Last night, I finally finished writing a script to automatically resize images. That way, if I see a picture on the internet that I like, there are very few steps between viewing and putting it on tumbledry — this is nice because the hassle of processing random online images has kept me from posting many. As an example, take a look at this wonderful picture by David Iliff of Canary Wharf in London:
Left center to right center: 8 Canada Square, One Canada Square, and Citigroup Centre. I particularly like the center building. Anyhow, it’s great to now be able to share interesting and/or beautiful photos in this main content area. Plus, I quite like this photograph — it’s a really good panoramic stitch!
Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness sounds a bit dull at first, but consider what that means: an automated software approach to actually making faces more attractive. I must provide a picture illustrating the results (originals on the top, computer-enhanced results on the bottom):
A quick summary of how this is done actually makes a lot of sense:
The key component in our approach is an automatic facial
attractiveness engine trained on datasets of faces with
accompanying facial attractiveness ratings collected from
groups of human raters. Given a new face, we extract a
set of distances between a variety of facial feature
locations, which define a point in a high-dimensional
“face space”. We then search the face space for a nearby
point with a higher predicted attractiveness rating. Once
such a point is found, the corresponding facial distances
are embedded in the plane and serve as a target to define
a 2D warp field which maps the original facial features
to their adjusted locations.
To my eyes, this looks like an automated approach to accomplishing the same thing that professional retouchers do to magazine photos. It starts to explain how actors & actresses can resemble but not really look like themselves on the cover of these mags. Apparently, a demonstration application will be issued by this team, so it may be interesting to try the program out on faces we know. (via Waxy)
“The majority of American adults find work cutting into
the middle of their days—exactly when leisure is most
effective,” said Adam Bernhardt, the Boston University
sociology professor who headed the study. “The hours
between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. are ideally suited to browsing
stores, dozing in front of the television, and finishing
the morning paper. Daytime hours are also the warmest and
sunniest of the day, making them perfect for outdoor
activities. Unfortunately, most Americans can’t enjoy
leisure during this time, for the simple reason that
they’re ‘at work.’”
It is truly unfortunate that America can’t keep pace with the “European leisure force.” The Onion is awesome.
I’ve been working on this version of tumbledry since January of this year — there were times I never thought it would be finished — and yet, we’re almost there now. During the next few days, there will be a short beta period in which I will add a few features and iron out any remaining kinks; leave comments here with your thoughts.
There’s an adage in the web development industry — don’t overhaul different parts of a website simultaneously. I only found out about this little piece of wisdom mid-way through trying to overhaul every single goll-darn last component of this website. Ultimately, my approach was a bad, but quite fruitful, method.
I’d like to reserve this paragraph for Mr. Justin Gehring. First, Justin and Amber got married this past weekend — congrats, you guys! Second, Justin has been kind enough to host tumbledry since before it was even called tumbledry. Yes, my writing space used to be at alex.jrcorps.com — five years have passed since then. In addition to hosting me, Justin has helped me with web-design for, well, about a decade now. Nothing you see here would exist were it not for Justin’s boundless patience and generosity.
I now politely say “farewell” to hosting with Justin, as he is cycling himself out of the hosting and into the web design and management business. So, tumbledry no longer lives in Minnesota. We reside at Joyent, in Sausalito, California.
Thanks for visiting, and allow me to raise a virtual glass to the entertaining years of tumbledry ahead. I’m excited.
Because it burns calories so quickly, aerobic exercise is a threat to the body’s energy reserves. Heeding this danger, the body acts to protect one of its most precious, and energy-demanding, organs: the brain.
…
By acting as a mild stressor, exercise is an alternative way to spur many of the protective benefits associated with calorie restriction and the release of brain-building growth factors, said Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at the University of California in Irvine.
What kind of exercise? Well, running is quite effective:
Even when we are sitting or lying down, our bodies send our brains regular updates about how our limbs are positioned. When we, say, stand and begin walking, these electric messages need to be sent more often. (Knee is bent, straight, bent, straight …) Move fast enough and the electrical activity doesn’t have time to dissipate between each message. It begins building up in the brain and eventually triggers a release of chemicals called growth factors.
Growth factors are like manna for neurons. “They make neurons stronger, healthier and improve their ability to learn,” Cotman said.
Anaerobic activity does little to aid the brain via this mechanism, but aerobic activity seems to do the trick.
Our Sheriff’s department uses it (along with other services by the same company), and it’s downright scary the ammount of stuff they can pull.
Want all the blue and gray SUV’s that have a 9 and an F within a 100 mile radius of a given location? It can pull that up. Want to find out if a particular person has ANY connection to the owner of that vehicle. It can do that. As a demonstration it was able to connect our sherrif to a woman that his wife had been roomates with over 20 years ago (before they were even married).
It was astonishing how much information it could coordinate on any person in the room that we plugged into it.
I wonder what they know about me. Then again, Facebook and the internet probably make their job pretty simple for my generation.
A canned drink called “Unagi Nobori,” or “Surging Eel,” made by Japan Tobacco Inc., hit the nation’s stores this month just ahead of Japan’s annual eel-eating season, company spokesman Kazunori Hayashi said Monday.
“It’s mainly for men who are exhausted by the summer’s heat,” Hayashi said of the beverage, believed to be the first mass-produced eel drink in Japan.
Mykala sent me an email about it, asking if you knew anything — it certainly piqued my curiosity. Your input and deep Japanese reservoirs of understanding are requested. Thank you.
