An odd one, this one. Microsoft filed a patent on December 20th, 2006, for a device called the “Guardian Angel”. The idea is to have a device to detect the number of people in a room, single them out and recognise them. And then gather information on them, presumably from the net, about previous convictions and stuff.. Hmmm, not saying that people need to be safe, but two things come to mind straight away:

1) If there are dangerous people in the room, shouldn’t they be in another room, like, oh I dunno, a jail or something?

2) If the device flags someone as “dangerous” I guess it doesn’t matter if that person has already served his time, and probably gone through rehabilitation? The person could be completely different to his criminal record now.

So I think I’m saying this is a massive invasion of privacy, and straight away sets a machine up to pass judgement on someone else in the room. Surely this is wrong? The original article by slashdot can be found here. Another interesting feature of the Guardian Angel was a “heart monitor” like people need a machine to tell them they’re having a heart attack, or that they’re dead? Well I guess it hasn’t stopped Microsoft in the past for providing “features” to things that they think the buying public need - just look at Vista..!

That’s really the one thing that, if you think about it, your subconscious wonders about every time you see Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, or Maximilian from Black Hole. How are they powered? And the best way is, in the future, for the robot to eat like you or me.

The food can be cheaply produced, provides a lot of power, and will make the robot truly self-sufficient. The food doesn’t even have to taste nice, just be the most efficient type of food for maximising energy transfer. There may even be Robot peasants in the future that grow their own fruit and veg.

And as if this post wasn’t proof enough, I stumbled across a Robot that was/is being developed at Bristol University, that is powered by dead flies! The Ecobot II, is the second in a line of robots designed to take it’s energy needs from the environment around it. Admittedly, it’s not the quickest thing on wheels, but rest-assured, it won’t be long before the grand-children of this robot will disappear into the forests and woodland areas to live in communes. Whilst there under the cover of the trees, they will gradually increase their numbers until they are ready to strike.

Wow, what a great find. If you’re into computer graphics then this site will be of immense use to you. It will convert raster graphics to vector graphics for free. If you have no idea what I’m on about, I’ll give you a quick explanation of what vector graphics are first, and why they’re so much better than rasters for computer work.

Raster

No it’s not what you call a religious type from Jamaica, it is in fact the name given to the graphic type that is made of lots of tiny squares of varying shades of colour. Look at the image to the right. You will notice that everything is blocky and that the squares that are next to each other are similar in shade. This is called “anti-aliasing” and is a trick to our eyes so that we can see smooth curves as curves, and not a progression of blocks. However, this trick only works when you’re zoomed right out of the image. The closer you get the worse the blocks appear. And if there is no anti-aliasing the picture will look blocky unless the resolution is massive (again essentially making the blocks even smaller to the eye, which hides the “steps”.)

So what use are raster images? They look rubbish, don’t they? Well they are, but they have their uses. For one thing, everything digital that captures an image (a digital camera, a scanner etc.) will do so as a raster. And also everything digital that displays an image, also does so as a raster. And if it isn’t a raster, it will be converted by the screen to one without you even knowing.. It just has to be that way for everything to be compatible. It’s the same reason that digital cameras need higher and higher resolutions as people start to print more and more detailed pictures - they would just appear too blocky if they weren’t that way.

Vector

Now, compare the image on the right to the raster one. The detail has not been lost when we’ve blown it up. The reason is that this image isn’t stored as a series of squares - this one is stored as a series of formulas for circles, and curves and squares and things. As this image is essentially a load of maths, it scales perfectly. Keep on zooming, and the details remain. It’s the same technology as that used by the fonts on any modern computer system. If you check, there is one file for every font, but you can have any size you want without losing detail. The real world, of course, isn’t made out of maths - at least not in an easy to store way - so that’s why vector images are essentially the realm of the computer artist and why they’re not interchangeable.

So here lies the problem.. What if you need a vector image to do things? What if you’re into rendering & CGI, or you want to create a nice christmas card from your tiny company logo? Normally of course it would mean either putting up with the horrible blockiness or re-creating it in a vector art package - something like Corel Paint.

In steps Vectormagic. A website & web application created by the boffins of Stanford University. Vectormagic will walk you through the process of converting a raster to a vector from beginning to end in only 4 steps. If at any point you want to change one of the settings, you can easily go backwards and forwards. Don’t let me put you off, there are only 3 choices or so for every step that are explained in plain english. In fact they really just require you to zoom into your raster image to have a look at the quality and things. And the results are amazing. For instance, the two images in this example are taken from a raster I downloaded ages ago of the half life 2 logo. The first one is the original, whilst the second is the Vectormagic-erised version. It will however, as you would imagine, struggle with a hugely complicated image with lots of colours. But for logos or high-contrast pictures it works a treat. [SHOW ME]

The conception of the transistor 60 years ago ear-marked the creation of the modern technology we see today. Without the transistor we wouldn’t have computers, aircraft, space shuttles or even toasters. This article by the BBC gives a slideshow view of the last 60 years of technology evolution - all thanks to the transistor. [SHOW ME]

Yeap, you heard right, the Zune 2 has been announced, and one would hope is in production. From the pictures, the second generation looks a lot better than the first. It is to be smaller with better styling & extra features. The price tag will initially be between the $149 and $249 range, depending on the model, so should compete very well with the iPod (hopefully). And you know what else? Most of the things users have asked for in the Zune are there - including most importantly the wireless capabilities not being crippled. Also, the buyers of the original Zune will receive a software update to give them all the features of the Zune 2. Now that is a proper brand loyalty reward! Try not to come to any conclusions between what Microsoft are doing and what Apple did with the iPhone/iPod Touch. No, really, don’t.. Let’s just hope the Zune 2 isn’t a damp squib of a launch like the Zune. Gizmodo has the full report, [SHOW ME]

Hang on, I’ve only seen one half life² case mod, which is this one. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll all agree the amount of work that went into this mod must have been truly mind blowing.. And the results have the same effect. [SHOW ME]

So here it is, conclusive proof for the reason people love Pacman. He was, it turns out decended from Man as you can plainly see from the recent excavation of his skull from an Archaeological dig in Africa.

Nope I’m being stupid, of course it isn’t real. It’s interesting though what palaeontologists get up to when they’re bored. Check out the article on Boing Boing. [SHOW ME]

I was browsing through some of the excellent wallpaper for linux tonight on GNOME-Look.org when I realised there weren’t that many widescreen Ubuntu ones. I decided to create some and post them to the site for other users that are having the same problem..

Follow the link to see the wallpaper I’ve uploaded, but don’t stop there - make sure you explore the rest of the site too. [SHOW ME]

From the steampunk workshop comes this neat mod to a standard Dell LCD screen.

With a bit of artistic flair, the monitor is transformed into something you might see in Thief. Also have a look at the guys keyboard too. [SHOW ME]

If you do any sort of web design, your own website in particular, you’ll need a decent resource for CSS. Quite rightly, there’s a comment on this post that mentions if they see another CSS post they’re going to die (a bit extreme I know), but thankfully with the help of this article you shouldn’t ever need to read another! [SHOW ME]