r3dux.org » Literature

2D Or Not 2D

r3dux — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:01:44 +0000

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Ph.D Proposal Fail – Really a Win in Disguise!

r3dux — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:20:03 +0000

I’m applying to do a Ph.D through research at the moment, and for this you need to come up with a research proposal – that is, 250 words outlining the area of research you’re going to undertake, and it can be basically anything… So, I’m thinking and thinking – what can I research? What would be super awesome that I might be able to actually do if I worked really hard on it for a few years? And then I wrote this:

Title: The development and application of augmented reality overlays for route finding and navigation

Description: In our increasingly networked lives we have access to large libraries of geographical data and the ability to easily plan our journeys through the use of freely available electronic map services such as Google Maps, which can provide us with a list of directions or audio cues to aid our navigation from A to B.

The goal of this project is to undertake the research, development and creation of an automated navigation overlay software system that can be used in conjunction with modern smartphones that have the capacity to use an Internet connection together with GPS tracking, magnetic and accelerometer data and a camera, to provide real-time or near real-time visual aides in the form of augmented reality overlays to assist in personal or vehicular navigation.

By providing the facility to overlay translucent guide-lines along with any other pertinent information such as road names and distances, it is envisaged that this system will greatly assist in navigation to, from and within unfamiliar locations either on the smartphone display for pedestrian traffic, or with the potential for a windscreen projected display for vehicular traffic, similar to existing military and more recently commercial grade aircraft.

If you’ve ever been to a hospital and followed a coloured line to reach a location such as the X-Ray department – this is, in essence, what the system aims to provide; a coloured line that you can follow – to anywhere we have maps.

And then during my research found this video, released a mere -three days- previously:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hot-damn! It’s been done!

At first I was a bit miffed, because it’s something I thought I could really get my teeth into, but now I’m incredibly glad I found out about it when I did – can you imaging what would happen if you spent years working on something and then just before you finished someone else one-upped you by getting their system out first? You’d be spitting blood!

So anyway, I’ve gone back to the drawing board and came up with kinda synthesis on a virtual reality (not a big fan of that term, but there we go) based concept using modern day software and hardware – and it’s gonna be frack’n ace, assuming I get accepted into the program, and I can thrash out a finalised research proposal!

Apparently, the entire first year of a full-time, three year Ph.D is spent doing a literature review and planning how you’ll go about the research, though sager minds than mine advise that the literature review starts on Day 1, and doesn’t stop until final submission… and I can really see why, now.

Assuming I get an tentative green light to go ahead with the initial literature review, with the project I have in mind (which I’m going to keep under my hat for the time being), it could just be a case of finding a value-add to push my work out incrementally further than what has passed before, via the age-old adage of standing upon the shoulders of giants to get the work published and earn my stripes.

In all honesty, I’m both nervous and excited about the prospect of committing myself to a number of years of research and study, but if I’m really going to do this, and do it right – then it could be simply killer. As in in killer app.

To make with the Bard, I guess this is where I screw my courage to the sticking place… For he who dares do more is none =D

Collected Essays of Walter Murdoch – “On Dull People”

r3dux — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:12:39 +0000

I recently used this text in a class on creative and critical thinking, and found that I rather liked what Sir Murdoch had to say, and how he went about saying it, so thought I’d share…

Published by Angus & Robertson Limited, Sydney and London, 1938

Often, in the course of my regrettably miscellaneous reading, I become conscious of a mysterious force, a sinister influence, a hidden and hostile something, for which writers are always trying to find a name and never quite succeeding, and with which, whether they can name it or not, they are always in conflict. It is the enemy, not only of literature, but of all the other arts as well; it is, in fact, the enemy of civilisation. According to my reading of history, this something has worked so consistently against the healthy development of the race, has been so consistently a clog on all progress towards the bettering of the world, that I feel perfectly justified in calling it a disease. If the doctors fail to agree upon its name, its causes, its symptoms, and its treatment – well, it is not the only ailment of which that can be said. Let us, provisionally, call it respectability…

Respectability has many virtues, but they are the meaner virtues, the timid virtues, caution, prudence, docility, tameness, discretion. All the brave, adventurous virtues are regarded by this dingy goddess as silly or dangerous, or both. Proposals for reform are not blocked by the bad people, but by the dull. Those who think our present economic conditions unsatisfactory sometimes think they are opposed by a gang of scoundrels so depraved that they really wish to keep us all poor. There is no such gang. There are not enough scoundrels to go round; the vast majority of mankind are kindly and well meaning. The persons we have to face are the dull, the stodgy, the unimaginative, the ancestor-worshippers, too timid to think for themselves, the persons who look at any suggestion of change with the expression of cows looking at a passing train. My own hope is still in education, in spite of many disillusionments. My hope is that some day teachers will impress upon their pupils the solemn duty of not accepting ready-made the beliefs of others, of not swallowing them unquestioningly as a child might swallow a pill given it by its mother. One had to put one’s beliefs on a foundation of sincerity before they are worthy to be called beliefs at all; and my hope is that some day education will train children for the real duty of life, which is to think for oneself and to act for oneself, and not to be one of the lifeless automata which make up the serried ranks of respectability.

Well put, no? After reading this, the students were asked to put forward arguments either for or against the following statement:

Education helps individuals grow and has a civilising and humanising influence on society as a whole.

So, what do you think?

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r3dux redux’d

r3dux — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:01:56 +0000

It’s been so long since I looked at my old site, since I was my ~~old~~ young (better yet so much worse) self, that I’d almost forgotten that I used to write…

I really should get ’round to making a PDF of the old PHP-Nuke site… I’m sure it’s aged terribly, and probably isn’t relevant any more (How To: Fix Some Stupid Shit in Windows XP etc.) – but it’s part of my life, and I think it deserves the light of day, if not much else…

I’ll have to wait for my return to the UK to get a copy of the old database (September 2010 currently planned), but once I have it raw, I don’t think it would take more effort than it’s worth to sling the lot into some kind of compendium of misplaced youth…

Burn your bank statements, keep your love letters, eh?

r3dux.org is 1! Again!

They’re Made out of Meat

r3dux — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:01:48 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Based on the Nebula Award nominated short story They’re Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson.

I’m sure I’ve posted this before in a previous life, but I was thinking about it the other day and it made me smile so I thought why the devil not… (with my meat )

DJ Shadow – Walkie Talkie