Funny Spider Movie

Effects Of Drugs And Alcohol On Spider Webs

IEEE VR - 2

I forgot: yesterday, I was introduced to Fred Brooks .

Computer Science Rap

Check out this song: here .

To understand it, you probably need a PhD in computer science (alternatively you can look up the keywords at wikipedia...). My favourite lines: "Your mom circulates like a public key, Servicing more requests than HTTP；She keeps all her ports open like Windows ME" :-)

Photos from IEEE VR

I have visited an NBA game with a big group of Japanese conference attendants (I already look like a Japanese tourist, haha)


At the conference, I have tried this demo:

Tactile Feedback at the Finger Tips for Improved Direct Interaction in Immersive Environments
- Volkswagen AG, Group Research, Bauhaus-University Weimar

We present a new tactile feedback system for finger-based interactions in immersive virtual reality applications that consists of shape memory alloy wires wrapped around tracked finger thimbles. The wires touch the inside of the fingertips and provide an impression when they are shortened. We use this system to communicate finger contacts with virtual objects in a demonstration application.

The feeling of the contraction of the shape memory alloy wires on my fingers was quite interesting. See the picture below - I look like thinking very deeply about it :-)

IEEE VR

I am currently at IEEE VR. Yesterday, I had tried the Sensics head-mounted display. I have worn that head-mounted display for about 3 minutes - playing some game similar to Quake. After that, something very strange happened: I was motion-sick for about 20 minutes! It was a very strange feeling. My sense of balance did not work correctly anymore and I felt like throwing up. I have worn a lot of head-mounted displays in my life. But with this one, there is definitely some fundamental problem. Several other researchers had similar experiences to me....

A few presentations at this conference have been really good! But, some have also been Cargo Cult Science... (a term coined in this article by Richard Feynman).

NWA

Back in the days, I was a huge fan of NWA. Especially their song F*** the Police had made a deep impression on me (it was the first music video that MTV refused to play!).

Today, I have found this gem of comedy: Help the Police!.

Traveling soon!

Not much special these days...
Having lots of fun on the weekends and working hard during the week.

On Saturday, I experienced (once again) something really surreal: a traditional japanese bar that was playing extremely modern music. On Sunday afternoon, the weather was fantastic! I was in Yoyogi park - wearing only a Tshirt :-) (of course I was also wearing pants). I bumped into a huge techno party outdoors. Tokyo is really one of a kind!

Recently, my god-like co-worker (Uchiyama-san) has surprised me once again. I was trying to implement a simple ray casting Algorithm. Essentially, what I wanted to do was to create a function Vector3float shoot_ray (int x, int y) that would give me 3d coordinates for an object that lies under the window coordinates (x,y). Having a cigarette in the smoking area (enjoying the beautiful view of Mt. Fuji), I wondered about the most elegant way to do it. Then, Uchiyama-san appeared.
Chris: "how can i get the 3d coordinates of an object from pixel coordinates?"
Uchiyama-san: "very easy - just read from the depth-buffer, multiply with the inverse projection matrix, and multiply with the inverse camera's pose matrix".
Chris (being astonished for a moment): "suge!"

Explanation of suge (taken from here):
Amazing, wonderful, great, awful, dreadful. Expresses amazement about someone's accomplishment or talent.

Next Friday, I will go for a business trip to a research conference in the US. I am already scared of the horrible American food... On the other hand, I always wanted to hear about things like "Rapid Animation of Laser-scanned Humans" :-)