Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Wonderfully Biomimetic Animation

Spent two hours today this afternoon watching Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22, with a bottle of Sarz and some chips. It was pretty good, I do intend to write a full synopsis/review once I can be bothered to type 1000s of words again.

Oh and it is full of science too, with one realistic portrayal of breaking the sound barrier, as well as a much redesigned Sahaquiel, which behaves just like an oversized pleomorphic virus.

HERE is proof:


For the virologically uninitiated, the black sphere seen from 0:48 drops like a disco ball because it had a plasma membrane coating which is of a fluid mosaic structure maintained by cholesterol; upon fusion with the host the membrane goes away to reveal some shiny and perfectly geometric capsid proteins forming a protective core; as the capsid disassemble, a neatly stratified and compact genome can be seen; finally the genome unwind itself to a more linear molecule, and judging from the complex outline (and the lack of other components) I am fairly certain it is positive sense ssRNA, so-shaped to trick host ribosomes into thinking it is one of the cell's own mRNA, as well as epigenetically regulating the level of expression of different gene segments.


BTW, here is the old Sahaquiel from the original TV series 15 years ago. Appearance-wise it is closer to an unnatural triplet of neurons with very short dendrites, strange.

Monday, April 19, 2010

GIFs: How to change white background to transparent in 5 seconds using photoshop

Step 1: Open the file (duh)
Step 2: Select the background with magical wand (hint hint)
Step 3: Hit the "delete" key usually found on your 6 o'clock.
Step 4: Save your changes and make a nice cuppa to celebrate.

That simple
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I have started to get random NMI errors since I upgraded my motherboard, I have had a few in the past weeks however it occured twice today. Prime suspects?
1. My 8GB of memory, two sticks run at really unusual timings, however it could have caused more problems than a general NMI.

2. Razer Sound card, even less unlikely since no similar issues have been reported by users.

3. My frail RAID5 array on ICH10R, hmmmm no thanks, I have seen arrays fail and this doesnt look like it.

4. Probably video driver issue, I have updated it now anyway because of CS5 launch. Let's see if the problem goes with it.

5. Finally, the omnious "Extended Shadow RAM" that I had to bite to be able to use Matrix RAID and SATA optical drives together. If #4 failed to prevent this from happening I will consider replacing my DVD with PATA.

6. Power stability, will connect that 4-pin 12V plug once I can be bothered to open the case, heheh.