Will we survive our technology?  Seriously…. Will we?

The website for many of the ideas and some (free) books of Ray Kruzweil, a scientist and inventor who predicted many of the technological advances of the modern age (through the Law of Accelerating Returns, an extension of Moore’s Law), and who is currently attempting to live long enough to get to the moment in biological and technological advancement when he will be able to download his personality into a computer-type interface and be able to live forever.

Ha!  I was right all along…

The best eggs around!

Well, this is from last summer.  This summer I am worried because the small wild birds who nested in my cherry tree (who didn’t like cherries, but in protecting their nest, also protected my cherries) returned this year to an irreparable nest.  They have not nested, and their nest has since fallen out of the tree.  Now my cherries will be so vulnerable to the little mouths of other birds!

Before photos:  Watch these spaces transform!  I will chronicle the evolution of these spaces into fabulous food producing areas.  The space up against my house will become the tomato patch, and the spot against the fence will be the bean bed.  I will have to build the beds (with gopher wire underneath so that those little critters cannot impinge upon the vitality of the plants), a chicken wire curved arbor over the area next to the fence for the beans to grow on, and for me to easily harvest from underneath, and a trellis fence to support the tomato plants and their fruit along the house. Stay tuned for updates on my progress!

A great video - a better, not-so-AmeriCentric perspective on Globalization.

What you can do with photo-editing with the simplest of programs.

Just an edge-of-spring day at the recycled-water filtration park.

Solar Wind Converted to Music Video

-See text post explaining this awesome endeavor.

From: SOFTPEDIA

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Solar-Wind-Data-Converted-to-Music-136155.shtml

By: Tudor Vieru, Science Editor
Solar Wind Data Converted to Music
Experts create sonic representations of it

A group of experts has recently managed to conclude a new project, which revolved around turning data on solar winds into music, or an acoustical representation of the regular graphs, charts and numbers. The goal of this investigation is to discover information that could otherwise get lost in the crowd, and to provide experts with a new angle in analyzing some of the most important manifestations of our Sun. Solar winds are currently the target of many investigations, as the phenomena can have significant implications for our livelihood, if they hit our planet with more energy than usual.

The new approach was developed by specialists at the University of Michigan, who were led by recent School of Music alumnus Robert Alexander. He explains that wind speed and particle density data are the most likely to escape scientific scrutiny, as investigators peer over numbers and charts produced based on them. For the new system, he used data collected by the American space agency’s Advanced Composition Explorer satellite, which is always aimed at the flux of highly-charged particles coming in from the Sun. Solar winds manifest themselves more during solar maximums, the peak-activity periods of the 11-year cycle the Sun undergoes, PhysOrg reports.

This is not the first research ever to deal in translating datasets into sounds. This is the
basic operating principle of the Geiger counter, for example. This radiation detector
basically detects high-energy particles, and then emits audible clicks as their quantity
increases. “What makes this project different is the level of artistic license I was given,”
Alexander says, adding that the end result is somewhere “in between art and science.” He reveals that the notes sound somewhat primal and otherwordly, as one would expect. “Every piece of scientific data tells a story. I’m expressing this story through music. These sonifications present scientific data in a way that is immediately visceral,” the expert adds.

“In this sonification, we can actually hear in the data when the temperature goes up, or when the density increases,” says UM Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences research fellow Jason Gilbert. He adds that studies of solar winds could allow astronomers and astrophysicists to gain a better ability to predict how these phenomena will behave over time. “I am excited for sonification’s potential in research, but I think more work will need to be done to realize that potential,” concludes research computer specialist Jim Raines, who works at the same Department.

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