Um, Hey

What's with the massive lack of comments? Are not LED throwies worth talking about???

Sheesh. You people are hard to please.

LED Throwies

They live for over a month. And you can make your own.

http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/

Valentine's Day

Wasn't that fun?

Strike

So this has been a really, really busy busy week. Which is why I haven't posted anything new in awhile.

Oh wait.

This IS a new post.

Scratch that. The part about not posting. Strike it from the record, please.

Oops!

My profuse apologies, but apparently there is actually no solution for the visual riddle below. It was told to me in such a way that there was a solution, but I guess the actual riddle is to prove mathematically that there is NOT a solution to this riddle.

So. Can you prove it? :)

Visual Riddle

Two islands in a river. Can you take a path that will cross every bridge once, and only once?

Cambridge, England - Part II

After your hike up the tower, the sun comes out, and Lucie has the wonderful idea to go punting. This is a favorite Cambridge pasttime, I'm sure they've done it for some few hundred years. Basically, punting involves getting into a flat-bottomed boat and navigating the River Cam using a long pole to push off the bottom, which also acts as a rudder to direct the boat. Lucie shows you how, then you catch on and away you go! You discuss the concept of total freedom from sin, the decision to laugh more often, and the Bridge of Sighs, as you float lazily along the river.

After punting, Lucie has a meeting with her Ph.D. advisor and so you walk around for a bit and visit this cute little circle church which is really old. It's quite nice inside, and in a corner they have set up a video which loops a presentation that talks about the Christian heritage of Cambridge. Apparently a lot of the grounds where the colleges are now was once owned by monasteries, and many colleges themselves were started to train clergymen. The ancient path...

Lucie is done with her meeting, and you spend some time chatting in the house over some tea. People continually come in and out from the church office next door to make some tea, so you meet a few folks. The sun has set, and it's time to wander more.

From here on to Pickerings (I think that was the name) where you enjoy a nice chat over a pint. This is the very pub where C.S. Lewis used to hang with his cronies back when he was tenured at Cambridge. Then on to curry, where you get to meet Gavin, who is currently pursuing Lucie for marriage, and some of their mutual friends.

But this is where you and I part ways. You, I am quite sure, will take some photos of Pickerings, take some photos of the nice restaurant where you ate curry, maybe a few unique artistic shots of the table, and definitely a shot of Gavin and Lucie together, arm in arm. I, on the other, do not do this. I forget all about my digital camera in my pocket and simply eat and drink.

Early, early the next morning you board a train to London, to Gatwick airport, where you fly back home, full of little sleep-bugs and warm, happy feelings from your day in Cambridge.

Strange Optical Illusion

On a close-up view, you can see on the left face, an angry man and on the right face, a woman with a neutral facial emotion. But further back, the faces change expression and even genders! if you squint, blink, or defocus, an angry man should substitute for the face of the woman and the left angry face should not be angry anymore. [Squinting hard worked best for me.]

This impressive illusion created by Dr. Aude Oliva and Dr. Philippe G. Schyns, illustrates the ability of the visual system to separate information coming from different spatial frequency channels. In the right image, high Spatial Frequencies (HSF) represent a woman with a neutral facial expression, mixed with the low spatial frequency (LSF) information from the face of an angry man. On the left, the face of the angry man is represented in fine details whereas the underlying female face is made of blur only ("blobs").

Be sure to read the research article [pdf], and there are more examples of hybrid faces in this pdf file and at the MIT Computational Visual Cognition Lab.

[Special thanks to my brother, from whose blog I copied this entire post.]