Smithsonian turns to 3D to bring collection to the world

With the Pirate Bay, Google and now the Smithsonian releasing 3D models it really makes me want to get one!!! Wow...

With just 2 percent of the Smithsonian's archive of 137 million items available to the public at any one time, an effort is under way at the world's largest museum and research institution to adopt 3D tools to expand its reach around the country. CNET has learned that the Smithsonian has a new initiative to create a series of 3D-printed models, exhibits, and scientific replicas--as well as to generate a new digital archive of 3D models of many of the physical objects in its collection. Representative of that effort, the museum is touting the 3D printed replica of a Thomas Jefferson statue that it recently installed for the "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty" exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. According to the museum, this is the "largest 3D printed museum quality historical replica" on Earth and is a copy of a statue on display at Monticello, the Thomas Jefferson museum in Virginia.

According to Adam Metallo, a 3D digitization coordinator at the Smithsonian, the team working on the Jefferson replica project decided that rather than use a traditional method involving rubber molding and casting, they would utilize modern technologies. Taking a Minolta laser scanner worth well up to $100,000 along, they contracted with Studio EIS to generate an intricately detailed 3D model of the statue that was then turned into the 3D printed replica by RedEye on Demand. Now, with that high-end scanner, as well as less expensive tools that include normal digital cameras and freely available cloud-based digitization software, Metallo and his fellow 3D digitization coordinator Vince Rossi are slowly setting out to begin building a new Smithsonian digital archive. They hope this initiative will eventually lead to scores of 3D printed exhibits, as well as countless 3D models that could theoretically be used in the museums, in schools, or just about anywhere people have an interest in the Smithsonian's vast physical holdings. The only problem? They need more companies that, like RedEye On Demand, have the resources to help bring the efforts to fruition.

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The Pirate Bay Switches from Torrents to Untraceable Magnet Links

The Pirate Bay will no longer link to .torrent files. It will use better technology instead. "Today marks the end of an era," the Pirate Bay blog says. "Sort of." The famed torrent site will now use magnet links. Magnet links don't break as easily, and they're more bandwidth-efficient for people who mirror the linked files.

Oh yeah, and unless a government is willing to shut down a whole Web page using out-and-out censorship tactics, magnet links can't be stopped. Magnet links hash their contents. They're effectively anonymous. There's no file living on The Pirate Bay's servers; it's just a link inside a page. You can pass the link around however you want and open it using any compatible application. No one can tell whether or not you downloaded the file.

The only way to stop magnet links is to actually block the exchange of the link in the first place, i.e. forbid access to a part of The Pirate Bay. And even if that did happen, the magnet links could just pop back up somewhere else. full article...

To help explain what a HASH is and why it's used in these new (ish) magnet files check out the below explanation. 


'.torrent' files

For years, BitTorrent clients, trackers and indexers have relied on .torrent files to store information on the files shared with the popular p2p protocol. These files are stored by indexing sites and are used by BitTorrent clients to connect to the tracker sites. The files hold several types of data, a URL of the tracker site, names for the files it shared, as well as hash codes of files. 

All of this is used by the client to connect with peers that have the files in the torrent, or portions of them, and also to ensure that the downloaded data is accurate. This system has several disadvantages, some technical, but one of the biggest is that BitTorrent indexers have to store the .torrent files on their servers, which leaves them vulnerable to legal threats if the content shared happens to be infringing despite containing no actual infringing data by themselves.

Magnet links

Magnet links though are just links, they have no files associated with them just data. The links are an evolving URI standard developed primarily to be used by p2p networks. They differ from URLs, for example, in that they don't hold information on the location of a resource but rather on the content of the file or files to which they link. Technically, magnet links are made up of a series of parameters containing various data in no particular order. In the case of BitTorrent, they hold the hash value of the torrent which is then used to locate copies of the files among the peers. They may also hold file name data or links to trackers used by the torrent. You can check out the entry on Wikipedia for a more detailed technical description.

With magnet links, BitTorrent indexers don't have to store any file at all, just a few snippets of data leaving the individual client apps to do all the heavy lifting. In fact, magnet links can be copy-pasted as plain text by users and shared via email, IM or any other medium. For the indexer sites, the allure is clear, using magnet links makes it harder for them to be accused of any wrong-doing in court. Theoretically, magnet links should not have any disadvantages for the users over .torrent files either. It would also potentially make downloads faster as it would enable the clients to download from peers which have identical files but with different names, for example.

As Movies Debut on Facebook, the Era of Social Cinema Begins

If anybody could pull it off, it would be Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. The comedy duo and stars of the often demented Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! have a rabid and loyal enough fan base that releasing their new movie in an experimental new way just might work.

Tomorrow night, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie will debut on Facebook, a full two weeks before it arrives in theaters. For $10, fans will be able watch the movie and chat with its stars in real time. The model represents a new sort of social cinema that, while not widespread, appears poised to become a potentially major trend.

Magnolia Pictures, who is releasing the film, is no stranger to the concept of making movies available before they hit theaters. The distributor is accustomed to releasing films via Video on Demand prior to their theatrical release, but this is the first time they've experimented with putting something out on Facebook first. Tim and Eric, they figure, would make an ideal test case.

"Everything that we've done with them has just been huge," said Andrew McGraime, Magnolia's Vice President of Interactive Marketing. We did a Reddit chat, which was the biggest Reddit has had. All of their viral videos have been huge hits."

To make it happen, Magnolia partnered with a company called Milyoni, which specializes in live entertainment events on Facebook. Using its Social Live product, the company sets up streaming content that lives directly within Facebook, as well as deep social integration to encourage fan interaction. By setting everything up on Facebook and streaming the movie at a set time, the opportunity becomes ripe for genuine, real-time social buzz, which can spread across social connections as people see their friends participating and sharing content related to the movie. Full article...

American humans at war with science?

After reading the below article from The Australian newspapers website I find it hard to completly agree with the sentiment put forth by the author. You've got to agree with a lot of it, but the story does come from a group of scientists based in the US. I don't believe that places like Sweden or even India would be so closed minded about the importance of science to humanities successful future...


Stark warning emerges from science summit - humans at war with science

• From:AFP 
• February 21, 2012 5:10PM

A STARK theme emerged from an annual scientific get-together in Vancouver: the world must be helped to believe in science again or it could be too late to save our planet.

Science is "under siege," top academics and educators were warned repeatedly at the American Association for the Advancement of Science summit as they were urged to better communicate their work to the public.

Scientific solutions are needed to solve global crises - from food and water shortages to environmental destruction - "but the public now does not understand science," leading US climate change expert James Hansen told the meeting.

"We have a planetary emergency, and very few people recognise that."

The theme of the five-day meeting, attended by some 8000 scientists from 50 countries, was
"Flattening the world - building a global knowledge society."

"It's about persuading people to believe in science, at a time when disturbing numbers don't," said meeting co-chair Andrew Petter, president of Simon Fraser University in this western Canadian city.

Experts wrangled with thorny issues such as censorship, opposition from religious groups in the United States to teaching evolution and climate change, and generally poor education standards.

"We have to plan for a future, considering the risk of climate change, with nine to 10 billion people," said Hans Rosling, a Swedish public health expert famous for combating scientific ignorance with catchy YouTube videos.

Rosling, pointing to charts showing how human populations changed with technology and how without science the majority of a family's children die, said it's naive to think that humanity can easily go backward in history. full article...

A New, New ... err New remake of Space Battleship Yamoto coming to JP Theatres

Let's remake the remake of a remake that started it all. Another new Space Battleship Yamoto TV show and film is nearly out (2012-04-07) and it looks really amazing. From the teaser trailer that's currently streaming on Amazon.co.jp (and swiped by some good Youtuber) ... it seems that the 3D look of the previous film remake has been updated to look more like the traditional animation. This most likely stems from the Yutaka Izubuchi the Chief Director on the project who worked on the mechanical designs and scifi ideas from older renditions of the franchise.


The April 7 film is actually the first two episodes of the new television series, combined into one theatrical preview screening about 50 minutes long. I don't know if I would go to a theater to watch what I could be watching at home on Blu-Ray days later but I can understand the appeal. Check of the trailer below and think back to better times filled with hollow shouts of ..."ISCANDAR!!!"I can never get tired of those classic early 20th Century battleship designs. 

A New Spin on Things

It's been a fair while since TapeMonkey has been updated but I've decided to have another go at it with a slightly different spin. There's still going to be tech updates, and nerdy news but I'm also going to start posting more about my new garden and the success and failures with my vegetable garden out the front of our unit in Northern Melbourne. Along side the garden I'll include some stuff that I've been cooking.. it may include stuff from the garden, it may not but hey I'll all look good :)

After seening an interview with Indira Nasdoo, a local Australian new reader, about her new book "The Edible Balcony" I got inspired to get stuck in and change out front garden into something that will actually start providing produce for our little family. I mean, I've got way more then a tiny little inner city balcony and by the sounds of it she's able to produce almost enough food to save her from shopping.

So moving forward without even opening a cover of the book that inspired me this lil nerd started getting his hands dirty too see what exactly he could make out of his front garden.

Our unit is in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne Australia and is Nth Facing. The front is approx 1.5 meters wide and 12 meters long, so just a standard front garden. Here's a picture of one side of our front garden.

To start I'm going try and grow the following things...

Carrots
Corn
Chili's (as many kinds I can find)
Stacks of herbs
Lemons, Lime & Oranges (Hybrid trees... way to go!)
Pumpkins
Tomatos

I'll keep updating the site with my progress, and any tips I discover along the way.