Photoshop Project

Sharpen - I felt like the image was out of focus so I used sharpen to bring the flowers into focus and expand the distance between the background and the foreground.

Grain - I wanted to make the image look as though it was printed onto a grainy sheet of paper. I set the boundaries low so the image still retained the focus I had achieved earlier.

Although the title of the band, the quote, and the image were all completely random, I felt like the final product came off completely soft rock slash religious. Just a thought...

Negative Refraction of Light

A recent development by scientists is the ability to negatively refract visible light (within the blue-green region). What does this mean to us? Well, many new developments and applications will arise within the next few years including things like cloaking, being able to actually see DNA, and working much more accurately in the nanoscale.

This breakthrough literally bends light backwards. One really cool application is that of an Invisibility Cloak that requires no electronics just the material. Another good article can be found here and gives credit to its developers.

One thing I would like to note is that if a cloak is developed I will buy it for sure.

Federal Spending mashup Map

Today I found a cool mashup site called Federal Contracts by State that combines government data (FedSpending.org) with a US map (Google Map API) to give a visual idea of how our government spends its money. This mashup is really awesome because it breaks down each state into subcategories like top products and services, top contracting agencies, top parenting companies, etc. I find this especially useful if I were doing research on what companies I think I government offers more "aid" to than others. Also, it breaks down these numbers by year so you can get an idea of the growth or deterioration of federal spending in certain areas.

Flying Car

Another technology that will be hitting the public this year is the Skycar. Not exactly affordable to me, but we will start seeing some people flying over our heads while we sit in traffic. I'm sure that within ten years time the price of these flying wonder machines will be within my reach. There are several types of flying cars that will hit the market but you can read up on one of them at Moller. You can also hear it from Paul Moller himself at YouTube.

Again, I am very excited for this upcoming year and all of the cool new technology that will be available to the public.

Paper Thin TV...

Also known as an OLED (organic - LED), these paper thin TV screens will be hitting the market big time in '09 and can be seen on YouTube. What's even more cool about these screens is the fact that they can be mounted on almost completely transparent materials. When produced properly, they can have a transparency of 85%, similar to a lightly shaded car window. This gives rise to the idea of car windshields being embedded with tv screens that can "highlight" the road and other objects at night.

Another application for this screen is in advertising. I don't mean billboards and mounted tv's though. I am talking about magazines with tv screen covers. Imagine next month's sports illustrated having a video of a baseball player hitting a ball rather than just a picture. This has a sort of Harry Potter newspaper feel to it.

But on a more practicle side, these tv screens use far less energy than normal LED screens. Since they are not backlight, only the pixels that need to be lighted are pulling energy. Couple this technology with the newer Lithium batteries that come in Laptops and you have a machine that can stay powered for days rather than just hours.

Salt Water Engine!!

That's right... an engine that runs solely on salt water is currently being developed by the US government. Apparently, a scientist looking to come up with a cure for cancer figured out a way to make salt water combustible. You can watch a report on this at Youtube.

I do have some questions / concerns about this engine, however. Anything that sounds this good usually has some problems that need to be resolved. My question is what kind of byproducts are produced by this reaction. Salt water is composed of very simple materials. Obviously, water is H2O, but salt is composed of Sodium (a material that explodes when it hits water) and Chloride (a lethally poisonous gas). Makes you wonder what kind of exhaust fumes we would be breathing in.

Also, if this development is achieved by the government, will we ever see it come to fruition? Imagine a world in which you can fill your car up at home, where boats don't have fuel tanks, where shipping costs are drastically reduced. I sincerely doubt that our current government would opt for that kind of a world. The fact that this natural resource is so easily obtainable leads to a government with less control of its populous.

I hope that before I die I can drive my car to the ocean and back for free.