Category Archives: Personal

SPiRT demo


Finally got a dowloadable version posted.

Right click on the link to download the file:

MAC
PC
UNIX

Sub-conscious Picture Rating Tool (SPiRT)
Your eye ball wanders around to places we are not always aware of. Could the eye ball involuntary movement show something about our subconscious/preferences/interests?

Some pictures of the device:

Eye Tracking

Tribeca Film Festival

Last week, by the indication of Charly Braun, I went to see “Santiago” – a documentary by Joao Moreira Salles about his buttler.
Fantastic story and character. We were honored by Joao’s presence at the screening for the Q&A session. Delicate, centered, and soft spoken…

Also saw Charly’s short film the same day “You Can’t Take It With You” – a story of a boy who finds out that the world is going to end from a VCR that sees into the future. Entertaining and cute film – well executed and with great actors… congratulations Charly!!

First Pictures with Nokia D80

Splurged today and bought myself a Nokia D80 with a Tamron 18-250mm lens.
Amazing camera – fast and all the options you want, and some that you will never use 🙂

The lens is not the clearest one in the market but it is truly a all-in-one… wide angle to zoom… covering all of your basic needs.

5 Borough Bike Ride

Today 40 thousand bikers hit the streets of NY and biked for 40 miles across NYC’s 5 boroughs – Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.

Met up with Roy, Jeremy, and Andy at his place at 6:30 am. We then met up with Felipe and Ben.

After freezing at the start line, we were let go… great ride!

Check out some pictures:

5 Borough Bike Ride

The Sphere – assembly time

The trek continues…

After hours of preparing the files in Maya, exporting them to Rhino, then arranging them in Illustrator, I got what I needed to send them to the laser printer.


Went down to
Canal Plastics and bought the material (1.5mm thick clear plastic)
Submitted the files to
AMS (Advanced Media Services from NYU).
BUT – the job was too big… It would take 12 hours to cut the entire sphere. So I had to simplify the project and submitted only 1/8th of the sphere…
Figured out that joining pieces together in the real world is a lot harder than it seems… software is sooooo much easier… heheehh…
In any case – happy that what was supposed to match up did and looks all right despite the unjoined rings in the center.

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