Oh, what fun…
Have you run across the website This Person Does Not Exist? Try it. Then come back.
He explains how it works in one article and three videos: 1, 2, 3, 4.
I read the article. It was a bit technical for me to understand fully, but basically it has a module that generates faces and another that critiques them. It starts out comparing real photos to the generated ones at four pixels by four pixels. When the program gets good at that, it goes up to eight by eight. And so on to 1024 by 1024, which is the size you’ll see on screen.
I found it because someone told me they used it to create a profile pic for social media and didn’t want to use a real picture.
p.s. it sucks at cats, obviously.
December 16, 2019 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 4
Balm to my soul
I have discovered the most soothing genre of YouTube videos ever. Forget your nature sounds and your guided meditations, let me turn you on to rusty machinery restoration.
Well, actually, the genre doesn’t have a name. There’s no specific person or channel doing them (though the Russians seem fond of them). It’s just, once I watched one, YT kept recommending new ones to me.
They all start with a rusty tool or piece of machinery. Then silently, without a word, a gloved pair of hands disassembles the machine bolt by screw. Quiet little scraping and clanking tool noises, that’s all.
In comes a bewildering variety of chemical, electrical and mechanical de-rusting procedures. De-greasing, painting, re-greasing, replacing bits. Then it all goes back together again, screw by bolt and the whateveritis is fired up.
Honestly, the before and after is indescribably satisfying. I recommend watching with the fast playback turned on.
Deep breath, here we go. Old Soviet chainsaw (pictured above). Hand drill. Electric grinder. Circular saw. Roto tiller. Hand crank grinder.
Once you start watching these, you’re bound to be offered more.
I just wanted to find a way to de-rust something from the storeroom. I wasn’t looking for porn, honest!
July 30, 2019 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 11
Oooohhhh…spooky
Neat article about deep fakes. You know, where they take an image and make a pretty convincing animated version of it. They’ve got it so they can work off a single still image. Watch them Facebook profile pics, everyone!
Unfortunately, you’ll have to go to Twitter to see the animated version of Mona Lisa.
Which brings us to Mona Weasel here. It’s a thing I did for a website I used to do, years before this blog. A thousand years ago in internet terms. I stopped updating it and then one day the URL got poached by Japanese schoolgirl porn, or something.
I got me an internet footprint goes back to the Eighties. I’ve been saying stupid stuff in public for three decades.
My P’shop skills have improved somewhat, anyhow.
May 23, 2019 — 8:48 pm
Comments: 10
How have I not seen this before?
This thing crossed my path yesterday. It’s called a Vein Viewer.
It’s a hand-held wand that you pass over the surface of the skin. It emits near-infrared light that is absorbed by the blood but bounces off the skin, showing the shape and position of veins – the closer to the surface, the better the image. Then the hand-held dingus makes a display out of that in real time and projects it onto the person with a laser.
I would really, really like to have one of those to play with for an afternoon. Its use is mostly just for precise needle sticks, particularly with difficult patients (like babbies). But it is very cool to watch in action.
So how come the top video on that page is eight years old?
February 11, 2019 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 1
Ew…skeevy…
This thing has been turning up in my FaceBook feed for days. It’s a sponsored post (meaning, they paid for an ad) for these tiny cameras.
Can you appreciate the size of them? I mean tiny. About an inch cubed. And according to the page, they run for 100 hours wirelessly and record to SD card. According to the website at the link, they’re $25.
I know there have been seriously tiny spy cameras for a while, but these things are so little and cheap and simple, and something about them being advertised on grandma’s social media platform of choice is just creepy.
February 6, 2019 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 6
Dispatched…
GIMME MY STUFF! GIMME! GIMME IT!!!
Ahem. My computer is on the way. I don’t have an ETA yet. It’s not actually in the tracking system for another couple of hours.
And it’s 3-5 day shipping, so we’re looking at next week.
I’m’onna come out of my skin.
December 5, 2018 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 13
too. much. choice.
Yup. My computer’s bricked. Now comes the painful process of replacing it.
Where once there were dozens of make-to-order sites in the UK, now I only know one: Novatech. I’ve always liked their stuff, though. All highly customizable. But I’m so far from the days when I thought I understood the innards of a computer, I am bewildered by the choices.
For a Photoshop machine, do I start with a gaming machine or a graphics workstation? I bought an Nvidia GTX 970 graphics card two years ago; is that still decent?
I’ve always believed in buying the best machine I could possibly afford, but I don’t even know where to concentrate any more.
If any of you tame computer geeks have insight, I’d be mighty grateful to hear it. I’m too boomer for this shit.
November 19, 2018 — 7:53 pm
Comments: 12
But wait, there’s more…
Divers around the area where the Antikythera Mechanism was found have discovered what they believe to be another piece of it. In fact, there have been continuous diving expeditions to the wreck site, official and otherwise, and all sorts of interesting things have come out of the water (though nothing as spectacular as this).
To refresh: in 1909, Greek sponge divers brought found a bunch of things on a 2,000 year old wreck near the island of Antikythera, including an unremarkable chunk of crap. Many years later, someone thought to x-ray the chunk of crap and discovered it was the corroded remains of a small, incredibly complex gear-driven analogue celestial computer.
The image above is an exploded view via computer model of what they think it looked like. Some of the structure is speculative, but quite a lot of it has been confirmed to be present and to work.
From the first link above (which is a very interesting article; you should read it):
The Mechanism could do not only basic math: with dozens of exquisitely worked cogwheels, it could calculate the movements of the sun and moon, predict eclipses and equinoxes, and could be used to track the solar system planets, the constellations, and much more.
We may never know how many cogwheels the original Antikythera Mechanism had. Assessments based on its functions in predicting the behavior of the cosmos range from 37 to over 70. For comparison, the most advanced Swiss watches have four cogwheels.
They don’t know exactly what the new bit is. It looks like a backplate of some kind. Under x-ray, there’s an etched image of a bull, so it may have something to do with the constellation of Taurus. It may not even be part of the famous mechanism, but it is metallurgically similar. Was there more than one?
There were all kinds of other things on the wreck I hadn’t heard of before; it was a huge ship. Like 50 life-sized statues of Homeric figures, and the wreck happened at a time when they think Homer had gone out of style. Antiques Roadshow, Ancient Greek Edition? Who knows?
And don’t tell me the Mechanism was the one and only calculating machine they had. Complex technologies don’t spring out of nowhere as a one-off. How much mind-blowing stuff has been completely lost to history…?
November 14, 2018 — 8:35 pm
Comments: 9
Kind of expensive, but way cool
The thing on the left is actually the thing on the right. They reclaimed the image using a freaking particle accelerator.
It’s a daguerrotype and it sounds this particular technique (or variant of the technique) only works with daguerrotypes, because the images were developed using a mercury vapor. The machine finds and maps the mercury. Though I don’t see why it couldn’t be done with silver or platinum or any other photographic emulsion. On the other hand, I’m not a partical physicist.
It is, as you might expect, REALLY EXPENSIVE to rent a particle accelerator and it took eight hours per square centimeter. So, you know, don’t go digging out grandma’s daguerrotypes just yet.
Here’s the item in Science News. And here is a heavier, boringer version in Nature.
I used to subscribe to Science News. I loved that rag. It was a tiny weekly — a dozen pages, maybe? — with short, interesting but not dumbed-down science items. Then they disappeared up their own assholes with globular warming and gender studies.
SJW’s — is there no wholesome thing they cannot pervert?
Have a good weekend, y’all!
July 13, 2018 — 10:20 pm
Comments: 13
The things you find on eBay
Introducing the FCD MK5.2 Ghost Box Spirt Box Portal All wood design Paranormal ghost hunting. I’m sure he means ‘spirit’ – it’s a ghost detector.
His picture really sells this thing, doesn’t it?
FCD MK5.2 GHOST BOX PORTAL (New for 2018!)
This is the all new wooden case FCD ghost box device. I have been working on this new design for a while now and I believe this unit has one of the clearest and loudest sound systems in such a handy portable case.Features: All wood case, loud clear sounds, individual tone and bass controls, continuous sweep, digital display, sound to light indicator, Aux In to play your apps through the box, Aux out to record and attach effects boxes, adjustable multi-directional antenna, uses 5 volts batteries or at home usb, carry handle and rubber feet.
The device is lovely to behold and incorporates the 5th Element crystal too. All hand made from the ground up. Watch the video for a demo of how it sounds and operates before you buy.
Made to order, £110. For a hand crafted, polished wood box incorporating a fifth element crystal, I think that’s quite the bargain. There’s video on his auction listing. It sounds to me as though it picks up (slightly disturbing) snippets of stray radio signal, and it would be easy to attach meaning to them.
Now, I won’t have Nigel savaged, please. I think he’s perfectly charming.
June 25, 2018 — 8:21 pm
Comments: 25