Honda Batbike - NM4 Vultus

http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20140322-honda-builds-a-batbike

Honda has revealed a new motorcycle called the NM4 Vultus. While not the most inspiring name, it does at least look really stealth. Cool stealth. Batbike-level stealth.

It's not a Batbike, of course, but is instead inspired by ‘Japanimation' - that's anime and manga - both genres long interwoven into the fabric of Japanese life and culture. Just last week we found out how Toyota is now plumbing this as inspiration for the new Aygo.

Reference is made to a ‘stealth bomber silhouette', and it measures 933mm across the mirrors, while the seat sits at 650mm high. There are full LED headlights too, while everything else comes in black and stainless steel. Some concession to colour has been made: the digital dash changes depending on mood, ranging from white, through blue and pink and finally red.

Underneath there's a 745cc twin-cylinder engine canted forward, with a low centre of gravity delivering "strong low and mid-range power and torque". It produces 54bhp and 50lb ft, with twin balance shafts and a single 36mm throttle body. Honda reckons it's efficient, too, offering up 185 miles from a single 11.6-litre tank.

The engine is mated to a six-speed dual-clutch gearbox, and it's all mounted on a steel diamond frame that weighs in at just 245kg. So then, while no performance figures have been announced, it'll be fast; that power-to-weight ratio stands at around 225bhp per tonne (the same as an old Honda NSX, if we're not mistaken).

"The NM4 Vultus with its future-shock style presents a look that will not have been seen in any cityscape this side of an anime movie," Honda says. And yes, while we're not TopBike.com, Richard and James never stop talking about them, and it's certainly a cool bike, no? Though maybe not as cool as those Lotus-liveried bikes we saw a while back...

TDCS thinking cap

http://scienceblog.com/71202/electric-thinking-cap-controls-learning-speed/

Electric ‘thinking cap’ controls learning speed

March 23, 2014
Brain & Behavior, Technology

Caffeine-fueled cram sessions are routine occurrences on any college campus. But what if there was a better, safer way to learn new or difficult material more quickly? What if “thinking caps” were real?

In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Vanderbilt psychologists Robert Reinhart, a Ph.D. candidate, and Geoffrey Woodman, assistant professor of psychology, show that it is possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain, and that this effect can be enhanced or depressed depending on the direction of the current.
The medial-frontal cortex is believed to be the part of the brain responsible for the instinctive “Oops!” response we have when we make a mistake. Previous studies have shown that a spike of negative voltage originates from this area of the brain milliseconds after a person makes a mistake, but not why. Reinhart and Woodman wanted to test the idea that this activity influences learning because it allows the brain to learn from our mistakes. “And that’s what we set out to test: What is the actual function of these brainwaves?” Reinhart said. “We wanted to reach into your brain and causally control your inner critic.”
Reinhart and Woodman set out to test several hypotheses: One, they wanted to establish that it is possible to control the brain’s electrophysiological response to mistakes, and two, that its effect could be intentionally regulated up or down depending on the direction of an electrical current applied to it. This bi-directionality had been observed before in animal studies, but not in humans. Additionally, the researchers set out to see how long the effect lasted and whether the results could be generalized to other tasks.

Stimulating the brain

Using an elastic headband that secured two electrodes conducted by saline-soaked sponges to the cheek and the crown of the head, the researchers applied 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to each subject. In tDCS, a very mild direct current travels from the anodal electrode, through the skin, muscle, bones and brain, and out through the corresponding cathodal electrode to complete the circuit. “It’s one of the safest ways to noninvasively stimulate the brain,” Reinhart said. The current is so gentle that subjects reported only a few seconds of tingling or itching at the beginning of each stimulation session.
In each of three sessions, subjects were randomly given either an anodal (current traveling from the electrode on the crown of the head to the one on the cheek), cathodal (current traveling from cheek to crown) or a sham condition that replicated the physical tingling sensation under the electrodes without affecting the brain. The subjects were unable to tell the difference between the three conditions.

The learning task

After 20 minutes of stimulation, subjects were given a learning task that involved figuring out by trial and error which buttons on a game controller corresponded to specific colors displayed on a monitor. The task was made more complicated by occasionally displaying a signal for the subject not to respond—sort of like a reverse “Simon Says.” For even more difficulty, they had less than a second to respond correctly, providing many opportunities to make errors—and, therefore, many opportunities for the medial-frontal cortex to fire.
The researchers measured the electrical brain activity of each participant. This allowed them to watch as the brain changed at the very moment participants were making mistakes, and most importantly, allowed them to determine how these brain activities changed under the influence of electrical stimulation.

Controlling the inner critic

When anodal current was applied, the spike was almost twice as large on average and was significantly higher in a majority of the individuals tested (about 75 percent of all subjects across four experiments). This was reflected in their behavior; they made fewer errors and learned from their mistakes more quickly than they did after the sham stimulus. When cathodal current was applied, the researchers observed the opposite result: The spike was significantly smaller, and the subjects made more errors and took longer to learn the task. “So when we up-regulate that process, we can make you more cautious, less error-prone, more adaptable to new or changing situations—which is pretty extraordinary,” Reinhart said.
The effect was not noticeable to the subjects—their error rates only varied about 4 percent either way, and the behavioral adjustments adjusted by a matter of only 20 milliseconds—but they were plain to see on the EEG. “This success rate is far better than that observed in studies of pharmaceuticals or other types of psychological therapy,” said Woodman.
The researchers found that the effects of a 20-minute stimulation did transfer to other tasks and lasted about five hours.

The implications of the findings extend beyond the potential to improve learning. It may also have clinical benefits in the treatment of conditions like schizophrenia and ADHD, which are associated with performance-monitoring deficits.

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/71202/electric-thinking-cap-controls-learning-speed/#yWJVSeBYVxZC8m1P.99

Electric ‘thinking cap’ controls learning speed

Caffeine-fueled cram sessions are routine occurrences on any college campus. But what if there was a better, safer way to learn new or difficult material more quickly? What if “thinking caps” were real?

In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Vanderbilt psychologists Robert Reinhart, a Ph.D. candidate, and Geoffrey Woodman, assistant professor of psychology, show that it is possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain, and that this effect can be enhanced or depressed depending on the direction of the current.

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/71202/electric-thinking-cap-controls-learning-speed/#yWJVSeBYVxZC8m1P.99

The implications of the findings extend beyond the potential to improve learning. It may also have clinical benefits in the treatment of conditions like schizophrenia and ADHD, which are associated with performance-monitoring deficits.
Read more at http://scienceblog.com/71202/electric-thinking-cap-controls-learning-speed/#yWJVSeBYVxZC8m1P.99Electric ‘thinking cap’ controls learning speed

 

Electric ‘thinking cap’ controls learning speed

March 23, 2014
Brain & Behavior, Technology

Caffeine-fueled cram sessions are routine occurrences on any college campus. But what if there was a better, safer way to learn new or difficult material more quickly? What if “thinking caps” were real?

In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Vanderbilt psychologists Robert Reinhart, a Ph.D. candidate, and Geoffrey Woodman, assistant professor of psychology, show that it is possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain, and that this effect can be enhanced or depressed depending on the direction of the current.
The medial-frontal cortex is believed to be the part of the brain responsible for the instinctive “Oops!” response we have when we make a mistake. Previous studies have shown that a spike of negative voltage originates from this area of the brain milliseconds after a person makes a mistake, but not why. Reinhart and Woodman wanted to test the idea that this activity influences learning because it allows the brain to learn from our mistakes. “And that’s what we set out to test: What is the actual function of these brainwaves?” Reinhart said. “We wanted to reach into your brain and causally control your inner critic.”
Reinhart and Woodman set out to test several hypotheses: One, they wanted to establish that it is possible to control the brain’s electrophysiological response to mistakes, and two, that its effect could be intentionally regulated up or down depending on the direction of an electrical current applied to it. This bi-directionality had been observed before in animal studies, but not in humans. Additionally, the researchers set out to see how long the effect lasted and whether the results could be generalized to other tasks.

Stimulating the brain

Using an elastic headband that secured two electrodes conducted by saline-soaked sponges to the cheek and the crown of the head, the researchers applied 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to each subject. In tDCS, a very mild direct current travels from the anodal electrode, through the skin, muscle, bones and brain, and out through the corresponding cathodal electrode to complete the circuit. “It’s one of the safest ways to noninvasively stimulate the brain,” Reinhart said. The current is so gentle that subjects reported only a few seconds of tingling or itching at the beginning of each stimulation session.
In each of three sessions, subjects were randomly given either an anodal (current traveling from the electrode on the crown of the head to the one on the cheek), cathodal (current traveling from cheek to crown) or a sham condition that replicated the physical tingling sensation under the electrodes without affecting the brain. The subjects were unable to tell the difference between the three conditions.

The learning task

After 20 minutes of stimulation, subjects were given a learning task that involved figuring out by trial and error which buttons on a game controller corresponded to specific colors displayed on a monitor. The task was made more complicated by occasionally displaying a signal for the subject not to respond—sort of like a reverse “Simon Says.” For even more difficulty, they had less than a second to respond correctly, providing many opportunities to make errors—and, therefore, many opportunities for the medial-frontal cortex to fire.
The researchers measured the electrical brain activity of each participant. This allowed them to watch as the brain changed at the very moment participants were making mistakes, and most importantly, allowed them to determine how these brain activities changed under the influence of electrical stimulation.

Controlling the inner critic

When anodal current was applied, the spike was almost twice as large on average and was significantly higher in a majority of the individuals tested (about 75 percent of all subjects across four experiments). This was reflected in their behavior; they made fewer errors and learned from their mistakes more quickly than they did after the sham stimulus. When cathodal current was applied, the researchers observed the opposite result: The spike was significantly smaller, and the subjects made more errors and took longer to learn the task. “So when we up-regulate that process, we can make you more cautious, less error-prone, more adaptable to new or changing situations—which is pretty extraordinary,” Reinhart said.
The effect was not noticeable to the subjects—their error rates only varied about 4 percent either way, and the behavioral adjustments adjusted by a matter of only 20 milliseconds—but they were plain to see on the EEG. “This success rate is far better than that observed in studies of pharmaceuticals or other types of psychological therapy,” said Woodman.
The researchers found that the effects of a 20-minute stimulation did transfer to other tasks and lasted about five hours.

The implications of the findings extend beyond the potential to improve learning. It may also have clinical benefits in the treatment of conditions like schizophrenia and ADHD, which are associated with performance-monitoring deficits.

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/71202/electric-thinking-cap-controls-learning-speed/#yWJVSeBYVxZC8m1P.99

Sony Virtual Reality Headset For PS4

From slashdot.org

"Sony has announced 'Project Morpheus,' their project to develop a virtual reality headset for use with the PlayStation 4. 'Using a combination of Sony's own hardware, combining personal video viewers with PlayStation Move controllers, PlayStation engineers experimented with multiple prototypes.' They've been working on it for over three years — here's a picture of the current incarnation. The headset will use 3D audio tech that changes as players move their heads. One of their big goals is to make it extremely simple to use. They intend the display to be 1080p with a 90-degree field of view."

Technology for Caricature

I have a friend who is an amazing caricature artist with no budget, but he owns an iPad. His real advantage is that he can draw quickly in real-time, no under drawing, in front of an audience and entertain.

I did some research and found some great options for iPad, and I thought of some ways to take advantage. A few advantages for a caricaturist on a computer of any kind is that you can project onto a big screen in front of a crowd, you can email the finished art to the client and they can post on Facebook without scanning. This makes for a great marketing strategy, requires a light weight travel solution. You can screen record yourself drawing and put on YouTube - imagine giving your client a video of the drawing process and a finished drawing. Imagine setting up a second camera to record the event and the crowd reaction. There are screen recording and time lapse apps for the iPad.


With tools like Skype or Google plus, a caricature artist with an iPad can even remote in to perform. 

With a video screen projection, the crowd can see the artist's desktop and the face of the subject as the caricature comes to life. Whether performing at a festival or corporate event, the screen projection allows everyone to see what's happening and draw more of a crowd without competing for space to watch. 

Again, it's easy to record everything - you can charge clients for the drawing and for the video - and now your client can post the image and/or video to social media. 

And, you might even set up a google help out page where people can pay you to make caricatures:
https://helpouts.google.com/home
Tools List

Procreate is apparently a highly rated, high-resolution drawing app + stylus - I've not used it but it looks good. Most other apps will not allow for high-res. which is important for printing.

Examples here:
http://procreate.si

Buy here for $6
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/procreate/id425073498?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

This stylus is said to be most sensitive - these are not cheap

https://tenonedesign.com/checkout.php?storeClient=affiliate&product=pogo%20connect&bundleid=au.com.savageinteractive.procreatehttp://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/11/10/hex3-jaja-pressure-sensitive-stylus-review/

This artist claims that using his finger is better than a stylus, you just customize your brush in the app:

http://studiojason.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/procreate-for-ipad-an-artists-must-have-app/

Screen recording:

screencast-o-matic - $15/year, records up to 2 hours
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

How to record your iPad
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cInob2VIaL

Reference: http://som.screencasthost.com/

 $13 - You may want to use a trial version before purchase and look for other apps if you don't like it.

http://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/

video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07fCFYFtUc

Time lapse apps for ipad - use this to speed up the movie of your drawing process

$2
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lapse-it-time-lapse-stop-motion/id539108382?mt=8

$3
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/osnap!-time-lapse-stop-motion/id457402095?mt=8

Code VS Design

I certainly appreciate the notion of this article, though code knowledge can really enlighten a designer and open up a tool box for creating more direct, elegant design. Many design elements are code-based and are important for making edits. There should be a fundamental understanding of what is code and what is graphic, and part of strategy includes understanding the entire product as a system for not only delivering experience, but for building in a flexible method of maintaining and modifying the experience over time.

Dialogue with engineers is needed for understanding what is possible, and this is where the Pegasus idea really becomes relevant. I'll admit, I've gotten away from front-end coding, and it's a use it or lose it scenario, keeping up with browsers, etc. Some people have a special knack for coding. I was fine with tables, but CSS added a level of tedium that I don't tolerate well. Along these lines, I'll add that I think it's important to untether from code and rely on a coding resource in order to create a more complex experience and focus on the IA, really think outside of the box, and concentrate on results. The key is to at least maintain close association with adjacent resources and that is certainly possible in a team environment.

http://uxmag.com/articles/unicorn-shmunicorn-be-a-pegasus

Unicorn, Shmunicorn: Be a Pegasus

by Wayne Greenwood

inShare118

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a designer. Maybe you code, maybe you don’t. But it’s likely you’re feeling more and more pressure to hone your programming skills and become that mythical product development creature who can both create compelling designs and write production code.
There are plenty of reasons why being a unicorn isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But what you might not have considered is that aspiring to be a unicorn could be the biggest mistake of your career.

Conflict of Interest

Having a coder and designer in the same body is tricky. Coders must, above all, serve the machinery, the OS, and the programming language. They have to, or everything goes boom! in a really ugly way.
Meanwhile, as a designer, you focus on human-scale issues, and you’re comfortable grappling with the inconsistencies of human nature. Which is good, because there’s a metric ass-ton of those.
Both roles are essential to the creation of great software, and close collaboration between a stellar coder and a top-shelf designer—along with a solid product manager—is the fast track to a world-beating product.

But when you try to package these skills in a single person, conflicts emerge. What happens when user goals and technical constraints collide as deadlines loom? Do you build the best product for the user, or the product you can implement in the allotted time given your technical abilities?

The hybrid coder/designer is not a new idea. Coders who designed software by default were standard issue in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The result was a flood of badly designed products that made an entire generation of normal people feel exceedingly stupid as they thumbed through the pages of their _____ For Dummies books. In fact, the primary reason software has improved dramatically is due to the establishment of software design/UX/IxD/etc as a separate profession: your profession.
The movement toward unicorns reverses this progress by assimilating designers like yourself into the coding collective, shifting your attention from the user and to the technology—which is what got us into that mess in the first place.

Checking the UX Box

A singular aspect of the Great Unicorn Quest that should give you pause is the implication that user experience as a discipline isn’t significant enough to be a sole focus. As if designing products that people love isn’t sufficient to justify a full-time position.
I mean, sure, you can get to know your users and customers, determine needs, wants, and goals, create personas, invent a concept design, craft the interaction flows, produce detailed wireframes, design pixel-perfect mocks, respond to last-minute feature requests, create production assets, and a million other details I’m glossing over, but when are you going to do some real work? You know, like code something.

Don’t aspire to be a unicorn, digging up nitty-gritty coding grubs with your horn.tweet this

Frankly, if your company doesn’t feel that design is important enough to warrant a full-time position, you should question how committed they are to an awesome user experience—and, for that matter, how you want to spend the next few years of your professional life.

Drowning in Details

User experience requires a lot of detail work; flows, wireframes, edge cases—you know the drill. You may already be so consumed with reactive and detailed design work that you don’t have adequate time to explore big ideas with the potential to dramatically improve the user experience.
Well, there’s one sure-fire way to make this worse: spend lots of time worrying about the details of a neighboring discipline: programming. Why isn’t this build working? What library can I use for this? What’s with this jacked-up PHP code?

Your time is the ultimate zero-sum game. The more you spend on the complexity and details of coding, the less you have to make the product experience better for your users or to influence product strategy.

A Better Idea: Be a Pegasus

It’s time to think bigger and more strategically about your career. The software industry needs high-powered product people in VP Product and Chief Product Officer roles. Today, these positions tend to be filled by people who came up from marketing, product management, engineering, or general business backgrounds. And some of them are very good in these roles.

But who better to take on the product challenges of the future than cream-of-the-crop UX professionals? No one is closer to the intersection of people’s goals and a company’s products than the designers sweating over every detail of the user experience, day in and day out. Rather than re-inventing yourself as a part-time, mediocre coder, consider aiming your trajectory squarely at these product leadership positions.

Instead of diving into the tactical details of programming, level up: Shadow your product managers and learn how they operate. Take a deep dive into your company’s product roadmap. Explore your company’s market strategy. Discover the top three things that the CEO is concerned about. Understand the high-level strategies in play in all areas of the business.

Don’t aspire to be a unicorn, digging up nitty-gritty coding grubs with your horn. Unfurl your wings and see the 10,000-foot view of where your business is headed, then use your design perspective to help your company and industry soar to new heights.
Be a Pegasus.

"Pegasus" image by Hannah Photography.

Solar powered toilet

From Slashdot:

"With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet challenge, [a] team has developed a toilet that uses concentrated solar power to scorch and disinfect human waste, turning feces into a useful byproduct called biochar ... a sanitary charcoal material that is good for soils and agriculture. By converting solid waste to biochar (liquid waste is diverted elsewhere, as it's easier to deal with), the toilet thus allows for sanitary waste disposal without huge infrastructure investments. The toilet itself, called the Sol-Char, is a fascinating bit of engineering. In order to sanitize waste without the help of massive treatment facilities, Linden's team instead designed the toilet to scorch waste in a chamber heated by fiber optic cables that pipe in heat from solar collectors on the toilet's roof. 'A solar concentrator has all this light focused in on one centimeter. It'd be fine if we could bring everyone's fecal waste up to that one point, like burning it with a magnifying glass,' Linden said. 'But that's not practical, so we were thinking of other ways to concentrate that light.'"

The Irony

HTML5 is loud and proud

Take a bite if it's ripe for the picking

Now Adobe and Steve are both in the cloud

but Flash is the one still kicking