Breakfast Links: Make3d, Machinimals & Bedbugs
Ok, this is cool. Check out Make3d a Stanford project that takes your crappy picture and turns it into a 3d thing with virtual fly through. Yeah, unlike all those other fancy projects like Photosynth that are taking tons and tons of pictures of the same thing and figuring out perspective and what not, this works off of a single 2D picture and you can do it now. Ok, not right now since this functionality seems to be down for maintenance, but sort of now. There are, however, youtubes of the softs in action strewn around the site. It’s pretty sweet.
What is also sweet and built by smart folks are these crazy animal machines in France. Gizmodo gathers up lots of pictures and a video of the elephant carrying it’s passengers walking around. It’s some kind of art display at Nantes and really makes me want to go… man, that squid looks cool. The elephant’s sweet, too, but it should go faster - how else will it trample unaware bystanders? Artists, never thinking about the big picture.
On the flip side of all this high tech wizardry we find… the Bedbug Registry. This tracks all the outbreaks of bedbug infestation, like say in, oh…. new york city? Isn’t this the 21st century? Shouldn’t we have licked this problem already?? Bedbugs are the worst, apparently there’s more or less nothing you can do about it but throw away or burn everything in your whole place. That’s it. What?? Gross.
