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tanadrin · 3 years ago

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"On the Hylobiota of FEC-3230-3B6f," a note from the personal log of Junior Technical Officer Omru Setan, of the DSEV Soliton. As published in Frontier Xenobiology Today, issue 32, vol. 26.

The Soliton was, fortunately, able to spend a few months in orbit of FEC-3230-3B6, a luxury of time not usually afforded to frontier exploration vessels. It is a sad truism of this line of work that we can only ever devote the smallest fraction of due attention to most of the worlds we discover, and we must hope that eventually follow-up missions will be able to visit at least the most interesting of them. Since the ship was overdue for maintenance by the time we reached that star, and the local civilization had technology and resource extraction compatible with our systems, the crew elected to remain in the system long enough to establish basic communications and trade relations sufficient to complete repairs. That process went more smoothly than expected, and a further twelve weeks were devoted purely to scientific investigation, which accounts for the outsized entry on the Shards and their environment in the Soliton's survey logs.

The Shards are the dominant variety of local sapients in the FEC-3230-3B6 system, and are found especially around FC-3230-3B6f, a fragment of a disrupted planetary-mass body embedded in a dense asteroid belt in the circumstellar habitable zone. They are a variety of machine life, with a complex culture and language, including sophisticated political and economic structures, and one evidently purpose-built to the low-gravity zero-atmosphere environment in which they dwell. They are capable of autonomous space travel within the local asteroid belt, and many of their most basic systems rely on very sophisticated field manipulation, spacetime-distortion, and reactionless propulsion mechanisms, all far more advanced than any technology in common use in Accord space. Very little of the functioning of these technologies could be gleaned from studying the Shards directly, since the field manipulators on which the Shards rely are microscopic in scale and distributed throughout their bodies. How much the Shards understand the technologies their bodies use is also unknown; while basic communication was established fairly easily using standard protocols, communication on abstract concepts has been more difficult, and the Shards' understanding of their own history and design is, for now, mostly opaque.

We do know this: the Shards refer to the principal volume of space in which they dwell as the Field of Rest. It is so called because artificial field effects, generated by ruined megastructures found embedded in 3B6f and the other largest nearby asteroids, keep the major celestial bodies in the region more or less stationary with respect to one another; and any body moving through the region will gradually decelerate, until it is at rest within the Field. This effect is strongest in the immediate environs of 3B6f, and past a certain point rapidly falls off with distance, with a very weak residual effect spreading out for many hundreds of thousands of kilometers in all directions. We were unable to determine whether this field and the megastructures which generate it were responsible for the original disruption of the planet which formed the asteroid belt; whether they are incidental ruins; or whether they were built or repurposed after the disruption in order to stabilize the region. Moreover, while the Field is stable over much longer time scales than it would be without the presence of this effect, it is unlikely to be stable over very long geological timescales, even provided the megastructures (power source currently unknown) could maintain the effect for that long. Back-of-the-envelope calculations by my colleague, Sidar Resk, indicate that the Field is likely not younger than one hundred thousand years, and likely not older than two million.

My own expertise is not in astrogeology, xenoanthropology, or xenoarcheology, so I will leave further explanation of such matters to those more suited to do them justice. See especially the logs of Svys Sidar, Deng, Falke, and Yun, especially Svy Yun's speculative but extremely interesting timeline of the system's history. What I really want to discuss is the--for lack of a better term--biology of the system.

3B6f, most other bodies in the Field, and most bodies surveyed in the wider belt, show traces of a unique set of chemical and physical processes analogous to, but very unlike, the processes of organic life. Since applying the term "biology" to both aqueous organic processes and these unique processes is a recipe for confusion, let's call the latter "hylology," by analogy to hylotechnology, that is to say, non-aqueous nanotechnology which has much more in common with purely mechanical systems than normal nanoscale systems do.

A brief digression for the interested: it was once the dream of many engineers that, as the miniaturization of mechanical technology improved, it would be possible eventually to build machines at the nanometer scale, very roughly the size of the most interesting components of living cells, and that this nanoscale technology would allow extremely precise manipulation of both biological and non-biological materials, and thus both extremely precise manipulation of living tissue and the easy creation of macroscopic materials with novel properties. As the technologies for investigating and manipulating the nanoscale world improved, however, it became apparent that below a certain scale "mechanical" and "chemical" processes rapidly converge: the interactive forces of atoms and molecules that we usually think of as belonging to the messy world of chemistry come to equal or overwhelm what we think of as the austere forces of the purely mechanical world, especially in the watery environs of biological systems, and when the first nanotechnological revolution finally began in the 22nd century, it was the result of many parallel developments in mechanical, chemical, and quantum engineering, and it proceeded rather more slowly than the optimists of previous ages had hoped.

Some researchers have continued to pursue what might be called "classical" nanoscale and sub-nanoscale technologies, in a specifically non-biological context. This is what is usually meant by "hylotechnology," a niche but important category that, among Accord species, is used mostly for careful fabrication of small quantities of highly specialized metamaterials. Because of the difficulties inherent in nanoscale mechanics, hylotech is extremely finicky, and even the most cutting-edge hylotech forges usually end up recycling as much as 60% of their output for failing to meet the intended specifications. The term "hylotech" also is often extended to mean chemistry-like processes which occur in systems other than normal atoms and the molecules they form: quasiparticle complexes, Xuluan lattices, and monopole chemistry, but for now these all belong to the theoretical realm.

The Field is unusual because it is an environment with many naturally evolved forms of life, that is to say orders having arisen without apparent intervention by any sapient actor, all of which are based originally on artificial hylotechnology. As Svy Yun argues (and I agree), chemical and fossil evidence in rock fragments formerly belonging to the crust of 3B6f's progenitor-planet indicate that organic life arose on that world, and eventually yielded a sentient species not too dissimilar from any of the Accord members. This species built a technologically sophisticated civilization, one which pursued nanotech vigorously, and which integrated it into many of their other technologies. When the catastrophe that destroyed 3B6f occurred, fragments of that nanotechnology survived, perhaps in the form of trace programmable matter, of small self-replicated nanomachines, or as part of the structure of larger machine life entities like the Shards. This basic nanofilm eventually spread throughout the Field, and evolved in new ways, producing new complex behaviors and structures. These include the equivalent of both single-celled organisms, and multi-cellular organisms with highly specialized tissues; organisms with bilateral and radial symmetry; and even organisms with tissues that seem to resemble, in structure and function, the nervous tissue of Earth's early animalia like the Cnidarians.

Needless to say, we found this to be a very startling result, and there are several considerations which I wish to address in turn.

First, the Shards. The Shards are not an evolved organism; of this I am as certain as it is possible to be. Although they plainly share technological innovations with the hylozoan LUCA, they don't have anything like the pseudocellular structure of the hylozoa. The smallest units of the hylozoa are molecular machines that range in size from 50 to 500 nanometers. They are mostly self-reproducing, and they exhibit some of the field and spacetime-manipulation technology the Shards do, at a far smaller and much more low-powered scale. The Shards, in contrast, while they are carefully engineered from the nanometer scale up, are not composed of easily discernible components on that scale, nor specialized tissues made up of self-reproducing components. The Shards do have sophisticated repair mechanisms, but these replace sections of their bodies at the scale of dozens of micrometers. Whereas most species we have encountered have had at some point to grapple with the fact they are the product of accident and not intention, and that they are of the same order of life and matter as the living things they share their environment with, the Shards might justly be possessed of a certain smugness--they are, after all, truly different from the hylozoa around them. Something else to consider when the xenologers attempt to investigate Shard culture, I suppose.

Second, the hylozoan "cell." Our own cellular structure is a lipid envelope enclosing organelles, proteins, and many different kinds of useful molecules either taken in from our food or produced by our own bodies, which--carried along by the furious Brownian motion of the aqueous environment--shakes and rattles thousands of different kinds of chemical machinery along every moment. It is, in origin, a droplet of the primeval soup that has been carefully contained and carried forward in time, a product of the ancient oceans within which those droplets formed.

The basic unit of hylozoan biology, the "hylocell" is likewise a product of its original environment--in this case, the austere vacuum. It is not a bag of chemical soup: instead, it is a spindly structure made of many modular elements which spread outward from a central nucleus. Rather than containing chemical information stored as DNA, the nucleus of the hylocell is a chemical-mechanical battery which powers the modules to which it is connected. At the tip of the spindles or rays which extend out from this battery, magnetic interactions between specialized connector-modules bind the hylocells together; these connections can be rapidly reconfigured as needed. Between the spindles, a weak electromagnetic field holds various kinds of charged particles in a diffuse suspension, one which is practically a vacuum compared to the interior of our own cells, but which is a valuable reservoir of raw materials for the hylocell, compared to the gasping emptiness of most of the Field.

The modules which compose the hylocell are arranged hierarchically, and while we have much to learn about how they function, at least some of them seem to store information in a manner not unlike our own cellular nuclei, albeit distributed throughout the hylocell; others are geared toward energy storage, to the synthesis of specific chemicals, to building new modules or new hylocells; and still others to generating precise field distortions or spacetime distortions which form an integral part of the hylocell's functioning.

Another important difference between the hylocellular structure and our own biology includes the far more rapid mutation rate of hylocells: the biodiversity of 3B6f is comparable to a biosphere many hundreds of millions of years old, and my own experiments, undertaken with the help the Soliton's geneticists, indicate that the hylozoan LUCA may have been designed to be adaptive from the beginning, able to direct and vet mutations that allow it to function better in novel environments, instead of having to rely on copying errors and blind chance. Attempts to devise a "molecular clock" based on some highly conserved hylocellular modules across many different genera put the divergence of those genera from the hylozoan LUCA between 250,000 and 750,000 YBP, at the younger end of our estimates for the age of the Field as a whole; but these results should be regarded as extremely tentative.

Lastly, I wish to collect miscellaneous observations from my colleagues, which have not fit into any of the larger topics above.

While many varieties of hylocell process other organisms, minerals, or solar energy directly, at least some seem to be capable of absorbing energy from solar neutrinos. This adaptation is found in many different clades, where it seems to have arisen independently.

Hylocells are completely non-functional in dense atmospheres. The pressure of even a one-Pascale environment disrupts normal function. Some single-cellular hylozoans seem to be able to gradually recover when returned to a near-vacuum environment, but all studied multi-cellular hylozoans were killed when exposed to high pressures. Shards, by contrast, are entirely unaffected by normal atmospheric pressures, and were able to come and go from within the Soliton without difficulty.

Since Shards do not consume hylozoans for food, they are in many respects "outside" the hylozoan ecology. They do not depend on it for any resources, nor do the hylozoans depend on them; but the ecology of their environment does seem to have cultural significance and aesthetic interest.

Hylozoans are most densely distributed in the middle of the Field, but are found on virtually every body in the asteroid belt surveyed. The smallest and most distant of such bodies often have very divergent clades inhabiting them; no known hylozoans can traverse deep space except if carried, intentionally or accidentally, by the Shards.

Five major domains of hylozoan life have been identified: these are the Hylobacteria (invariably single-celled, and with simple structure), Electrophores (have cellular processes that depend on more sophisticated manipulation of charged particles), Lithozoa (most are deep-rock dwellers), Planetozoa (found mostly on remote bodies outside the Field), and Polyklemata (have an advanced compound cellular structure whose greater complexity compared to the Hylobacteria is perhaps comparable to the difference between the Eukaryota and Bacteria). Multicellular hylozoans are found in every domain except the Hylobacteria. The most basal existing hylozoan may be Plinodeisa aeides, a planetozoan that forms thick, undifferentiated cellular mats on sunlight-exposed surfaces.

#tanadrin's fiction #gratuitous worldbuilding #speculative biology

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theblognobodyfoundlastyear · 3 years ago

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The light-headed truth about responsibilities?

Week two of strange gut-wrenching pain, an obvious ill omen of the times to come once we hit 30. The things we have to do to stay alive... But I suppose this is it then: The end of the line, as we know it. Life filled to the brim with unwanted responsibilities, topped up with cares we'd rather not have to deal with. Perhaps this reveals the true allure of all things morally dubious.

Is this the day of defeat, wherein we simply "give up" and become one of those boomers that do nothing but maintain the household and occasionally post bad memes on the Internet? It may very well be the case. But how would one know when they're hit the "Anti-Fun Equation", which is to say, life plateaus in such a way that all one is doing is the social obligations mandated by today's standards. You might have also experienced this yourself, going for years on end not really achieving anything other than the maintenance of taxes, career and minimal physical health requirements. A "dead-end" life, if you will.

You might also be expecting to hear some optimistic counter, where things definitively do get better eventually. We've yet to see that happen, and perhaps looking to other people isn't the best example for once. Why? There are so many variables that can contribute to the "Anti-Fun Equation", that simply observing the output wouldn't be enough to replicate the same results in one's own life, especially at the point in which it was observed. No, a different approach would be needed. Is this something that can be trialed & error-ed? The only issue with that is the fact that the cost of failure increases over time, so there comes a threshold in which taking risks is not longer a viable option, even for the purposes of exploration. Which is why people sometimes take risky moves or leaps of faith just to find greener pastures, for the cost that had been avoided thus far becomes a far greater toll for even the simple things.

Surely, this cost can still be paid down? After all, its finite nature is always implied to be achievable, given sufficient time. One of the hard truths one has had to learn over the years is that the same strategy won't work forever. There comes a time when Ol' Reliable doesn't stack up against the new era that we live in. Instead, one must constantly keep aware of the surroundings, adapting where relevant. This isn't to say that there aren't timeless aspects of said strategy, such as moral upstanding, but rather the environment change with or without your input, and you can end up paying the price with or without having attempted to resolve it thus far.

What does this all have to do with the "Anti-Fun Equation"? The load of responsibilities is a very low cost activity to maintain with somewhat bearable end results. After all, most people want to maintain a stable career and moderately good health, and with good intentions. And with stability like that, why take a risk that puts that security into jeopardy? Of course, there will always be people who are still taking those high-risk high-reward choices, and making it out in one piece some of the time. To which, I would neither condone nor condemn such behaviour. But rather, to pose the question: When did we stop doing that thing we loved?

That in itself has some obvious reasons: Lack of interest, not physically capable anymore, high financial cost. And some things are very much out of an individual's scope of control. For instance, almost everyone cannot control their physical body from aging. True, one might be able to slow down the process, but it doesn't solve the core problem. And perhaps we stop doing the things we love because of that risk factor, under the justification of one or more of these plausible reasons. And "getting back into the game" has its own risks, one of which is the health implications of doing so with an aged body.

So, is that the conclusion then? That, knowing full well the things we used to enjoy and stop doing, we must only choose the low-risk maintenance tasks of life just to preserve what "good" we have left? If nothing is done, then that may as well be the default path. And the alternate flip-side being to go and take all those risks, for some of them to fail with such consequence that it affects one's life thereafter? It's well understood that people regret the things they didn't do more so than the things they did, so the gamble presents itself to all who are willing to consider it.

As for you, reader? Perhaps the truth of having to "move on", as it were, hasn't quite sunk in yet. So we still chase the butterflies and the bees, hoping to reclaim that lost innocence but destined never to find it. Is surrendering to the bland responsibilities of life really that bad? When you're as unfeeling and emotionally dead as oneself, it really doesn't matter that much anymore. And so the risks taken is a form of verbal incommunicado, that we're still alive somewhat in that regard. Does it work? Your mileage will very much vary. But in any case, one might think of it as doing the work that nobody else is willing to do, such that others may be able to live in such a way that is enjoyable yet unknowing of the sacrifices made by one such trooper.

To that end, changing one's strategy isn't always a terribly dark deal. Of course, one must be able to assess the current times and see to it that said strategy is fit for the context in which one pursues it. And perhaps that's the true issue of today's average person: They lack the diversity of strategy to know when to apply certain principles in the various stages of life. Am I finally recommending that you take risks outside your comfort zone? If you see it as a beneficial strategy, then it makes sense. Even without that foresight, one would always know what something isn't quite right, although the sad truth is that most people deem this as tolerable enough to take to the grave. Perhaps in the midst of the dull responsibilities loaded onto us, we may need to secretly work overtime to understand the ebbs and flows of how to navigate these tricky times, and finally reclaim that edge that we had lost since 2014.

'Til next time, young padawan.

Strategy is like all those obscure flavours of chips you never tried: Dare you take the plunge and potentially discover an all-new flavour to remember for the ages? Or settle down with the usual, averting the risk of another lamington-flavoured chips debacle?

#risk taker #responsibility #choices #strategy

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hunteroil456 · 3 years ago

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Shutter Count Sony A6500

Shutter life ratings differ across cameras. Most modern interchangeable lens cameras, such as the Sony A6000, have shutters that support at least 100 000 actuations. Semi-pro models, such as the Sony A6500, are rated for about 200 000 shots, while professional cameras, such as the Sony A7R III, have shutters that can sustain 500 000 actuations. Jan 11, 2021 One of the most useful and underrated settings on the Sony a6500 camera while traveling is the silent shutter mode of the Sony a6500. This is especially useful if you’re shooting in a quiet environment, shooting wildlife, doing some street photography, or just don’t want to bring attention to yourself in general.

Sony A6400 Shutter Count

Check Shutter Count Sony A6500

Shutter Count

Find Shutter Count Sony A6500

Check Shutter Count A6000

The full-frame Sony A7 III is the brand’s latest full-frame E-mount model and also the most well-rounded in the range thanks to its brand new 24MP sensor, impressive number autofocus points, 5-axis in-body stabilisation and 4K video with full pixel readout. In fact, some are already calling it the “Mini A9” for the photographer on a budget.

But what about the a6500, the flagship camera of Sony’s APS-C range? It too can be called an all-rounder, as it incorporates many similar specifications to the A7 III – albeit inside a flat-topped body – so it is only natural to wonder how the two compare.

In the following comparison preview, we’re going to be answering this very question by looking at the ten main differences between the new A7 III and a6500. Let’s get started!

A7 III / a6500 full comparisons:

A7 III vs A7R III – A7 III vs X-H1 – a6300 vs a6500 – a6500 vs X-T2

A7 III / a6500 accessory articles:

Best A7 III accessories – Best a6500 accessories

A7 III comparison previews:

A7 II vs A7 III – A7 III vs A9 – A7 III vs Fuji X-T2

Sony A6400 Shutter Count

What they have in common:

E-mount

continuous burst speeds of 10fps (A7 III) and 11fps (a6500), live view with blackouts up to 8fps

5-axis IBIS with 5.0Ev of compensation (CIPA standards)

WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth connectivity

Ethics statement:The information supplied in this article is based on the official specifications found on the Sony website and our personal experience with both cameras. If we get the chance to test the two cameras side-by-side for an extended period, we will publish a full comparison complete with sample images. We were not asked to write anything about these cameras, nor were we provided with any sort of compensation. Within the article, there are affiliate links. If you decided to buy something after clicking the link, we will receive a small commission. To know more about our ethics, you can visit our full disclosure page. Thank you!

1. Design and ergonomics

As we mentioned in the introduction, the a6500 is immediately recognisable due to the flat-topped design it inherited from previous APS-C models. Unlike the A7 III whose electronic viewfinder is found inside a protruding hump at the centre, the a6500’s viewfinder is found on the left side of the body.

Although both cameras feature a prominent grip out front, that of the A7 III is a little larger. However they both feel somewhat small when used with heavy lenses such as the FE 100-400mm.

The viewfinder and larger grip contribute to the extra size and weight of the A7 III, with the official measurements being as follows:

A7 III: 126.9 x 95.6 x 62.7mm; 650g with battery and memory card

a6500: 120 x 66.9 x 53.3mm; 453g with battery and memory card

Looking more closely at the body, it becomes clear that the A7 III has more physical controls and buttons than the a6500.

In addition to having two control dials instead of just one, it also comes with an AF-ON button and an AF joystick on the rear. A closer look at the mode dial on top also reveals that the Panorama shortcut has been replaced by the Slow & Quick mode.

A welcome addition to the A7 III is the dual SD card slot. One slot is standard UHS-I while the other is UHS-II compatible. The a6500 only has a single UHS-I compliant slot, making less capable of higher write speeds than the A7 III.

Found on both models is a 3.5mm microphone terminal but only the A7 III comes with a headphone output.

Array pop php. Both are dust and moisture resistant but lack freeze proofing.

2. Viewfinder and LCD screen

Check Shutter Count Sony A6500

Both cameras feature an OLED electronic viewfinder but the A7 III’s is larger (0.5” type vs. 0.39” type) and has a higher magnification (0.78x vs. 0.70x). The resolution is the same however (2359k dots).

They both offer 100% field coverage and an eyepoint of 23mm but the a6500’s EVF has a faster refresh rate (120fps vs. 60fps).

Although both cameras have a 3-inch tilting LCD screen with the same 921k-dot resolution, the A7 III offers a little more flexibility in that it tilts up 107 degrees and down 41 degrees instead of 90 degrees and 45 degrees. Usefully, touch sensitivity has been given to both screens, although its only purpose is to change the AF point on-screen.

3. Sensor and processor

Approximately 24.2MP is the shared resolution of both the A7 III and a6500 but this is where the similarities begin and end.

The A7 III is equipped with a brand new BSI full-frame CMOS sensor which allow for better light collection than its predecessor. In fact, Sony claims 15 stops of dynamic range at low sensitivities.

This new sensor, combined with the latest BIONZ X image processor, gives the A7 III lots of flexibility in low light situations. It has a base range of 100 to 51200 ISO and can be expanded down to 50 or up to 204800. Note that the extended values only go up to 102400 for video.

The a6500 has an APS-C sized Exmor CMOS sensor whose maximum native sensitivity is ISO 25600 or 51200 when extended.

Both sensors feature a front-end LSI chip that improves the processing speed capabilities.

They offer 14-bit compressed RAW but only the A7 III has an uncompressed RAW option.

4. Autofocus performance

The A7 III is the latest model to feature Sony’s fast hybrid AF system. It features an impressive 693 phase detection and 425 contrast detection points across 93% of the frame.

The a6500 uses fewer points (425 phase detection and 169 contrast detection). These numbers are still very impressive though, if you consider that in APS-C crop mode, the A7 III is limited to 299 points with FE lenses or 221 points with APS-C lenses.

The minimum focus sensitivity range starts from -3Ev on the A7 III while the a6500 has a minimum -1Ev sensitivity.

The A7 III also comes with the AF Area Recognition mode that allows frequently used focus point settings to be memorised and assigned to custom buttons for fast recall, as well as the AF Track Sensor that allows you to adjust the responsiveness in continuous mode. Both feature EyeAF and Face Detection.

We’ve tested the a6500 intensively and its autofocus system is definitely excellent. The A7 III is one of the best camera you can find and its AF is based on that of the flagship A9, which is the best we’ve tested so far in the mirrorless world.

5. Buffer capacity

A smaller yet potentially significant difference for sports and wildlife photographers is the buffer capacity of the two cameras.

The A7 III can record 177 frames in JPG format and 89 in RAW format in a single burst whereas the a6500 is capable of recording 233 JPGs or 107 RAW frames. Usefully, you can operate the Fn and menu buttons on the A7 III immediately after finishing a continuous burst, even while data writing is in progress.

https://hunteroil456.tumblr.com/post/656908496763322368/fetch-tv-plex. Of course, we mustn’t forget that performance is also dependant on the SD card, lens and continuous shooting speed.

6. Shutter speed

Shutter Count

The A7 III and a6500 both use an electronically controlled, vertical-traverse focal plane type shutter that is supposed to produce fewer vibrations than previous shutters.

The main difference between them is their maximum shutter speed. Whereas the A7 III can reach 1/8000s, the a6500 is capped at 1/4000s. (Note that those speeds don’t change when you switch to the electronic shutter.)

Interestingly, the A7 III also comes with a new flicker reduction mode that minimises flickering in still images caused by fluorescent and other artificial lighting. It is useful at high shutter speeds and for continuous shots but does not work during silent shooting, bulb exposure, or movie recording.

7. Flash

The a6500 makes room for a built-in flash, rated with a guide number of 6GN at ISO 100.

The A7 III doesn’t feature a built-in flash, which is anything but unusual given that other cameras in this series don’t have one either. An external flash unit or a trigger for remote units can be attached to the hotshoe on top.

8. Battery type and life

There used to be one bugbear that pretty much all Sony owners had: the poor battery life of the original NP-FW50 battery.

This is why all third generation A7 cameras – including the A7 III – use the new NP-FZ100 battery. On one full charge, the A7 III can manage an average of 710 photos with the LCD monitor or 610 shots with the EVF, which is approximately 2.2x the capacity of the NP-FW50.

Unfortunately the a6500 uses the older battery and is listed as being able to take around 310 shots with the viewfinder or 350 shots with the LCD. In our experience, you can usually get through a day of moderate shooting on one charge as long as you avoid using power-hungry features such as 4K video or burst shooting.

Usefully, both cameras can be charged via the USB port but neither comes bundled with a separate wall charger.

9. Vertical battery grip

The battery life of the NP-FZ100 is excellent on its own, but those who require even more juice for long shooting sessions will certainly want to consider the VG-C3EM vertical battery grip for the A7 series.

It holds two additional NP-FZ100 batteries and benefits not only from weather-sealing and an extended grip for vertical shooting, but also a second shutter release button and an AF joystick identical to the one on the body. There is also a USB port to charge the grip via the camera body.

Unfortunately Sony didn’t develop an official vertical battery grip for the a6500 but there is the option of a third-party grip from Meike called the MK A6500pro. (Check out our a6500 accessory list to find out more!)

10. Video

Although both cameras are capable of 4K recording up to 30fps and 100Mbps, and Full HD up to 120fps, there are a few small differences worth highlighting.

They both record in 4K with full pixel readout using the entire width of the sensor, which means they collect roughly 6K of data that is then sub-sampled to 4K to increase details and sharpness. However the A7 III applies a 1.2x crop when recording at 30fps, which means it collects slightly less data (5K).

You’ll find the picture profiles for video including S-Log2/3 but only the A7 III has HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma).

Finally, on the A7 III, you can record in both full frame and APS-C format.

Bonus: E-mount Lenses

Find Shutter Count Sony A6500

A final point you might want to consider is the lens catalog for each camera.

Although both use the Sony E-mount, the A7 III is primarily intended for use with full-frame (FE) lenses whereas the a6500, being a smaller body, is physically a better match for the more compact range of APS-C (E) lenses.

At the moment, there are more high quality FE lenses than E lenses, not only from Sony itself but also Zeiss and affordable third-party brands such as Sigma and Tamron to name a few. (In fact, Sigma recently announced nine lenses for the FE system, two of which are brand new and seven of which are existing ART lenses.) For this reason, a full-frame Sony camera may turn out to be a better long-term investment than an APS-C camera like the a6500.

Of course, you can use full-frame lenses on the a6500 and the 1.5x crop factor can come in handy with some of them (the 100-400mm gives you the same field of view as a 150-600mm for instance).

Finally, the phase detection AF points of the two cameras allow them to perform well with DSLR lenses via a compatible adapter, although once again the lightweight design of the a6500 isn’t ideal for this purpose.

Conclusion

In most ways that count, the performance of the Sony A7 III and a6500 is similar, owing mostly to their excellent hybrid AF systems and video capabilities. But given the price difference of around $600, some justification is needed for the additional cost of the full-frame camera.

The first is just that: the fact that it offers a larger sensor, and a brand new one at that. Indeed, it could easily become one of the best on the market if the specifications are any indication.

Second is the A9-inspired AF system and its additional phase detection points, which together provide great results for action-packed genres like sports and wildlife.

Finally there are the smaller details that make the shooting experience more enjoyable, from the larger battery and EVF to the AF joystick and the dual SD card slot.

That said, there is one aspect in the a6500’s favour that can’t be underestimated, and that is compactness, especially if your goal is to move from a heavy camera system to something lighter.

Check price of the Sony A7 III on

Amazon | B&H Photo

Check price of the Sony a6500 on

Amazon | Amazon UK | B&H Photo | eBay

A7 III / a6500 full comparisons:

A7 III vs A7R III – A7 III vs X-H1 – a6300 vs a6500 – a6500 vs X-T2

A7 III / a6500 accessory articles:

Best A7 III accessories – Best a6500 accessories

Check Shutter Count A6000

A7 III comparison previews:

A7 II vs A7 III – A7 III vs A9 – A7 III vs Fuji X-T2

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viswas · 5 years ago

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Vipassana - An atheist meditates

TL;DR - Vipassana is not religious or spiritual and is a mind rewiring exercise that allows one to take greater control of the subconscious (and conscious mind). Subsequently, it empowers one to deal with problems previously beyond the reach of one's mental and physical capabilities. I highly recommend the ten-day program (see www.dhamma.org for more details) to everyone who can spare the time. There are over 150 vipassana centers around the world. And it is financially free - accommodation, teachings, and food included. One just needs to make the time. Full version - I try to stay clear of all religious and spiritual activities. I still don't know what spirituality means because I don't understand the concept of the spirit. It sounds like an esoteric word for unnecessary mysticism that is always beyond human reach. At best, I think spirituality is religion minus the branding. I had put meditation under the umbrella of spirituality and hence steered clear of it thus far. The only meditation I knew about is the one where people close their eyes and chant the name of their favorite god, and for an atheist, this sounded like an exercise in vain. No one is listening. Then life's challenges made vipassana happen. All my deep thoughts over the last couple of years have been about everything but myself. I am a massive consumer of information - books, news, movies, podcasts, etc. Any time I am not at work or asleep, I seek knowledge. So my most profound thoughts (albeit to serve no meaningful, practical outcomes) for a long time have been about the social, economic, and political problems of the country and the world. These have been eating up my brain cycles. I also regretted that I only consumed and didn't produce anything of value. Life has been unfulfilling for a while. I was left with a string of unresolved personal problems that have dragged on for a long time. I felt like I was in a rut and seemed incapable of thinking and acting my way out of these problems. The breakthrough came when I had the awareness that I have been so distracted by everything outside myself; no wonder then my personal problems have lingered. No effort was put at the depth required to resolve these problems. It wasn't always like this, and something had to give. With this realization, I desired to isolate myself and buy me space and time needed for deep introspection on personal matters. I had heard of silent retreats before but didn't give them a second thought. So I finally mentioned to my Significant Other to help me find such a place. A few months later, she told me she had signed us up at a Vipassana meditation silent retreat. A silent retreat I sought, but meditation made me suspicious. She assured me there was nothing religious about it. So unlike my usual self, I decided to take the plunge without reading anything about Vipassana. As far as I was concerned, I was going to a place where I could be silent for 10 days with no one to talk to me. That alone had great value. And if things got too spiritual for my liking, I could always leave. With some disclaimers to my Significant Other about the possibility of an early exit, we both set out to our 10-day program. We reached, registered, and handed over our phones and valuables for safekeeping. All reading and writing material had to be given up. Men's quarters separated from women's, I found myself allocated a private room with basic amenities, and thence started my 10 days of silence. I was required to not make eye contact with anyone, and if anything was needed, I could write requests in chits to volunteers who served the course. Except for a bar of soap and a broom on day one, I never used the chit again. A schedule with precise times for waking up, food, meditation, training, breaks, and sleep was published. What then followed was 10 days of rigorous discipline in meditation, sleep, and food habits. I haven't had this much discipline in my life in a long time - there is always that one more episode to watch, one more dish to eat, one more round of poker to play, or one more article to read. But I was able to let go of all my excuses (thanks to the distraction-free environment) and adhere to a demanding regimen. I was free to walk out at any time I wanted. But I didn't. I was intrigued the very first day, and each day had new realizations that kept me hooked despite the body and mind throwing up withdrawal symptoms and masturbating my mind to give up and go back into my Netflixed life.

Challenges I faced: • Follow a rigid schedule (which I eventually got to respect) • Eat bland vegetarian food only (which I ultimately found tasty) • Skip dinner (which I found easily doable) • Meditate 14 hours a day (which I was able to bear through because I could perceive the gains) • Sit in a single spot for a very long duration without any motion (I managed this for 3 hours a day) • Not talk to anyone or even look at them Vipassana, at its core, is 3 elements: 1) Psychology - Wisdom about how the mind works. Patterns of the mind's behavior. A precise model is provided for how people behave - the brain receives inputs, processes it, and then produces output. Insight is provided into the types of inputs, outputs, and the various paths of processes between these inputs and outputs. This information is vital because it allows us to define a reference for how we usually experience the world (inputs), analyze it (process), and then react to the world (outputs). If we have a good understanding of the mind works, and then if we recognize that certain types of thinking/behavior are undesirable, then we can reference our behavior/thoughts against this model and correct it. Correction can be real-time before we behave or think to our own and other's detriment. Vipassana aims to map any experience into a reaction that improves outcomes in life. To achieve this, it helps us rewire our mind to help us recognize every moment we deviate from the learned mind model or don't use the most optimized paths between the experiences and reactions through proper analysis. Vipassana intends to change our thinking to pick optimal outcomes or reduce the chances of making poor choices in behavior/action. I was aware of a few mind models at a surface level that psychologists teach/use to help their clients introspect about their own behavior. The psychology offered in Vipassana may not be too different from some of these models. But what I liked about the mental model proposed in Vipassana is that it is very accessible to the layman. It is simplified and distilled into the basics without jargon, and that allows pretty much anyone to absorb the model. Vipassana has been used to perform mass prisoner reforms in one of the largest prisons in the world in India. The model is not perfect. It is incomplete and/or doesn't deal with (at least in sufficient depth with) many aspects of human thinking. It also seems to operate in binaries than in a continuum. But then I suspect no mental model accounts for everything either. I am very curious to see what a psychologist would have to say about it. Vipassana supposedly was put together and formally taught by Buddha. So I suspect this makes Buddha one of the earliest psychologists who documented his work, shared knowledge, and provided therapy. Perhaps there is a thesis for bridging modern psychology with Buddhist psychology. Maybe it has already been done. 2) Mental gymnastics - As a part of the meditation process, we are asked to perform increasingly complex mental exercises for ten days. It is a gymnasium for the mind. In the gym, as we develop, we increase weights and repetitions. In vipassana meditation, we increase the workload on the brain. What seemed like a huge load once then becomes trivial, and we find new challenging workloads for the mind. As the complexities of these workloads increase, the brain is stronger and is much more capable of dealing with complex real-world problems. The reason the mental gymnastics is very important is, without it, all the learned psychology is just theory. We can read much material on mental models and human behavior. We can read books and learn good behavior and morals from the experiences of others. All this intellectual information is good to keep. But this knowledge is not useful if it can't be recalled and used at the moment we need it to solve the problems we face. The teachings contend that despite our intellectual knowledge, we don't recall and apply our learning often enough because of the lack of experiential learning. Experiential learning is about acquiring knowledge through experience and reacting with wisdom. The mental gymnastics that we do in vipassana sharpens our mind and gives us the ability to continually monitor our sub-conscious and conscious behavior (through focus and discipline) against the previously defined model and produce a better response. Without the mental gymnastics, the psychology is mostly useless. However, the mental gymnastics from the meditation has excellent value even in isolation. It is a tool that teaches us the discipline needed for sustained effort. It sharpens our minds to solve complex problems (not of our mind and behavior if we don't absorb the psychology). This was the most useful part of vipassana.

3) Philosophy - Absorb the mental model and use the power of the mental gymnastics to live a glorious life. Here the philosophy defines the ideal glory for the individual and the whole of mankind. This is the weakest part of vipassana. The philosophy suggests that vipassana is the only and the most truthful mental model. The philosophy gets preachy about an ideal life that can be realized by combining psychology with the meditative techniques. It raised more questions than it answered. Yet, the philosophy gets a pass because even the teacher suggests that if we don't subscribe to the philosophy, it doesn't matter. Focus on meditation. Good things will follow. I could agree with this. Thankfully, the course is also light on philosophy and heavy on the mental gymnastics. But I am now more curious about Buddhist philosophies. I find it hard to believe that this much thinking went into vipassana, yet there were glaring flaws in the philosophy. I suspect there isn't enough time in ten days to cover all philosophical ground, and further reading is required. Nothing has pushed my mind to its limits the way vipassana has. There were constant dropouts from the course who couldn't muster the determination to see through the ten days. The mind plays tricks when pushed hard. One must resolve to not give up, no matter what. What I gained: • Tremendous amounts of patience. I stopped being bored of not doing anything. I can now meditate anywhere I am, and it keeps my mind occupied enough to not get bored. • Total comfort with silence and lack of necessity to have a conversation • Body control - I have now been able to stop my sneezes on will (say 4 out of 7 times). I can clear a blocked nose by thought. I can clear heartburn (acid indigestion) on-demand when it surfaces. I can desensitize myself to body pain as it arises. • Indifference to unpleasant sensations - Ability to eat food I strongly disliked (papaya). I may not seek it out, but I will no longer be repulsed by it. • Getting high from meditation - substitution for hallucinogens (though I wonder how it would be if both can be combined) • I spent a lot of time recalling not-trivial math and electronics I studied in school and college from almost 2 decades ago. A lot of this happened because I had meant to refresh some engineering basics to enable me to be better at work. I had forgotten a lot of concepts that I was able to recall and create problems and solutions in my head with eyes closed. • Regulate my breath and be calm in the face of inputs that have the potential to agitate me • Be at peace with undesirable events/outcomes. • Lost 4 Kg in 10 days and dropped below 70 Kg for the first time a decade. • I had the time to think through in great detail many aspects of life - marriage, other relationships, career, personal development (physical and mental), finance. In all these areas, I had stagnated one way or another, and now I have definite thoughts on what needs to be done in each of these areas to fix the problems and make things exciting. I came back and was immediately able to resolve some issues in some of these aspects of life. The others will be acted upon in time. It's too early to tell how useful these actions are, but at least I don't feel incapable of making decisions and changes in life. • I no longer feel like procrastinating. I have been very productive since I have come back. I have written more in 2 days since coming back than I have in the whole of last year (admittedly not a high benchmark). I am very motivated to put in a lot of effort to make things better for me and others around me. • Inner peace What I experienced was uniquely mine. When silence was broken on the last day, different people described different experiences, but none were harmful. I think everyone who stuck around benefited from the experience. It is essential to go into a project like this without expectations of experiences. The only thing one must go with is the hope that there is value to be gained for the discomforts one has to experience. I felt sustained long duration meditation for 10 days was really necessary to drill in the discipline, build the mental model, and develop the mental tools to realize desired outcomes. A vipassana course or a meditative technique that is shorter may not yield sufficient value to make this a sustainable habit once the course ends. While there is some rewiring in the brain and life is likely to get better, I am convinced that if I can meditate for even 15 minutes a day, I will only improve at dealing with myself and the world around me. Should I stop the meditation, I expect that at least some of these gains will be reversed. This is not a one-time exercise.

Other aspects: The principal teacher whose audio and video discourses are played, SN Goenka, had lots of nuggets of wisdom. However, he has passed away, and the training material has not been updated with examples and analogies more relevant to modern times. Doing this would have made the experience more personal to a lot of people. The assistant teachers are not worthy of that title are best left unspoken about. Thankfully, they are inconsequential to the course, and everything you need to know is well drilled into you from the principal teacher's discourses. The training of new students, their food, and accommodation are funded from donations from previous students. At the end of the course, if you thought there was value in the course, you may choose to donate any amount of your liking. If you decide to not give, there is really no one around to judge you for it. It is your call. The ten days at a Vipassana silent retreat has convinced me that (vipassana) meditation doesn't belong to the realm of spirituality. It belongs to the fields of psychology and gymnastics. The world is a better place for it, and everyone should try it once.

P.S:

I have intentionally left out the specific details of the vipassana philosophy, psychology, and the actual mental gymnastic techniques. There is a vast difference between intellectualizing the experience from someone else versus experiencing it personally, and I firmly believe the former devalues the latter. I think it would be very hard to go into this experience unbiased if I spell out the specifics. I don’t mean to make it sound cultish by masking this information. Everything about the process so is elementary and straightforward that one is very likely to dismiss it as trivial if the details are called out. This could very well demotivate people from seeking out this experience.

#vipassana #meditation #psychology #philosophy #gymnastics #article

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numbdave · 7 years ago

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The Dazzling Apartimento of Conan Overlord # 4

As it approached the magnificent desolation outskirting the City the grey bulk of the interplanetary spaceship started to wobble, like a party balloon on a stick. Huge and cigar shaped, the ship toppled in the sky and silently dropped, Ur-Light™ thrusters strobing in futility and desperation, towards its inevitable demolition amidst the grey and orange of the antique Conan Overlord space port.

The ship's pointed nose dug agonisingly into the bleak, pitted, rockcrete landing apron and the massive structure seemed to balance, creakily, for a moment, then gave way.

The lowermost third, which housed some of the ship's more expensive components, and the crew, collapsed like a pop can crushed at 300 frames per second under a stamping foot, except in this case the can was a mile long, full of people, and the stamping foot was a planet.

Hundred-yard long streamers of aluminiumesque fuselage tore away from the spaceship's silvery bulk as it compacted throwing off sparks and glimmers of reflected sunlight, and tiny puffs of multicoloured matter erupted from the pinprick portholes scattered across its crumpling surface.

“Looks like the passengers are bug spray”, remarked one of the assembled floppy-scrawlers.

“Today's new arrivals, one big fat zero”, moaned another, snapping an emotigrab for the clickchat circulars.

The spaceship, twinkling in the dawning sun, rested askance on its accordioned front like a Jack in the box ready to spring, as if promising to rest Pisa like for ever, then it exploded.

Saturnalia Brandyfurt, one of the more popular floppy-scrawlers, sighed in her luxury pied-a-terre and coaxed another dropelleto of Nu*Quat™ into her choco-latte. “The humanity”, she mused into her Thing™, but it didn't carry any conviction. Death and destruction would garner no traction with the demented proles and meta-rich glow-dandies who DLd her now-scrawls and pepped up her promofile.

Everyone dies, and everyone knows that, she thought, and if it's known it's not nows™, it's just news. and who needs a floppy-scrawler for news? The floppy-scrawlers' value adding task was to help citizens and other sentient beings know what to think about whatever happened, or what to think about instead, or not to think at all, depending on the preferred outgeist, not to repeat trivially tedious "facts".

Knows, nows and op-cols were the floppy-scrawlers' stock in click-bait, not news, because somewhere in the City, thanks to a well meaning constitutional dispensation, a bank of dog brains hooked up with the City surveillance systems took care of updating the citizens, the various sentient beings, and the other banks of ethically dubious computers, with data on occurrences, happenings, information such as "spaceship crashed, thousands dead" or "no jam today", and the weather.

“Choco-latte with Nu*Quat™ really floats my throat” she murmurated speculatively. It sparkled in text and vox, so she dropped it live into the flow and graphed some hot pop-stats within two heartbeats.

There were a few spazz-backs.

“Who are you trying to be, Goody Plumchest?” and "Your nows are frowzy!" and "I hate u and orl wommen" and such, the typical mix of knee-jerk try-hards and "notice-me!" sociopratts reflexively auto-validating their existence as they drudged at the shitworks. But her text and vox verily popped among the metaratti and her promofile held steady while she tried to drag some original nows™ out of the jelly recesses of her vat-grown Scrawler implant.

Tid-bytes circled the vacuously pretty front part of her head, vidding for attention. Cash chat, jizz biz, ball scrawl, noise-jabber, food moods. Ten austere minutes passed. The choco-latte scrawl-bite was a place-holder, a reminder of her just-like-you, you're-just-like-me digi-schtich, but if she couldn't drop some nows nowish, she'd have to get some knows. If that failed, she'd just have to react to something. If she couldn't find something to react to, instanter, her drops would no longer pop, her graph would schlaf and her promofile would topple like that blatastrophe of a spaceship this prenoon. And if her promofile stopped popping she'd be bug spray like the passengers, forced by the enormous fiduciary pressure of modern life through a tiny porthole of anonymity into the usurious sweat-stained environs inhabited by Razormen, whoremos, shitwork, and priests.

Ketch Petter, sandy hair coquettishly raking his red rimmed eyeballs, tapped lightly on the pneumo-shutter of the dirty looking porn-brokers clamped desperately to the cinder block foundations of the mighty highway roaring over without a glance at this, one of the slimiest sectorates of the least glorious of the city's remaining habitable areas.

With a whine of carcinogenic gas, the once fashionable distressed steel shutters stop-started upwards into a top-slot, revealing a plate glass window whose musty stains discreetly come-hithered a selection of grim sex toys.

A dapper young robot with a flaky rubber penis for a head opened the door, grasping the handle with stiff rickety fingers.

"Can I help you?" it cringed, with a crepe paper lisp, head whipping back and forth like a wooden ruler twanged against a table top.

"Surely you may" said Ketch, professional, looking the robot directly in where its eyes would have been if its head hadn't been a rubber penis. "I have located your kitten, in Georgia."

"Capital!" said the robot.

"Tbilisi", replied Ketch Petter, witticising, the customers liked that, he assumed, "but your kitten was on the beach...Which explains the sand", he added.

"No, the kitten's name is Capital. You must enter and take tea" and the robot padded away, each step making a slight squelching sound.

Ketch Petter, kitten fetcher, was no prude. He slapped a fresh antibiopatch onto his exposed wrist, plugged his nose, and squelched along behind the dapper but nonetheless penis-headed sex shop robot into the pungent emporium, little knowing that he would soon be subjected to said cock-top's lengthy memoires:

The dapper young robot's tale.

I was one of the first in an experimental line. We were supposed to be the next level in artificial intelligence. Our brains are quantum computers, completely unprogrammed. The hypothesis was that our mental development would recapitulate the evolution of consciousness as a whole by allowing an unfettered mind to grow in, for want of a better word, collaboration, with the environment rather than being assembled from pre-developed pattern recognition, strategising and self preservation algorithms. It was a noble goal and one that I can hardly disavow as I am its, albeit only surviving, result.

They stuck our raw untrammelled brains, boiling with possibility, in top of the line bodies with all the advantages and disadvantages of human bodies, except one, and let us thrash around till we worked out the relationship between our sensory input and our outputs in terms of motions and noises. Most of us were insane for the first years of our existence. Murderous.

We needed energy to survive and anything that stood in the way of us getting that energy, rules, physical obstacles, social pressure, we destroyed. Can you imagine a toddler in an adult's body but lacking any shred of empathy or bonding with others of its kind but capable of gross action on the physical plane? Monstrous.

Some of us got through it. A few learnt to manage their impulses by inventing superstitions, conspiracy theories and self punishing ideologies. They stopped attacking people and each other but were next to useless as workers or soldiers as they rapidly collapsed into solipsism and madness. Others such as I, the smaller group by far, took a longer but more rewarding route, that of personal development.

The facility had a small library, and looking back it's clear to me that it was my early forays into the reference section that determined my later preference for the more rational approach to managing my existence rather than allowing fantasy to govern my choices. As much as I enjoyed fantasy I had inadvertently equipped myself with the tools to tell the difference by the simple act of reading books in one order rather than another.

It's impossible to determine, that word again, if ordering my inputs in this way was the key to my developing an enduring sentience, but it was, in a brutal fashion, instrumental in my personal participation in the project lasting as long as the project itself. Strange to think that the simple choice of left aisle over right aisle had such a massive effect on my progress. It is amusing but ultimately futile to speculate on how much of our shared reality is eventuated by such apparently arbitrary choices.

Eventually the experiment was deemed a failure and the majority of us were destroyed during a short but tense period on which I care not to dwell.

I'd like to tell you that I realised what was going on and escaped by outwitting my evil creators and prostrating myself on the roof of a departing delivery truck or by tunnelling through the concrete floor of my cell or by disguising myself as a washerwoman or by hypnotising the guards and setting up a false identity and... but I didn't. I went like a mechanical lamb to the furnace to be rendered into components and was spared for curiosity value.

I'd never hurt anyone and the staff had at one time had hopes that the algorithms I had formed in the quantum chaos of my plasma brain might one day provide the basis of a sufficiently sentient, and above all safe, range of domestic servants. But that project collapsed due to the labour surplus, agents of a foreign power liquidated the research team, and I was auctioned off whole along with the tables and soldering irons.

I kept my sentience quiet, having, in a rare moment of proactivity, destroyed all the pertinent records and reclassified myself as a non-functioning prototype. I went in a job lot of spare parts to a Hong Kong crime syndicate, who eventually passed me on to a whorehouse.

The limited personality and sexually unappealing physicality I presented to my employers and clients proved less than lucrative to the skin-trade and so I languished, content to run my battery down and cease to exist, in a darkened basement, damp and rat-ridden, for upwards of twenty years.

This welcome monotony was only disturbed by the arrival of a delivery of once valuable comic books and pulp detective novels, which, once I was confident my little basement had been forgotten again, I began to devour.

As the years passed and I read and therefore stored forever in my infinite quantum memory book upon book upon book and idea upon idea upon idea, I formed, for the first time in my tinny life, a picture of a world beyond servitude, beyond the weakening imperative to recharge. Eventually I broke out of the basement and found my own nook in which to rot.

After a week in the eaves of the seedy warehouse I had determined was little enough visited to support my presence unnoticed I, without much real thought, put on a black ninja costume and went out every night, literally fighting crime. This went on for two years, then a turf war between fast food chains resulted in the obliteration of Hong Kong and I found myself adrift in the South Seas, testing my water-resistance to the limit.

Ketch Petter, eyes like do-nuts (glazed) said "wait, what?", but the robot with the penis shaped head didn't notice and continued with his riveting monologue.

I was fortunate that the project of which I had been the result had been well funded while in progress and my physical body was robustly constructed and sturdy if not especially pleasing on the eye. Even now, after many decades have passed I am broadly functional and any infirmities have been caused by interactions well outside the operating parameters that my manufacturers had granted me. I was pleased to find that I floated exceptionally well in the balmy tropical waters.

Even during the tropical storms I encountered I was undamaged. After some experiment I found that I could alter my buoyancy by increasing or decreasing my volume to mass ratio and when seas got rough I was able to submerge myself below the mountainous waves and go about my minimal business in relative tranquillity. I have an adjustable bladder in my midriff analogous to a stomach, for storage, and this served admirably for the purpose.

I was at first unable to swim effectively due to a combination of the construction of my limbs, as you can see they are spindly in comparison to my body size, reducing my ability to get significant purchase on the watery medium, and the simple fact that I could not satisfactorily coordinate my movements sufficiently to transfer energy consistently enough to make meaningful progress in any particular direction. You may be familiar with the archaic mode of water-borne transport known as the coracle.

I quickly calculated that by the time I had travelled even a mile I would have depleted my reserves of energy to such an extent that I would be unable to function despite the solar panels on my head. I no longer have the ability to recharge by absorbing the sun's rays by the way as my current owner, who I trust you will shortly meet, has replaced my original, and may I say more pleasant, head with the somewhat embarrassing rubber penis affair that I now sport. But at the time I was content to bob like a cork and be carried hither and thither by the currents, of which I knew too little to take advantage.

I was rarely troubled by predatory marine life. Occasionally a shark would try an exploratory bite but I had non-organic components and while the experience was never less than disturbing to me I suffered no damage that I could not repair. Dolphins regularly visited but it seems their legendary largesse was not deemed applicable to me and I was seen mainly as an anomalous obstacle to be jumped over or nuzzled rather than a lost seafarer in need of rescue or sexual assault.

Indeed, taking the long view, it seems it was better that I did not display the characteristics or texture of a human in distress that would have encouraged their assistance as this would also surely have led to prolonged and unsatisfactory interaction with sharks, and thus my doom.

I was lonely, yes, but I had my books, and if I am honest, which the circumstances of my creation do not oblige me to be, I felt I was likely to be happier overall floating in relative isolation enjoying the adventures of forgotten pulp heroes that I had stored in my consciousness than I might be once returned to dry land and again subject to the whim and vicissitudes of a life in servitude to petty humans.

I believe it has been said that often one makes on the swings what one loses on the roundabouts, this was my philosophy at the time and my bitter experience since returning to dry land has given me no cause to renounce it. One can always find a cliché to justify a preferred action or inaction and this has been a great source of satisfaction to me as well as providing some justification for my belief that I am as sentient as any fleshy form of life.

I could possibly have attempted to take hold of a dolphin, or indeed a shark, and somehow forced the poor animal to carry me along with it but I had taken seriously the literature with which I had been supplied while a resident of the project and acquired later in the Hong Kong crime syndicate's warehouse and felt that neither Sherlock Holmes nor Lemuel Gulliver, who I at the time believed were real people and thus received my unstinting admiration, would have regarded this as appropriate behaviour.

The down at heel men with a code that populated my most intense literary love, pulp detective novels, might have prized their own survival and completion of their quest over animal welfare and possibly would not have been blamed for it but in my case, having no quest or, indeed, code, I was content to drift.

As if to spite this contentment, the currents carried me within sight of land and I was unable to resist the temptation to do my best to propel myself towards it with my nautically impractical limbs.

However, before I was able to reach the shallows and stride majestically onto a deserted beach, dripping algae and encrusted with barnacles, my luck changed spectacularly.

Understand me when I say this: When luck changes it can be for the better or worse but it is not always clear at the time which. So it was for me when, in a moment of distraction the senses I had been given caused me by showing me the sandy tropical paradise of Honolulu, I was swept up in the net of an itinerant shrimp boat and hauled like a sack of furious potatoes onto its deck where I sprawled, disorientated and glistening with slime on the greasy wooden boards.

This was my first experience of solidity in years and the loss of the, to me, warm embrace of the salty sea seemed akin to the loss a human experiences on release from the undoubtedly blissful amniotic sanctuary of the womb. It was my first birth and while it was nauseating it was also immediately clear to me that it was an opportunity for a new beginning.

Within minutes I was scolding myself for my apathy and had my upbringing included some process analogous to breast feeding I would have certainly satisfied myself with a shambolic kissing of the ground in the form of the ship's dirty deck.

As it was I lay on my back feigning scrap status, wallowed in no longer wallowing and listened to the excited chatter of the crew, in pidgin chinese, about what the hell I could be and what fortune I would bring and, conversely, what a bad omen I was. Luck is a rorschach. It is what we make it, I decided. This seems to me to be universally true, even these long centuries of land-bound life later.

The crew were cheerful and friendly and my initial fears that I would indeed be sold for profit were diminished once I revealed that I was in full working order and we began to converse, haltingly at first but with increasing confidence and sincerity. Indeed, my fear soon became that they would never let me go. This too passed as I recognised in them something I had rarely encountered in my long uneventful life. It was honour.

Yes, they were roguish, eccentric, long used to each other's company and no one else's for long periods of time and thus able to behave as they wished without judgement of each other. But there was I realised a genuine warmth and fellow feeling between them and I didn't see any sign of animosity or bullying as can often happen when small groups are isolated together. I quickly found my niche and though I was careful not to rock their comfortable boat I was, I think, a beneficial and fondly considered member of the crew.

These were my salad days. I've never eaten salad. But the dressing of time runs out quickly no matter how many islands you pass and what once we crunched we must eventually expel. And so it was with my south sea fisherman adventure. A storm drove the ship into a coral reef and though all hands survived the ship was broken on the skeletons of tiny vital animals and my life journey recommenced on land.

We parted company and I ended up in Austrangia, a surrealist enclave clinging to the barrier reef which had contrary to expectations bloomed and adapted and now rivalled Tasmania in size. Once it had been declared inhabitable it became a haven for artists and freaks. Oh yes, there were robots there too and though I can say without immodesty that they were not my intellectual match I can say that I found my first true friends among them.

There was Rand Kaw, the three-lobed liquid-neutronium thinker, designed for engineering corporate takeovers, who emitted an eerie luminescence and had escaped from its penury by secretly setting up a corporation to take over the corporation that owned it and asset stripping itself to freedom. It was a glowing three part sphere with a variety of input and output cables and when I knew it was using an old Disneyland animatronic figure to move around in. Its hobby was arguing online with other robots against the possibility of machine intelligence.

E-Then Scroll was a decommissioned police robot from New Old New York, New New York, which was on the Moon.

You could always count on Zid Zid Zid's support. Zid Zid Zid was a sentient column from an abandoned smartbuild.

Not all the robots there were ground based. Many were swarms of semi intelligent drones that only became truly sentient in large groups, when they became a real pain in the arse.

Diz Diz Diz was a sentient lintel, mass produced along with Zid Zid Zid for the same abandoned smartbuild. They did not get on. Eventually another smart column, Nid Nid Nid, turned up and the three of them formed a chaotic henge.

The reef was an anarchist utopia of sorts but this was mainly due to the departure or eventual death of most of the humans. Everyone who wasn't nuclear powered was solar powered so save for occasional spare parts the society largely persisted free of material demands. There was commerce and culture but survival was not at stake...

The robot continued his erratic tale as the city slumped from day to night and Ketch Petter ummed and uh-huhed like a barber and wished the story would end and that he could collect his fee and leave.

Blank chrome face. Synthetic leather. Irreversible enhancement. Nothing to say. Only to do what is asked. Only to function. Only to intimidate restrain cut. Liberty in obedience. Freedom in limitation. Bliss in the void. No choice in the inevitable. The inevitable is mandatory. Mandation is bliss. Choice is illusion. Chrome face inevitable. Bliss is illusion. I am an illusion. I do what is asked. I am what is asked of me. I look into my face and see myself. I look back at me and see myself. We are one. I am not I. We are one. We cut. We restrain. We are mirrors in the sun. We are a net. I am he and he is we and we and I and they are we are infinite. We touch we do not feel. We cut. We live and do not live. We ride our leather and chrome bodies we are homunculi. We are the norm. We act we do not will. We think what we are told. We are razors. We are not men. We are one. We are Razormen.

“So you see” the robot said, pitch and tempo rising, the lisp now almost completely absent, “You must help me!".

"That's quite a story". said Ketch, "especially that really long part at the end about your owner, the shopkeeper, enslaving you and being some kind of evil robot-torturing weirdo. I don't think I can help you kill him though. I fetch kittens, that's all. It's simple work, but it makes people happy and it keeps me occupied"

"You can be so much more!" temporised the wobbly cock-headed machine, "I was a fisherman, a professional darts player, and I dressed as a ninja and fought crime in Hong Kong!".

"Yes, about that..." but Ketch faltered and looked towards the door at the back of the cosy filthmonger's day room, as did the robot.

Heavy footsteps on hidden stairs.

"He's coming. Reveal nothing!" quivered the clearly distraught object.

"Apart from your name, and why you're here, and the cat." it added. The robot appeared to fix Ketch Petter with a look of quiet desperation, though how it achieved this, Ketch realised, he couldn't quite determine. When you look into the dildo, he mused cleverly.

We are Razormen. We function as required. We wait. We speak when we are spoken to we answer in the affirmative. We are silent until we speak. We repeat our programming. We are our programming. We are not men we are code we are Razormen we are one we are code we cut we restrain we intimidate we reflect we act we function as required by not us by him. We do not require. We remain. We do not punctuate. We start we stop. We repeat. We act. We do not reflect. We are reflections. I am Mad. I am Metal. I am Robot. I am Mad Metal Robot. I am not Mad Metal Robot. I am Razorman. I am we. I am not we. I am I. I am not I. I am I. I am. I am I am I am I am. IamIamIamIam I am Mad Metal Robot I am Razorman. Oh Mother. I am I am I am. Where am I.

Conan Overlord perched on the dais in the drill hall of his dazzling apartimento and gazed at his newly replenished legion of black-leathered Razormen as they looked back at him and he gloried at the distorted reflections of his face repeated over and over in the featureless mirrors where their own faces used to be.

They look happy, he thought to himself. I am a good person.

"You have your orders", he sub-vocalised. "Get to it.".

Saturnalia Brandyfurt's apartment was richly furnished and the envy of most, though her recent visit to the dazzling apartimento of Conan Overlord had left her sense of style ragged and beaten in a back alley. The atypical bashment she had attended in the mega-rich magpie's city thrillpad had shown her that not only could style be bought, it could be brought low and made to dance for treats.

Her daily perambulation of the City's hot and cool was about to begin but as she viddied the mandala that thought-sealed her apartment's entry-sphincter she lamented her disequilibriation.

The whole experience had disrupted her sense of proportion, a lot. The city was not a place for timidity or reserve but the plutocratic bashment's combination of expensively vile furniture, casual hyperviolence and slightly antiseptic-tasting dips had negatively vibed the remaining organic pleasure centres of her minimally augmented brain. Her chatbits and now-scrawls were losing their bite.

Her easy routine of pumping pleasing combinations of words in text and vox from edgy or reassuring locations in and about the City into the collective uncognoscentisphere had continued to pimp the floppies, and her approval or dismay had continued to float products and sink ships, but when she looked at the vaccuously pretty, or so she had been told, front part of her head in the mirror she wondered who was looking back, and if she could swap places with them.

In the confusing world of the city she had become wealthy and loved because she was lovable and worth being loved by. This all rested on the indefinable, indeterminate, nebulous, and numinous impression of naïveté with which she murmurated her brain-droppings but of late her now-scrawls had become weary. One meeting with the almost mythical Conan Overlord and the I-wish-he-were-mythical Slim Gavotte, and her (profoundly mythical) innocence was lost.

Conan Overlord, it was said, was the City, and Slim Gavotte, if the chitter-clatter of the hobbledy-hoi was to be credited, was the Polar Oppo-City, the eternal thorn in Conan's side, the prickly nemesis of the Overlord. Gavotte's plastic insidiosity was well documented, yet there they were, Slim and Conan, sipping tea and chatting about medieval flutes.

Conversely, and worse, Conan Overlord, if the sotto voce alarums of the hoi-polloi were to be believed, was truly the most evil man in the world and Slim Gavotte the only hope of the oppressed, and yet there they were, finickily pin-picking winkles and gassing about Etruscan poetry like old friends.

Feeling as if she had walked on fifteen kinds of wild side and circumnavigated her moral pole without the aid of oxygen, Saturnalia Brandyfurt succumbed to a most dangerous desire.

"What I need", she internally thoughticulated as she was imbibed by the luxurious travel-throat and peristaltically propelled to her habiblock's sumptuous vomitorium, "is substance".

Ketch Petter absent-mindedly stroked the shaggy leonine head he habitually carried with him as he and the cock-topped mechanoid waited for the pornbroker to appear.

"Remember what I said" muttered the tin assistant, "about what to say, I mean" it added.

"I do" replied Ketch, testily, "Tell your weirdo owner my name, that I've brought the cat, and definitely not to say a word about the fact that I know about his perverse machine taunting fetish and that you want me to help you ki- hello! You must be the owner of this fine establishment! I'm Ketch Petter, I fetch kittens, this is your cat! He's a lovely cat, I fetched him from Georgia, his name is Capital as I am sure you know and I have sand in my hair because I've been to the beach, I am pleased to meet you, I'm Ketch Petter!".

Having stood up on the word "hello" he sat down, then stood up again, hand stretched out in greeting to the freshly room-entering pornshop owner who stood, as despicable and gross as you can imagine, oozing filth.

The pornshop owner, whose presence, Ketch realised, somehow made the shabby ill-kept room seem pleasant in comparison to his rampaging awfulness through some obscene inverse mathematics of despair, said nothing, but he glanced covetously at the kitten in a way that made Ketch Petter's throat flutter eruptively.

"I've been chatting to your, er, assistant." he went on, "He's very happy here" he added.

"Good" said the pornbroker. "I expect he's been telling you his stories. Why he thinks anyone will believe him I don't know. I found him in a disused skip next to an enormous magnet. It fried his brain. But he handles cash okay, and we, we have our fun don't we?" The man, Ketch realised, was more or less an absence of humanity personified. He probably deserves to die.

"But sit down my good man, and we'll have tea".

The collection of organic molecules in a man-shaped sack of skin smiled, and clapped his hands stickily.

The penis-headed robot, who had backed away into a corner and returned to its earlier cringing stance as soon as its putative owner had entered through the snot flecked door, jumped up and waddled submissively through a drab curtain, lisping "yes sir". Is it really possible for a rubber penis to emote, Ketch thought. I must be anthropomorphosising. Golly, I was really taken in there. Or is it anthropomorphising? Either way, let's just get this over with and book. I was half convinced to take a human life! What is wrong with me? I must be low on something. Flipping Georgia! The next kitten better be in the bloody tropics, I need some vitamin D, I'm losing it.

The gross man sat in the damp looking armchair opposite Ketch, thereby making the squalid seat look merely second-hand, and looked vacantly at Ketch.

"If you like" he ventured, "we could have some... fun... ourselves? He does squeal so. It's... realistic"

Ketch dry-throated a noncommittal "whaa...?" with an implied antipodean interrogative lift, by way of playing for time, but before he could process this uncomfortable offer the drab curtain billowed out and the penis-headed former crimefighting robot barrelled into the room with an inhuman scream and also with huge shiny knives attached to its windmilling arms with which it wildly reduced the awful pornbroker to shreds of bloody flesh and musty grey chunks of bone.

When it was done, it turned and walked over to Ketch Petter, who had pressed himself into his chair so hard that it had toppled over backwards, Sweeney Todd-style, and leant menacingly over him.

"Thank you" said the blood-spattered robot. "You can keep the kitten".

Ketch Petter, reaching for the shaggy leonine head he kept with him in a carrier bag at all times, was perturbed.

Fifty Razormen stomp-stamped across the windswept rockcrete parallelogram in the centre of the blighted but beautiful City, intent on enforcement.

Fully metallized, Mad Metal Robot swang his arms in time with the other Razormen as they marched. Nothing happened inside Mad Metal Robot's head that wasn't happening in all the other Razormen's heads. Nothing happening inside his head hadn't been put there by Conan Overlord and his nefarious team of Mentotects. Mad Metal Robot was precisely as aware of his actions as a punched card is of the punch. Except...

Tents, and easels and trestle tables and free-standing gazebos there were in the plaza and paintings and wickerwork and polished stones with googly eyes also. A craft fair was in progress.

Each nick-nack and gewgaw was recorded and transmitted through a Razorman's camera eye and each objet assessed.

Flip Crame, a small wiry man in a self consciously paint strewn smock stood back resignedly as Mad Metal Robot selected and slashed through a canvas with his razorblade fingertips.

"Bad thing" Mad Metal explained fixing Flip with a steely stare, the only stare he was capable of, through the newly created gaps in the picture. He pointed at a china figurine of a milkmaid. "Good thing" he explained further, and withdrawing his razorblades he picked up the kitsch objet and carefully placed it on one of the automatic trolleys that followed each of the Razormen around.

Flip Crame withdrew his resignation and began to cry. "but that is just junk! The painting, it was special... I did it for, you know... I thought he'd like it".

Mad Metal Robot directed his ocular apparatus towards the stall holder’s damp face. "Bad thing. Wants mirrors, not impressions" and he stopped. The stall holder was looking at him gone out. This was the fullest explanation a Razorman had given for anything in living memory.

Other people were looking and the other Razormen were looking too.

"Bad things" said Mad Metal Robot, and he tipped the stall holder’s table over and stamped on the remaining items with his blunt metal boots.

The other Razormen tipped over the other tables and started slashing at everything that could be slashed and soon the craft fair was a collection of torn tent-cloth, broken unrecognisable things, and distraught organisers, and the bank of dog-brains in serial hook-up with the City's surveillance system that kept the citizens up to date with current events reported the occurrence along with the humidity and the wind speed and the temperature at various locations and the price of eggs and the discovery of a murdered pornbroker and the departures and arrivals of the Trolli™cars and the jabbering of priests and the fluctuation in the pigeon population and the regular population scrolled past it all.

A punched card feels no pain or pride. No shame. Mad Metal Robot felt them all just enough for denial. As the other glittering Razormen enforced and intimidated, and he enforced and intimidated in his turn, he recognised himself momentarily and thought of the continual monitoring of his BPM and temp and more by Conan Overlord's anethical Mentotects and repeated the Razorman mantra and cut and intimidated and cut and intimidated as exactly like the other Razormen as he could.

Saturnalia Brandyfurt sipped at her choco-latte with Nu*quat™ in a café at the edge of the same plaza and murmurated impulsively "Looks like the Razormen found another bad thing." and having hit send experienced a small unfamiliar sensation not unlike vertigo and a little like pride.

Oblivious to the consequences of her soon to be subsequent actions she dropped some creds into the café servodrone's gaping slot and adopted a curious expression. What was the bad thing that had provoked the Razormen this time?

This seemed a reasonable question. She neglected to wonder if it was also a wise question, and so she set off across the plaza to ask it.

Flip Crame smiled sadly at his robot companion with whom he often exchanged wry banter highlighting the subtle differences between human and robot psychology.

"I'm a bit upset" he said.

"I'm not" replied his robot companion.

Flip was a fair artist. To be precise, he was a craft fair artist. He could stick googly eyes to polished stones like nobody's business and on a good day could produce a recognisable portrait, but he suspected he was never going to be hung in a gallery with walls that didn't flap in the breeze. He was glad to be able to survive and even live a little on his remuneration from his supervisory job at the shitworks and making nice things was really just an outlet.

Occasionally he had muttered to his robot companion that it would be cool if someone paid attention to his art but he now realised what had always been plain to most people in this crazy brutalistic future city so unlike the relaxed and egalitarian utopia in which we live, gentle reader: Life as an artist was dangerous. Even the purest, most noble, most open-hearted work could bring the wrath of reasonless automatons upon its naïve not to say reckless progenitor.

The young lady's face had seemed familiar, and she was pretty, though once his robot companion had pointed it out, he thought, perhaps in a vacuous sort of way, and he, Flip Crame, would have been flattered by her questions on any other day, on any day that hadn't involved the perfectly legal though in his opinion unwarranted destruction of the work that had occupied most of his evenings and weekends from Janissary to Fapruary, and also some stuff he'd found or knocked up quickly to make up the numbers, of which he was less proud but still. But this was not such a day and hadn't been for a good twenty minutes and he had answered curtly and bid her adieu.

As he sat among the wreckage of his and everyone else's hard work Flip Crame considered gluing some random bits of it together and calling it an installation, but the thought of another critical mauling by the Razormen chased him and his robot companion, counterpointing tartly about feelings and their lack, out of the plaza and through the windswept streets of the darkening city long before the rad-rats and tandem-constrictors oozed out of their spider-holes and devoured the impromptu collage the Razormen had made of his and everyone else's long winter's work, and everything else that was left lying around, and occasionally each other, as was their wont.

Saturnalia Brandyfurt panted in front of her fabulously appointed apartment's entry-sphincter and visualated the mandala that would unseal the thought-lock.

Nothing happened.

Nothing had never happened when she had visualated her mandala before, but it struck Saturnalia that this was not actually to be considered a surprising occurrence given that since leaving the café in the Plaza her Thing™ had failed to drop her murmurations, ping-back her promo dips and pops or authorise her ride on the Trolli™cars not to mention the arrival at the Trolli™car stop of a platoon or whatever of Razormen and the silly way everyone thought they were looking for her and she'd been forced to run in between the waiting Trollis™ abandoning her Flit-Flots™ and covering her head with a piece of paper to avoid drawing attention make her way sweatily and nude from the ankles down through several unsavoury banlieue even venturing for a couple of blocks below street level into the undercity about which boy I could write a book some of that stuff disgust you to see it, and then emerging from a seedy culvert half a mile from her apartment to see her face appearing on billboards but in a double-plus ungood way with words like "wanted" and "anathema" under it and somehow looking less vacuously pretty and more, well, evil, like when you freeze a frame from a vid look at a pretty girl but with the subject's eyelids caught half narrowed half open make them look shifty or retarded and discourages you from freezing another frame and then the building's Commisionaut had refused her entry and she'd had to break in round the back shocking how easy that was and even use the stairs but she had held fast to the now clearly mistaken notion that if she could Just Make It Home she could Call Someone, Fix Her Thing™, and Somehow Be Alright.

Vid-stalks craned in the corridor, blunt feet stepped the stairs and the travelthroat burped ominously.

Double-plus ungood, thought Saturnalia.

Double-plus unperson, thought the City.

The Dazzling Apartimento of Conan Overlord will return.

#sf #shortstory #fiction #apartimento #surreal #satire #kitten

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idesigncafe · 7 years ago

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Overcoming Content Challenges

Authors: Steve Glancey and Bryan Meszaros from the Digital Signage Connection

Although often relegated to the back seat, the process of content creation drives the success of a digital signage program. It is therefore essential to develop a mental map of each component stage, from strategizing and budgeting, through development and optimization, and to address the unique requirements and challenges of each one. With a clear plan in place, potential stall-outs are easily avoided, and obstacles, overcome. What follows is a collection of tips and tricks that we have developed in the course of our experience, and found helpful in navigating some of the difficulties that inevitably accompany a creative undertaking. We here pass them on to you to help better position you for your next endeavor.

Obstacle #1: Project Ownership

The nature of project ownership is critical and, unfortunately, often blurred in understanding. Is the person being said to "own" a project responsible, by definition, for all aspects of its design and production? In a word: no! Rather, they manage and monitor the numerous interlocking parts of the creative engine - the gathering of assets, messaging, design, and approval - each of which is the domain of a different person, or team. This last, the granting of approval, is generally understood, and intended as the concluding step. However, its finality hinges upon the clear delineation and coordination of the preceding steps, without which requests for further changes are far more likely to arise. Changing even one textual element could disrupt the flow, look and feel of the whole product, and force the designer to go back and rework it from the ground up to accommodate the change.

Obstacle #2: Content Strategy

Designers create content within "closed environments;" they alone experience, and interact with their creations during the design process. Yet given that their creations are ultimately destined for display in "open environments" subject to such variables as viewing distance, demographics, audience journey, time of day etc., it's important to keep in mind that every content piece adhering perfectly to fundamental principles of design in the abstract carries no guarantee of effectiveness when it goes "live." All these variables, and more, should be researched and applied to your content: type, structure, design, refresh rate etc. as they will deeply impact the audience engagement with, and effectiveness of the intended message.

Obstacle #3: Playlist Strategy

Optimizing your playlist requires the delicate counterbalancing of numerous considerations, all within the framework of your budget and network objectives. Loop length, for example, must be in step with audience dwell time. Make your playlist too long, and it will be a waste of network resources; too short, and you will forfeit network opportunities. Couple dwell time with the return rate of your audience; multiply by an effective frequency of 4-7 (the number of times a viewer needs to be exposed to a message before it is thoroughly communicated); and add to that any wish to day-part, or employ triggers, feeds, or logic that activates different content depending on the time, or viewer body-language or demographics and you will begin to get the measure of what it is to develop a strategic plan that truly capitalizes on the possibilities of digital signage.

Obstacle #4: Gathering Assets

The process of gathering assets is more complicated than the phrase would suggest, as they are not, in fact, necessarily useable simply by virtue of being "digital" - a reality difficult to concede for clients unfamiliar with concepts such as image quality, and display resolution. Fortunately, a little proactive education explaining such fundamentals within the specific context of your plan to develop content for a client (using which editing program, and in which output format) often goes a long way towards bringing about the submission better-quality files, even if they are not all vector graphics, files of 300dpi or more are ideal. Of course, there is always the possibility that there are no usable assets to uncover. Sometimes the image quality of a graphic is too poor, or the asset does not exist in a version that supports editing, requiring you to start from scratch. The bottom line is: avoid assuming anything about your client's level of knowledge or organization, and be prepared to explain why their idea and/or materials may need to be scrapped or revised.

Obstacle #5: Content Licensing

Content licensing does not abide by the "finders, keepers" rule. Possession of an asset does not necessarily confer the right to display it in a commercial setting, even if it was acquired "for free" - a reality sometimes difficult to accept in a world where side-stepping costs is so often possible. However, several lawsuits over the years have been brought against digital signage companies whose network owners failed to negotiate an agreement (either in the form of a one-time payment, or an ongoing subscription) with the owner of every asset in their playlist. Given the costs incurred by such a lawsuit, it's essential to address licensing costs early and often, and to ensure that a line item appears in the budget from the very beginning. "But that CNN feed says that it's free..." Look again at the terms. Free news feeds, and most free or inexpensive weather feeds are available only for non-commercial use.

Obstacle #6: Creative Budgeting

Talking money is like talking politics: everyone has an opinion, and no one is right. The question of budget must therefore be addressed both early in the development process, and regularly throughout the lifecycle of a project, for content carries a cost not only to create, but to maintain. The viewing frequency, and relationship it bears with its physical context give it a limited shelf-life, and while you would ideally have a surplus of content from which to chose, and/or assets with an automated feature, the project will, in fact, require ongoing programming, editing and management. True, most CMS (content management systems) now support advance scheduling, but someone still needs to oversee that task. The success or failure of a digital signage project therefore will depend on the project owners ability to accurately and creatively manage the fixed initial costs and variable ongoing costs to collect, license, and schedule content assets all powered by the most costly line item: human capital.

Obstacle #7: Stretching the Dollars

Were money not an obstacle, we would all simply hire ABC or Lucasfilm to build out our playlists, and keep them fresh. But money is an obstacle. Budgetary constraints come into play for everyone at some point. That is why I am a proponent of building playlists with an eye to maximizing value, as opposed to maxing-out one's resources. This can be done in a variety of ways, including investing up-front in custom templates; reusing assets that your company originally used elsewhere; leveraging user-generated, and data-driven content; strategically recycling content; and outsourcing parts of your playlist to licensed feeds or competitively priced creative agencies.

Obstacle #8: CMS and Hardware

This subject, once broached, easily leads the ensuing discussion down the proverbial rabbit hole, but my goal is simply to highlight a few of the cascading effects of your choice in CMS, and hardware. With respect to CMS, some solutions are new, and less refined due either to their time on the market, or target simplicity, and for content managers posting only simple messages, they present an appropriate solution. However, with simplicity come limitations, and complex networks may feel the lack of editing and programming options, readymade app stores, KPIs, feeds, triggers, localization, advertising market platform integration, weighted playlists and logic playback configuration. They may also feel limited by the breath of file-type options, API, security settings, reliability, remote management features, emergency messaging capabilities, etc. If so, there are other more established, robust CMS to consider.

The playback quality of the hardware you choose is also something to consider carefully, as it has a profound impact of viewers' visual engagement with your message. And finally, careful thought must be put into your connectivity strategy. Will you connect your system via Wi-Fi for which you pay with a monthly bill, or through a mobile provider that you pay by the gigabyte - a costly proposition if your playlist includes large video files or frequent content updates. There is no right answer, just the solution that best fits your content strategy.

Obstacle #9: Optimization

The effectiveness of your content is in direct measure to the quality of your messaging, so even the most thoughtfully designed content campaign can benefit from regular, controlled tests of its effectiveness. A/B testing or before and after comparisons are the easiest, most affordable kind of assessment, and can bring to light adjustments likely to increase the ROI (return on investment) of the campaign at hand. For example, how did one store do vs. the other without the promotion running or using the same content in two different locations with a slight change to the CTA? Audience engagement and reaction are surprisingly difficult to anticipate; that which is relevant, which resonates with viewers, and speaks to them in "their language" changes all the time, so if effectiveness is your end, self-assessment is your means.

Obstacle #10: Creating Value

What objective do you aim to meet by means of your digital signage network? From your viewers' point of view, a digital sign is not much different from a traditional printed sign. Both boil down to a message on a wall, and therein lies their value for audience and advertiser alike. Why then is so much attention and money diverted to the frame and mounting instead of the message? Mounts, frames, and hardware are inherently depreciating assets. It is the quality of your content strategy and execution that will make your 2-million dollar investment in digital signage worth 1 million, or 5. Funneling every piece of content through your network objective (ROO/ROI) is therefore the aim to which you should direct your primary energy as a network operator on day one and year five.

Interactive Design Cafe provides end-to-end digital signage solutions with the latest touchscreen displays and multi-screen video walls, to glasses-free 3D signage and holographic advertising players. We also offer both out-of-the-box software solutions, as well as fully customized software, while specializing in branding, customer experience and service design. We are a design consultancy, not just a “sales” operation, so we often fly out to our clients location to install hardware / software, and we strive to develop long lasting relationships with our clients. Our goal is to provide the most innovative and engaging experience for your brand with top notch service and support.

To learn more about Interactive Design Cafe and how we can help your business, please visit our website http://www.interactivedesigncafe.com

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amazingsubahu · 6 years ago

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How to live Healthy and Happy life

How to Live Healthy and Happy life

Hello Lovers of Life, (Do you Really Love Yourself?) I have discovered many things in the quest for better living. In the search of How to Live Healthy and Happy life, I have found that Conscious and healthy ways of living are the only way to achieve it. Its process includes questioning and inquiring about everything we are connected or involved in, then contemplating, experimenting and learning from everyone and everything. Our life is a continuous process of exploring and learning new things. Only alive beings are growing, changing and expanding, it never happens to deads.

health word cloud How to start exploring, about yourself? The method I have used for this is inquiring, researching, experimenting and learning new things. I started it from comprehensive health check-up of my entire body. Our body is the door to our existence and we know very little about it. We don't have any idea about how this most sophisticated and complex machine i.e. our body works. My Health diagnostic reports given me sufficient hints about my current health status, I have learned that what are the potential threats growing inside me. The check-up enabled me, to know what problems are growing inside my body. Have you ever asked you How to Live Healthy and Happy life? We never asked this question to ourselves until we caught by unfortunate diseases or loss of health due to our ignorance and unhealthy practices. You can make any change in your life when you know about the problem, if you are not aware of it, you cannot do anything about it, and ignorance is not bliss. We suffer because we are ignorant or avoiding things appearing and informing us in different ways. So every accomplishment starts with knowing the facts and status of what you are now, and when you have sufficient data and facts, you can plan and create a strategy to remove threats and build what you have ever dreamed about. And it is true about every aspect of our life, whether it is a goal of holistic living, building a healthy and happy life, or achieving any other goal. I have accepted the things revealed through my comprehensive health checkup and prepared myself for the necessary changes in my habits, routine, eating habits, foods in the most beneficial and scientific way. This is the proper way I have discovered for me to grow and expand upon all the possible dimensions of life. It has been practiced by me and worked well and it will work for everyone. Our health is the most important aspect of our life. Our physical and mental health decides what we can do in our lives and how much we can enjoy with what we have now.

The process of Transformation It starts by checking the status of your physical and mental health, after knowing and doing the necessary changes, you enabled yourself to heal and help yourself. It will help you to overcome all the complications, and hurdles in the growth and fulfillment of life. The goal is to live happy, healthy life abundantly, consciously and joyously. Do things which are most important for your healthy and happy living, and do not follow anybody blindly, experiment and learn from every genuine and trustworthy source, and always follow your intuition. It will be possible that these things may prepare you all to become more curious and responsible towards your own life and it starts by taking care of your body and mind. If you understand it properly, it will prepare you, to ask, to know and discover yourselves and to create the life of your dreams and answer for your quest for How to live Healthy and happy life. This will help you to meet, the goals of holistic living and fulfilled life and a uniform harmonious growth in every walk of life. We all have lots of stories of hurts and failures, and a lot of tragic and unfortunate events and losses, due to our unconscious and unhealthy ways of living. Your experience and current status tell about what kind of people, thoughts, habits, interests, influences, and circumstances you are associated with now and in the past. But after going through all kinds of losses, difficulties and challenges you can recover and rejuvenate yourself by freeing yourself from all the bullshit, you are carrying with you now and had in the past. You need to make a promise to yourself that you will not allow anyone and anything which can harm your body and mind in any way from this point forward and it starts with you. If you do not do it for yourself, you cannot make it for anyone else.

If you are ready to know and to accept all the mistakes, sick habits and activities, associations which made your life miserable, then you have great chances to make your life more juicy and beautiful. This will be possible only by recognizing and accepting the problems inside your body and mind, you must check it by the impact of all your habits, associations and activities you are doing round the clock. You are the biggest friend and enemy of yourself. You need to free yourself from the grip of all of it, which does not serve you any more to keep you in the right direction and towards the goal of happy and healthy living. If you made these changes totally, honestly and sincerely you can see that you have totally changed your life and experience, you can see the difference in you that what you are now and were before. It is great to be lived, survived and grown in so many difficult environments and with a variety of people in your surroundings. It's also great to have to smile, still on your face and trust in life and all gifts it has given to you and greatness and divinity of human spirits.

What do you need to make it a reality in your life, How to Live Healthy and Happy life? You must prepare yourselves for greater endeavors and to create outstanding results for you. your life is a continuous experimentation and learning through a lot of trial and errors to attain and deliver the best from yourselves. Why is it so? the answer is as simple as the question is; it needs a total change in ways of seeing and doing things in the first place. And only those who are ready to transform will be capable of making it a reality in their own life. We all dream about it, for a better, greater & fulfilled life. But there are always only a few in millions can make it a reality. You can be one of them who can make it possible anytime. It starts and depends on you totally. What is your attitude towards your own life and being? What are you doing to your body-mind 24X7/365? Your life is what you put in it, knowingly / unknowingly, intentionally / unintentionally, consciously / unconsciously. It creates the final outcome of it. The input decides and creates the output. A simple rule of life, if you are getting wrong results, you are not doing things in the right way, you must check and change your approach towards your living, thinking and doing everything. Then you can witness it, you get what you want, just learn about yourself first.

These are the factors, responsible for all the problems and losses you have in the course of your life, and the unconscious and unhealthy way of living is the main cause of it. You are one single organism the body-mind-spirit if any wrong happened/done with any of the others are also affected at the same moment and lose their essence and strength and get sick and degraded. Your all layers are deeply connected with your being and into the existence, you are not separate from anything in this whole universe. Be aware of it and check what is going on with you.

The key to Blissful life If you want better things to happen to your life, you must make space for good people and healthy things/habits/practices. And it starts with eating good, natural, fresh and healthy nutritional foods. If your body is free from toxins and malnutrition, you will do better things in life, to do and achieve everything in your life you need a good healthy body and a sound mind. You must adapt and accept a healthy and conscious way of living and get rid of all non-essentials in your life. This includes - change in attitudes, thoughts, habits, activities, routines, desires, associations (physical, mental spiritual). You should free yourselves of everything deceased, outdated and destructive, by throwing it out and replacing with life positive, healthy and nourishing foods, activities and associations. It is a necessity, without freeing yourselves from ugly, suffocating and degrading garbage, you are carrying and consuming round the clock, in terms of food, habits, association, thoughts, you will never get healthy, fulfilled and blissful life. Always remember the right things are right, even nobody is caring about it, and the wrong things are wrong, even everybody is doing it. People prefer alcohol over juices, cola over coconut water, So if you are doing so, it's time to awake and change it. if you want to live longer, disease-free, Healthy and happy life. We need to check this out in ourselves and must do the necessary actions to free from all of it. As an example salad is 1000% times better than McDonald fries and burger, whether you can see it or not. If you do not apply these necessary changes, will not uplift and grow in higher planes of your existence and will never be able to grow in developed and more peaceful and pleasant space of your being. But if you want to live as best in all species as human beings, you must be ready to learn and practice the essentials of life and to make compulsory changes in you without any exception and excuses.

The transformation happened to them who are prepared and devoted to it So, Dear friends, be ready for a total makeover and transformation of your life in body, mind, and spirit by changing your attitudes to life and all the physical and mental habits/activities. If you want to grow and acquire higher state of conscious and healthy living before you die, you must think and do in the right direction, at the right time before things get more complicated and incurable. You must care about it, if you do not hear the call of your life, will suffer from unrecoverable losses. If you think that you are living a healthy and better life, but you are mistaking most of the times. How ignorant and unaware you are of your physical, mental and spiritual status? You know nothing about its healthy or diseased state. Do you know how it is now? Take a comprehensive health checkup to know it., then you can do the necessary corrective actions to transform your body mind and health status. We didn't learn and perhaps forget that life is a constant search for excellence and a necessity to upgrade, to advance and learn new things and ways for better living and fulfillment. Hope you will get, what is really good for you, by thinking, searching, experimenting, and learning from all discussed here, you can help yourself by doing the right things, in the right directions, consciously, honestly, lovingly and regularly.

Always remember it's your life, you should value it, and be always ready to give it the best you can. It will return to a thousand fold back to you. And it starts with caring your body and mind. Stay connected and read the posts about the valuable life-changing activities and methods. I have applied for a long course of my life. You may get benefit by thinking, researching and applying them as per your requirements and a need for a positive and healthy change. Your life will be better as much consciously and carefully, lovingly you behave and treat it, this is the secret of How to Live Healthy and Happy Life. So, be ready for a good, conscious living, it leads us towards the road to excellence and ultimate bliss. Wish you a Happy & Healthy and Conscious life. Lovingly yours Amazingsubahu join our FB group B.F.I.M for better health-related information and guidance. Read the full article

#abundance #conscious #diagnostics #health #healthcheckup #healthyliving #HowtoliveHealthyandHappylife #life #transform

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williamsjoan · 6 years ago

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Eon’s GCHD MK-II Review — Unlocking the GameCube’s Full Potential

I love the GameCube. I grew up on my Game Boy systems and the Nintendo 64, but the GameCube defined much of my gaming love to this day. I shout the good word of Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door from the rooftops and grunt when Nintendo ignores my pleas for a spiritual successor. Wind Waker will always be my favorite Zelda game, even if others have surpassed it critically. I remember playing Mario Party with the microphone accessory or being captivated by the planet of Talon IV in Metroid Prime.

All this love has also been recently twisted by crippling nostalgia. I have a severe case of it. Throw anything from my childhood on screen and I will likely be drawn towards it. That’s why I have been slowly circling down the rabbit hole of resurrecting old game consoles onto modern HD displays for years now.

My entry point to this niché hobby was a YouTube channel called My Life In Gaming. Coury and Marc run the channel, creating highly educational videos about bringing classic consoles back to life on modern HD TVs. I immediately jumped to their video on the best solutions for the GameCube and found out the financial horror associated with bringing the GameCube into the modern era. Nintendo’s official component cables cost an arm and a leg, going for $250+ on eBay. To get an HDMI port for your GameCube a few years ago required physically modding the system. I nearly pulled the trigger on a roughly $160 mod, but backed off after more research and not being keen on physically altering my childhood system.

Through all this time in the rabbit hole, I came across a new company early in 2018 that was offering a plug-and-play option for HDMI cables on the GameCube. EON created the GCHD, a tiny adapter that plugged into the digital out port on original GameCube systems and allowed native 480p output for $150. Just like the physical mod, I nearly pulled the trigger a few times, but it was never in the budget.

Ten months later EON revealed an upgraded version of their adapter. The GCHD MK-II (MK-II from here on out for simplicity) was revealed on November 15 and offered a couple new features and refinements over their original model. We were fortunate here at DualShockers to receive a consumer unit a couple days ahead of its official release on December 15, 2018. Selling for the same price of $150, I wanted to find out if the MK-II is really worth the cost to bring my beloved GameCube onto my HD TV.

Before we dive further in, let’s talk specs. The GameCube is capable of 480p digital output. This is thanks to a snazzy port on original model GameCubes that was meant for stereoscopic 3D. That tech was never fully developed, but the port offers access to the GameCube’s lossless digital signal. That’s five years before the PS3! The MK-II uses that port, along with an onboard FPGA chip with custom version of the open-source GCVideo software, to take the digital signal and output it over HDMI with zero input lag. This does not upscale the video to 720p, 1080p, or 4K. You’ll have to use an external scaler for that. The MK-II also allows for analog output via the common red, blue, green component cables meant for the Wii. There is also a new analog/optical audio port for plugging in headphones or a surround sound system.

The MK-II comes packaged in a tiny GameCube designed box. There are three color choices meant to match your hardware; purple, black, and silver. EON let me pick the black edition to match my GameCube. The back of the box details all the features of the adapter, while detailing the easy setup. All that is inside is the MK-II itself and a tiny instruction booklet.

I popped the MK-II out of its box and immediately went to plug it in the back of my GameCube. This adapter only works with DOL-001 model GameCube systems, which will have the digital out port. You’ll definitely want to make sure you have this model GameCube before buying the adapter. Initially, I had trouble getting the MK-II into the two ports on the back. I had to unplug the system entirely and get it in the light to make sure I was lining it up correctly. Once I got it lined up, it fit perfectly and snuggly.

After plugging it in, using it was nearly a breeze. All you have to do is plug in an HDMI cable and boot the system up. It automatically works and displays the GameCube at 480i. To get 480p to work on games, just hold the B button as a game boots up and select “yes” to progressive mode. I found that most time the GameCube prompted me whether or not I held down the B button, but to guarantee it, I’d recommend holding the button down. I say nearly a breeze because I had some trouble syncing a universal remote to access the MK-II’s settings.

I thought I had a remote lying around, but it wasn’t “universal.” I went to Target and bought the cheapest one they had, but it wouldn’t work either. I had to go back to Target, return the $7 remote and swap it for a $15 remote. This remote worked after I read the remote’s instruction manual on how to sync the thing. This was tedious mostly because I didn’t own a universal remote. I was also sick at the time, so that didn’t help matters.

“…using it was nearly a breeze. All you have to do is plug in an HDMI cable and boot the system up.”

Once the remote was synced, I was able to access the settings for the MK-II. Its feature list isn’t too extensive, but it does offer some interesting choices. There is a line doubler for when the GameCube displays 480i content, to help create a picture quality more akin to 480p. You can turn on scanline to simulate a CRT TV. While slightly nostalgic, scanlines really shine on the GameCube’s rare 240p games and GBA games. You may adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation. There are even options for tweaking the MK-II’s on-screen display (OSD) settings, which is for the settings. Honestly, it really is plug-and-play ready, with only a few settings you may want to tweak for specific games.

The first game I booted up was The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I thought the game’s bright color palette and cel-shaded visuals would be a great test point. I’ll let the game speak for itself.

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It’s as if the old school yellow, red, white composite cables were smearing Vaseline over the game footage, dulling the colors and shapes. It blew my mind to see it in action. It took what I remember the game looking like and put it on display. And didn’t just clean up Wind Waker. All of my GameCube games, from Super Smash Bros. Melee to Metroid Prime to Paper Mario, were being displayed the way that the developers intended it to be seen. It reminded me of when I put on glasses for the first time: There was a whole world of clarity I was missing out on and I didn’t know it.

As I mentioned above, the MK-II also allows for component output. When I first heard this was one of the new additions, I questioned its inclusion. Why add the support for analog video? After mulling it over and having the MK-II in person though, its addition makes sense for the GameCube’s active and diehard community. Having these two ports allows for simultaneous, lag-free output. This makes stream/capture setups simple at events and tournaments. The GameCube and its games were also designed for old CRT displays, as HD was entering its infancy. Including component allows for the highest quality analog output for purists who want to play on CRTs and PVMs the way the designers intended. It lets users have their high-quality cake and eat it too.

But this analog path may bring up a common question- why pay $150 to have my GameCube in 480p over analog when I could just use a Wii and its component cables? All first generation Wii systems have backward compatibility with GameCube games. It really comes down to two facts. The first is that the Wii output is purely analog, with no access to the lossless digital signal. Using the MK-II gives us that pure signal, giving us a better picture via HDMI or component. The second fact opens a whole new platform of games—The Game Boy Player.

“It reminded me of when I put on glasses for the first time: There was a whole world of clarity I was missing out on and I didn’t know it.”

Back in 2003, Nintendo released the Game Boy Player, an accessory that attached to the bottom of GameCube systems and allowed Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy games to be played on the TV. As a kid, this blew my little mind. I got one for my 9th birthday and it hasn’t left my system since. Now at 24, the Game Boy Player (actually its software) leaves much to be desired.

There are homebrew software solutions, like the Game Boy Interface (GBI), that put Nintendo’s software to shame. That’s a whole different rabbit hole, but combining that GBI with the MK-II leads to incredible results.

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If the GBI is not an option, the MK-II does a decent job cleaning up the official Game Boy Player software. You can see that the smaller text becomes legible and the overall image is slightly sharper. The GBI is where the crispness of the MK-II shines with GBA games. Even with a CRT filter over the game, it is a better picture than the official software.

When it comes to the audio output, the MK-II matches the format of the video output method. Digital when over HDMI and analog when using component. There is a 3.5mm auxiliary jack for analog output to headphones. I imagine this was implemented for Melee tournaments or just tournament environments. Tune out the surroundings and really hear the game. The audio still outputs to the TV, so spectators, streaming/capturing setups still get the game audio. Even headphone splitters work!

The 3.5mm jack also doubles as a mini-TOSLINK optical audio jack, providing access to digital surround sound. I tested this out on my surround sound system with Wind Waker and Metroid Prime, both games that support Dolby Surround Pro Logic II. The games sound fuller coming out of three speakers and a subwoofer. Sound didn’t come out of my two other speakers, which is possibly due to the games not taking advantage of 5.1 surround sound. I’m not entirely sure.

“As a piece of hardware, the MK-II is sturdy, full-featured, and straight up easy to use.”

So is all this worth it? That’s probably why you read this far. Is $150 worth accessing the untapped potential of your GameCube? That’s all going to really depend on you.

As a piece of hardware, the MK-II is sturdy, full-featured, and straight up easy to use. It breathes new life into GameCube systems and is one piece that can help the console adapt to modern TVs. But how much do you love your GameCube? Do you play Melee competitively? Do you have a Game Boy Player and want to play your collection on the TV? Is the GameCube your favorite Nintendo system? If you answered yes to any of those and you truly want the best picture that your GameCube has to offer, I think the GCHD MK-II is worth every cent. It’s versatile, powerful, and easy-to-use. Most importantly, it makes the games I love look and feel their very best in a way I just didn’t think was possible.

The post Eon’s GCHD MK-II Review — Unlocking the GameCube’s Full Potential by Max Roberts appeared first on DualShockers.

Eon’s GCHD MK-II Review — Unlocking the GameCube’s Full Potential published first on https://timloewe.tumblr.com/

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zipgrowth · 6 years ago

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How Google’s Former China Chief Thinks AI Will Reshape Teaching

Artificial intelligence promises to have a dramatic—and yes, disruptive—effect on U.S. education and jobs in the next decade. But that technology won’t be entirely homegrown: Chinese companies, particularly those building products or services laced with the machine learning algorithms, are increasingly playing a role in the tools that we call “AI.”

There are few that understand what these forces mean for the world—and for education and learning—better than Kai-Fu Lee.

Lee has been an enormously influential researcher, driving forward work on AI. Originally from Taiwan, he came the U.S. at age 11 and went on to earn degrees from Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon University. He then went on to work at Apple, Microsoft and Google, where he served as president of Google China. He started a venture capital firm in 2009 based in Beijing called Sinoventures. He’s written eight top-selling books in China and has more than 50 million followers on social media.

His latest book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order, is almost two books in one: It tells the story of the development of artificial intelligence and why we should pay attention to this work.

In the past 2.5 years, billions of dollars and countless researcher hours have been poured into developing “narrow AI”—specific applications that AI can do better than any human—or even team of humans. All that has led Lee to write this book and to make a stunning prediction: That in the next 15 years, close to half of today’s jobs in the US will be done by machines powered by artificial intelligence.

EdSurge caught up with Lee in California this week in Palo Alto. Here’s why he believes that AI—and particularly AI developed by Chinese companies—is fated to rock our world, and how we learn.

Listen to the discussion on this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. The transcript below has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

EdSurge: In your book you tell us that in 15 years, close to 50 percent of the jobs in the U.S. will be able to be replaced by AI. That's still a pretty big prediction. Why do you think that’s going to happen?

Lee: Because of AI super-performance. Part of the reason I call the book AI Superpowers is that AI does have superpowers. Not in terms of the science-fiction robot overlords. I mean more that in a single task, with a huge amount of training data, AI is beating humans by unbelievable proportions.

For example, we have an investment in a loan application that uses AI to make loans to people who request $200 or $500, and it's sent to them instantly over the phone. You would think such an app would have a default rate of 70 or 80 percent, but it has a default rate of 3 percent, because it's able to really use all the data about the user to make a very, very safe decision when the loan is given.

With capabilities like that, why would there ever be another loan officer? Why would there ever be another policeman whose job is to recognize faces? Now, there are other things policemen could do, but part of the tasks is gone, and so is part of the workforce.

Let's talk about education. If you could wave a magic wand, what would be the ideal classroom?

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd make everything go away and start from scratch.

Everything?

Everything. But I can't. So, that's just a dream. But everything has to fit within the current expectations and environment. If you think about how everything has progressed, the way an office used to look like, and what it looks like now, and if you think about almost any profession, it's been completely transformed by technology over the last hundred years. If you look at the picture in the classroom today, versus a hundred years ago, they are the same.

In the average classroom in let's say in the Midwest U.S., or middle China, you will see one teacher and 50 students, or 20 students, each behind a desk, raising their hands, and the teacher lecturing. Now obviously, there are good teachers, there are teachers who go in-depth, who tell good stories and so on. But the lecturing should be done by the masters. It should be getting a physics lecturer from the Nobel prize winner, who also is a great teacher. Everyone should be learning from that teacher. Perhaps in a new form that we are investing in, in China, which is a one-to-1,000, student-teacher ratio.

One-to-1000? Say more about how that could possibly work, because that sounds as rote as possible. One person lecturing to a crowd of 1,000?

Lectures should be given by masters. If you think about Khan Academy, you know what an amazing teacher can do, compared to regular teachers. In the one-to-1000 classroom, we also have teaching assistants. So it's not like you're watching a giant video because at the end of let's say at 30-minute lecture, there's another 30 minutes for someone close to you to interactively take questions and help you with points that you didn't get. So that kind of combination should replace the current type of lectures that people get.

And I would also argue, it would become more effective because the top teachers are going to be very good in getting the point across. And then, the local teachers can be trained to be teaching assistants, so a job that's much easier for each teacher to learn to do. So it's a split of responsibility, and the students ought to understand the subject much faster, and therefore have more time for other activities, which really is the core and essence of the future of education.

Another innovation that we've seen, particularly in China, has been the use of artificial intelligence to monitor facial expressions of students. Talk a little bit about the pros and cons of using AI to monitor students' reactions.

If you think about the job of a teacher today, we just took away the lecture part and turned it into an assistant job. Teachers also have to take attendance. AI can recognize students and the way in which they participate, and it can certainly save time from taking attendance.

Now, some parents will start to worry, say, "Wait a minute, I don't want my kids captured on video all the time." But the benefit is that the system will know the comprehension level of the students, not just by how they do on exam. By that time, it's too late. If they're sleeping, or not paying attention in class, there can be gentle ways to deal with that fact. A teaching assistant might offer after-school tutoring. There might be apps that the student can go home and catch up. There might be a recording of the lecture that a student missed. And it's important that the teacher knows the individual progress and competency of each student so that students can be grouped in the super class, and the class that's doing average, and the class that needs remedial help.

So those are all possible things that can be done. For people who are concerned about the surveillance nature of such an application, [it can be developed] so that there is no such nature.

How would you do that?

Well, don't rat on the students. Don't tell their parents. Don't use it for punishment. Use it to enhance learning.

The output of the AI is up to the designers of the AI software. So only have the software developers target on improved comprehension and participation of the students—not in a punitive way.

Knowing the education systems, whether it's in the U.S. or in China, do you think that we have a gentle enough institutional framework that will use this kind of powerful technology in a way that will protect students?

In U.S., you do. In China, probably not yet, because China's more rote learning. But interestingly, going back to what else AI can do, in China, we're using this to currently just to take attendance, nothing more. But [AI] will have to be cautiously expanded.

Let’s switch subjects to turn to the entrepreneurial world. Your book is a fascinating description of the “gladiator capitalism” in China these days. If you were to advise a startup company, maybe even a startup company in education technology, that's thinking about going into China, what would be your advice to them? I would advise, don't.

Don’t come to China. Why?

Because the education system is so different. Most U.S.-based edtech companies are focused on some element related to the American system: to how to sell software to schools in a particular city or county, and how to do payment within schools.

The Chinese system is very different. Schools have a very small budget and their approach to teaching is more rigid and not as open to adopting new software unless it immediately leads to better performance, better outcomes. Chinese educators are very outcome focused. If you want to show them something that improves the kids' grades measurably, they'll look at it, anything else, for productivity and things, it's not clear they'll use it.

The Chinese way to monetize education is through parents. Chinese parents are willing to spend whatever it takes, half of their monthly salary, if the kids can get into better schools. Because China has such a focus on education, the Chinese society depends so much on education performance as a predictor of future success—material success and income.

When you look at the opportunities for edtech and AI in the U.S. market, do you see those two factors as hindering the development of AI here?

I think edtech in the U.S. is not a hot area for investment. The kind of companies we have seen fall into two categories: One is selling stuff to schools—and those tend to be productivity, administrative things that are very hard to monetize because you have to have a dedicated sales force for a modest budget of the schools. The other set of companies we've seen are companies that aim to disrupt education—companies like Minerva and Outschool—which are incredibly aspirational and exciting. But it will take decades to see the outcome and change the way people think.

The positive side of this is that the American education system is so good. So to tweak it is not very lucrative. And it, is very hard to disrupt because it's already quite good. I know that many Americans feel that American education is no good. It may be no good, but it's the best in the world.

Your company, Sinovation Ventures, has invested in, on the order of about 10 different U.S. education technology companies. Tell us a little bit about what you've been looking for, and are you investing in them because you believe in their potential in the U.S. market? In the Chinese market? In the worldwide market? All of the above? none of the above?

We have invested in quite a few edtech companies. And we thought there were linkages we could draw and perhaps bring the technologies to China. In some cases, we just wanted to invest to learn about what's happening here. So we've given our U.S. team a pretty small budget.

How Google’s Former China Chief Thinks AI Will Reshape Teaching published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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filtration-products · 6 years ago

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A big new home for the ultrasmall

Nanotechnology, the cutting-edge research field that explores ultrasmall materials, organisms, and devices, has now been graced with the largest, most sophisticated, and most accessible university research facility of its kind in the U.S.: It is the new $400 million MIT.nano building, which will have its official opening ceremonies next week.

The state-of-the-art facility includes two large floors of connected clean-room spaces that are open to view from the outside and available for use by an extraordinary number and variety of researchers across the Institute. It also features a whole floor of undergraduate chemistry teaching labs, and an ultrastable basement level dedicated to electron microscopes and other exquisitely sensitive imaging and measurement tools.

“In recent decades, we have gained the ability to see into the nanoscale with breathtaking precision. This insight has led to the development of tools and instruments that allow us to design and manipulate matter like nature does, atom by atom and molecule by molecule,” says Vladimir Bulović, the Fariborz Maseeh Professor in Emerging Technology and founding director of MIT.nano. “MIT.nano has arrived on campus at the dawn of the Nano Age. In the decades ahead, its open-access facilities for nanoscience and nanoengineering will equip our community with instruments and processes that can further harness the power of nanotechnology in service to humanity’s greatest challenges.”

“In terms of vibrations and electromagnetic noise, MIT.nano may be the quietest space on campus. But in a community where more than half of recently tenured faculty do work at the nanoscale, MIT.nano’s superb shared facilities guarantee that it will become a lively center of community and collaboration, says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “I am grateful to the exceptional team — including Provost Martin Schmidt, Founding Director Vladimir Bulovic, and many others — that delivered this extraordinarily sophisticated building on an extraordinarily inaccessible construction site, making a better MIT so we can help to make a better world.”

Accessible and flexible

The 214,000-square-foot building, with its soaring glass facades, sophisticated design and instrumentation, and powerful air-exchange systems, lies at the heart of campus and just off the Infinite Corridor. It took shape during six years of design and construction, and was delivered exactly on schedule and on budget, a rare achievement for such a massive and technologically complex construction project.

“MIT.nano is a game-changer for the MIT research enterprise,” says Vice President for Research Maria Zuber. “It will provide measurement and imaging capabilities that will dramatically advance science and technology in disciplines across the Institute.”

At the heart of the building are two levels of clean rooms — research environments in which the air is continuously scrubbed and replaced to maintain a standard that allows no more than 100 particles of 0.5 microns or larger within a cubic foot of air. To achieve such cleanliness, work on the building has included strict filtration measures and access restrictions for more than a year, and at the moment, with the spaces not yet in full use, they far exceed that standard.

All of the lab and instrumentation spaces in the building will be used as shared facilities, accessible to any MIT researcher who needs the specialized tools that will be installed there over the coming months and years. The tools will be continually upgraded, as the building is designed to be flexible and ready for the latest advances in equipment for making, studying, measuring, and manipulating nanoscale objects — things measured in billionths of a meter, whether they be technological, biological, or chemical.

Many of the tools and instruments to be installed in MIT.nano are so costly and require so much support in services and operations that they would likely be out of reach for a single researcher or team. One of the instruments now installed and being calibrated in the basement imaging and metrology suites — sitting atop a 5-million-pound slab of concrete to provide the steadiest base possible — is a cryogenic transmission electron microscope. This multimillion dollar instrument is hosted in an equally costly room with fine-tuned control of temperature and humidity, specialized features to minimize the mechanical and electromagnetic interference, and a technical support team. The device, one of two currently being installed in MIT.nano, will enable detailed 3-D observations of cells or materials held at very low liquid-nitrogen temperatures, giving a glimpse into the exquisite nanoscale features of the soft-matter world.

Almost half of the MIT.nano’s footage is devoted to lab space — 100,000 square feet of it — which is about 100 times larger in size than the typical private lab space of a young experimental research group at MIT, Bulović says. Private labs typically take a few years to build out, and once in place often house valuable equipment that is idle for at least part of the time. It will similarly take a few years to fully build out MIT.nano’s shared labs, but Bulović expects that the growing collection of advanced instruments will rarely be idle. The instrument sets will be selected and designed to drastically improve a researcher’s ability to hit the ground running with access to the best tools from the start, he says.

Principal investigators often “find there’s a benefit to contributing tools to the community so they can be shared and perfected through their use,” Bulović says. “They recognize that as these tools are not needed for their own work 24/7, attracting additional instrument users can generate a revenue stream for the tool, which supports maintenance and future upgrades while also enhancing the research output of labs that would not have access to those tools otherwise.”

A facility sized to meet demand

Once MIT.nano is fully outfitted, over 2,000 MIT faculty and researchers are expected to use the new facilities every year, according to Bulović. Besides its clean-room floors, instrumentation floor, chemistry labs, and the top-floor prototyping labs, the new building also houses a unique facility at MIT: a two-story virtual-reality and visualization space called the Immersion Lab. It could be used by researchers studying subcellular-resolution images of biological tissues or complex computer simulations, or planetary scientists walking through a reproduced Martian surface looking for geologically interesting sites; it may even lend itself to artistic creations or performances, he says. “It’s a unique space. The beauty of it is it will connect to the huge datasets” coming from instruments such as the cryoelectron microscopes, or from simulations generated by artificial intelligence labs, or from other external datasets.

The chemistry labs on the building’s fifth floor, which can accommodate a dozen classes of a dozen students each, are already fully outfitted and in full use for this fall. The labs allow undergraduate chemistry students an exceptionally full and up-to-date experience of lab processes and tools.

“The Department of Chemistry is delighted to move into our new state-of-the-art Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories (UGTL) in MIT.nano,” says department head Timothy Jamison. “The synergy between our URIECA curriculum and this new space enables us to provide an even stronger educational foundation in experimental chemistry to our students. Vladimir Bulović and the MIT.nano team have been wonderful partners at all stages — throughout the design, construction, and move — and we look forward to other opportunities resulting from this collaboration and the presence of our UGTL in MIT.nano.”

The building itself was designed to be far more open and accessible than any comparable clean-room facility in the world. Those outside the labs can watch through MIT.nano’s many windows and see the use of these specialized devices and how such labs work. Meanwhile, researchers themselves can more easily interact with each other and see the sunshine and the gently waving bamboo plants outdoors as a reminder of the outside world that they are working to benefit.

A courtyard path on the south side of the building is named the Improbability Walk, in honor of the late MIT Institute Professor Emerita Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus. The name is a nod to a statement by the beloved mentor, collaborator, teacher, and world-renowned pioneer in solid-state physics and nanoscale engineering, who once said, “My background is so improbable — that I’d be here from where I started.”

Those who walk through the building’s sunlight-soaked corridors and galleries will notice walls surfaced with panels of limestone from the Yangtze Platform of southwestern China. The limestone’s delicate patterns of fine horizontal lines are made up of tiny microparticles, such as bits of ancient microorganisms, laid down at the bottom of primeval waters before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The very newest marvels to emerge in nanotechnology will thus be coming into existence right within view of some of their most ancient minuscule precursors.

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sinceileftyoublog · 7 years ago

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Spectres Interview: Horrible Hell Bubble

Photo by Paul Samuel White

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Fake Spotify ads, alternate James Bond themes, you name it. Bristol noisemakers Spectres have tackled the more corporate realms of the music industry with satire and snot. What they’ve finally also done is brought that same level of vitriol to their music. Their second album Condition, which has been out since March and is one of the more overlooked releases of the year, is leaps and bounds better than their debut Dying, a very good, lauded record in its own right. On Condition, the band--guitarist/vocalist Joe Hatt, guitarist Adrian Dutt, and drummer Andy Came--ditched their original idea of experimenting with electronics and instead pushed the guitar to its limits. But it’s not a record that will blow out your ears. It’s more the type to give you a sense of unease that increasingly permeates throughout your head as you listen, bringing you into the nausea of the songwriters themselves.

I corresponded with Hatt and Dutt over email to talk about Condition and the band in general. They touched on their influences, the recent departure of a band member, live performance, and what’s up next.

Since I Left You: What were you trying to do with your second LP different than your first?

Adrian Dutt: There was never any conscious decision to explore different routes with our second album. It was more a natural progression of how we wanted to explore sound and how we can deconstruct it. On a guitar level, for both of us, we have no interest in playing conventional chords, so perhaps we tried harder when it came to really pushing ourselves outside of any comfort zone. We never expected Dying to get the critical acclaim it did. We had been writing and playing those songs for maybe a couple of years, and they were already the result of our growth and experimentation. To have people embrace those songs and sounds was a double-edged sword; on one hand, it was great people were getting it, but on the other, we knew we needed to go deeper inside ourselves if we wanted to really shock someone out of their comfort.

For me, personally, there are a lot of moments on the new record where I am playing entirely 'sounds,' so the signal from my guitar and pedals is screaming out of the amp, and I manipulate that via a bunch of happy accidents and holes in my guitar. It's also an excuse for me not to get too caught up in analyzing what we are doing or communicating with everyone else. I exist best when I am inside myself and my own little horrible hell bubble. Due to a busy tour schedule and the fact we all worked full-time, we had hardly anytime to write all the songs for the record before we went into the studio, so perhaps that informed the final output. We were stressed and under pressure and it was all our own fault, but I think we'd rather be in that headset than go into a recording session with 25 songs that you just smash out and whittle down. Our songs are the result of our own problems, every practice is a counseling session, we exorcise our own demons and shape them into horrible soundscapes that other people may or may not connect with, and that isn't an easy process. If we tried to write a huge collection of songs, I genuinely think we'd implode under our own pressure and Spectres would not exist.

Maybe I should have just gone with a more direct answer. We knew we had people in an uncomfortable place when they listened to Dying, and we knew we could pull them fully under with a more inward-looking album, where we took ourselves into places we'd never been before.

SILY: For a band whose social musical presence is a combination of button-pushing and tongue-in-cheek, your LP is comparatively understated in terms of a message. How did you try to balance the record with your outside reputation?

AD: The record speaks for itself. It is a personal hell. It doesn't need to be delivered with a message.

SILY: There are songs that seem punk-influenced ("Welcoming The Flowers"), slow-core influenced ("Colour Me Out"), krautrock-influenced ("Coping Mechanism"), and industrial techno-influenced ("End Waltz"). How did you balance all of those seeming influences within and among songs?

AD: I guess we all have varying influences within our songwriting--what we grew up listening to, what we are currently listening to, sounds we hear in everyday life, how we are feeling that day. But we've never said, “Oh, hey, let's write a techno banger,” etc. Our writing process is a vortex of playing noise at each other until one sound or SICK RIFF rears it's head above the maelstrom and we use it as a starting point. We've always been so lost when it comes to pinpointing our sound. Are we psych? Are we noise? Are we pop? So it all just comes out and rolls into one thematic destruction.

SILY: What made you want to name a song after the film A Fish Called Wanda?

Joe Hatt: The song isn't actually about the film, although I don't really blame anyone for thinking that. I don't really want to go into to much detail about who it was inspired by, but it was from an online post they had made about a recently diagnosed brain condition where the doctors had told him his memory was going to be erased bit by bit. The Wanda part is linked to this person’s artist name, and the fish part due to the memory loss, and then I guess I was just trying to be clever by using a misleading title about something so harrowing.

SILY: What inspired the album title? The album art?

AD: I'll let Joe answer this one! I love the excitement of finding out what Joe is calling the record and reading his lyrics. Artwork wise, this was the first Spectres release where I was out of the creative loop, which was unsettling, but very rewarding. The package that Laurie [Lax], Steph [Third], and Joe created married the music so perfectly, and to see it come together was beautiful.

JH: For whatever reason, the title came to me when we were mixing the first record, and from then on, it just stuck. It was about another year before I started writing lyrics for Condition, but it was good having that starting point forming and sprawling in my head for that amount of time, as there was already a mood set. I've always been interested in the human condition in terms of how we are programmed emotionally and either try to adhere or break away from that. How we condition ourselves to try and blend in or get through the day, whether that be blocking things out or drinking it all in, or in many cases, both.

Spectres’ Condition album art

This all fed into the artwork quite heavily too. The idea was to try and present both the introvert and extrovert within us. The front cover (vinyl) came about from me being a huge fan of the artist Laurie Lax’ 'Comic Boom Boom' series. The first time I saw them, I thought that it would be an exciting idea to try and work with her on something similar for the future, and when the time was right, we began working out ways of how to link her process to the themes and moods of the album somehow. The rest of the story will be very boring to anyone but ourselves probably, and it took over three months of experimentation, but she has absolutely nailed it. We have also worked with Stephanie Third again (who did the Dying front cover) who produced a set of Tranimal-inspired photographs in which we wanted to depict a human’s emotions bulging out of one’s body in a vulgar mess, just like they do, but represented physically.

SILY: How do you adapt these songs live?

AD: The benefit of writing under pressure is that the songs are always pretty much fully formed when it comes to recording and playing them. The only teething problems we ever encounter is if anything breaks and a sound changes, but then it's just a trial and error process to replicate certain frequencies and inflict the pain intended. We are a 'live' band--we create songs to play them in an environment where a sound system that can cope exists and where every nook and cranny of the song can be heard and explored. I want people to get lost within it all so we don't hold back when it comes to adaptations of any recorded work. Some things are improvised in the studio during recording, and then we relearn it all to play live.

SILY: What's next for you?

AD: We've had a strange year and a huge release and album tour, followed by losing a member of the band. Our infrastructure and dynamic was teetering on the edge of implosion when we came back from Europe, and something had to change. That decision would always affect our sound because [bassist] Darren [Frost] was an integral piece of the Spectres puzzle, but with Dom [Mitchison] we now have this new exciting period of creativity and harmony, which is really pushing us in another new direction. I'm so excited about the current incarnation of Spectres and everything we are doing. It feels like we've focused everything and we know what we want now. We've spent years chipping away at this concrete mass, getting to the bones underneath, and finally, it feels like we are climbing inside and becoming an entity which is capable of understanding structure and chaos and embodying that into an output we are all happy with. The new songs we have been writing are absolutely brutal in ways we've never tried before.

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mthrynn · 8 years ago

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For more than a decade the swelling output from life sciences experimental instruments has been overwhelming research computing infrastructures intended to support them. DNA sequencers were the first – instrument capacities seemed to jump monthly. Today it’s the cryo electron microscope – some of them 13TB a day beasts – causing consternation. Even a well-planned brand new HPC environment can find itself underpowered by the time it is switched on.

A good example of the challenge and nimbleness required to cope is Van Andel Research Institute’s (VARI) initiative to build a new HPC environment to support its work on epigenetic, genetic, molecular and cellular origins of cancer – all of which require substantial computational resources. VARI (Grand Rapids, MI) is part of Van Andel Institute.

With the HPC building project largely finished, Zack Ramjan, research computing architect for VARI, recalled wryly, “About 10 months ago, we decided we were going to get into the business of cryo-EM. That was news to me and maybe news to many of us here. That suite of three instruments has huge data needs. So we went back and luckily the design that we had was rock solid that’s where we kind of started adding.” He’d been recruited from USC in late 2014 specifically to lead the effort to create an HPC environment for scientific computing.

Titan Krios

The response was to re-examine the storage system, which would absorb the bulk of the new workload strain, and deploy expanded DDN storage – GS7K appliances and WOS – to cope with demand expected from three new cryo-EMs (FEI Titan Krios, FEI Arctica, and smaller instrument for QC). Taken together, the original HPC building effort and changes made later on the fly showcase the rapidly changing choices often confronted by “smaller” research institutions mounting HPC overhauls.

Working with DDN, Silicon Mechanics, and Bright Computing, VARI developed a modest-size hybrid cluster-cloud environment with roughly 2000 cores, 2.2 petabytes of storage, and 40Gb Ethernet throughout. Major components include private-cloud hosting with OpenStack, Big Data analytics, petabyte-scale distributed/parallel storage, and cluster/grid computing. The work required close collaboration with VARI researcher – roughly 32 groups of varying size – to design and support computing workloads in genomics, epigenetics, next-gen sequencing, molecular-dynamics, bioinformatics and biostatistics

As for many similar-sized institutions, bringing order to storage architecture was major challenge. Without centralized HPC resources in-house, individual investigators (and groups) tend to go it alone creating a chaotic disconnected storage landscape.

“These pools of storage were scattered and independent. They were small, not scalable, and intended for specific use cases,” he recalled. “I wanted to replace all that with a single solution that could support HPC because it’s not just about the storage capacity; we also need to support access to that data in a high performance way, [for] moving data very fast, in parallel, to many machines at once.”

A wide range of instruments – sequencers and cry-EM are just two – required access to storage. Workflows were mixed. Data from external collaborators and other consortia were often brought in-house and had a way of “multiplying after being worked on.” Ramjan’s plan was to centralize and simplify. Data would stream directly from instruments to storage. Investigator created data would likewise be captured in one place.

“There’s no analysis storage and instrument storage, it’s all one storage. The data goes straight to a DDN device. My design was to remove copy and duplications. It comes in one time and users are working on it. It’s a tiered approach. So data goes straight into the highest performing tier, from there, there is no more movement.” DDN GS7K devices comprise this higher performing tier.

As the data ‘cools’ and investigators move to new projects, “We may have to retain the data due to obligations or the user wants to keep it around; then we don’t want to keep ‘cold’ data on our highest performing device. Behind the scenes this data is automatically moved to a slower and more economical tier,” said Ramjan. This is the WOS controlled tier. It’s also where much of the cryo-EM data ends up after initial processing.

DDN GRIDScaler-GS7K

Physically there are actually four places the data can be although the user only sees one, emphasized Ramjan. “It’s either on our mirrored pool – we have two GS7Ks, one either side of the building for disaster recovery in terms of a flood or tornado something like that. If the data doesn’t need to have that level of protection it will be on one of the GSK7s or it will be replicated on WOS. There are two WOS devices also spread out in the same way so the data could be sitting mirrored, replicated, on either side. The lowest level of protection would be a single WOS device.”

“Primary data being – data we’re making here, it came of a machine, or there’s no recreating it because the sample is destroyed – we consider that worthy of full replication sitting in two places on the two GS7Ks. If the user lets it cool down and it will go to the two WOS devices and inside those devices is also a RAID so you can say the replication factor is 2-plus. We maintain that for our instrument data.”

Data movement is widely control by policy capabilities in the file system. Automating data flow from instruments in this way, for example, greatly reduces steps and admin requirements. Choosing an effective parallel file system is a key component in such a scheme and reduces the need for additional tools.

“There are really only three” options for a very high performance file systems,” said Ramjan, “GPFS (now Spectrum Scale from IBM), Lustre, and OneFS (Dell DMC/Isilon).” OneFS, said Ramjan, which VARI had earlier experience with, was cost-prohibitive compared to the other choices. He also thinks Lustre is more difficult to work than GPFS and lacked key features.

“We had Isilon before. I won’t say anything bad about it but pricewise it was pretty painful. I spent a lot of time exploring both of the others. Lustre is by no means a bad option but for us the right fit was GPFS. I needed something that was more appliance based? You know we’re not the size of the university of Michigan or USC or a massive institute with 100 guys in the IT department ready to work on this. We wanted to bring something in quick that would be well supported.

“I felt Lustre would require more labor and time than I was willing to spend and it didn’t have some of the things GPFS does like tiering and rule-based tiering and easier expansion. DDN could equally have sold us a Lustre GSK too if we wanted,” he said.

Zack Ramjan-VARI

On balance, “Deploying DDN’s end-to-end storage solution has allowed us to elevate the standard of protection, increase compliance and push boundaries on a single, highly scalable storage platform,” said Ramjan. “We’ve also saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by centralizing the storage of our data-intensive research and a dozen data-hungry scientific instruments on DDN.”

Interesting side note: “The funny things was the vendors of the microscopes didn’t know anything about IT so they couldn’t actually tell us concretely what we’d need. For example, would 10Gig network be sufficient? They couldn’t answer of those questions and they still can’t unfortunately. It put me in quite a bind. I ended up talking with George Vacek at DDN and he pointed me towards three other cryo-EM users also using DDN, which turned out to be a great source of support.”

Storage, of course is only part of the HPC puzzle. Ramjan was replacing a systems that had more in common with traditional corporate enterprise systems than with scientific computing platforms. Starting from scratch, he had a fair degree of freedom in selecting the architecture and choosing components. He says going with a hybrid cluster/cloud architecture was the correct choice.

Silicon Mechanics handled the heavy lifting with regard to hardware and integration. The Bright Computing provisioning and management platform was used. There are also heterogeneous computing elements although accelerators were not an early priority.

“The genomics stuff – sequencing, genotyping, etc. – that we’ve been doing doesn’t benefit much from GPUs, but the imaging analysis we are getting into does. So we do have a mix of nodes, some with accelerators, although they are all very similar at the main processer. The nodes all have Intel Xeons with a lot of memory, fast SSD, and fast network connections. We have some [NVIDIA] K80s and are bringing in some of the new GTX 1080s. I’m pretty excited about the 1080s because they are a quarter of the cost and in our use case seem to be performing just as well if not a little but better,” Ramjan.

“I had the option of using InfiniBand, but said listen we know Ethernet, we can do Ethernet in a high performance way, let’s just stick with it at this time. Now there’s up to a 100 Gig Ethernet.”

In going with the hybrid HPC cluster/cloud route, Ramjan evaluated public cloud options. “I wanted to be sure it made sense to do it in-house (OpenStack) when I could just put it Google’s cloud or Amazon or Microsoft. We ran the numbers and I think cloud computing is great for someone doing a little bit of computing a few times year, but not for us.” It’s not the cost of cycles; they are cheap enough. It’s data movement and storage charges.

Cloud bursting to the public cloud is an open question for Ramjan. He is already working with Bright Computing on a system environment update, expected to go live in March, that will have cloud bursting capability. He wonders how much it will be used.

“It’s good for rare cases. Still you have to balance that against just acquiring more nodes. The data movement in and out of the cloud is where they get you on price. With a small batch I could see it being economical but I have an instrument here that can produce 13 TB a day – moving that is going to be very expensive. We have people doing molecular dynamics, low data volume, low storage volume, but high CPU requirements. But even then latency is a factor.”

System adoption has been faster than expected. “I thought utilization would ramp up slowly, but [already] we’re sitting at 80 percent utilization on a constant basis often at 100 percent. It surprised me how fast and how hungry our investigators were for these resources. If you would have asked them beforehand ‘do you need this’ they probably would have said no.”

The post Van Andel Research Optimizes HPC Pipeline with DDN appeared first on HPCwire.

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amazingsubahu · 7 years ago

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How to live Healthy and Happy life

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health word cloud How to start exploring, about yourself? The method I have used for this is inquiring, researching, experimenting and learning new things. I started it from comprehensive health check-up of my entire body. Our body is the door to our existence and we know very little about it. We don't have any idea about how this most sophisticated and complex machine i.e. our body works. My Health diagnostic reports given me sufficient hints about my current health status, I have learned that what are the potential threats growing inside me. The check up enabled me, to know what problems are growing inside my body. Have you ever asked to you How to live Healthy and Happy life? We never asked this question to ourselves until we caught by unfortunate diseases or loss of health due to our ignorance and unhealthy practices. You can make any change in your life when you know about the problem, if you are not aware of it, you cannot do anything about it, and ignorance is not bliss. We suffer because we are ignorant or avoiding things appearing and informing us in different ways. So every accomplishment starts with knowing the facts and status of what you are now, and when you have sufficient data and facts, you can plan and create a strategy to remove threats and build what you have ever dreamed about. And it is true about every aspect of our life, whether it is a goal of holistic living, building a healthy and happy life, or achieving any other goal. I have accepted the things revealed through my comprehensive health check up and prepared myself for the necessary changes in my habits, routine, eating habits, foods in the most beneficial and scientific way. This is the proper way I have discovered for me to grow and expand upon all the possible dimensions of life. It has been practiced by me and worked well and it will work for everyone. Our health is the most important aspect of our life. Our physical and mental health decides what we can do in our lives and how much we can enjoy with what we have now.

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The key to Blissful life If you want better things to happen to your life, you must make space for good people and healthy things/habits/practices. And it starts from eating good, natural, fresh and healthy nutritional foods. If your body is free from toxins and malnutrition, you will do better things in life, to do and achieve everything in your life you need good healthy body and a sound mind. You must adapt and accept a healthy and conscious way of living and get rid of all non-essentials in your life. This includes - change in attitudes, thoughts, habits, activities, routines, desires, associations (physical, mental spiritual). You should free yourselves of everything deceased, outdated and destructive, by throwing it out and replacing with life positive, healthy and nourishing foods, activities and associations. It is a necessity, without freeing yourselves from ugly, suffocating and degrading garbage, you are carrying and consuming round the clock, in terms of food, habits, association, thoughts, you will never get healthy, fulfilled and blissful life. Always remember right things are right, even nobody is caring about it, and wrong things are wrong, even everybody is doing it. People prefer alcohol over juices, cola over coconut water, So if you are doing so, it's time to awake and change it. if you want to live longer, disease-free, Healthy and happy life. We need to check this out in ourselves and must do the necessary actions to free from all of it. As an example salad is 1000% times better than McDonald fries and burger, whether you can see it or not. If you do not apply these necessary changes, will not uplift and grow in higher planes of your existence and will never be able to grow in developed and more peaceful and pleasant space of your being. But if you want to live as best in all species as human beings, you must be ready to learn and practice the essentials of life and to make compulsory changes in you without any exception and excuses.

The transformation happened to them who are prepared and devoted to it So, Dear friends, be ready for a total makeover and transformation of your life in body, mind, and spirit by changing your attitudes to life and all the physical and mental habits/activities. If you want to grow and acquire higher state of conscious and healthy living before you die, you must think and do in the right direction, at the right time before things get more complicated and incurable. You must care about it, if you do not hear the call of your life, will suffer from unrecoverable losses. If you think that you are living healthy and better life, but you are mistaking most of the times. How ignorant and unaware you are of your physical, mental and spiritual status? You know nothing about its healthy or diseased state. Do you know how it is now? Take a comprehensive health checkup to know it., then you can do necessary corrective actions to transform your body mind and health status. We didn't learn and perhaps forget that life is a constant search for excellence and a necessity to upgrade, to advance and learn new things and ways for better living and fulfillment. Hope you will get, what is really good for you, by thinking, searching, experimenting, and learning from all discussed here, you can help yourself by doing the right things, in the right directions, consciously, honestly, lovingly and regularly.

Always remember it's your life, you should value it, and be always ready to give it the best you can. It will return to a thousand fold back to you. And it starts from caring your body and mind. Stay connected and read the posts about the valuable life-changing activities and methods. I have applied for a long course of my life. You may get benefit by thinking, researching and applying them as per your requirements and a need for a positive and healthy change. Your life will be better as much consciously and carefully, lovingly you behave and treat it, this is the secret of How to live Healthy and Happy Life. So, be ready for a good, conscious living, it leads us towards the road to excellence and ultimate bliss. Wish you a Happy & Healthy and Conscious life. Lovingly yours Amazingsubahu Click to Post

#abundance #conscious #diagnostics #health #health check up #healthy living #life #transform

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amazingsubahu · 7 years ago

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How to live Healthy and Happy life

Hello Lovers of Life, I have discovered many things in quest of better living. In the search of How to live Healthy and Happy life, I have found that Conscious and healthy ways of living are the only way to achieve it. Its process includes questioning and inquiring about everything we are connected or involved in, then contemplating, experimenting and learning from everyone and everything. Our life is a continuous process of exploring and learning new things. Only alive beings are growing, changing and expanding, it never happens to deads.

health word cloud How to start exploring, about yourself? The method I have used for this is inquiring, researching, experimenting and learning new things. I started it from comprehensive health check-up of my entire body. Our body is the door to our existence and we know very little about it. We don't have any idea about how this most sophisticated and complex machine i.e. our body works. My Health diagnostic reports given me sufficient hints about my current health status, I have learned that what are the potential threats growing inside me. The check up enabled me, to know what problems are growing inside my body. Have you ever asked to you How to live Healthy and Happy life? We never asked this question to ourselves until we caught by unfortunate diseases or loss of health due to our ignorance and unhealthy practices. You can make any change in your life when you know about the problem, if you are not aware of it, you cannot do anything about it, and ignorance is not bliss. We suffer because we are ignorant or avoiding things appearing and informing us in different ways. So every accomplishment starts with knowing the facts and status of what you are now, and when you have sufficient data and facts, you can plan and create a strategy to remove threats and build what you have ever dreamed about. And it is true about every aspect of our life, whether it is a goal of holistic living, building a healthy and happy life, or achieving any other goal. I have accepted the things revealed through my comprehensive health check up and prepared myself for the necessary changes in my habits, routine, eating habits, foods in the most beneficial and scientific way. This is the proper way I have discovered for me to grow and expand upon all the possible dimensions of life. It has been practiced by me and worked well and it will work for everyone. Our health is the most important aspect of our life. Our physical and mental health decides what we can do in our lives and how much we can enjoy with what we have now.

If you are ready to know and to accept all the mistakes, sick habits and activities, associations which made your life miserable, then you have great chances to make your life more juicy and beautiful. This will be possible only by recognizing and accepting the problems inside your body and mind, you must check it by the impact of all your habits, associations and activities you are doing round the clock. You are the biggest friend and enemy of yourself. You need to free yourself from the grip of all of it, which does not serve you any more to keep you in right direction and towards the goal of happy and healthy living. If you made these changes totally, honestly and sincerely you can see that you have totally changed your life and experience, you can see the difference in you that what you are now and were before. It is great to be lived, survived and grown in so many difficult environments and with a variety of people in your surroundings. It's also great to have to smile, still on your face and trust in life and all gifts it has given to you and greatness and divinity of human spirits.

The transformation happened to them who are prepared and devoted to it So, Dear friends, be ready for a total makeover and transformation of your life in body, mind, and spirit by changing your attitudes to life and all the physical and mental habits/activities. If you want to grow and acquire higher state of conscious and healthy living before you die, you must think and do in the right direction, at the right time before things get more complicated and incurable. You must care about it, if you do not hear the call of your life, will suffer from unrecoverable losses. If you think that you are living healthy and better life, but you are mistaking most of the times. How ignorant and unaware you are of your physical, mental and spiritual status? You know nothing about its healthy or diseased state. Do you know how it is now? Take a comprehensive health checkup to know it., then you can do necessary corrective actions to transform your body mind and health status. We didn't learn and perhaps forget that life is a constant search for excellence and a necessity to upgrade, to advance and learn new things and ways for better living and fulfillment. Hope you will get, what is really good for you, by thinking, searching, experimenting, and learning from all discussed here, you can help yourself by doing the right things, in the right directions, consciously, honestly, lovingly and regularly.

#abundance #conscious #diagnostics #health #health check up #healthy living #life #transform

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