Sunday, October 20, 2013

Grid Art

Because of my busy schedule, I chose to do fairly simple image. The image is made of roughly 2500 clear push pins. For my grid, I used chicken wire which I removed before placing everything.





Emak-Bakia

After watching this video, I can honestly say that I do not get it. All it seems to be is a bunch of random different videos put together to make one longer video, added with random music. It makes not sense. To me, it seems to be put together very incoherently or with out any purpose. I am sure that is not the way it was done, but it would have to be explained to me what is going on. This whole genre of art is confusing as to what it all is and why it came to be. While I am not trying to argue that it is not art, it is not any sort of art that I care for.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Steve Jobs 2005 Standford Commencement Address

Steve Jobs was a very inspiring man. His message of never giving up and living your life to its utmost possibility. Those people in life who have become successful were not ones who sat around and did nothing. Instead they were the ones who worked hard at what they loved to do and made sure that they would flourish. This can really be seen with Steve Jobs life and how he approached it. Everything from his founding of Apple even though he never graduated college to him being fired years later when the company no longer thought that his visions were in the companies best interest. He always continued on doing what he loved and trying to be successful and it worked out. This video is very inspiring for all people to watch, especially younger people who still have their entire lives to live and make an impact on society.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Wage War - "The Aftermath" (Official Lyric Video)

This is a lyric video that a friend of mine was hired to make for the band Wage War. He creates album art, logo designs, and videos for all sorts of music, though hard rock/metal is what he specializes in. He also just created a new Facebook page where he will put up more of his work, linked below.

Blind Cat Studios

Speaking of Turing Machine...

This is a song of the same name by the band, Traverser.


Alan Turing

Alan Turing is the man who came up with the idea of the "Turing Machine" which is the basis for the modern day computer. This machine had limitless memory and a scanner that could go through all the memory, reading what it went through and then come up with new information based off of that. It could decipher code and write its own program, which was the first time that it had been mentioned that machines could have some sort of intelligence. During WWII, Turing was part of the team that made "Colossus"which was a machine that was built to crack the Germans radio communications without them knowing that the code had been cracked. This was a very basic computer that had 1600 vacuum tubes, no internally stored programs, and was not a general purpose machine. Every time the machine was used for a new task, the wiring had to be switched out by hand. From there, many people started using programs from Turing to make there own computers. Turing's next accomplishment though was making high speed memory for computers. All of this work by Alan Turing led to what we now have in the modern day computer. Without him, we would not have computers as we know them today or we would not have the advanced computers that we have.

History of the Battery

The modern day battery is based off of the work of Alessandro Volta who invented the voltaic pile in 1800, which he made based on work from Luigi Galvani. The voltaic pile was made from discs of zinc and copper which had pieces of cardboard soaked in brine put in between the metals. This was able to produce an electrical current that was steady and reliable. Daniel Cell invented a longer lasting battery in 1836 that was used to power things such as telephones and telegraphs. In 1859, the first rechargeable battery was made which is what modern day car batteries are based off of. 1866 brought in the first battery that was able to be transported. Before this, batteries were considered wet cell batteries because the materials were not sealed tight. The dry cell battery was able to completely seal the materials and made batteries more what they are like today. 1881 brought in the use of a negative and positive side to the batteries but 1901 brought around Thomas Edison who created a battery that is used today, a positive side made from nickelic oxide and a negative side made from iron. This was called an alkaline storage battery.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

War of the Worlds

This was a very interesting broadcast. When it was first aired over the radio, it started a panic for people who did not understand that it was just a story being told or for those who may have tuned in late. And I can see why they may have felt that way. While I was listening to the recording, I was working on some homework. At times, I was not quite paying attention so I would forget that I was listening to a story and not what it actually sounded like which was reporters talking about what they were seeing. After a second I would remember but it definitely shows how well the story telling was from Orson Welles. It was also good that there was no video to go along with because a video would have made it very easy to tell that it was fake. It shows how prevalent the radio was back then when that was the type of show that was on and the quality of it.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick was a revolutionary writer that completely changed the face of science fiction to what it has become today. He started writing when the ideas he was writing about were supposed to be perfect. While the movies were made after Philip had started writing his books, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey are examples of what everyone thought of technology, space travel, and overall the future. Robots were subservient to intelligent, living life forms and worked perfectly doing whatever their jobs were. Space travel was fast, comfortable, and easy. Philip made everything abnormal, everything had flaws, one would even question free will. Prior to Philip K. Dick, the Minority Report would have been just about stopping crime before it happened, not about the corruption that came from using the precogs. We would not have movies scifi movies such as Judge Dredd and the Matrix which are heavily influenced by his work.