I’ve begun learning how to do machine learning. It is extremely complicated, but I feel after just a few days of trying I understand it much better. This python wrapper for tensorlm has made generating results much easier for me. I’ve got my little machine trained on the full NES US release list, and it’s giving me back things like this…
TapMeasure is a whole new way to build a 3D model of any room in a few seconds. It works with Apple’s new ARKit framework, and adds Occipital’s special sauce to provide artwork alignment, quick measurements, and the aforementioned generation of (SketchUp-compatible) CAD files. It’s free, and will ship as soon as iOS 11 drops later today.
For my part, I got to push some iOS code to this one! As well as helping out with some of the graphic design and UX, I was also able to design and edit the tutorial videos and the launch trailer embedded above. We have the luxury of one of the most seasoned computer vision teams in the world here, and I think it shows.
Just pushed a new release of my free retro pro wrestling RPG, Rassler. This one contains some small updates and an interesting, complicated, unintended consequence:
The last bullet point, explaining the changes to the activity system, is essentially a naive implementation of drug dependency. The player needs their health to be above 0 in order to work or go out. If the player has $40 they can buy some pain killers to get them through the next match, but pain killers only provide a +6 to short-term health (and a -6 to max health, affecting their future prospects and longevity) so it is not a sustainable solution. Either the player gets lucky, and their next several matches are relatively easy and they aren’t further injured, or something bad happens and they’re rendered immobile and bankrupt in the end.
The image above is from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon title sequence. Pretty iconic, right? It is the result of a new video technique I came up with. For more examples and a thorough explanation, read on:
I was taken by a Strange Mood and created a small combination of shell and python scripts that:
1) Creates a still image from every frame of a given input video, then
2) Compares each of these images against each other, round-robin style, in order to
3) Find the two images (and therefore, the two “shots”) which are the LEAST like each other in the source video.
Essentially it take a video input, and finds the two frames that are least like each other. My theory is that all of this will Tell Us Something. I don’t really know what. This is something like digital mysticism, trying to find the soul of a string of bits and surface it.
The current method is sub-optimal in several ways, for one it takes a long time to run on a laptop. Remember: We’re comparing every second of video to every other second of video, and that adds up. Running the script against a full 22-minute episode of a TV should would require 970921 comparisons, so I’ll set that up to run tonight and maybe it’ll be done by morning? This sounds like a job for EC2.
This weekend I started building a media center with the CHIP and an old external hard drive which formerly functioned as my Time Machine backup (here’s the new Time Machine drive). In the process, I needed to delete the old Time Machine backup but NOT format the drive. This proved to be harder than you’d think.
Long story short, the tool you’re looking for is tmutil. It exists solely to modify and delete Time Machine backups. Use it like this: sudo tmutil delete /Volumes/YourDisk/Backups.backupdb
Instead of just asking for money for my prototype game, Badlands, I’ve created the Scroll of Naming. Visit the Badlands homepage and you can pay $1.50 to add any 3 names to the random name generator in the game. Your submissions will be added to the core game code and distributed with the game to everyone.
Don’t be a jerk. I can / will reject names due to bigotry or other jackassery.
A sort of single screen microgod game that is roughly 10% complete but functional. Free download for macOS. Windows build coming soon. More on the itch.io page.
We started working on Bridge, in secret, pretty soon after Structure Sensor launched. It’s so cool to be able to talk about this in public. I got to get my hands dirty with a lot of Bridge, including the Bridge Engine that powers the software. The press has done a better job than I could in describing the device, so I’ll leave it to them for now:
From Last Exit to Springfield. Imagine the writer’s room discussion over the best wording for the “Robot Workers, 100% Loyal” sign. I bet it raged on for hours.
I’m happy to present to you the newest entry in the long-lost 6 hour projects (this one took more like 2) section here at Extra Future: blubox.
blubox is a script and page that takes the most recently posted videos on Metafilter.com and puts them into a YouTube playlist. The source code is available on Github.
Last week Occipital announced the VR Dev Kit, and a public preview of our kickass positional tracking inside of Bridge Engine. As part of the launch, I did a lot of stuff! Here’s the video that I wrote, shot, edited, and narrated:
I also designed the system with our in-house 3D team, prototyped it all on our 3D printer (an Ultimaker 2), and am currently helping to kit and ship the orders with Lauren. Being this close to every part of a product is really exciting and scary, but so worth it when it works.
Get yours for a limited time only (the next 20 days!) for the low-low price of $16.00. Use code FREESHIP to get free shipping. Shirt disappears forever on April 3rd, 2016.
In a damning new report by the Smoking Gun, a crucial witness in the grand jury deciding whether to indict former Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson is revealed as having fabricated her eyewitness account of the altercation between Wilson and unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9. “Witness 40,” identified as 45-year-old Sandra McElroy, has a documented history of racist remarks, criminal behavior, and mental illness.
I wish this case was some kind of bizarre anomaly in how these things are handled, but it seems to be pretty “normal.”
I’m turning off my stylesheets for the rest of 2014. And probably some of 2015. It’s an experiment. Plus it will force me to do a full redesign when the time comes.
We used to do this kind of stuff all the time before the internet got all serious and everyone started pretending to know what they were doing.
Phil Nelson 
