Danny Hillis: Back to the future – of 1994

From deep in the TED archive, Danny Hillis outlines an intriguing theory of how and why technological change seems to be accelerating, by linking it to the very evolution of life itself. The presentation techniques he uses may look dated, but the ideas are as relevant as ever.

Temporal Distortion

Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Featuring an original score by Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead, Eureka, etc)

What you see is real, but you can’t see it this way with the naked eye. It is the result of thousands of 20-30 second exposures, edited together to produce the timelapse. This allows you to see the Milky Way, Aurora and other Phenonmena, in a way you wouldn’t normally see them.

In the opening “Dakotalapse” title shot, you see bands of red and green moving across the sky. After asking several Astronomers, they are possible noctilucent clouds, airglow or faint Aurora. I never got a definite answer to what it is. You can also see the red and green bands in other shots.

At :53 and 2:17 seconds into the video you see a Meteor with a Persistent Train. Which is ionizing gases, which lasted over a half hour in the cameras frame. Phil Plait wrote an article about the phenomena here blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/10/02/a-meteors-lingering-tale/
There is a second Meteor with a much shorter persistent train at 2:51 in the video. This one wasn’t backlit by the moon like the first, and moves out of the frame quickly.

The Aurora were shot in central South Dakota in September 2011 and near Madison, Wisconsin on October 25, 2011.

Watch for two Deer at 1:27

Most of the video was shot near the White River in central South Dakota during September and October 2011, there are other shots from Arches National Park in Utah, and Canyon of the Ancients area of Colorado during June 2011.

Equipment Used
Thanks to Dynamic Perception for their support and for making the Stage Zero Dolly. dynamicperception.com The best dolly made in many ways!

Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 60D
Canon 16-35, Tokina 11-16

Shot in RAW format. Manual mode, Exposure was 30 seconds on most Milky Way shots, 15-30 seconds on Aurora. ISO 1600 – 6400 F2.8. 3 second intervals between exposures

Production Assistants – River Halverson and Kelly McIlhone

Opening title by Gus Winkelman // Winkelmedia LLC // Contact Guswinkelman@gmail for creative solutions

Contact for licensing footage, or anything else.
Randy Halverson
dakotalapse.com
dakotalapse@gmail.com
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Beware of Gustav

Well … maybe not anymore. German railway guns, back from WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

Tech support

Why I hate calling tech support.

Retro Encabulator

Rockwell Automation’s Retro Encabulator

Duke Nukem 3D revisted

Duke Nukem 3d a classic first person shooter game from 1996. I remember playing it up on the computer labs on Friday afternoons back when I was a lab aide. Multiplayer was IPX only, everyone had to start at the same time and if one computer crashed every one in the game did, good times. 🙂

Some years ago I bought the Kill-A-Ton collection which included everything Duke up to that point. Duke Nukem 1,2, 3D, Duke It Out in DC, etc..

Recently I had been thinking about playing Duke Nukem 3d again. Problem is it doesn’t run too good under XP, especially if you want to do multiplayer. I played with setting up a DOS or Windows 95 virtual machine for Duke that we could use in the office, but the performance just wasn’t there. I was about to move on and forget about Duke when I ran across JFDuke3D. JFDuke3D has native Windows support for Duke. Install Duke 3d, install JFDuke and run. Duke never looked so good and runs great on a current OS. There is even network play support over IP, haven’t tried that yet though.

What makes Duke great is the attitude and the guns. Duke’s witty one liners are great and the weapons are classic. The shrink gun has to be my favorite. Hit someone with the shrink gun and once they shrink down to itty bitty step on them to squash them. Freeze gun is great too. Hit someone with the freeze gun to literally freeze them and then a good kick breaks them into shattered pieces. The pipe bombs also cool along with the Laser Trip Bombs. When playing multiplayer Laser Trip Bombs are great when placed right around a corner. While not a weapon the HoloDuke is also great with multiplayer. Setup the holoduke out in the open go hide near by and wait for someone to come by and be fooled by the holoduke.

It took me a couple weeks to get through all 4 episodes trying to get to all of the secret places. It really surprised me how in depth that game was. I was able to setup my keys and mouse similar to what I use in UT. W-A-S-D for movement and mouse look worked decent enough.

It is really sad that 3dRealms has dragged their feet as long as they have in releasing, if it will ever be released Duke Nukem Forever. DNF has been in development for almost 10 years now with little to show for it. I feel if they would have just taken Duke3d, updated the graphics to make it look pretty, updated the controls to be more responsive and updated the network play for true IP support, the game would have been a hit. But unfortunately that hasn’t happened.

If you have Duke Nukem 3d lying around, download JFDuke3D and give it another go. You will be impressed on how fun it still can be and at the same time sadden at how 3dRealms has literary killed Duke with their incompetence.

System Administrator Appreciation Day

Friday July 28 is System Administrator Appreciation Day.

This is the day you give thanks to your System Administrators.
Give thanks for keeping the network up, for doing upgrades during your vacation and at night so your work is not affected and for answering all those questions that could have easily have been answered if you had just clicked on help.

Food seems to be the best way to show your appreciation.
Just remember….