an inflating flashbag

This is a flash drive. A flashbag, more accurately. When it is empty, it is slim and as data is filled into it, the bag starts to inflate until it is full. How ingenious! The creators have applied micro- pumps to achieve this, as stated in their site. When the device is about to blow off, it gives a message - "There is not enough free space". At times when it is not plugged in, it remains inflated relative to the amount of data it is holding. There are other innovative products from the creators of flashbag - such as C'ALL future phone, Balloophone, AllTunes, GMEA, Trings and Remobeads. Great, PlusMinus! Kudos to your grey cells.

nec earth simulator

In 1997 a team of Japanese engineers dared to imagine a computer so powerful that it could keep track of everything in the world at once — steaming rain forests in Bolivia, factories in Mexico belching smoke, the jet stream, the Gulf Stream, the works. What's more, they dared to build it. On March 11, 2002, when they turned it on, the engineers did something no mere mortal had ever done before: they created the Earth.

Or at least the next best thing. The Earth Simulator, the most powerful supercomputer ever built, was designed for a single purpose: to create a virtual twin of our home planet. Before the Earth Simulator arrived, the fastest computer in the world was an American military machine that can perform 7.2 trillion calculations per second. The Earth Simulator runs at more than 35 trillion calculations per second, almost five times faster. In fact, it's as powerful as the next 12 fastest supercomputers in the world put together. Located at a vast, newly built facility in Yokohama, the Earth Simulator is the size of four tennis courts. The price tag? Around $350 million.

It was worth every penny. By plugging real-life climate data from satellites and ocean buoys into the Earth Simulator, researchers can create a computer model of the entire planet, then scroll it forward in time to see what will happen to our environment. Scientists have already completed a forecast of global ocean temperatures for the next 50 years, and a full set of climate predictions will be ready by year's end. Soon, instead of speculating about the possible environmental impact of, say, the Kyoto accord, policymakers will be able to plug its parameters into the virtual Earth, then skip ahead 1,000 years to get a handle on what effect those policies might have. That kind of concrete data could revolutionize environmental science. By digitally cloning the Earth, we might just be able to save it. via.

multimedia in plain words

In general sense, multimedia is just two or more media. Nevertheless, when most people refer to multimedia, they generally mean the combination of two or more continuous media, that is, media that have to be played during some well-defined time interval, usually with some user interaction. In practice, the two media re normally audio and video, that is, sound plus moving pictures.

AUDIO – An audio (sound) wave is a one-dimensional acoustic (pressure) wave. When an acoustic wave enters the ear, the eardrum vibrates, causing the tiny bones of the inner ear to vibrate along with it, sending nerve pulses to the brain. These pulses are perceived as sound by the listener.

VIDEO – The human eye has the property that when an image is flashed on the retina, it is retained for some number of milliseconds before decaying. If a sequence of images is flashed at 50 or more images/sec, the eye does not notice that it is looking at discrete images. All video systems exploit this principle to produce moving pictures.

the last page on the internet

Sometimes days are boring and you feel like doing nothing. You want to lock yourself up at home with a big sad headd. And then suddenly you remember that maybe an online chat will cheer you up - you know, with some stranger on the other side of the globe - that sort of thing. And when you want to connect to a chatroom, it is not working because of slow connection or disturbed connection. Then you want to shut down the Internet itself. Oh, what a wonderful idea - to be able to visit the last page on the Internet! Try it once, before you try out the first page on the Internet or the middle page on the Internet.

microcosmos - le peuple de l'herbe

Claude Nuridsany and crew goes to a rural meadow in France to capture insect activities in their amazing camera. Using sophisticated closeup lenses, time-lapse photography and a lot of patience, they have managed to capture fascinating shots that are as rare as waterbombs. Featuring the life of insects, Microcosmos is a documentary film that shows a wide range of insect activities including but not limited to interactions such as kissing, mating, dueling, hunting, working and eating.
The amazing music composed by Bruno Coulais complements well with the amazing documentary; however, the lack of narration can be quite easily felt during the entire one and a half hour of the show - but then nothing is perfect to the satisfaction of everybody. Most of the show is filled with sounds from insects while occassionally accompanied by contextual music and sound effects. However, not all insects and their sounds are familiar unless you are a zoologist specializing in arthropods. This is a highly recommended documentary for all ages because of the uniqueness of its contents.

extract video clips from vcd

Use VirtualDub to extract a portion of video. This is a very useful feature of VirtualDub. With it you can extract a portion of a movie and save it. Put the movie CD in your CD drive and open VirtualDub. Here, we are going to just extract the movie file and are not applying any compression to it. To enable compression, you will need Video Codecs such as xVid or Indeo. Now make sure the following settings are qpplied in VirtualDub: Options > Preferences > "Output Color Depth" should be "Match Display Depth", "Display" should be set to "Use DirectX for displaying panes". Under the menu Video > Compression should be set to 'Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr' and under the menu Audio > Directsream Copy.

After the options are saved, select the portion that you want to extract. Just move the Timeline slider until you reach the starting point of the scene you want to extract. Press HOME to mark the start position of the selection. Now move the slider until you reach the end position of the scene you want to extract. Press END to mark the end position of the selection. Now, go to File > Save as AVI or press F7. In the Save As dialog box, specify where you want this file to be saved, hit ENTER, and you are done.

via digit 2005.01

extract audio clip from vcd

VirtualDub is a small, yet deceptively powerful program useful for video editors. Virtual Dub started out as a pet project at ECE lab at UCSB. At its homepage, there is a line of text that says, PROOF THAT I HAD TOO MUCH FREE TIME IN COLLEGE - quite a nice way to say it! You can use VirtualDub for frame-by-frame editing, applying video effects and extracting audio or video clips as necessary. Here is how to extract a song from a movie CD using VirtualDub.

First open the movie in VirtualDub. Now, in the Audio menu, make sure the Direct Stream Copy option is selected. After the options are saved, select the portion you want to extract. Just move the Timeline slider until you reach the starting point of the song you want to extract. Press HOME to mark the start position of the song. Now move the slider until you reach the end position of the song you want to extract. Press END to mark this option. Click on File > Save Wav and enter the location where you want to save this file as Temp.wav. As WAV files are uncompressed format, this will be a huge file but don't worry, you can convert this file to MP3 later, using encoders such as RazorLame.

via digit 2005.01

tech-savvy household items

"I don't know if anyone would venture to say the Magic Self-Stirring Mug is a truly useful addition to your coffee-drinking arsenal, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to swear off teaspoons forever. Those tiny buggers have long been a nemesis of my clumsy mitts. With just the push of a button, the mug employs a tiny propeller (not real "magic," I guess) to mix your drink up. All you need is $21.51, two AAA batteries, and no shame. Yeah, it doesn't get much lazier than a self-stirring mug." via SciFi Tech.

"Wouldn't it be great if you could command a robot to fetch another brewski from the fridge while you kept right on watching the big game on Sunday? Judging from this picture of the HRP-2 in action, that's exactly what scientists at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) have in mind. But how many robots does it take to retrieve a can of suds? AIST did it with three HRP-2s: one to map the room, one to understand the spoken command, and a third to actually walk to the fridge and collect a frosty beverage. The three robots communicated with each other over a network, but AIST says it will soon get one robot to do all three tasks. AIST also has a great FAQ on its Web site on why humanoid robots are superior to robots with more than two legs. One reason: bipeds can make turns in a smaller space. At any rate, now we know why Sony's Aibo robot dog was put to sleep on January 27 along side Sony's humanoid robot, the QRIO — both were too short to reach the fridge door." via SciFi Tech.

neuromancer by william gibson

The Internet needs no definition. From the desk of Tim Berners Lee to the present day Web 2.0 phenomenon, the Internet has grown to become the global medium for mass communication. It is a live network that is forever expanding, forever intensifying and more importantly, it is forever engaging. But how engaging can Internet become for a person? Can Internet evolve into a highy addictive model for a human being so much so that it becomes absolute necessity? It may not be so now, but in the future it is possible according to the book Neuromancer by William Gibson, who is better known as the person who coined the term CYBERSPACE.

Set in the not so far future, Neuromancer is about a wannabe ubergeek named Case. He lives in a world that is saturated with ubiquitous technology. Cities are no longer metropolises - they have developed into urban sprawls. People no longer log in to the Internet - they use neural jacks to directly plug in their brains so that they can visualize whatever they encounter inside the "Matrix", today's version of the Internet. Although the book does not portray a commoner's lifestyle in detail, it shows how society is surviving under complex atmosphere created due to corporate pressure because in Neuromancer, multinational companies are the true rulers of the society.

Case lives in the backyards of Chiba, a suburb of Tokyo. It is a dark world - the streets are hangouts for sex agents, drug addicts and brokers selling blackmarket body parts. Case used to be a talented hacker, working for companies who employed him in order to steal valuables of other companies. In one of his missions, Case tried to steal money from his employers, who then took revenge by damaging Case's brain and his central nervous system rendering him unable to gain access to the matrix. The matrix is everything for case - and seeing no future without being able to jack in again, he comes to Chiba with hopes of repairing his damaged body. After a lot of unsuccessful attempts at buying replacement parts, Case runs out of money, thus forcing himself to live at the backstreets of Chiba.

The story begins when a person called Armitage offers him job as a hacker - with an offer to repair his body parts. Case instantly agrees and teaming up with Molly, also recruited by Armitage, he is all set to begin his new life. Molly is not an ordinary girl - her body is cybernetically enhanced with biometric surgeries of all kinds. Her nails contain hidden razors, her reflex system is faster and her face is enhanced so as to protect her eyes. She is swift for a warrior, skilled for a number of combats - which is why she's been dubbed a street-samurai. As the story unfolds, Case and Molly develop a personal relationship and go on a number of adventures around the world working for Armitage. Later they begin to secretly inquire into the life of Armitage and come up with strange conclusions.

I am not a fan of science fiction stories and I can count the number of SciFi stories I have read so far (The Time Machine, Contact and Brave New World). Unlike the other three, this book portrays a strong and dark world that could be waiting human civilization in the very near future. I am referring to the society, depicted in Neuromancer, which is surviving directly under multinational companies. Today, governments are powerful enough to control the companies (big or small) within their jurisdiction - but there is limited or no law to check a manufacturing company from researching, practicing and selling new technologies. In fact this very limitation of the law could be the hidden key to large companies, with resource and expertise, to grow their technological prowess in the market. So how long will it take before large corporations begin to own technologies that surpass any government power? As such, would a company still want to remain under a government or wouldn't it want to become the new government itself? Neuromancer, thus, has an extremely valid plot that is convincing to its readers from every angle - be it the description of the Matrix, the street-samurai, or Wintermute (an AI that rivals the humans who created it).

I wonder whether The Matrix has anything to do with Neuromancer, especially because of the strange resemblance of cyberspace in both of these works. Wachowski Brothers could indeed reply!

get ready for eggs

While trying to look up help with Clip In in Adobe Premire Pro, I encountered something interesting. Fire up Premiere Pro. When you click on Help>About menu, an image of a horse appears followed by credits. Now, while pressing Shift, click Help>About. Repeat using Alt, Ctrl, Ctrl+Alt and the combination of all three keys. Eight different images are displayed in total. That's one easter egg in Adobe Premiere.

For some really great eggs, visit EggHeaven or Eeggs. There has been a long tradition for Adobe to include Easter Eggs in Photoshop since Adobe Photoshop 5.5. Some inquisitive Freecell lovers can select game number -1 and game number -2 by pressing F3 on Freecell main window.