Archive for March, 2005

Gadget - Greentea design

Even if their furnitures remind me the one imported from asia by “cheap” exotic shops at Montreal (In fact, in every large city I’ve lived), many look beautifull. Look at this elm burl step chest or this coffee table. The finish is a bit to much clean and polished, but at least, that seem to be professional work. Well, unfortunately Ikea is still an option actually, and that’s not cheap either. ;)

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Music - "Believe", Chemical brothers music video


Watch this delightfull video. Well, delightfull isn’t the word. I’ll give you a hint : that’s full of robots. This is the kind of video what you can film with a mini-DV and a handfull of 3D, Tracking and Compositing softwares (Forgot to mention talent, oops). Believe video
Nothing much to say. If you,re into 3D, electro or whatever, you’re already watching the video anyway. ;)

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Web - Making profit with your Blog, muwhaha


Typing short entries, gathering the work of somebody else, pointing an interesting web site, are the most common activities on blogs like mine. I have not much authority to open my mouth about many subjects nor have time or patience to argue over the internet with total strangers. In fact, I’m just considering my blog as a very humble tribune I’m using mostly as a reminder to point people I’m talking with to web sites I’ve found interesting (You’ll quickly find a pattern under the sites I paste here, for sure). My blog has also a professional aim, but that’s on side. As a CG artist, I’ve got some material to show and that’s often how I find interesting jobs.
By considering the traffic it generated, I wanted to know if people, acting in a different way than me, were usually clicking on ads and buying stuff online. Basically, I used Google’s Adsense program, Amazon’s and Share-A-Sale’s rewarding system. When Goggle offers to pay for each 100$ you earn (Both for clicking on ads or using their search app, the last two will reward more often depending on the system you registered to, because each sell is rewarded (5$, 5-10% of the sell, generally).

At the end, I’ve earned more negative feedback from visitors about the bad design of my site (I know) mixed with the fact there were ads on it, than money from Google or Amazon. In fact, my total earning from Google is less then 5$ and there’s still nothing coming from Amazon or Share-A-sale. People used Amazon and Share-A-Sale too, clicking on their links, but not to buy stuff directly, rewarding me for the enormous effort of linking them there. So, use your calc : earnings=0. Waste of time, waste of my public space, waste of your brain and eyes. Even if my girlfriend was totally against the principle of putting ads on my pages, I’d give up and put them all to the bin. The overall results shows that less than 0.2% of the visitors clicked on an ad here. This isn’t demonstrating that 99.8% people were frustrated, bored or annoyed by these same ads, but that’s enough for me to apologize. :)

You may find these sites interesting, Bear left - No logo, and by the way, “No Logo” is also a book (Naomi Klein) dedicated to branding and how it’s spoiling our lifes and harming working conditions over the world. Here’s another good pick, if you wish to go further “Supersize me” : “Fast food nation”, also in French : Les empereurs du Fast food by Eric Schlosser.

Ha, by the way. Some recent articles about the blogging explosion over the internet pretend that this will arm the press, radio and most of the news groups. When I read some free newspaper, I’m not crying about that. Copy-pasting Reuters isn’t acting like a journalist anyway. The same with music radios, they can die (Silently please).
I feel more concerned about radios and newspaper which are doing a real research job and spend time to create quality content. Listening to intelligent people on air is becoming more and more uncommon.

Making profit with your Blog, muwhaha, what a joke. Happy Easter to everybody. I’ve spent it half naked, changing pots and moving plants all over the house, with soil under my nails. THAT’S worth doing it. :)

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Techno - The bike tree / Communauto / Sharing transportation


I’d love to see this at Montreal. Instead of using cryptonite and heavy locks and chains, just hang your bike to the tree. What a beautifull idea and urban design. I doubt this system will last long in Paris though, but Canada would be a good pick. By the way, we’re using the “Communauto” car sharing system (Montreal) and we are very enthusiastic with it. :) It’s very easy to book and grab a car (the neighborhood is crowded with Communauto’s park places, litteraly. We are living in a trendy area anyway), and very convenient to use. Then park and forget, passing the car to somebody else (That’s specially convenient during the winter when it gets snowy or very cold. The car is often warm and ready to ride. No need to shovel).
These are the practical reasons, with the cost of course. But you cannot miss the ethics and pride of using a car for a short moment then sharing it with somebody else.
Here the bike tree site, BtW.

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Techno - PlusTek timberjack walking machine


Have a look at these videos. Their system is functionnal and reminds many walking SciFi robots you’ve seen for the last decades. Well, that’s dedicated to the lumber industry. Renewable forests I hope ?
Walking machine videos

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Game - Mindrover (CogniToy)


By typing stuff about Uplink, it just reminded me another game I used to play 3 years ago. Mindrover!
I’ve played the demo many times and it never failed to entertain me. I lacked time to play the real version though. But if you’re into robots and love to wire AI into machinery, that’s your game for sure!
Cogny toy - Mindrover

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Game - Darwinia (Uplink - introversion)


Yeah baby !!! I’m just downloading the demo. If you’ve already played Uplink, loved it, failed to sleep because of it, these are the same guys!
The introversion team call themselves the last of the bedroom programmers, but they may be the first of a new religion of game production…
Darwinia
Introversion software

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Techno - Nomad, a robot on ice from CMU


Nomad, one of the Carnegie Mellon University’s most advanced robotic rover, was already deployed in Chile and Antartica (1997 & 2000).

Nomad, which has been upgraded with sensors and computing to increase its ability to act independently, first gained notoriety in 1997 when it traveled through the Atacama and again in 2000 when it autonomously discovered meteorites in Antarctica and became the first robot to perform science on its own.
In the past, Nomad has largely been teleoperated, but for the LORAX expedition, it was given the “brains” of another robot called ZoĆ© that has been surveying microscopic life in the Atacama Desert.
“The goal of this field experiment was to establish that Nomad’s mobility on snow and ice and our technology for autonomous navigation meet the requirements for survey traverse in the Antarctic,” said Robotics Institute Associate Research Professor David Wettergreen.

Carnegie Mellon news

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WWW - CocktailDB - The internet cocktail database


I’ve spent the last 20 minutes on it, trying different configurations including Gin, Vodka, Triple sec, lime, tonic, cointreau, cranberry juice, fresh raspberries, and so on. You can browse directly the database, or search what cocktail you can do with the ingredients you’ve got. Of course, if you’ve just got beer in your fridge, there will be some shopping to do, but you may be quite close to a “Dark & Stormy“.
There’s even a “mixilator” to generate the perfect random cocktail to suit the mood and circumstance. A must have in my bookmark.

Here we go : CocktailDB
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WWW - GMail Drive shell extension

That’s as easy as it sounds. Use your Gmail account as an internet drive worth of 1Gb. You’ll have to use XP, and avoid files bigger than 10Mb (Well, zip or rar are usefull apps anyway) because gmail can’t handle them by limitation. Afterwards, it’s all yours. You inherit a new drive online. There are no garantee that Gmail won,t stop supporting that feature, or even cancel your account. For my own, I won,t abuse, but certainly use it from time to time because it is very convenient.

[…Read more in extended…]
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