Taking matter lightly: polystyrene optically bound

A couple of chaps named Colin Bain (Durham Uni) and Christopher Mellor (National Institute for Medical Research) have been really unkind to some mini-beanbag-contents, using arrays of lasers to build literally microscopic sheets and structures out of polystyrene nanospheres and to increase our scientific understanding of how light acts on even smaller scales within crystals.

I don’t see how this amazing stuff will directly invade our everyday electronics, but I presume that having exact metrics for how, why and when to build circuitry is probably a good place to start: shades of “Hey! I’m gunner print me-self a new memory card!”

Just as long as it ain’t a model like HAL 9000, made in Urbana, Illinois, and it holds no songs from Mr Langley (especially not any about Daisy and not affording a carriage). (-:

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

Of course, there’s always the line you so desperately want to hear from the computer running everything in your isolated spaceship including all of your life support and navigation:

this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye.

14 May, 2006 08:02

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.

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.

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

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