I’m often disappointed by technology. The year is 2007 and there are no cyborgs, no anti-gravity devices, no colonization of the Moon, no food pills and no household robots worth mentioning. But one thing does give me hope for the future: technologies involving induction! This has to be the coolest thing ever.
Induction itself is quite simple: it’s a law that describes the connection between the strength of a magnetic field, a conductor (such as a piece of metal), the conductor’s movement speed, and the resulting voltage in the conductor. Essentially, voltage and magnetic fields are connected…and one can be used to generate the other. I assume that everyone’s familiar with the electromagnet and how electricity can generate a magnetic field, but the cool thing about induction is that the reverse is also possible.
One application that’s come up recently is recharging batteries through induction; it’s been all over the news lately, how (induction-prepared) cell phone batteries can be recharged by simply placing the phone on a special pad, and it’s been rumored that Apple will use induction for certain products. And here’s a Taiwanese patent for a device that can recharge normal batteries through induction. But there’s more to induction than this!
One thing I had never heard about until today was induction cooking. It’s really quite clever: a magnetic field interacts with a conductor (a cooking pan or somesuch), and because there’s electrical resistance in the conductor the current is converted to heat. No need to transfer the heat through a coil or by heating with gas - the cooking pan itself is heated from the magnetic field! Cleaner, faster, and more efficient. Also less dangerous, since you won’t be able to burn your hand on the stove anymore. Is there no downside to this at all?! No, not really. But try telling that to the uncouth masses.
“A great big magnetic field in my kitchen?! No way! Who knows what it’ll do to me!”
It’ll make your life better, that’s what. Here’s a summary of test results concerning the dangers of radiation involved with inductive cooking. See anything there along the lines of “will cause dangerous mutations and spleen ruptures”? Nope, nothing at all. (Though to be honest, cancer is always a possibility. But then, just about everything can cause cancer.)
I think most people suffer from a belief that electromagnetic radiation is something strange and weird and sciency. It’s not. It’s pretty dull and common, in fact. I leave you with a quote from Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics’ review of The Core:
[...] humanity is doomed and will end in a few months. The cause? Deadly microwave radiation will cook us since we’ll no longer be shielded by the Earth’s magnetic force field or what Keyes refers to as “Earth’s electro-magnetic energy field”.
Keyes proceeds to demonstrate the effects of losing the magnetic field by lighting the aerosol from a can of hair spray and flaming a peach representing Earth. He makes his explanation simplistic since he’s talking to military brass who can’t grasp complexity, even though they lead one of the most complex and high tech organizations in the world.
Not only does Keyes not know the difference between forces and energy but he apparently believes that electromagnetic radiation such as microwaves can be deflected by a magnetic field. Here’s a quick experiment, try using a magnet to deflect the electromagnetic (EM) radiation emitted by a flashlight. The EM radiation is a beam of visible light and, although we hate to spoil the experiment, nothing will happen.
Evildoers, prepare yourselves! A new hero is in town, and Vigilance Valley will no longer be a putrid cesspit of crime and villany! Create your own hero in the puzzle/adventure/RPG Truth, Justice and Spandex, and battle horrible super villains like the Blizzard Wizard and Countess Conundrum. In other words: the first public version of my new game is available and I’d love to get some feedback!
Screenshots:
http://www.karjasoft.com/test/screenshots/ss1.jpg
http://www.karjasoft.com/test/screenshots/ss2.jpg
http://www.karjasoft.com/test/screenshots/ss3.jpg
Download:
http://www.karjasoft.com/storage/Truth,_Justice_and_Spandex.exe
Note: I’m not happy at all with the city art. I need to find an artist interested in making it look nice an’ good; if anyone has any suggestions for suitable artists I might contact, please let me know at info@karjasoft.com!
More notes:
- The game starts in full screen, but you can use the command line option “-w” to force it to windowed, or “-fl” to force it into fullscreen with the desktop resolution.
- Many non-necessary things are missing. Options, profile selection, some special effects for the super powers, and so on. Please let me know if something’s completely off - but it might be on my todo list already.
- The game will feature artifacts - weapons and armour that you can apply to your hero. But that store isn’t done yet.
- All game mechanics aren’t explained; I’m still undecided whether or not I should go into rants about how some super powers level up along with powers, and how the power levels decide the defense against similar powers. Part of me reasons “Screw it! It’s playable without such information, and I can make FAQ pages for those who do care.”
Does anyone remember the Gizmondo; a handheld system that was launched in 2005, and claimed to be the best thing since sliced bread and Jesus combined. (Sliced Jesus?) Gizmondo wasn’t exactly what you would call a hit, and if I were thus inclined this is where I would make a pun about the word “hit.” See, Gizmondo was brought to life by Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson, and the latter one’s claim to fame comes from totalling an Enzo.
You were too pretty to die so young!
Anyway, to make a short story shorter, Gizmondo died and no one cared (except for all the investors who lost millions). Read more about it all here. But now things are changing; it’s time to care again.
The Gizmondo actually wasn’t that much of a joke, hardware-wise. It had a decent 400 MHz ARM CPU, 320×240 resolution, NVIDIA 128-bit GoForce (not a misspelling) 3D 4500 GPU…and some cool things like a GPS and GPRS connectivity. Essentially, the device was good enough to play some games, and was tailor-suited for connectivity applications. (Car GPS, check. SMS services, check. Social gaming possibilities, check. Etc etc.) Apparently, Carl Freer also thought that the Gizmondo was a pretty nifty piece of hardware, ’cause he’s bringing back the Gizmondo. (Warning, Swedish article.)
The plan is to release the old version of the Gizmondo in May 2008, and a new improved one in time for Christmas 2008. With my non-existing psychic powers I foresee that the second coming of the Gizmondo will end in tears, and it’s doubtful that we’ll even see the May launch. A console launch needs funding, and Freer is not likely to get much of that after what happened the last time. So, he’s trying to make the Gizmondo cheap(ly) and work with Open Source to cut down on costs. In addition, he’s producing the hardware on credit - a Chinese company in Shenzhen is offering to produce the Gizmondo in exchange for exclusive rights on sales in China. If Freer manages to pull this off I’ll be in awe; it just seems too improbable that anything good will come of all these schemes!
However, it’s hard to deny that if he manages to get the console out to the public, and if there’s funding for a PR campaign, and if the claimed 35 available game titles really are available at launch, things might look brighter. The name Gizmondo may be a joke right now, but it’s hard to laugh at the connectivity possibilities the device has; there’s a slight chance that it might find a niche for itself after all.
If nothing else, it might become another homebrew favourite like the GP2X. It might not be what Carl Freer wants, but he should be thankful even if it just comes to that.
Today I browsed a DDJ article called C++ Hash Table Memoization: Simplifying Dynamic Programming, and I was immediately struck by a feeling of “why the hell didn’t I think of this!” If you’re not familiar with Dynamic Programming, here’s a very very brief summary:
When solving a problem you often encounter overlapping subproblems which - if you implement the solution algorithm naively - causes a sub-solution to be calculated many times. The most famous example of this is the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on. Here’s an example pseudo code snippet stolen from Wikipedia which calculates a Fibonacci number naively:
function fib(n)
if n = 0 or n = 1
return 1
else
return fib(n + 1) + fib(n + 2)
From the code you’ll note that when trying to calculate, say, fib(5), you’ll calculate fib(3) more than once. Dynamic Programming is basically saying “hey, let’s stop being stupid! If we make sure that the result of fib(3) is only calculated once we’ll save a lot of time!” Quite so. Dynamic Programming may have the most idiotic name ever, but the idea is elegant and very efficient for certain problems.
The Wikipedia article then goes on to mention two DP approaches: top-down, and bottom-up. I’m getting all hot and bothered from mentioning both DP and bottom in the same sentence, but I’ll try to control myself. Bottom-up DP is essentially a way of restructuring the algorithm from a recursive solution to an iterative one, while top-down retains the recursive structure but uses an array for storing the calculated values. As the DDJ article mentions, arrays are most commonly used for storing values…and that’s where the real beaty of the DDJ article’s suggested improvement kicks in.
An array may be inefficient for some problems, so use a hash table instead!
In that short sentence I think I’ve summarized the whole DDJ article; the actual implementation of the proposal is irrelevant, and nothing else is particularly new or exciting. If not for this short addition to what’s already presented on Wikipedia I would’ve claimed that the article was dull and pointless - but now it turned from cow dung into gold! It’s amazing how a small idea can have such an effect. And of course, the fact that it’s such a small idea is what causes the I-Coulda-Thought-of-That reaction that’s oh-so-common.
To end on a high note, here’s a little fib for you:
Left
Right
Top-down
Bottom-up
I don’t give a damn
Just don’t waste any precious RAM
