The Human Edge
When Fight School was still airing last week, there's this show on National Geographic I wanted to watch but was in conflict with the schedule. Now that Fight School's over, I totally forgot about it and luckily stumbled onto it awhile ago.
Light
A few years ago, when Joseph Estrada wasn't elected as president yet, Raul Roco dropped by our school to give a speech about journalism. The participants were mostly grade school students and staff but being news editor has its privileges (one being that I get excused for class to attend the talk).
Mr. Roco began the talk by giving a puzzle. He asked what one thing could change the face of the entire room. And to encourage people to participate, he offered P500 as a prize (yes, Xaverians are easily bribed). I told Filbert, managing editor at the time, that the answer was light. He told me to raise my hand say the answer but I didn't. For one thing, I wanted to give the grade school students a chance. For another, if I was wrong, well, it's quite embarassing to be one of the few high school students in the room and make a mistake. Apparently, my answer was correct.
So what does light have to do? Well, one theory proposed in The Human Edge is that the factor that determines whether we can distinguish whether an object is real or not (such as a computer-generated image) is due to light. There are times when we can something is real or not, even if we can't pinpoint exactly why we come to that conclusion. Well, apparently, that thing we can't pinpoint is actually light.
This guy developed software just to accomplish that. For objects, he had a device that captured light from all the angles hitting the object. For human beings, it's actually more complicated but works on the same principle.
An application of this is when he took the light of an area (a catherdral) and a person. The person's image was then placed into the cathedral so that she actually "fitted" there.
Think of it as an improved blue/green screen. With such techniques, we usually know that there's a blue screen behind the person, mainly because the light hitting the people isn't right (the light we see hitting them is from the studio rather than the location depicted by the blue screen). In this case, however, the location's lighting fits the person's. If I were to be placed in a forest setting, for example, you'd see shades of green and yellow on different parts of my body to mimic me actually being present there.
Of course so far, this application is only for stationary objects/people. The guy is currently working on one for film.
Mechanical Surgery
There was this other feature on cyborg apparel (well, I'm sure Sacha would appreciate this) and clothing (keyboards on cloth!), but I've heard about it several months ago. The one that really caught my attention was the surgery being made via computer.
While surgery attempts to heal the person, it usually comes at the cost of injuring the person (making incisions, having the wounds heal, stopping the heart, etc.). Robotic surgery minimizes that. In the case of heart surgery (yes, I am thrilled at this since I'm one of those people who have respiratory diseases), the doctor doesn't need to cut open your chest to perform on your heart. They just make three holes (the size of a pencil they say), one for the camera and two for the mechanical arms.
The camera magnifies the picture a hundred times so that the doctor can see it better. And with a joystick, he can operate with the mechanical arms. And since it's a joystick, there's much more precision as a result. No more jittery hands causing mistakes (or leaving a watch inside the person).
And the other practical application of this is that it can be done far away. Your doctor might be in another continent but still able to perform the procedure.
Itching to Game
Now that my RPG gaming group has been scattered around the world (Franco and Jobert are in the US, for example), I have no outlet for games I want to play. But oh well, I guess I'll start making the D&D campaign so that when Jobert arrives here by June, the game will be ready with minimum preparation.
When Fight School was still airing last week, there's this show on National Geographic I wanted to watch but was in conflict with the schedule. Now that Fight School's over, I totally forgot about it and luckily stumbled onto it awhile ago.
Light
A few years ago, when Joseph Estrada wasn't elected as president yet, Raul Roco dropped by our school to give a speech about journalism. The participants were mostly grade school students and staff but being news editor has its privileges (one being that I get excused for class to attend the talk).
Mr. Roco began the talk by giving a puzzle. He asked what one thing could change the face of the entire room. And to encourage people to participate, he offered P500 as a prize (yes, Xaverians are easily bribed). I told Filbert, managing editor at the time, that the answer was light. He told me to raise my hand say the answer but I didn't. For one thing, I wanted to give the grade school students a chance. For another, if I was wrong, well, it's quite embarassing to be one of the few high school students in the room and make a mistake. Apparently, my answer was correct.
So what does light have to do? Well, one theory proposed in The Human Edge is that the factor that determines whether we can distinguish whether an object is real or not (such as a computer-generated image) is due to light. There are times when we can something is real or not, even if we can't pinpoint exactly why we come to that conclusion. Well, apparently, that thing we can't pinpoint is actually light.
This guy developed software just to accomplish that. For objects, he had a device that captured light from all the angles hitting the object. For human beings, it's actually more complicated but works on the same principle.
An application of this is when he took the light of an area (a catherdral) and a person. The person's image was then placed into the cathedral so that she actually "fitted" there.
Think of it as an improved blue/green screen. With such techniques, we usually know that there's a blue screen behind the person, mainly because the light hitting the people isn't right (the light we see hitting them is from the studio rather than the location depicted by the blue screen). In this case, however, the location's lighting fits the person's. If I were to be placed in a forest setting, for example, you'd see shades of green and yellow on different parts of my body to mimic me actually being present there.
Of course so far, this application is only for stationary objects/people. The guy is currently working on one for film.
Mechanical Surgery
There was this other feature on cyborg apparel (well, I'm sure Sacha would appreciate this) and clothing (keyboards on cloth!), but I've heard about it several months ago. The one that really caught my attention was the surgery being made via computer.
While surgery attempts to heal the person, it usually comes at the cost of injuring the person (making incisions, having the wounds heal, stopping the heart, etc.). Robotic surgery minimizes that. In the case of heart surgery (yes, I am thrilled at this since I'm one of those people who have respiratory diseases), the doctor doesn't need to cut open your chest to perform on your heart. They just make three holes (the size of a pencil they say), one for the camera and two for the mechanical arms.
The camera magnifies the picture a hundred times so that the doctor can see it better. And with a joystick, he can operate with the mechanical arms. And since it's a joystick, there's much more precision as a result. No more jittery hands causing mistakes (or leaving a watch inside the person).
And the other practical application of this is that it can be done far away. Your doctor might be in another continent but still able to perform the procedure.
Itching to Game
Now that my RPG gaming group has been scattered around the world (Franco and Jobert are in the US, for example), I have no outlet for games I want to play. But oh well, I guess I'll start making the D&D campaign so that when Jobert arrives here by June, the game will be ready with minimum preparation.
posted by Charles at 8:31 AM
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