For now we see through a glass, darkly (Part I)

writings,

Back in the halcyon days of yore of my misspent youth when life was simple (see IRON CURTAIN), one of the few haunts where I sought solace from the dreaded linked list, relational database, homogeneous diff-e-Qs (as opposed to heterogeneous diff-e-Qs which are currently lobbying for heterogeneous diff-e-Q marriage) was The Closet of Comics. I also was known to frequent licensed shebeens but that’s another story for another time.

The Closet of Comics was a nondescript little store located in the basement of a building next to a major shebeen on Route 1. Which is probably how I discovered it. I had been out of the comic-reading business since roughly the age of fourteen. By then the callipygian assets of Linda Guadanole had captured my imagination. Anyway in I walked and I was greeted by the proprietor and his large black Lab-mix dog Rhoda. I took a look around and my eyes fell upon the cover of a comic that brought it all back. The Life of Captain Marvel. I mean that’s it. Right there. All in one little package. All the wonder, excitement, and joy of comics came rushing back in an instant.

Captain Marvel

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Thanksgiving 2008 photos

the mindlab,

I don’t think I ever posted photos from last Thanksgiving. I don’t upload all my photos at once usually, so it can be a couple months before they are all uploaded. They’ve been up for the most part for awhile now, but I forgot to post the link here. Click on the photo below to see them.

brian

Call for Blimp Designs

the mindlab

Tim has recently agreed to be in a film where he pilots a blimp. Resultantly, I’m looking for some miniature blimp designs. I’ll probably green screen the blimp, so it would be good if there was a way it could be suspended in front of the green screen. If anyone has any good designs, please post them below or email them to me.

Tim's Blimp

Magic Eye Films

Dragon's Den, the mindlab

Just a random idea I had at some point. Don’t know enough about the technology to know how one would go about it, but . . .

So “Magic Eye” pictures (a.k.a. autostereograms) are those 3D images that you have to stare at a book to get. A few folks can see the images really quickly, some can only see them after staring awhile, and apparently there are quite a few who are never able to see the things.

It’s kind of an interesting effect though if you can get it to work: Hiding information in the background noise in such a way that when you are able to interpret it you can trick each eye into interpreting it differently.

I think one of the things that makes it tough to pick out the 3D image is that there are no obvious visual cues. It seems to me that in a lot of cases with normal vision the human brain is picking out the edges of things, or contrasts and gradations of solid colors that define shape. But those things are absent in autostereograms, so it’s tougher to pick them out.

It occurred to me though that what would happen if you ran together a string of similar autosterograms to produce an animation? The consistency of the 3D image against a changing background might make it easier to spot the image than with a non-animated version.

Voila! I’ve just invented 3D animation without special glasses!

Well, not quite. Apparently someone else already thought of it.

I don’t know if the image portrayed on wikipedia is exactly the best example though. ‘Twer it me, I probably would’ve made the background as a more randomized image (like basic static), rather than a sweeping colored pattern which seems to distract from the 3D image.

Aside from the wikipedia article though I’m having trouble tracking down other good examples of animated autostereograms. Seems to me there should be some small creative sector devoted to them though: Cartoons maybe. Or segments of horror film where a random background (foliage or TV static for instance), kind of becomes 3D and leaps out at the viewer. Or possibly some sort of video game.

I also wonder if there might be ways to color the 3D objects, or have the background pattern be somehow meaningful in the context of the 3D scene it’s self, rather than just the standard splatter painting effect.

Tim & Coffee

the mindlab

Back in 1994, energy drinks, like Red Bull or Monster-blue-windshield-wiper-fluid-whatever, did not exist. Really, the only things that did, were vile vials of 50% ginseng root/50% dirt water and the occasional energy elixir shot, like Bacchus D, that could be purchased in China Town. As a result, my group of friends and I would frequently take it upon ourselves to concoct our own energy drinks, like quadruple-brewed coffee, boiled sassafras root, clove water — basically anything in the herb cabinet. According to Tim, during one of these evenings, he had too much coffee and vowed to never drink coffee again. I always thought Tim was making his bad coffee-trip up just to be different. Recently however, I found evidence that proves my me wrong. These are pictures from one such evening and feature my friend Lee, myself, and finally Tim, in a heated moment of drinking something, perhaps even coffee, on his mythologized run-in with it.

Drink 1

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