphics community”
Go check it out at http://opensource.imageworks.com/ .
via Sony Pictures Imageworks Releases Open Source Shading Language (OSL) to Development Community — CULVER CITY, Calif., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ –.
Graphics imageworks, osl, software, sony
EA’s new “Amy of Two: the 40th Day” (for Xbox360 and PS3) has an amazing new commercial from Zoic. You can view it online, or download the 175M Quicktime MOV. (01/19/2010: At Interdub’s request, I have removed the Download Link. Simply hit the View link, and you’ll see a download link on the page.)
I guess it’s a successful commercial, because I sure want to play it now.
Science commercial, video game, zoic
Over the last week, I’ve spent approximately 24 hours in Second Life, about 3-4 hours a night, exploring the sights and chatting with various inhabitants. Once word got out about the first article in this ongoing series, I was inundated with compliments, requests, and information from around the world. One thing you quickly notice is that while everyone tends to look “similar”, their backgrounds are anything but. People in SecondLife are all slender, attractive, with long flowing air and ripped abs; I don’t think I saw a single portly or overweight avatar during my travels. I did see a few “furries”, but they seemed in the minority.
What I did see was amazing environments, made possible by the unlimited control Linden gives you over your space. Mountains and buildings floating in the sky, recreations of famous movie landmarks, waterfalls and rolling green hills, it seems anything you can imagine has been constructed somewhere inworld, and if it hasn’t then you are welcome to create it. Such flexibility has become a great asset to filmmakers and videographers who are unable to afford traveling to New Zealand for rolling green hills, or large studios for fancy cable rigs or set constructions. Simply construct your set inworld, and shoot the inhabitants there.
This new emerging form of video is called “Machinima”, a term which I’m sure many of you have heard before, and in SecondLife it’s big booming business.
Read more…
Graphics feature, machinima, secondlife
VizWorld.com 
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