Swedish Graphics

Most of the images in the Ikea catalog are Computer Generated, including this one.  They didn't sack all their photographers; they just re-trained them.  Now they don't have to ship a load of furniture from all over the world for a photo-shoot, mistakes found later are easy to fix and the prototype furniture doesn't need to physically exist before they start designing the room view.   So smart!

More Asteroids

My favourite non-Boosh Zooniverse has relaunched: Asteroid Zoo - helping astronomers spot and catalogue new orbiting rocks.  The pics are bigger, the interface is slicker, but the best thing is the new colour-rotation mode; it highlights differences in the four image sequence, so a moving object shows as a line of flashing dots against the solid white star field.  It also coincidentally creates the effect of watching a short silent movie of the sky, complete with occasional blips, scratches and frame wandering. Another side-effect shows when a bright star causes a kind of lens-flare - the overloaded pixels around the edge gain a pleasing early-arcade-game rainbow colour cycle.

Virtually Real

The brains behind the greatest 3D games of all time have been assembled.  The nebulous research phase has moved on to concrete engineering.  The funding is backed by the richest of website companies.  Finally, a mass-produced device for total immersion is in sight.  Don't worry Mr Gibson, it will be alright this time.

Other ideas

As people are finally taking Space Elevators seriously, it looks like this company specializes in researching other crazy-until-we-build-them ideas.  Highlights include: a 2001-alike space hotel, transparent pyramidal pod cities, a hexagonal robot-built moon base, 30km diameter artificial oases, and, most crazy of all, a ring of solar cells around the moon that transmit power to the Earth.

Forecast

"...six more weeks of winter it shall be."

- Punxsutawney Phil, occasional meteorologist

Space Elevator Update

Recently I found a nice round-up of the state of building a tower into orbit, the only sane way to get stuff up there. Here are a few highlights:

• a space elevator could be built on the Moon using existing materials
• LiftPort has been resurrected and is working on this right now
• carbon nanotubes could be the "diamond thread" that A C Clarke described in his novels
• International Academy of Astronautics says that a space elevator "seems feasible"