I came across a post on CrunchGear about some University of Washington students experimenting with a new video manipulation technique using still photographs to enhance or alter video.
The results are unreal. Check this out:
Did you see the part where they used a layer mask to remove a No Parking sign? That would usually take forever to do in After Effects.
Amazing.
Aegir Hallmundur from the Ministry of Type has a fascinating article on the math that goes into making geometric patterns on currency. The math is definitely way above my head, but it’s interesting to think about the detail that goes into making money look the way it does — including anti-counterfeiting ‘flaws’ that are introduced into the patterns.
From the Ministry of Type
This got me tinking a little more about all of the techniques that go into making money more difficult to counterfeit — and counterfeiting in general. As color printing has evolved, it’s become harder and harder for the Treasury to make bills with details that could not be replicated when the bills were scanned and printed. To help curtail counterfeiting, I know that the Treasury has worked with printer manufacturers and providers of image editing software to make sure their technology doesn’t allow users free reign to make high-quality fake currency.
You learn all sorts of fun facts when you start digging into this stuff. A friend of the family who works as a consultant to the Treasury Department on anti-counterfeiting once told us just how many points of reference there are in a banknote. I can’t remember precisely how many, but it’s a lot. She also said that nearly all $100 bills in circulation have traces of cocaine on them.
Fascinating.
More fun currency morsels:
I really wish I understood patent law better, I must say. But I just read this article and it seems unbelievable to me. If I gleaned this correctly, a shifting of the Patent Office’s position on what technically qualifies for patents basically invalidates software patents.
Now that I look around, it seems like this has actually been up for debate for quite some time. Even Wikipedia seems pretty opinionated about the matter. And I guess there is definitely some debate as to whether software should be protected by patents or by copyright.
Still. Seems pretty aggressive on the part of the patent office to go after Google.
And this after the nonsense yesterday where one guy (he’s got a company called Anascape, but it’s basically one guy working out of Carson City, Nevada — the sketchiest place on earth) is suing Nintendo over patent infringement on his highly specific patents such as
… which seem like they could be applied to pretty much anything! I mean, a mouse is a remote controller with an analog button! And the guy already won $21 million from Nintendo in ‘damages’.
Long ago I should’ve patented ‘Flat Surface with Texture’ and sued the entire world.
All of that said, I’m all for open source culture. I think it’s a step in the right direction. But when it’s the patent office and the courts that are making the decisions, I find they are generally completely ignorant about most things technical.
I’m all for making Google fight harder for their bread. But only if the Patent Office actually knows what they’re doing.
Holy crap. I just posted this from my iPhone! How nerdy is that?
Granted, I don’t think I’ll be writing any epic posts this way. No great american novels. It takes awhile. But it’s awesome to know I can :)
check out more on Automatic’s site
I got an iPhone yesterday morning.
Now my conversion to the dark side is complete.
Amazing. Jacob Seidelin took the data from the Radiohead House of Cards video (made using lasers and data points rather than filmed) and made a JavaScript based visualizer using the Canvas object.
Even if what I just said was all Greek to you (I barely understand it myself), you’ll have fun playing with the visualizer. Check it out:
couresy of Jacob Seidelin via http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/radiohead-meets-javascript/
Thanks to Ajaxian for the link
from http://www.shibukei.com/photoflash/414/
Makes me wish I had a decent coffee shop around the ol’ workplace…