Monday, October 06, 2014

My Klout Score

I just got an email from Klout that says my Klout score went up. Is 50 good? I signed up for Klout like I signed up for LinkedIn. I signed up because it showed up in the news. I signed up and forgot about it. I have rediscovered LinkedIn in the recent years. But Klout I have not dusted off yet.

I guess I am in the top 20% with a score of 50. But that's not good, is it? Top 5% would be nice.

Friday, October 03, 2014

Food And Cooking Are Fair Game For Innovation

Fun With Food
the “scientific identification and exploration of deliciousness.” ...... Insects are, of course, the miracle protein of the future: no one asking how we will feed the world can avoid talking about them. ...... grasshoppers, beetles, bees, crickets, and other insects that have served as food. ...... “Bee larvae could be the caviar of insects” and “Exoskeletons can be useful for crunch—for instance, in a roasted grasshopper.” ..... The team at the lab happily spends days developing granola with bee larvae and honey on oats and various seeds. Bee larvae, Evans notes enthusiastically, are half protein and 20 percent mono- and polyunsaturated fat (the good kind), with “loads of vitamins and minerals.” And insects might be genetically modified to be even higher in protein and what are thought to be beneficial lipids. ..... The immediate agricultural future of insects is in animal feed: such a diet is certainly better suited for chickens, who peck at insects, than the fish meal they’re given now. ...... the team wields a “spice rack of microbes” to ferment every kind of grain and fruit. The results appear in the grasshopper garum, that surrogate chocolate cake, and the food-friendly beers that, along with insects, are the main funded project at the lab. ...... Redzepi principles: going into a field, kicking an anthill, using pieces of bread to absorb the formic acid ants emit, and using that to add lemony notes to a stew—a trick they learned from a longtime forager. ..... the oak moss and peach base of one of the 20th century’s most enduring fragrances, Mitsuoko, and sprayed nebulized spruce tincture over a granita of peach juice, crystallized peach skins, and sheep’s-milk frozen yogurt, accompanied by crispy oak moss, to make what he calls a “magical, ethereal dessert.” ...... Much of this is play, blending science and cooking techniques with anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. ..... the new generations of chefs .... Whatever equipment fads come and go, chefs will always be in search of new flavors based on nature. ...... a national chapter of Slow Food ..... One late afternoon, following a day of checking on Aspergillae and the mummified deer leg, he was hand-chopping sheep’s heart, lung, stomach, liver, kidney, tongue, and suet and blending the result with oats, foraged herbs, and a good dousing of whiskey before stuffing it all into the heavy, enormous rumen, which had to be lifted into a pot—an all-hands-on-deck process that left everyone smelling strongly of sheep offal.














Smartphone Lenses That Move Sideways

Deutsch: Prinzip eines Zoom-Objektivs, stark v...
Deutsch: Prinzip eines Zoom-Objektivs, stark vereinfacht. Die einzelne Linse ganz links stellt das Grundobjektiv dar. Die drei weiteren Linsen bilden gemeinsam ein afokales System. Selbst erstellt mit POVRAY 3.5 unter Verwendung freier Skripte und der frei verfügbaren Version von LINOS Photonics WinLens 4.3, Quellcode beim Uploader wegen eines Festplattenchrashs leider nicht mehr in einer funktionierenden Version vorhanden. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I probably use my phone as a camera more than anything else. Therefore I am all ears when something like this shows up in the news. I am not too hungry for more megapixels. But the lack of meaningful optical zoom has been a major problem from day one. It has been in the "God, give me the wisdom to accept things I can not change" category.

Lenses That Move Sideways Could Improve Smartphone Snaps
To pack a camera-quality optical zoom into a smartphone ...... For now, the DyanOptics lens prototypes can magnify objects up to three times larger than they really are. Chan says the company expects to magnify objects up to five or six times ..... Chan is already thinking beyond the smartphone. She believes the technology could find a home in the cameras strapped to drones or robots. ..... there are cameras everywhere

Almost Driverless Cars

Film poster for Speed 2: Cruise Control
Film poster for Speed 2: Cruise Control (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Someone pointed out that driverless cars are actually more complicated than they are made out to be. Therefore I think the goal ought be to put forth almost driverless cars. No major changes in laws and regulations necessary. These almost driverless cars could function in the existing framework.

They would be almost accident free. The cruise control would be much smarter. Cars would talk to each other to make sure they don't crash into each other.

Uber is taken for granted. Uber and uber-like services would take car pooling to a whole new level.

Town Built for Driverless Cars
The urban setting will be used to create situations that automated driving systems have struggled with, such as subtle driver-pedestrian interactions, unusual road surfaces, tunnels, and tree canopies, which can confuse sensors and obscure GPS signals..... Highway driving, which is less complex than city driving, has proved easy enough for self-driving cars, but busy downtown streets—where cars and pedestrians jockey for space and behave in confusing and surprising ways—are more problematic. ..... in some situations, the car’s Super Cruise system will take care of steering, braking, and accelerating.

Second Avenue Subway


Living City