Tuesday 29 March 2005

2005 Expo Aichi

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EXPO 2005 AICHI, JAPAN is a stunning showcase of future technology. The one that's grabbing all the headlines is the Futurecast system which puts your face onto specially made feature film characters.


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Internet Archive - Open Source Video

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Stunning site this. The Inter Library's Open Source Video Collection. Thousands of video clips stored by key word, and with frame grabs of the main images. Endless uses.


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Thursday 24 March 2005

MIT OpenMind Commonsense Project

The OpenMind Commonsenseproject is an MIT activity to collect common sense for use in AIs. Contributions so far look pretty random, but could be of use.


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WordNet

WordNet from Princeton University Cognitive Science Laboratory looks like it could be very useful. 150,000 words with all their synonyms and "type of" relationships. There's even a PERL module. Could be a great foundation for the ontology that Halo needs.


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Haptek People Putty

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Haptek make Poeple Putty, a nice avatar creation tool. You'll need their player to see them though.


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Wednesday 23 March 2005

Driving In My Car - Birmingham Post Column 050322

Several years ago the US introduced a vehicle system called STAR. Given the wide expanses of wilderness it could be hours after an accident before anybody drove past and called an ambulance. With STAR, whenever the air bags trigger STAR reads the location from the GPS system, and then uses the mobile telephone to call the control centre, reporting the vehicles location. The control centre then call backs to the car's driver, and if there's no answer they immediately call the emergency services and have them dispatched to the accident.


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Tuesday 22 March 2005

Cyc Top Level Ontology

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Looking around for a top level ontology to use with Halo I finally made my way to the Cyc site. I'd come across Cyc in XTM write-ups, and it looks like they are working on similar ideas (although with far more money I'm sure!) Anyway their interactive top level ontology is a great resource. It must be somthing like this that the 20 Question machine has - I must buy one to find out.


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Saturday 12 March 2005

Celebrity Cyborgs

Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Are you Worthy%u2122 | contest


OK there are some odd sites on the web. Watching GITS:SAC I googled Kusanagi and came across the Celebrity Cyborg site - photoshop jobs turning celebrity photos into Borg. Gabriel Byrne looks superb, as does Alyson Hannigan (aka Willow).


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Monday 7 March 2005

Miniatura

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My parents were up for the weekend running their stall at Miniatura - the big Dolls House fair at the NEC. Here's Ruth busy helping out behind the stall. This is obviously where my miniature craft genes come from.


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Saturday 5 March 2005

West Midlands Military Show

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Had a good time today at the West Midlands Military Show. My first time at a Wargames show for 25 years or so. Interesting to see where the hobby has moved on and where it hasn't. This 15mm game of the Battle of Leuthen 1757 looked superb. Bought the Generals De Brigade rules which I might move to from the good old Airfix Bruce Quarrie set.


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