New Laptop for My Fantasy Writing

So my wife got me a new laptop for my birthday and so I decided to make an Unboxing Video for my Charles Moffat YouTube channel.

Not everyone is into Unboxing Videos, but I enjoyed making this one.

Enjoy!

"Sight", is this the future of Nerd Dating?

Below is a short film named "Sight". It presents an interesting prediction of what dating might be like in the future if people started wearing Augmented Reality Contact Lenses. Which is honestly pretty creepy. (As if nerds were not creepy enough and socially awkward, now they can secretly stalk you online while simultaneously staring at your breasts.)



So I don't think "Augmented Reality Contact Lenses" are going to hit the market any time soon, and even if they did so within the next 50 years I doubt they would be as useful as the short film suggests. More likely they would have a host of technical problems, extremely short battery life, and limited capabilities.

Take cellphones for example. Do they really make your life easier? The batteries are constantly running low (or worse, dying after 2 or 3 years, right before your contract expires), and there are definitely times when it would actually be easier to use a lan line. Or skype. Or Google Phone. Whatever.

Lost? Bring a map with you. Learn how to use a map. (Any child of mine will learn how to use a map and which way north is, that is for certain.)

Sometimes technology just can't compete with old school things like maps, pencils and paper. eg. I still prefer to use pen and paper during business meetings.

Anywho back to the topic of nerds dating...

These days there are generic websites like POF and OKCupid that provide free personals, which means people (nerds especially) have no problems finding other nerds to date. There are also personal websites that now specialize specifically in nerds. matchgeeks.com, geeknerddating.com, nerdpassions.com, etc.

But do any of those personals sites make nerds any less socially awkward? Or do they just make it easier for 1 nerd to ask out 50 people in 30 minutes, and if he/she gets one response that later leads to a date, that seems like a good results right?

Except the awkwardness is still there. The date might go horrible.

Dating apps and personals essentially ignore the problem that causes nerds to be socially awkward in the first place: Lack of self esteem.

Take the man in the short film as an example. He is apparently a talented software developer. Spends a lot of time indoors. Has a pretty boring apartment if he ever takes his contact lenses off. Is trying to appear more "sporty" by wearing a sports jacket. Compensates for his lack of social skills by using a "Wingman App" that tells him how to behave in front of women.

All of this points to his low self esteem, lack of social skills, and general incompetence with women. Clearly this is a man who desperately needs relationship advice.

And then the end of the film (SPOILER ALERT) he somehow hacks into her ocular account and causes her to freeze in motion, apparently confused by flashing lights or whatever from her contacts - in which case she should have logically just removed them and kept walking.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Superhearing - Why is it considered such a wimpy superpower?

Everyone takes hearing for granted - unless of course they have hearing damage or are deaf.

Thus perhaps it is no surprise that "super hearing" isn't really considered to be that great of a superpower when it comes to comic books.

For example Superman can fly, is super stronger, can shoot lasers from his eyes, has X-ray vision and a lot of other awesome powers (eg. super fast healing whenever he is in the yellow light of the sun). His super hearing isn't really a central part of his character. (Same goes with Supergirl and any other Kryptonian.)

Another character with Super Hearing is Aquaman - but he only has super hearing when underwater. He also has super strength underwater, super swimming, the ability to breathe water, etc. So his ability to hear really well underwater is a lesser ability.

Wolverine - again, another character who's other abilities overshadow his hearing ability. His super sense of smell overshadows even his hearing, let alone his healing factor and bone claws.

Spider-Man - Yada yada yada, you know the drill. Super reflexes and strength vs his spidey-sense hearing.

Wonder Woman - On the long list of Wonder Woman's powers, yes, she also has super hearing. Yeehaw!

Daredevil - You were probably wondering when I would get to Daredevil. Yes, Daredevil's super hearing is basically his main forte. His hearing is so good it is basically radar. He also has a super sense of smell, touch, balance - and despite being blind, apparently can match red colours with matching red colours so his outfit looks normal.

But Dare Devil's enhanced senses are really just designed to counter his lack of sight. Yes, he has super hearing. Yes, it is amazingly good - like radar. But it really is kind of a wimpy super power.

But here is the interesting thing.

If you shoot yourself with a couple CCs of adrenaline in a syringe, you too can have super hearing. The extra adrenaline heightens brain activity and boosts your senses - giving you what could basically be considered to be a super power. It wears off over time, adrenaline shots do that, but it is one way of boosting hearing to superhuman levels.

You could also combine adrenaline with hearing aids and other electronic devices to give yourself unusually powerful hearing. So much that you could be "Super Hearing Man!" or "Super Hearing Woman!"

But what would be the point? Could you stop crimes using your super hearing? Not really. No more than police or spies using tech toys to listen in on criminals or other spies.

eg. The tech toy on the right is a mere $62 USD on Amazon.com.

Call it part of the whole "why is there no superheroes" problem. The problem isn't really the issue of having access to tech toys so you can become Batman, the problem is being able to find criminals and stop them in the act.

Anyone with enough money and wherewithal could train themselves to become a proverbial Batman - but having the ability to find criminals, that is the true challenge. Vigilante crime fighters are as rare as female Navy Seals (there are no female Navy Seals currently, but the Pentagon recently changed their policies and are hoping to have the first female Navy Seals trained by 2016).

There have been people who wander around at night, in costume, masquerading as vigilantes. But they are the superhero equivalent of firefighters who rescue kittens trapped up trees and boy scouts helping elderly people to cross the street.

Yes, you could go out and spend lots of money on audiologists, visiting hearing clinics, buying the most high tech hearing aids that money can buy, but even if you did have superhuman hearing, what would you even do with it???

Cyberdyne Robot Suits from Japan

Cyberdyne, based in Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo, has been making robot suits for hospitals, welfare and other facilities in Japan since 2010, usually designed to help elderly / handicapped people walk or move their arms. A new version has been designed for the full body - for quadriplegic people.

The normal limb version, the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL, has nothing to do with the HAL - the evil supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

No word yet on whether they are planning to make a version called the T100 for the military.

Zachary Quinto vs. Leonard Nimoy: "The Challenge"

Love your nerd / techie cars?

Watch Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy ham it up over Audi vs Mercedes.

The High Tech Superhero

Take two ordinary guys. OK, scratch ordinary. Two extremely rich people.

One is the orphaned son of a murdered billionaire tycoon, the heir to an industrial empire and the most eligible bachelor in Gotham City. At night he dresses up like an oversized bat, and puts his life on the line to fight crime on the city streets.

The other sits at the head of the world’s most advanced weapons and robotics manufacturer, and is a billionaire playboy and genius inventor. With a heart powered by a cutting-edge reactor and a flying suit of robotic armour, he’s doing his best to privatise world peace. Neither man has any supernatural abilities, genetic mutations or extra-terrestrial super-powers. All they have is training, courage, and some of the hottest technology imaginable.

Sadly, imaginable is the operative word – Batman and Iron Man aren’t real. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a real-life Tony Stark facing down an army of killer drones or a real-life Bruce Wayne taking down the mob. Frankly, we’d hate to think of what a Steve Jobs (let alone a Steve Ballmer) might do with a real Iron Man suit. But is there any truth behind the tech? If you were to win the lottery, would you have any hope of fighting crime on, say, the mean streets of Swindon, or does the stuff just not exist?

Well, lets see...

Powered Armour

Bruce Wayne relies on a rack of muscle and stringent combat training to keep him safe, but where would Tony Stark be without high high-tech tin suit? Nowhere. Well, there might be no real Iron Man suit, but that doesn’t mean that work isn’t heading in the right direction.

In 2000, America’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a program – Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation – with the stated goal of developing “devices and machines that will increase the speed, strength and endurance of soldiers in combat environments.”

Amazingly, the program has resulted in at least two real-life prototypes that might one day see active service. A team at robotics specialist Sarcos – best known for creating the dinosaurs for Universal’s Jurassic Park theme park rides – built XOS, a robotic suit capable of amplifying its wearer’s strength by a factor of 10:1. If you can lift 10Kg, then the suit will lift 100Kg, and in theory do it over and over again without you getting tired quickly.

The really clever stuff happens in how the suit is controlled. Just as the Iron Man suit needs to work in concert with Tony Stark’s body, so the XOS suit needs to understand its wearer’s every movement. The XOS suit’s actuators are controlled by processors and sensors which read movement from the user’s hands and feet, translating each tiny motion into suit movement, instantly and with a surprising degree of finesse. The exoskeleton takes all but the minimum of weight and effort from its wearer, and is responsive enough to allow them to run, jump, box and even throw and catch a ball. It’s not armoured as such, but it’s certainly a kick-ass bit of kit.

The one problem? At the moment XOS only works when tethered to a power-source, and while it’s hoped that this can eventually be integrated in a case or backpack, with the suit regenerating energy while in use, it’s something that – literally – holds the exoskeleton back from active service.

Lockheed Martin’s HULC might not be a full exoskeleton, but this suit, which reinforces and works with muscles in your legs and torso, allows troops to carry up to 90Kg over all terrains and march at speeds of up to 10mph, albeit only for brief periods.

As the suit supports full mobility, its wearers can squat, crawl and lift, with the suit supporting its own weight as they do so. An over the shoulder harness allows the user to manage heavier loads, and there are plans for armed and armoured models in the future. Best of all, it’s powered by lithium ion batteries, each lasting for an hour or so, depending on usage.

HULC is currently under evaluation by the US Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Centre, and is already available for what a Lockheed Martin spokesperson calls “limited application in select groups.” Could this be the basis of a future Iron Man suit, we asked them?

“We see significant potential for this technology in the defense, industrial and medical arenas. As a load-carriage device which augments a person’s endurance and capabilities, this technology can be applied to numerous missions including logistics, infantry, explosive ordnance disposal and chemical and biological defense, to name just a few.”

We’ll take that as a yes.

Exoskeletons and powered armour

Not all the exoskeleton action is taking place in the US. In Japan, Cyberdyne, a company set up by Professor Sankai of the University of Tsukoba, is manufacturing HAL (Hybrid Assisted Limb, pictured right), a gleaming white suit developed, in Sankai’s words, to “upgrade the existing physical capabilities of the human body.” HAL multiplies the user’s strength by a factor of two to 10, with the exoskeleton supporting its own weight. The suit responds to bio-signals running beneath the human skin, interpreting signals going to the wearer’s muscles to mimic his or her movement exactly.

The HAL suit is powered by a battery lasting between three and five hours, and while the first suits on sale are targeted at the medical industry, future applications will include heavy labour and rescue support. Why not add dispensing justice to the list? Professor Sankai certainly seems confident; he’s already built a factory to produce 500 HAL units every year.

Of course, Iron Man’s suit has another function: keeping Tony Stark safe from terrorist machine-gun fire, plasma whips and missile strikes. In real life, even a nickel-titanium alloy suit might not be of much use here: even if the armour withstood every blow, it would still transfer force to the wearer – but some high-tech padding might help. For instance, a foam of carbon nano-tubes – molecular scale tubes of graphite carbon – may be resilient and strong enough to dampen the blow.

There is, however, an alternative to the whole Iron Man concept. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is working with the US military to create a “multi-capability battlesuit” for tomorrow’s troops to wear in the field. MIT is already talking about nano-structure actuators that could give the wearer inhuman strength, and nano-fiber materials that could literally deflect bullets. The battlesuit might even be able to sense toxins in the air and filter them away from the soldier without him or her knowing about it. Frankly, it all makes an Iron Man suit seem so last year, even if the research is years away from bearing real fruit.

For Bruce Wayne, of course, things are easier. In Batman Begins, the Batsuit is based on a ‘Nomex Surivival Suit’, with a neoprene undersuit featuring the same heat-resistant materials used by real firefighters today, covered by bulletproof Kevlar panels and topped with a graphite composite cowl with Kevlar plating – all stuff that’s available right now. In The Dark Knight the suit had evolved. In the words of Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), the suit now featured “hardened Kevlar plates over titanium-dipped tri-weave fibers for flexibility” making Batman, “lighter, faster, more agile.”

All very advanced stuff, but Wayne Industries might want to invest in some more R&D if it wants to keep Batman ahead of the curve. Last year, BAE in Bristol demonstrated an armour system which utilized what’s called ’shear thickening technology.’ Here, tiny particles are suspended in a liquid where, in normal conditions, they repel each other slightly. With a sudden impact, however, the particles instantaneously clump together, creating a hard surface that can stop bullets and dissipate the energy of impact.

BAE’s scientists have referred to the liquid as “bullet-proof custard” on the basis that the two materials share basic properties (and more than that if my mum is cooking). This liquid, when used to treat Kevlar plates or garments, creates materials which bend and flow until you need them – perfect for the average stealthy super-hero. In ballistics tests with a gas gun firing ball-bearing bullets, 10 layers of treated Kevlar outperformed 31 layers of untreated Kevlar, dissipating more of the bullets energy and lessening the deformation of the plates.

An alternative approach uses what’s called a magneto-rheological fluid, where the armour is treated with an oil filled with tiny iron filings. When exposed to a magnetic field, the particles line-up, thickening the fluid and instantly turning thin clothes into solid armour at the flick of a switch. Sadly, while armour and sports equipment which use shear thickening and similar technologies are already entering the market, magneto-rheological fluid armour is still a few years away from practical use.

Finally, don’t forget those carbon nano-tubes.

Massachusetts-based Nanocomp Technologies has already demonstrated carbon nanotube armour plates capable of stopping 9mm bullets while only a few millimeters thick. Working with the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Centre, Nanocomp hopes that carbon nano-tube will be the next-generation of US army body armour. When asked for more details a company spokesman informed us that armour applications were some years away, and might not be suitable for superhero use, but we’re not fooled: a real-life Bruce Wayne is probably getting his first suit as we speak.

GM Advanced back window TECH

Got backseat boredom? DVD players and Game Boys are so five years ago, but a new concept in rear seat entertainment technology that uses the windows themselves could replace squirminess and snoozing with interactive scribbling, sweeping and pinching.

GM Research & Development team put that challenge before researchers and students from the FUTURE LAB at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Israel.

The task: Conceptualize new ways to help rear seat passengers, particularly children, have a richer experience on the while driving.

The Windows of Opportunity Project was inspired by psychological studies indicating car passengers often feel disconnected from their environment, GM asked the Bezalel students to turn car windows into interactive displays capable of stimulating awareness, nurturing curiosity and encouraging a stronger connection with the world outside the vehicle.

“Traditionally, the use of interactive displays in cars has been limited to the driver and front passenger, but we see an opportunity to provide a technology interface designed specifically for rear seat passengers,” said Tom Seder, GM R&D lab group manager for human-machine interface. “Advanced windows that are capable of responding to vehicle speed and location could augment real world views with interactive enhancements to provide entertainment and educational value.”

Since General Motors has no immediate plans to put interactive display windows into production vehicles, the R&D team gave free reign to the Bezalel students to create applications without concern whether they could be mass produced. Bezalel is Israel’s oldest institute of higher education and one of the more prestigious schools of its kind in the world today

Holographic TVs Good or Bad?

Since the first time I saw Star Wars and that iconic scene where R2D2 projects Princess Leia as a holographic video to Luke, I have been waiting for this to become an everyday reality. I saw this video from the BBC a while back and it promises us that the technology is here and we are at the fine tuning point. I think as an alternative to the current 3D TV options I would be willing to give Holographic TV a chance. The video below is from BBC’s (video below) program with Spencer Kelly who explains the state of play of Holographic TV.