Hello lungs (day 57)

I took some time today to render the lung model to see if I could get the transparency to work correctly and maybe play around with the video mapping.  I got as far as getting the transparency to work and then ran into a resolution problem.  To my chagrin, Touch Designer will only render to a maximum horizontal resolution of 1280...unless I pay $599 for a commercial license (per machine).  I've asked if they have educational pricing and we'll see.  It's strange that I hadn't notice this before when I rendered to the screen in the lab.  But looking back, it does explain the slightly squished look of the lungs.   Even at the slightly lower resolution, the lungs look pretty good.  I'm really starting to get fond of the shape of the lungs.  They're almost friendly and sweet.  Here is a pic (which is down-res'd):

The grey scale give it a medical X-ray look.  I wanted to keep it neutral until the video is added to see if it has a fluoroscopy look.  We'll see.  Trent is currently working on the texture coordinates.

I also spent some time learning Field which I can run now that I have my Macbook Pro.  It feels like learning a new language even if the component elements (Java, Python, OpenGL) are familiar.  It feels to me like a tool I could seriously love after spending some hours with it.   It reminds me of the old Unix days with lots of command line and immediate feedback.  It also makes me a bit worried that I would write something in Field and a few months later remember nothing of the mental model that led me to a particular design (i.e. more than one way to shoot yourself in the foot).   But this minor worry is not going to stop me.   I'll just trust that I knew what I was doing at the time I wrote the program which, believe it or not, is hard to do.  The belief that I am smarter in the present, so smart in fact that I know better than the previous self who was immersed in the code, is always lurking.

A song for this post.

Me and my machine (day 36)

At some point I started having an arms length relationship with the machine.  This does not feel so good.  I probably will go back to manipulating data directly but for now I'm in interface hell.  Yes, I'm in menus with options that I'm not sure about trying to achieve thing that clearly these menus weren't meant to facilitiate.  Often there is a nagging suspicion that perhaps it's not me or the menus, but something wrong in the implementation or an unintended interaction with another plugin or widget.   These mild irritants used to be motivations to go to the code and change things directly.  Now they are stumbling blocks that keep me from getting things done because either I don't have access to the files I need or I simply don't have the time to fiddle.  You see, I've become an administrator.  Administrators delegate.  My problem is that I still secretly long to fiddle.  Sometimes I give in and spend hours tweaking or programming something.  It's like being on a diet and suddenly binging on ice cream.  It feels good in the moment but then the cold hard reality of my inbox hits me in the morning.

I think that for my own sanity I'll have to carve out some time at least three times a week to assuage the programming urge.  I've just ordered a new Macbook Pro and I'm looking forward to working with Field.  I think it could be a nice mix between menus and low level wrangling.

A song for this post.

Domo Arigato (day 25)

The dream of robot slaves.   There's been lots of talk lately about robots that can walk, run, stay balanced, go up stairs, serve coffee, chop vegetables.    Alongside the talk about new robot abilities there's been nervous hand-wringing about the ethics of having robots among us.  It's funny to me because I actually got into computing science because of a sort of fascination with telling the computer what to do.  Write a program, press enter, and it does exactly what you specified.  At that time, the computer was a semi-conscious thing for me.   I had no real knowledge of the inner workings so it was a capricious being, fighting yet giving in with the right incantation.  I still feel that way but now I know the innards so it has lost a bit of its romance.   So I wonder if acquiring a robot to chop vegetables for me and do laundry might not be a version of my first encounter with the Commodore 64.  Mysterious yet pliable, my robot frenemy.   Here of course I'm talking of the benign affect of telling a robot what to do.   The difference between a robot and a computer is in the potential for harm.  Motility takes computers way beyond the harm of computer viruses and privacy invasion.  Sentience and free will adds a whole level of unpredictability which may swing it towards harmful behaviour.

Asimov's laws three laws (don't harm humans, obay humans, preserve thyself) as a starting point for ethics but they have been found lacking it seems mostly on the basis of the robot's sentience or free will getting in the way.  The conundrum is that we are creating something stronger than us and expect two things:  that it will not harm us and that it will harm the ones we don't like.   It's the fantasy of the gun as a defensive device, again.   We are afraid that we will create the robots a little too much like us and have to deal with mood swings on a scale beyond prozac.  So we need to ask ourselves who's creating the robots?  What are their intentions?  It's unlikely a dove can come out of a hawk's nest so we really need to choose the root genetics of this new line really carefully.  We should feel revulsion at drone attacks.  We should feel disturbed by a robot that looks like a girl and is pleased to repeat any recorded positions when you tap her on the head.  These are real affective behaviours and abilities.  Our relationship with robots informs and is informed by our relationship with other beings.   It would be infinitely better to amplify the best in human behaviour.

A song for this post.