Truely Creative!!

Check out this advertise.

Bus Ad!

An update on the bike idea from a few posts back…

The first phase of my project is the determination of the effective cost of the different vehicles.

1. 1990 Honda CRX (photo coming shortly) 29.5 mpg

2. Schwinn 10-speed bicycle mpg: E

3. Peace Sports 50cc scooter (white, normal idle positioning) 127.2 mpg average

4. Peace Sports 50cc scooter (yellow, reduced idle positioning) 160 mpg average

Smart metering for attic apartment

http://www.powerlogic.com/literature/EnergyMeter_3020HO0002R908.pdf

Currently playing with this sub-panel meter in my studio apartment. If I can tie it into a network of some sort, I can remotely monitor the power use. Even better, I might post my power usage stats to a web-page so that I can see historical data on my consumption.

Do I use more power on Tuesdays or Wednesdays?

Is this high efficiency AC really worth it?

To exactly how many dollars per hour does a 90 degree equate?

 

Very interesting information visualization

http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html

With respect to learning-via-videos…

While we’re talking about learning in the “video space,” don’t you guys think Ted Talks is the coolest thing since sliced bread?

http://www.hulu.com/tedtalks

Here’s 3 ways it can make your life better:

1. Listen in the morning while you ear your oatmeal (you don’t necessarily have to watch)

2. Tell your grandmother to watch some, and then talk to her about what she found interesting

3. Chuckle to yourself as a very attractive woman discusses some monkeys pinching each others buttocks

http://www.hulu.com/watch/225827/tedtalks-isabel-behncke-evolutions-gift-of-play-from-bonobo-apes-to-humans

 

A Final Adeu to the Amazing Class!

What a semester it was! Not only studies but most of us were busy hunting for internships and that made it a hell of a semester. But one thing that made us all forget all the woes, was the class on Wednesday 6-9PM. It really made me relaxed. From 1st class of origami where we made a dumpling as well as few of us tried our hands on making a sphere too. With later lectures involving paper discussion and debating on pros and cons were quite an experience! Many games were also played to make learning a fun experience in the class. From getting to watch movies to quite a creative way to create music, the class was really remarkable. It made my semester flow smoothly. Thanks for such a wonderful class Ellen.

Most interesting thing I learned in class

One of the first lessons we learned is that constraints can help creativity. I know it’s not very profound by itself, and perhaps what I found to be most fascinating isn’t very profound at all, but I feel it is worth expounding upon.

We recognize that an over-constrained problem can kill creativity. The fact that there exists a notion of too little constraints for creativity is quite fascinating. I think there are 2 primary types constraints, an economic one and an artificial one.

An economic constraints is one granted by scarcity. When people say laziness is the mother of inventions, it’s where their creativity allows for them to fill a need or create value in a place where they never experienced before.

An artificial constraint is one that is not granted by scarcity. It is a constraint perhaps of one’s education or one’s available knowledge or material. This might be an arbitrary constraint but these constraints help propagate creativity.

That shouldn’t make sense to a mathematician, because a set can do anything its proper subset can do (besides being smaller). Why when given less that people can do more? Perhaps it’s the paradox of choice, that the choices makes it less worthwhile to create, but I don’t find that to be the case. I come to the grim, but really informative conclusion that the complexity of the world is too much for people to understand.

In what could be called the Curse of Dimensionality, when too many things are presented to people, their ability to wrap their minds around and create things with what they are presented diminishes greatly. It’s the combinatorial explosion combined with the curse of dimensionality. The space gets larger while the ability to jump through neighbors decrease. The space of possibilities increases O(n^n) while the Limit of the volume of the sphere from any given point reaches 0 as n gets to infinity. It’s as if the Universe expands and its weight is crushing the person from going anywhere. Anywhere it goes, it’s a needle in a haysack, so dial back the Universe and let’s just play locally. We’ll get somewhere, maybe it won’t be the global maximum, just a local one.

Reason for Final Project

The inspiration for my final project revolves around the issue of deriving context from a reading passage. If there is a word or terminology I am not familiar with, I will have to open up a new window and search for it. Then I have to go back to the sentence and see the context of the word and compare and contrast as I flip back and forth between the dictionary screen (because who uses a paper dictionary these days?) in order to get the context of one sentence.

What I found to be more useful instead is to extend the way information is presented in the context of a sentence. Sentences are linear in nature, but can be extended in a 2-dimensional manner. By expanding the text, one can actually augment the available information of a sentence instead of replacing it. What I had imagined was that when a  word or a phrase is being questioned, the definition will be revealed just below it so that the meaning can be quickly derived.

That’s why I felt it pertinent for my project to build on those principles and create such a functionality. Click a word and it searches for you, expanding the space below it without removing a word in order to help the user understand the meaning of the word. This immediate feedback helps users understand what they’re reading in a meaningful manner.

This can be extended to translations; foreign language documents can easily have portions or specific words translated as to provide the non-native speaker a more positive language experience.

Hopefully, whenever I find the time, I can expand this product and make it available for everyone through a browser extension. My dream is to turn on/off the translator and the too will quickly allow you to click on portions of text for greater clarity and understanding.

PUPPET PARADE

Puppet Parade is an interactive installation that allows children to use their arms to puppeteer larger than life creatures projected on the wall in front of them. Children can also step in to the environment and interact with the puppets directly, petting them or creating food for them to eat. This dual interactive setup allows children to perform alongside the puppets, blurring the line between the ‘audience’ and the puppeteers and creating an endlessly playful dialogue between the children in the space and the children puppeteering the creatures.

 

Cabinet de Curiosités – Zim And Zou