The Sphere – assembly figured out!

After quite some trying to decide how to name, extrude and connect each ring segment of the Sphere I finally changed strategy to notched connections and came up with a naming convention to recognize each piece when they are laser cut.
The Maya MEL script I used for the initial setup lines can be found HERE and the “methodology” used HERE.
Now just have to figure out what are the tolerances on the laser cutter for 1/16″ plexy to finish the rings, export to Rhino then to Illustrator and finally to the Laser Printer itself.
Here are some pictures of today’s progress:

Google Analytics

I have recently included Google Analytics on my blog and now I am addicted to it… you can track where people are coming from to see your blog, how often they come back, what page they read and much more.
Maybe not such a novelty but I found it fascinating and very easy to implement… check it out HERE!
And it seems like the more I post, the most visitors I get – obvious? Sure… but fascinating to see how it spreads. At first it was only people in Brazil and here in NY… now somehow it is reaching as far out as Japan, Indonesia, India…
Yeah yeah… geeky… but very cool 🙂

My Google Maps

So Google has this new feature – My Maps – create your own map and post your points of interest… post geocoded photos… and even videos I’ve heard… Going to work on that to see how it plays out…
You can check it out

Extraordinary People – Daniel Tammet

Worth watching this entire video…

Doing math with shapes, effortlessly – could this be the future of computing? What if computers could “number crunch” looking at shapes instead of actual numbers? Could be a very interesting way of looking at complex problems dealing with turbulence and multiple variable systems such as weather forecasting.

Also, at the very end it has an image of Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum kinetic building actually moving!

Expanding Interactive Video Final

Going to continue with my Eye Tracking idea… here are some pictures of the device I have built…

Eye Tracking

Need to change/enhance the application:

  1. Improve eye tracking code
    1. Edge detection on pupil
    2. Calculate relative position of cornea reflection and pupil
    3. Calibration procedure
  2. Instead of pulling pictures from Flickr, use “local” pictures
    1. Select the pictures in a “meaningful” way – by color, theme or emotion?
  3. Show the “winner” after each slide
  4. Log what pictures are winners
  5. Create a web page with results

Still working on the “purpose” of this project other than the rating tool… want to try to draw some kind of conclusion from the “experiment”.

Some other ideas that are swirling in my head:

  1. Blur areas of picture/video eyes are not looking at
    1. User using the eye tracking device would see it all in focus
    2. “Audience” would see the in-focus and out of focus areas
  2. Present an out of focus video/picture. Wherever user looks at more, it start to come into focus

Ubiquitous Computing for Mobile Devices Final Project

After having two fellow ITPers come up to me asking me if I was a professor I started thinking about the first impressions we have of people and how we perceive ourselves in one way and other people see us in another way. Or sometimes you are simply not aware of the image you are presenting to the world.

It would be interesting to find out how other people see me… both people who know me/interact with me and people who just see me walking by.

Based on that I teamed up with Caleb and Joo-Youn to create a mobile app to explore this fact.

After some brainstorming, we came up with a game/social network/informative site. Here it how it might work:

  1. First we pre-populate the database with all of ITP student’s names and pictures
  2. We then send out a picture of someone to your phone
  3. You then have to find that person and take a picture with them
    1. You can “pass” that person by replying with the word “NEXT”
  4. Upload the picture to our system to get points
  5. Get extra points by tagging the person with a one word adjective
  6. Get the following picture
  7. The more points you have, the more often your picture will be sent
  8. On the web you will see the adjectives people have been described
  9. You can send us the phone number of a friend to invite them to the game
    1. They will receive a message asking for their name and picture
  10. You can see what people have said about you by sending the word “TAGS”
  11. If you tag someone with the same adjective they tagged you, you are a match and both get a message