Technical justification within 12 hours of first prototype

I’m gunna plant me a coconut palm!

While we were all running around at LCA2005, it seems that some ANU people have been busy, or possibly flat out like a lizard drinking.

Dr Darren Lipnicki, from the School of Psychology in the Faculty of Science at ANU, found that people solved anagrams more quickly when they were lying down compared to standing up. [...]
“In theory, there may be greater release of a chemical, noradrenaline, in the brain when standing up than when lying down.
“It’s suspected that noradrenaline inhibits the abilities to solve anagrams and to think creatively so we decided to test the idea that lying down would actually help solve anagrams more quickly.”
Dr Lipnicki asked 20 healthy subjects to solve anagrams in both a lying down and standing posture. There were 32 five-letter anagrams, such as “osien” (noise) and “nodru” (round). [...]
Subjects were also asked to solve arithmetic problems, but the study found lying down made no difference to solving arithmetic compared to standing up.
“Anagrams can be characterised as insight problems, in part because they are often solved in a moment of sudden awareness. Both anecdotal reports and experimental evidence suggest that insight can occur during, or be inspired by, sleep,” Dr Lipnicki said.

So now I can build my laptop stand thingy in the reasonably sure knowledge that it will help my creativity. (-:

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new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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