Artema’s Universe

Biological neural processors

Researchers Steven Potter (Georgia Tech) and Guy Ben-Ary (University of Western Australia, Perth) have created a robotic “arm” that makes a painter’s rudimentary brush strokes at Ben-Ary’s lab, directed over the Internet by its “brain” (composed of 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish) in Potter’s lab, according to a July report from BBC News. According to Potter, the brain is not yet classically “intelligent” but does “adapt” (i.e., experience less chaos) and thus strokes more smoothly over time. [BBC News, 7- 28-03]

I find this unreal. The robotic arm controlled over the internet is nothing new. The fact that it is being controlled by a Petri dish with a lump of rat brain parts in lieu of a microprocessor is amazing.

Audiopad ~ electromagnetic musical magic

There are some creations that if properly marketed could change the face of its genre. Those same things could fade into obscurity if not fully developed. Though not yet available, you can see one such musical technology here. The Audiopad is a program written for Linux which is comprised of an enormous selection of audio samples. The music is controlled by electromagnetically tracked objects on a flat surface. These plastic objects have a coil of wire and a capacitor which are tracked by the sensing surface’s antennae matrix. Above this is a projector which shines the computer’s visual interpretations below onto said objects. The data is fed into simple midi interface. Individual artists can add their own tracks. The results are an interactive and easily manipulated board of virtually unlimited musical variance.

The physical objects on the Audiopad table are representative of microphones, audio tracks, and actions. Each audio track on the table has several samples. Selection of each track is done very simply through the placement of a translucent selector which lets you go through an ingenious tree structured menu system. Switching to related tracks, such as verse, chorus, etcetera is made simple and can be done very quickly. Volume control is made ridiculously easy by simply moving the physical objects closer to the “microphone”. The mic is made blue by the projector, and sliding the audio tracks closer increases volume, and moving them farther apart decreases the volume. Adjusting the pitch and frequency of each audio sample is easy as moving a piece of plastic on the table. Tempo is set by tracking the speed at which you revolve the object around the microphone.

Please view the Audiopad’s website here. The videos show off this technology wonderfully, and I insist you watch them. You can see the Audiopad Frequently Asked Questions here.

It’s a girl! Meet Meagan Elizabeth

Sarah, our neice Heather, and I just returned from another ultrasound. This one was special as she is 19 weeks, and we could clearly see that there is no penis.

So we’re having a girl. Her (current) name is Meagan Elizabeth Garza. We previously had decided on Amber Laurel, but Sarah began to literally cry about it despite my insistence that we had decided on a name. We both like the name, so until the next time our upcoming baby girl is Meagan Elizabeth. We’re all happy about this news.

Continue reading It’s a girl! Meet Meagan Elizabeth…

The weblogging experience

NYTimes has posted a thought provoking article on the weblog experience known as blogging. The author touches on the phenomenon of ordinary people turning into reporters, reporting on the details of their own lives, and how it affects their friends, family, and job. I personally have already run into trouble commenting with sarcasm on a friend’s weblog. I honestly don’t think badly about the corporation for which I work, so I’m not worried about commenting on them. My wife even mentioned once that when she read the post the day before we were married it made her cry (in a good way). This article covers some much more unfortunate stories.

“While personal blogs have been around for years, their proliferation has caused a wrinkle in the social fabric among people in their teens, 20’s and early 30’s. Inundated with bloggers, they are finding that every clique now has its own Matt Drudge, someone capable of instantly turning details of their lives into saucy Internet fare.”

“”It’s like all your friends are reporters now,” said Douglas Rushkoff, a blogger and author of “Media Virus” and other books about the impact of technology on society.”

One woman even lost her job as a result of her exaggerated entries relating to her job and coworkers.

“When her bosses were alerted that Ms. Armstrong was writing about her office life, they fired her, she said. She is now much more careful about what she publishes in her blog, and she had a word of caution for bloggers who write furtively about others. “If you’re publishing under your own name, they’ll find out,” she said. “I was extremely na