Your gateway to a gold monolayer!

June 16, 2010

I set up a google email alert for “self assembly” a while back – at the time I was hoping for the first stories of robots building robots, but it turns out that nanoscale is where it’s at. This technique is simple but fantastic! The last interesting one I saw appeared several months ago; it also used surface tension, but to arrange particles in a grid of prepared grooves instead of in a monolayer.

Check out the links below for more detail.

RPI.edu

Unlike previous techniques, Eah’s new method has no need for a vacuum.

sciencetechnologyblog.com

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Latest News, as of March 16th

March 16, 2010

Ahhh… just had a nice talk with my Lab Manager and PI from the DNA sequencing lab today, it’s great to know that they’re watching out for me even though I’m going to be leaving for a new job… I went in to talk about the plans for their computer systems once I’m gone, but they wouldn’t let me go so easily! I told them about my plans to go to Taiwan if I can’t find a job, so they’re trying to find me one in San Diego to get me to stick around longer and train a mini-me freshman or sophomore who can help out with the CCDNASEQ servers.

On my home systems, I have some great new software that I’ve been trying and want to tell you guys about! But first, I want to talk about some hardware – I just installed a gigantic RAID 5 array made up of 4 320GB disks for a total of 894GB of usable space. It can survive one disk failure without the system going down, but I would have to replace the drive before a second one fails or else I would lose data. I’m not one to move all my data to new hardware without testing it, so I’m doing a full disk encryption using Truecrypt. It’s projected to take a total of 12 hours to completely overwrite the entire 894GB, hopefully everything will be A-OK in the morning.

So, on to the new software. Like all software I recommend on this blog, this software is 100% free (ad supported).

  1. Dataram RAMDisk
    • This is the best Free RAMDisk software available for Windows
    • Compatible with XP,Vista,7, 32bit and 64bit editions
    • Allows you to have up to 4GB RAMDisk to make your internet cache super fast (10X faster than your hard drive)
    • Since your browser only saves to your RAMDisk, wear on your HDD is reduced, making it less likely that it’ll die and bring your data along with it.
  2. NewsGator FeedDemon
    • This is the best Free Desktop RSS Reader available for Windows
    • The key here is that it allows you to prefetch the images for all your unread items.
    • Just set it to prefetch and come back in 10 minutes, combined with the use of a RAMDisk, that means NO WAITING to scroll through your subscribed feeds.
    • I hate waiting for images to load, even 250ms is really noticeable, and thats about how long it takes for each additional HTTP request! Prefetch FTW.
    • I used to be a hardcore Google Reader user, this feature alone is what caused me to switch.
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Data sharing with Copenhagen Wheel

December 28, 2009

http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/

Seems like most people would buy the wheel just to propel their bike, and unknowingly upload their gathered data at the end of the day.

Practically everything on the internet is already being datamined, seems like it’s going to extend into real life pretty soon. I wonder what kind of other data gathering devices will become available…

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AMD finally beats nVidia: how does my old GPU stack up?

September 26, 2009

Looks like ATI (now owned by AMD) is finally overtaking nVidia in terms of best graphics chips. They’re now capable of supporting the resolution of 6 monitors combined! I was just at maximumpc and the specs are insane!

EyeFinity in Action

EyeFinity in action

I didn’t want to check my current specs because I was afraid of how pitifully low the numbers might be – but I did it anyways, and here they are:

stats from my old graphics card

I can’t believe how puny my card’s specs are…

I don’t have time for new games right now; I’m waiting for them to get so ridiculously out of control that I’m overcome with disbelief and force myself to upgrade.

For now I’m happy with my current setup: PS3 only on a 105″ 720p projection screen. The projector + screen only cost $1.2k in 2006, while a 50″ LCD was $2k. So I got plenty of screen space for super cheap. That’s one reason why I seriously doubt that 6x or even 3x screens will be popular in 5 years, and I’ll explain the other one after these two EyeFinity demo videos.

   
EyeFinity allows 6 monitors to operate as one without additional hardware.
source: AMD

EyeFinity is not a new technology, it’s a temporary hack. The GPUs are doing the same job as before, they’ve just improved far faster than LCD technology has been able to. Splitting a rendered image to 6 monitors can’t be that complicated! But no matter how badly AMD or anyone else wants it to, Moore’s law works for making things smaller, not larger; it doesn’t apply to display size like it does to GPU’s, so it’s impossible for displays to catch up. I think eventually there will be 50″ monitors with the same pixel density of the current 30″ models, but until that happens I will consider displays to be lagging.

Back to the screen topic: I’ve played single player Halo on a 105″ screen, larger than any 6 monitor setup out there, and it’s definitely more immersive, but there’s no edge whatsoever playing on a bigger screen. It actually made me play worse, because it was so much slower turning my head to react to things.

Conclusion: The advantage of being able to scan the entire screen in one eye movement is huge in fast games. I don’t care how much information I can pack on 6 screens, if I don’t have time to use it in the heat of battle then it’s completely useless.

I think a lot of other people like me are playing to win, not just for eye candy. Will game makers ever make using multiple monitors advantageous enough to be worth the cost?

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Architecture is: making better housing more affordable in 3rd world countries

August 14, 2009

Here are some pictures of a small house in Jakarta, Indonesia. It’s not especially energy efficient or covered in green technology, but it’s designs like this one that actually make a difference in improving the quality of life for people in 3rd world countries.
I like the look of the house, but what’s really impressive is the cost… the whole house is built for under $20,000 USD!




via archdaily

Great design, to me, is made with a purpose but also turns out to be something more. It adheres to tough constraints but finds some way to break out of the box. The smaller the box, the more surprising a design can be.

The reason why I like the house is that despite sever limitations on cost and space, it still manages to look like an inviting modern home.

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