A Daily Dose of Architecture: The Green Cathedral De Groene Kathedraal (The Green Cathedral), at the bottom of the aerial, is a full-size copy of Reims Cathedral by artist Marinus Boezem that replaces stone and glass with poplar trees and sky. About 20 years after it was started the artwork was “completed” in 1996, yet it is expected to reach its full height in 2015. The duplicate footprint to the north is a clearing in beech trees that follows the original by about a decade, so it is not as tall as the first.
If you had told me ten years ago that within a decade the USA would rank behind China and India in wealth distribution, I would have laughed at you. In fact the USA is 39th and right between Bulgaria and Cameroon. New Zealand is #84, the European Union as a whole is #113 and Sweden is #136.
LED Lights Make Augmented Vision a Reality | Elemental LEDucation University of Washington researchers have figured out how to implant semitransparent red and blue LED lights in contact lenses, for the purpose of receiving and displaying data in sharp visual images and video. This means wearers will literally be able to watch TV or view photos that are projected directly onto their eyeballs.
Once miniature green LEDs are developed (and they’re in the works, as of now), full color displays will be possible. Once that happens, the possibilities are endless. Think about everything your smart phone can do right now, and imagine the same being possible for your eyeball. This news is a little scary and a lot fascinating, if you ask me—at the very least, with LED contact lenses, your hands would be free to pet your robot or tinker with your hover board.
Lead researcher Babak Parvis comments “You won’t necessarily have to shift your focus to see the image generated by the contact lens,” it would just appear in front of you and your view of the real world will be completely unobstructed when the display is turned off.
Wow! First thoughts:
– A great torture device… you can close your eyes, but you can’t stop the images, like in Clockwork Orange!
– A pleasant way to fall asleep… by showing images that slowly get darker and fade away…
– Perhaps a learning tool… I learned a lot by listening to certain complex rhythm while sleeping. Perhaps on could learn certain complicated movements by watching video of them over and over… perhaps timing the images the start AFTER one falls asleep…
Experience has taught me to never give a record company a rough mix. Even A&R people are often not able to imagine what the track can become.
That said, here is an excerpt from the second half of a rough mix Jon sent me yesterday. He added upright bass to a new song, but obviously there is no melody guitar in the verse, there are no keyboards and there is no percussion. And it is not “mixed” yet.
(((I love the bass line in the verse and would turn up the bass overall…)))
Coincidentally, I only use Sonnox Inflator. It’s the only plug-in I’ve found to not destroy my mix while bumping levels up to the place where victims of the loudness wars can accurately evaluate my mix on their laptop speakers and earbuds!
And
Now the one quick test I did was to encode a standard MP3 file at 256 kbps in the Pro Tools TweekHead setting and then encode one with the comparable settings in Fraunhofer Pro-Codec. I then imported both files into iTunes. Yes, I know the iTunes playback platform imparts its own sound to all digital playback, but this was just a quick comparison between the two methods of encoding the MP3 to the same bit-rate. There was indeed a difference in sound quality. This is when I start to get depressed — kind of like listening to test CD pressings from various factories. There shouldn’t be a difference — it’s digital, right? Well there is!!!! Needless to say, the Sonnox-encoded file felt clearer, more open, less compressed, and closer to my original mix.
I haven’t checked out the plug-in that was being reviewed, but have noticed that using different applications results in different qualities of mp3s.
