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In the works

Time for some change. Here is the plan:

This week: Designing new blog/website.
This weekend: Changing everything over. Blog will be hosted on www.corpusvile.com instead of on WordPress.
February: Goal is to start posting a photo a day.

Stay tuned!

Getting under the animatronic skin

Take a look under the hood of some animatronic creations with robotics film-maker John Nolan. His gallery not only shows off some wild creations but also gives you a peak at what is under their skin. It’s funny how even the cutest creatures look like something out of a nightmare when their skin is removed the reveal a harsh metal skeleton and veins made of wires.

More info: link

Drake Equation explains lack of aliens and girlfriends..

The Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of highly evolved civilizations that might exist in our galaxy.  Warwick University’s Peter Backus applies the Drake equation to discover why, exactly, he can’t find a girlfriend. The results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.

“So,
 what
 this
 means
 is
 that
 there
 are
 10,510
 people
 in
 the
 UK
 that
 satisfy
 these
 most
 basic
 criteria
 for
 being
 my
 girlfriend.
 That
 is
 0.00017%
 of
 the
 UK
 and
 0.0014%
 of
 Londoners,
 which
 doesn’t
 seem
 so
 bad.
 On
 a
 given
 night
 in
 London,
 there
 is
 greater
 than
 a
 1
 in
 1000
 chance
 that
 I
 will
 meet
 an
 attractive
 woman
 between
 the
 ages
 of
 24
 and
 34
 with
 a
 university
 degree.
 Of
 course
 this
 does
 not
 take
 into
 account
 the
 fraction
 of
 these
 women
 that
 will
 find
 me
 attractive
 (depressingly
 low),
 the
 fraction
 of
 these
 women
 who
 will
 be
 single
 (falling
 with
 age)
 and,
 perhaps
 most
 importantly,
 the
 fraction
 of
 these
 women
 who
 I
 will
 get
 along
 with.
 Including
 such
 factors
 would
 greatly
 reduce
 the
 above
 figure
 of
 10,510.
 A
 rough
 estimate
 puts
 the
 number
 of
 potential
 girlfriends
 accounting
 for
 these
 three
 additional
 criteria
 (1
 in
 20
 of
 the
 women
 find
 me
 attractive,
 half
 are
 single
 and
 I
 get
 along
 with
 1
 in
 10)
 at

 26.

 That’s
 correct.
 There
 are
 26
 women
 in

 London
 with
 whom
 I
 might
 have
 a
 wonderful
 relationship.

 So,
 on
 a
 given
 night
 out
 in
 London
 there
 is
 a
 0.0000034%
 chance
 of
 meeting
 one
 of
 these
 special
 people,
 about
 100
 times
 better
 than
 finding
 an
 alien
 civilization
 we
 can
 communicate
 with.
 That’s
 a
 1
 in
 285,000
 chance.
 Not
 great.”

More info + all the math: link

Pixar Easter Eggs

Pixar Animation Studios is know by millions for their fun movies, lovable characters, and meaningful story lines. Behind it all is an intense team of writers, animators, programmers, etc all of whom just want to have some fun. As many times as you have watched Toy Story or Monsters Inc, I bet you missed the little things that were intentinally put there for fun. Did you know that WALL-E appeared in Ratatouille? Do you know how many movies the Pizza Planet truck actually appears in?

For those who have never heard of this before, an “easter egg” is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in a piece of media. The term was coined – according to Warren Robinett – by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game Adventure.

Check out this comprehensive list of Pixar easter eggs for all the answers: link

Homunculus

Homunculus, the first of an annual series of experimental films by a collaborative group called Hydra, pits little (mold?) men against each other.

“Homunculus is a dark and twisted fable of spontaneous generation and untrammeled id. Taking its title from the Latin word for “Little Human”, the piece is an associative mashup between the two concepts behind the word: The first being middle-age alchemical beliefs that “little men” could be spontaneous generated from dead or decaying matter. The second being Carl Jung’s usage as a personification of pure id. These ideas, combined with our love of Dutch still life’s “beautiful decay,” sowed the seeds for this unique little monster of a film.”

A very interesting little short, it reminds me of some kind of video game from hell. The characters and soundtrack are very impressive!

More info: link

Sociology in the age of the internet?

“This shows Google’s remarkable power as a source of data on a range of human behaviors, emotions, and opinions. It gives us insights into what people might care the most about concerning a given topic. When people search a particular political leader, what are their main concerns? What are people secretly guilty about? For better or for worse, Google’s obsession with collecting and refining data has given us a window into each other’s fascinating and telling curiosities.”

source: link

Life In Black And White

I guess things don’t seem so bad when you look at it this way.. oh, wait.

source: link

Google confirms 1 as the loneliest number

What was once assumed by many has now been confirmed by the great minds over at Google. The number 1 is, in fact, the loneliest number. .

Pi Calculated to a Record Number of 2.7 Trillion Digits

That’s 123 billion digits more than the previous number. Computer scientist Fabrice Bellard ran his calculations on a desktop computer, taking 131 days to run the program and then check the results:

“Previous records were established using supercomputers, but Mr Bellard claims his method is 20 times more efficient.

The prior record of about 2.6 trillion digits, set in August 2009 by Daisuke Takahashi at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, took just 29 hours.

However, that work employed a supercomputer 2,000 times faster and thousands of times more expensive than the desktop Mr Bellard employed.”

More info: link