Home » Archives for May 2010
What exactly is a blowout preventer, and how does it work? What were some of the flaw’s in the blowout preventer that may have caused it not to work? The Washington Post has a story and an infographic showing what a blowout preventer is, how it works, and what may have contributed to the disaster.
Click the first link below for the full image. The second link below takes you to an interactive infographic on the oil spill, and what it is affecting.
Several things were wrong with BP’s oil well, according to findings of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
via House panel: Flaws in the well.
via Interactive Graphic: Gulf Coast Oil Spill Map – The Washington Post.
Read more…
Graphics, Science infographic, oil, washingtonpost
eNet has just received a sample GeForce GTX465 and quickly ran it through some benchmarks, and unfortunately the results are not too impressive.
The graphics’ core name is “GF100-030-A3″ have 352sp 1GB 256bit and the core Shader memory frequency are 607 1215 3206MHz. The core frequency is consistent with the GTX470 while the memory frequency is slightly lower.
Look at the benchmark screenshots below, but to see Unigine Heaven running at only 18fps is a bit disappointing.
via The performance of GeForce GTX465 had leaked – Expreview.com.
Hardware benchmark, fermi, nvidia
The European Space Agency (ESA) has taken a picture of the Meridiani Planum on Mars using the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera. To orient yourself, remember that North in this image is to your right. Therefore, looking at the volcanic crater, you can see that the prevailing winds are from the North-East, and are blowing the volcanic ash out of the crater into long streaks.
Meridiani Planum, at the northern edge of the southern highlands of Mars, lies between the volcanic Tharsis Region to the west and the low-lying Hellas Planitia impact basin to the south-east. Through a telescope, Meridiani Planum is a striking, dark feature, close to the martian equator. It extends 127 km by 63 km and covers an area of roughly 8000 sq km, about the size of Cyprus. This dark material probably resembles volcanic ash, which is predominantly composed of minerals such as pyroxene and olivine.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
via ESA – Mars Express – Volcanic ash in Meridiani Planum – images.
Science astronomy, esa
While I disagree with the title “World’s First Twitter Artwork”, the concept is clever. They’ve constructed a virtual picture frame where Twitter users can elect to tweet a special message, and have a portion of the canvas covered with their avatar and a link to their Twitter Profile page. More followers makes your avatar larger, with the canvas size representing the number of followers of Aston Kutcher.
Join the worlds first artwork made by Twitter users! The artwork will later be made into a physical piece by Swedish artist Jon Holm. Tweet and get your profile pic inside the frame. More followers = bigger size.
VizWorld is in there somewhere.. Not sure where yet.
via Dont Tell Ashton – The worlds first Twitter artwork.
Science art, social media, twitter
A press release from Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:SNIC) talks about some new Stereo 3D products that are coming in their next Roxio suite. On the high-end, they’re bringing in BluRay 3D Authoring capabilities to the “Hollywood Studios” (No mention of consumers there, so presumably this will be ridiculously expensive). For more “consumer” interest, they’ve offering the CinePlayer BD which will support 3D BluRay titles and, get this, online video providers and real-time conversion of 2D to 3D, “allowing 3D viewing of a user’s existing library of standard DVD’s and personal home movies”. They also have some interesting technology called “Video Lab 3d”:
Roxio Video Lab 3D, a new consumer product from Sonic, allows consumers to edit and burn personal 3D content on standard DVDs; these discs can then be played back on any standard DVD or Blu-ray player connected to 3D-enabled HDTVs or PCs.
In addition, it seems that the new ASUS G-Series notebook will come with 120hz panels and 3D Glasses, and ship with CinePlayer ready to go in 3D.
Great to see it coming to mainstream, but it sounds like they’ve added a lot of flakey “experimental” technology to it for no real benefit. Automatic 2D to 3D conversion? 3D DVD? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how well it works (or doesn’t).
via Roxio
Hardware, Science 3d, roxio, sonic, stereoscopic
Zoic studios follows up the action-packed “Dominoes” NASCAR spot with a new one called “Variables”. Focusing heavily on the tiny, mostly unseen tiny variables that can affect the race in both mundane and awe-inspiring ways, they used a CG camera to analyze each one.
The intensity, focus, and skill required in the last lap of any race are what set the champions apart from the other drivers. The story of the new NASCAR spot is that last lap, the intensity and focus of the NASCAR drivers, and the variables in the final stretch that determine the outcome for the champion Kyle Busch.
See the spot at the link below, and see the credits and press release after the break.
Zoic Studios : NASCAR Variables.
Read more…
Science nascar, vfx, zoic
A new shoe from Adidas, the F50 football boot, became the focus of a 45-second online promotional video for Superfad and 180 Amsterdam. Using the concept of a light tunnel and using several abstract design element, the result is a beautiful dance of light and sound.
To keep the look of the spot consistent, Superfad came up with the concept of having the F50 boot interact with a football made up of the light streams that appear throughout the spot. Playing with various speed ramps and bullet time effects gives the viewer time to fully appreciate the boot’s design, while reinforcing the exceptional speed its lightweight design gives the player.
View the spot via the link below, and read the full credits & press release after the break.
Superfad : Adidas F50.
Read more…
Graphics superfad, vfx
Moon Zoo? What is that? Moon Zoo is a social experiment, or at least I would call it one, in which common people look at different images of the moon. They then make judgments about what they see in these images. These images come from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the judgments they make could be one of several things. You may be asked to identify any craters that you can see in the image. You may be asked to compare two images and decide which has the most boulders. Answering these questions, and others, helps scientists understand the moon, and thus, helps them to understand the universe around us. Heck, you may even spot some lost Russian hardware.
The aim of Moon Zoo is to provide detailed crater counts for as much as the Moon’s surface as possible. Unlike here on Earth where weather quickly erodes any signs of all but the most recent impacts, craters on the lunar surface stay almost until eternity. That means that the number of craters on a particular piece of the surface tells us how old it is. This technique is used all over the Solar System, but the Moon is particularly important because we have ground truth — samples brought back by the Apollo missions — which allow us to calibrate our estimates. Planetary scientists have always carried out this kind of analysis on large scales, but with your help and the fabulous LRO images then we should be able to uncover the finer details of the Moon’s history.
via : Moon Zoo
Science astronomy
The 1944 report from Harold N Fisk on his Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River, conducted for the Mississippi River Comission and the US Army Corp of Engineers, is a fascinating combination of science, research, and early GIS technology.
Landscape architects in every specialty have much to glean from it, not the least of which are water engineering techniques, ecological and geological processes, graphic representation, and the ideological and philosophical implications of reconstructing the Mississippi River.
The entire 170 page report with all charts and graphs included is now available online in high-resolution scanned PDF form, hosted with the USACE for maximum bandwidth.
- Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River – Fisk, 1944 Report (197MB)
- Oversized Plates – Fisk, 1944 Report (686MB)
- Oversized Plates Rectified – Fisk, 1944 Report (369MB)
Some truly beautiful work in here from the days before Electronic Computers and Satellite Imaging.
via Pruned: Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.
Science gis, mississippi, usace
Today’s “Gold Box” deal on Amazon is Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 8, discounted to $54.99 (that’s $45 off). Available for both PC & Mac, it’s the latest version of the popular photo editing package. From their description:
The newest version of the #1 selling consumer photo-editing software, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can easily tell amazing stories with your photos. Bring all your photos and video clips together in one convenient place where you can easily find, view, and manage them; protect them with automatic online backup and 2GB of free storage; and then dive right into a full range of creative activities. Make your photos look extraordinary with editing options that let you recompose photos to any size while keeping key subjects intact; combine multiple exposures into a single, perfectly lit shot; and quickly preview a range of adjustments before choosing the perfect one. And share your stories in unique photo books, scrapbook pages, slide shows, and interactive online experiences.
Normally a $100 piece of software, this makes it a nice deal. If you’ve wanted to try it out, you won’t find a better price for a while.
Graphics adobe, photoshop, sale, software
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