seen megapixel, try gigapixel

This page contains what I believe to be one of the highest resolution, most detailed stitched digital images ever created. It is the view from Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It consists of 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite. The final image is 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size, and contains about 1.09 billion pixels...a little more than one gigapixel. I have been unable to find any record of a higher resolution photographic (i.e. non-scientific) digital image that has been created without resizing a smaller, lower resolution image or using an interpolated image. via

I want some more.

rolling along asian rails

The Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) was initiated in the 1960s with the objective of providing a continuous 14,000-km rail link between Singapore and Istanbul (Turkey), with possible onward connections to Europe and Africa. The link offered the potential to greatly shorten the distances and reduce transit times between countries and regions, while being a catalyst for the notion of international transport as a tool for trade expansion, economic growth and cultural exchanges.

Meanwhile, this serves as a depot for sites providing information on passenger rail travel throughout Asia and Russia. The list ranges from Baku, Azerbaijan to Yokohama, Japan and all stops in between. Whether you want the timetable for the Taegu line in Korea or route maps for the Philippines, you’ll find it here. The site also includes links to the public transit systems in large Asian cities.

hd, beyond hd

The High Definition Television, HDTV, system was developed in the 1980s. It uses greater number of lines and wide-screen format, providing a significantly clearer picture than the traditional 525 and 625 line television screens. Each line in HDTV also contains more information than normal formats. HDTV is transmitted using digital technology. While we gush over the gorgeous resolution of 1920 x 1080 (1080p) that true HD offers, Japan’s NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) has been testing a new format called the Super Hi-vision, or Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV), which offers 16 times the pixel resolution – an eye-popping 7680 x 4320 (4320)!

Visually, there’s little here in the way of enhanced experiences, though – it’s effectively the same old HD, just really, really big. What does make a difference is the audio. Where we rejoice with 7.1 channels, viewers of UHD content will be treated to glorious 22.2-channel audio – 24 speakers, arranged in three layers: ten at ear level, nine above three below and two low frequency effects.

Even NHK admits that the technology is experimental and it’ll most likely be a decade, perhaps longer, before we see such resolutions in auditoriums, and much longer for living rooms. Firstly, because…well, think about it: at 2000p, movies are crisp and impeccable on large movie screens, and even that’s a novelty; it’ll be a long while before HD becomes “boring old standard definition”. Secondly there’s the matter of storage. Each minute of uncompressed UHD video takes up a 195 Gigabytes, so a two-hour movie will occupy a gargantuan 25 Terabytes! Even the best compression will result in a movie that’s a couple of terabytes in size.

Where are we going to put it all?

intelligent chatbots

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a dream for over half a century now. Researchers have been building robots and software to try and mimic the human brain for as long as they possibly could, and are nowhere near building a thinking application than they were when they started. A lot of people will disagree with that, of course, and we don’t mind. A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), can simulate intelligence to an untrained observer, but doesn’t understand the meaning of what’s being said.

Basically, everything to do with computers uses mathematics, and it’s near-impossible to make a computer understand characteristics of human speech or conversation such as wit and sarcasm. And if that’s hard, imagine how impossible it is for a computer to understand the difference between someone telling the truth and someone lying!

See for yourself – some eagerful talkative chatbots – that you might even want to have a chat with: Eliza, Jabberwacky, Ultra Hal Assistant, and Fred.

the most boring page on the internet

Some people are born boring; others like John Ingram, thrust boredom upon the rest of the world. And so as we tread upon the gargantuan bog called the Internet, we slip and wonder: why? Why did John Ingram create a site that has nothing but just 413 (exactly) words of text? Why did he create a site that has no meaning, no reason to exist, and no way to earn him even a cent, forget a fortune?

But it takes all kinds, and Ingram is one of those. He is rational in his thought, grammatically correct in his writing (although) for some reason he hates capital letters), and has enough reasons to keep the world’s most boring site alive at all times since its “founding” in 1996. Is that why his site has now been translated into 12 languages including Finnish, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and, hold your breath, ladies and gentleman, Pig Latin? World War II is obviously history since here we have a German as well as a Hebrew translation sitting right next to each other. The site, Ingram informs us, was created in DOS-edit (yes, you can do that!), and was meant to escape the humongous GIF-animated and Flash sites. This is where you come for a break after spending hours and hours visiting various sites. A sort of virgin beach in the Seychelles after visiting the crowds of New York, Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong!