Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Transcendence looks fun - a cross between Elite and Asteroids, with upgradable spacecraft, economics and trade, relatively simple controls, and an interesting back story.

Just watch out for the really big ships...



And it's free...

Walking through Clerkenwell Green today, I spotted a Smart car with a rather odd roof mounted camera system, with a fairly hefty GPS antenna.


click through to see image annotations

The vehicle would drive a short distance, then the camera would take various shots around the car. The camera appears to have a very wide angle lens. Gaps between photographs seemed to be of the order of 20 feet or so.

I suspect that this was photography for a street façade mapping function, similar to that offered by Amazon's A9 maps. There are other possibilities - codepope suggests that it could have been capturing backgrounds for a video game, much as was done for The Getaway.



The GPS link to the mount and the laptop that was being used to control the whole process are clearer are in this view.

Melted ice on a hefty aloe. I liked the combination of silver and curves.

Macro shot - Click through to see the detail

Putney, London

December 2005