(This post introduces the new Weekly Head Voices Nerd Index, or WHV-NI, a metric by which you can see if you should read a post or not. See this page for an explanation of the WHV-NI. The NI of the first part of this post is 0/5, whilst the NI of the part starting with the accepted paper is 3/5, also due to the extensive Head Voices Review at the end.)
Kids, I’m still here! It just that the holiday season is here, and I’m feeling all strange, but I’m super-busy, mostly because I have to put oodles of time into a cool new augmented reality project for the new computer science first years that will be arriving in the first week of September. There’s also the complicated issue of WHV-regularity vs. worthwhile content: I really like entering your visual cortex on a weekly basis, but I prefer doing so with at least some kernel of information value.
We spent some fantastic quality time, perfectly scheduled right in the middle of the Dutch heat-wave (harr harr), on Texel, beautiful little island on the North Sea. Here it is on the map:
View Larger Map… and here it is in real life: One fabulous unit of my genetic offspring running on what appears to be our private beach on the island, but wasn't. It was just that nice.
Here’s a nice path on that same island, just because I hope it makes you all nostalgic and pensive: This photo makes you feel like you should go somewhere mystical, right? Photos of mysterious paths on islands do have that tendency. Check out those clouds, man…
I can do nothing but very strongly recommend that you visit an island when the weather is perfect.
(WARNING, NERD INDEX 3/5 starts here!)
In other great news, Stef’s paper on example-based exploration of multi-fields was accepted by the journal Computers & Graphics. Get it, read it, CITE IT:
S. Busking, C. P. Botha, and F. H. Post, Example-based interactive illustration of multi-field datasets, Computers & Graphics, 2010.
In spite of the fact that my TPN has not yet been able to deliver that jingle he promised, the Head Voices Review simply has to discuss a number of items that have recently been extensively analysed and, err, reviewed. We make use of the proven HVR classification system:
- Samsung SyncMaster P2370 23 inch 1920×1080 (HD) screen for my home workstation at € 185 including shipping: AWESOME. Many many pixels. Two browsers adjacent.
- Philips GoGear Ariaz MP3 player with 8G memory at € 70: MOSTLY AWESOME. I can copy music to AND FROM the player on Linux and Windows, no extra software required. Sound quality great, good in-ears. It’s a shame that the slightest perturbation to the ear-phone plug causes audible disturbance, so no carrying this in your super-tight Mika jeans pockets.
- Sony PS3 Eye USB camera at € 40: AWESOME. Based on a number of websites, we got this camera at work for doing augmented reality work, and oh my, is it fast! Just to make it an even more attractive deal, the lens is adjustable between 54 and 75 defrees of field of view.
- Nokia E71 at any price: DIVINELY AWESOME. Many of you know that I love my phone. We’ve been together for almost two years now, and I thought that I might be falling out of love, until I ordered a new battery. Once again it manages 4 days on a single charge. Other smartphone users come to me with jumper leads when they run out of juice, and then I just smile as I jump-start their pitiful fruit-themed bricks. I have also temporarily stopped lusting after the latest and greatest Android-running keyboard-toting battery-draining super-phones. Together with the battery life, the keyboard makes this e71 the ideal phone for the socially-adept, attractive nerd with stamina. YEAH.
So boys and girls, that’s it for this week’s edition. I have to go jump-start some phones, and also do a bit of work on a slightly longer term blog project that I hope to finish sometime in the next few weeks: It’s a post called “The Human Animal Post” and with it I hope to perturb, ever so gently, some of your brain cells.