Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghosh) (August 15, 1872 December 5, 1950) was an Indian nationalist and freedom fighter, poet, philosopher, and yogi. He joined the movement for India’s freedom from British rule and for a duration (1905 10), became one of its most important leaders, before turning to developing his own vision and philosophy of human progress and spiritual evolution.

The central theme of Sri Aurobindo’s vision is the evolution of life into a “life divine”. In his own words: “Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth’s evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of Nature’s process”.

The principal writings of Sri Aurobindo include, in prose, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Secrets of the Vedas, Essays on the Gita, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, Renaissance in India and other essays, Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, The Future Poetry, Thoughts and Aphorisms and several volumes of letters. In poetry, his principal work is “Savitri – a Legend and a Symbol” in blank verse.

To find out more about Sri Aurobindo, please click here.

“Tente pensar em um elefante. Agora tente pensar em outro. Adimita: os dois eram o mesmo elefante, não eram?”

Resolvi não colocar imagens neste artigo. É melhor que você vá até o site e veja por si mesmo. Neave é um site criado pelo designer londrino Paul Neave  que dispõe de treze inusitadas, interessantes e diversificadas maneiras de se passar o tempo ocioso, se divertir ou fazer o que mais você descobrir ser possível. É provável que você se surpreenda, não só com a criatividade de Paul Neave, como também com a sua própria. A seguir um resumo do que se pode encontrar no site:

1. Flash Earth coloca à sua disposição imagens de satélite da Terra adquiridas através de múltiplas fontes, incluindo a NASA e a Microsoft.
2. Planetarium vai lhe mostrar um belo céu estrelado pelo qual você poderá rodopiar à vontade, identificar constelações e, quando tiver curiosidade, passar o mouse por cima de uma estrela para saber seu nome, sua constelação, sua magnitude e sua distância de nós.
3. Games disponibiliza remakes de jogos clássicos como Space Invaders, Tetris N-Box, Asteroids, Snake, Simon, Jogo-da-velha, Hexxagon e Frogger.
4. Imagination fará com que linhas de luz e fumaça saiam da ponta do seu mouse em um fundo preto, formando texturas e desenhos interessantes.
5. Fractal te levará em uma viagem de zoom eterno que segue os princípios de um complicado conceito matemático (sobre o qual você pode tentar saber mais aqui e aqui)
6. Television é uma televisão sem contexto. Entre color bars e chiados você assistirá a trechos randômicos de uma coisa qualquer.
7. Strobe te fará ver tudo de uma forma diferente da que você costuma ver. O Mushroom não recomenda que você dirija nem opere máqunas perigosas logo após a experiência.
8. Anaglyph dará utilidade àquele óculos 3D que você roubou de algum filme ou ganhou junto com aquela revista de dinossauros quando tinha dez anos. Com ele você poderá desenhar e escrever em três dimensões, girar e aproximar/afastar sua imagem. Se você não tem um óculos 3D, faça um: vale a pena.
9. Bounce deixa bolinhas coloridas de diferentes tamanhos na sua tela. Coloque uma música ou fale algo (requer microfone) e as bolinhas vão pular de acordo com o som.
10. Light segue o mesmo princípio de Bounce, exceto que, nele, o show é de luzes.
11. Dandelion consiste num dente-de-leão virtual que você pode soprar (requer microfone) e sacudir eternamente, pois ele sempre se renova.
12. Webcam é um conjunto de gravações interessantes feitas pelos internautas através de suas webcams com alguns efeitos que o site disponibiliza. Além de assistir, você pode se divertir com os efeitos fazendo, você mesmo, gravações (requer webcam).
13. Voting questiona e estuda o ato de votar. Nele, você se deparará com perguntas estranhas (e potencialmente engraçadas) como:

Armpit hair?

• Long and dangly
• Short and matted
• Fashioned into a small hat

que exploram fatores como a influência que a construção da pergunta exerce sobre sua resposta.

Enfim, vale muito a pena conferir o Neave, a não ser que você esteja estudando para algum vestibular ou tenha algum projeto importante para entregar no trabalho por esses dias, pois o site tomará uma parcela razoável do seu tempo. Confie no Mushroom.

]]> http://blog.mindbrix.co.uk/2009/11/25/the-mandelbulb/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:29:29 +0000 mindbrix http://blog.mindbrix.co.uk/2009/11/25/the-mandelbulb/

A ravishing collection of images from the realisation of the mandelbrot set in 3D.

Petals ESB v3.0 is finally out (two years after the v2.0 release), there are many changes in this version but here are the main ones :

Petals ESB 3.0, includes a lot of improvements for users, as well as optimisations, and nice new features :
- Dynamic configuration, and hot-deployment of new nodes
- Redesigned webconsole for administration, and deleted statistics monitoring (based on OW2-OpenSUIT)
- SCA support: SCA engine (OW2-FraSCAti), and SCA designer (Eclipse)
- BPEL support: BPEL engine, and BPEL designer (Eclipse), with validation (based on a new BPEL engine!)
- WS Notification and WS-BorkeredNotification support (EDA)
- more and more things…

Integration with new Petals Camelia softwares :
- Petals Studio: Complete Eclipse development environment, for Petals ESB
- Petals Master: SOA Governance (OW2-Dragon)
- Petals View: Business flow monitoring based on Petals EDA feature (based on OW2-OpenSUIT)

We gave this release a name : Camelia.

Impressiona como uma fórmula tão simples

pode criar figuras tão belas.

Mandelbrot em cores

Mandelbrot em cinza

Não considere as minhas implementações. Procure outras mais bonitas.

Persona in Japan are gaining followers in the corporate world as the value of the technique becomes known.

Japan Persona -- Basic Approach

Image from http://www.personadesign.net/en/index.html

Why did I re-brand persona to Neuropersona? 

I have observed over the past 12 years that the persona approach has been used by companies who find that the old market segment approach does not help them serve customers or compete in the marketplace.  While the behaviour focus of persona tools is very good, it is possible to quickly add more value to the approach.

Since its christening as a formal branch of mathematics by the great Benoit Mandlebrot, Fractals in images, arts, and nature  have captured the minds and even the hearts of millions.

This gallery contains some really nice examples of fractals in real life.

Enjoy…

11 Fascinating Fractals in Nature – Oddee.com (fractals, natural fractals)

2012 Psychopathy™ is an engineered phenomena
by the Alpha Draconians. AD’s are aurally conceived
Atlantean pseudo jargon via tertiary optical inlets, aka
“the third eye.” Furthermore, we know AD’s
invented mascara and mastered the Rainbow
Snakes; energetic beings [sic] quantum controlled
by Necromancers and Shamanators.

We now know Rainbow Snakes
have been stimulating the polyanal tribe
of Microsoft for years. We also know Microsoft
tissue has been trans-gendered by scarab singers
harmonically adjacent to the Diamond Anneal clan (inventors
of the pharisaical trampoline, solar deity travel blazer and

semi-sweet Caroline). The scarab singers,
referred to as “Greys” by ufologists, are inter-
dimensionally promoted as “Doppler Gazers”
and “Conquistadors of the Kevlar SanskritBelt.”

For this reason we are issuing an astral projection
travel advisory to our readers:

Be on the lookout for the Black Hole
Gang and Avatarians of the Algebrahminical
Episcopal.

Note: Avatarians are paragons of the Areola
with lubricated DNA of chromosomic dither.
As such, Avatarians are expressly covered
under the large gaseous mass treaty of 1812.

Further psychopathy pending.

Crab claws and chopsticks. Bicycle streamers
and cinder blocks. A cardboard box
filled with scars. Get with the

2012 program. Put on your
cosmic wave breaker. It’s time
for the butterfly to morph

into a worm. No doubt
about it baby, don’t stop
until I bleed on the cross

sectional couch. Two-thousand 9
plus 3 with seven inches to spare.
We’re almost back at home

base sweetheart. Around the world
tonight on the memory foam. In 60 light seconds
Alpha Centurion returns to Earth

so let’s get primitive. Admire my aboriginal
peach fuzz and gambit our pawns
for the King and Queen

of calamity. Tomorrow
morning (before the stars
dissolve on the other side

of the mirror) we’ll go to the zoo,
sit with the chimps and share
a Darwinian banana.

ART VOLUME ONE PRESENTS:

The Road to Interzone: Reading William S. Burroughs Reading

by Michael Stevens

“The Road to Interzone is the result of a fascination with the works of William S. Burroughs and the literary influence that made his legendary canon of work possible. Here, the raw material of the shaping spirit of the imagination, is analyzed by presenting quotes and selections from Burroughs works (novels, interviews, criticism, etc.) alongside the primary literary sources that influenced him.

Also contained herein are listings from the recorded archives of the books Burroughs read through most of his lifetime. Redacted from university archives and WSB’s personal libraries, these listings attempt to catalog the source materials of what was to become Burroughs literary legacy.

The Road to Interzone provides the skeleton for an interpretation of the operational processes of influence and the function of artistic inspiration.”

“Editorial Review:

Michael Stevens has found the right vein, circulating raw material of the mind of visionary genius in post modern literature and art. His exhaustive compendia and matrix is like the fractal’s pattern bringing similarities that could reveal whole equation. He has provided the reader with the sources of allusion, influences, critiques, and the spirit of scatological obsessions of the late William S. Burroughs, the well-read innovator, inventor, and investigator in literature, art, culture and cosmology. Ezra Pound once advised readers who thought the Cantos too obscure, to just think of them as people throughout history sitting around talking. This book allows me the conversations with Uncle Bill that I unfortunately neglected in his presence. –Charles Plymell

To scan Michael Stevens’ bibliography is to dream of entering into William Burroughs’ head from a new angle — not from his writings but from his readings. You can’t live Burroughs’ life but you can read the books he read. You can infect yourself with the same word virus he picked up in writers ranging from Abrahamson (Crime and the Human Mind) to Yeats ( ‘cast a cold eye on life, a cold eye on death…’ ) Will these get you any closer to the mutations Burroughs performed on the word virus? Doubtless you’ll understand the man and his work better. And perhaps, with the help of the creative reading Burroughs espoused, Road to Interzone will even put you in position to subject the same viral sources to a few new mutations of your own. –RealityStudio.org

‘A fascinating and richly helpful piece of literary archeology, tracing as broadly as possible the sources William Burroughs had available to him as he wrote. Both the title and the method echo the classic Road to Xanadu, John Livingston Lowes excavation of Coleridge s reading: Coleridge, like Burroughs, being more than a little interested in drugs. It is a work for which all Burroughs students should be grateful.’ –Larry McMurtry“

EXCERPTED FROM: LOOK AT, READ ABOUT & OWN IT HERE!

SUICIDEPRESS.COM

-

FILM:

William S Burroughs – Commissioner of Sewers

[WARNING] FractalComponentProcessor >>  No value found for property ‘generatorClass’ in processor org.objectweb.fractal.fraclet.annotation.processor.FractalComponentProcessor

[INFO] ————————————————————————

[ERROR] BUILD ERROR

[INFO] ————————————————————————

[INFO] fail to execute

… which is really helpful…

After spending too much time on searching why, the cause was ’simply’ because my Fractal component (java class) was extending another Fractal component (java class). Not sure that it is a component problem or a component import/requirement one but when one component inherits one other it does not compile at all.

Good to know!

Update on november 13:

Sometimes things are strange… It seems that this bug has been fixed some months ago (according to the Fractal bug tracker…) but I have it when I try to extend a component which has already been processed by spoon… ie In the same project all works fine… The problem occurs when I have a fractal based project which depends on another one…

An article was published in the scientific magazine “Nature” called “Cells go fractal” on September 4th. The article reported on the findings of research done at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) as it was published at the ‘2009 European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) conference’ held in Amsterdam.

Experiments done by Sebastien Huet and Aurélien Bancaud in a research group led by Jan Ellenberg at the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, tracked the movement of molecules within cells, this was then compared the pattern of movement against mathematical models. It was found that, large molecules moved according to the same rules as small molecules, suggesting that their environment was therefor fractal.

The researches were able to track the behaviour of the cells by means of injecting live mouse cells in a lab dish with fluorescent molecules. They were able to track the molecules with this special type of imaging in microbiology called fluorescence microsopy. The study focused on how cells can keep track of gene activity or gene expression through chromatins in the cell nucleus.  Basically this process takes place to ensure the right molecules interact with each other at the right time and in the right place in the cells. Huet and Bancaud found that the molecules moved as if they were having to navigate obstacles (but there are no barriers, as they exist in other parts of the cell) to navigate around in the cell nucleus. When the team looked at the behaviour of different sized molecules, they saw that large molecules were obstructed to the same degree as small molecules in the cell nucleus.

It was furthermore discovered by studying how proteins, bound to different kinds of chromatin (namely Euchromatin and Heterochromatin), moved around in the cells and found that the different types of chromatin were fractal in different ways. Meaning molecules behaved differently for each type of chromatin with its own distinct fractal characteristics. All this information could be used to learn exactly how cells use a fractal structure to change the behaviour of proteins to change particular DNA sequences and skip whole other parts of the DNA sequence. It’s also expected that with insight into these fractal structures researches can learn how to better target certain areas of DNA for study or perhaps in the future even for new types of treatment for disease.

Links:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090904/full/news.2009.880.html
http://www.nature.com/
http://fractuality.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/cells-go-fractal.pdf

http://www.embl.de/
http://www.embo.org/

http://www.embl.de/research/units/cbb/ellenberg/members/index.php?s_personId=4421
http://www.embl.de/ExternalInfo/ellenberg/homepage/bancaud.html
http://www.embl.de/research/units/cbb/ellenberg/members/index.php?s_personId=939
http://www.embl.de/ExternalInfo/ellenberg/homepage/labmembers.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence_microscopy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_nucleus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euchromatin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromatin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequence

It was very useful to be able to transform a constant normalized random distribution (same probability for every number between 0 and 1) into another one with personalized density distribution. This has been used to create materials choosing photon bouncing directions. Also used on objective depth of field effects of different types. This is the way I did it (and really enjoyed deducing this one):

• Lets suppose we have a random generator with a density probability distribution : D(x)=1 for all 0<=x<1, and lets call ‘r’ the random numbers generated by this distribution.

• We want to get another density probability distribution called E(x), of course definite integral of E(x) between x=0 and x=1 must be exactly 1.

• Lets call ‘t’ to the random numbers generated by E(x) distribution.

• I found the relationship between r and t is: r = definite integral of E(x) between x=0 and x=t. This is to say the area defined between E(x) and the horizontals axis between x=0 and x=t must be exactly r.

• So just substitute your E(x) and solve the equation for t.

• Applied example 1: find a random distribution that applied to a radius and given uniform random angles gives a homogeneous surface distribution at the plane inside a radius 1 circle:
  • Solution: t = sqrt(r/pi)

• Applied example 2: find a random distribution that applied to a radius and given uniform random angles gives a homogeneous surface distribution at the plane inside a washer of radius r0 and r1 with r0<r1:
  • Solution: t = (-b+sqrt(b^2+2ar))/a with a = (2(r1-r0))/(r0+r1) and b = 1-(r1-r0)/(r0+r1)

• As exercise: can you calculate ‘t’ for a random distribution which is completely lineal between x=0 and x=1?

These are some screen shoots of custom random distributions made by my wife María with the same Raydiant engine:

I find delightful the art of pseudorandom number generation. A bunch of generators has been tested before choosing one for the Raydiant engine. Some of them have been found to be not so random by the simple method of drawing random ponts in an accumulation buffer. These are the bad sheep (see the screen shoots just to be sure):

• Park-Miller “minimal standard” 31 bit pseudo-random number generator, implemented with David G. Carta’s optimization: with 32 bit math and without division.

• Lehmer random number generator. For more details see: “Random Number Generators: Good Ones Are Hard To Find” by Steve Park and Keith Miller, Communications of the ACM, October 1988.

• Concatenation of following two 16-bit multiply with carry generators: x(n) = a*x(n-1)+carry mod 2^16 and y(n) = b*y(n-1)+carry mod 2^16. Number and carry packed within the same 32 bit integer. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests.

• Combination of a Multiply with carry generator and a simple multiplicative generator. Returns x(n) + z(n) where x(n) = x(n-1) + x(n-2) mod 2^32 and z(n) = 30903 * z(n-1) + carry mod 2^16. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests.

On the other hand there were other generators that didn’t show their true predictive nature and insisted on appearing as true random numbers:

• ANSI C pseudorandom number generator.
• Mersenne Twister pseudorandom number generator.
• Robert Jenkins’ IBAA generator. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests.
• Combination of lagged Fibonacci generator and a multiply with carry generator. Returning x(n)+y(n) mod 2^32 where x(n)=x(n-99)*x(n-33)mod2^32, x’s odd and y(n)=30903*y(n-1)+carrymod2^16. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests.
• A Combination of 2 multiple recursive generators. Has parameters for 3 different combos. Source: Pierre
  * L’Ecuyer, “Good Parameter Sets for Combined Multiple Recursive Random Number Generators.” Operations Research, vol.47 no.1 (1999), pp.159–164. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests.
• Combination of 3 Tausworthe generators — assumes 32-bit integers, Source: Pierre L’Ecuyer, “Maximally
  Equidistributed Combined Tausworthe Generators”. Mathematics of Computation, vol.65, no.213(1996), pp203–213. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests. Strong theoretical backing so far.
• Combination of 4 tausworth generators — assumes 32-bit integers, Sources: Pierre L’Ecuyer, “Tables of
  Maximally-Equidistributed Combined LFSR Generators.” Mathematics of Computation, vol.68, no 225(1999),  pp.261–269. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests. Strong theoretical backing so far.

Other merits considered to choose the perfect one were fastness of set seed operation, low memory usage, length of period and of course random number generation performance. And the winner is…

• Combination of a shift-register sequence on a 32-bit vector, a linear congruential generator, and a multiply with carry sequence. Returns y+x+z where y(n) = y(n-1)(I+L^13)(I+R^17)(I+L^5), x(n) = 69069*x(n-1)+1mod2^32 and z(n) = 2*z(n-1)+z(n-2)+carry mod 2^32. The period is > 2^127. Extremely high quality, extremely fast, ultra fast set seed, 32 bit random numbers. Pass all of the tests in Marsaglia’s “Diehard” battery of statistical tests.

These are the bad sheep, to appreciate the defects is imperative you see them at full size and 1 pixel per texel zoom. A couple billion points have been accumulated on each one:

Those are the last tests just before starting completing and debugging the HQ render with radiosity. This waiting is killing me but discipline is not a luxury but a necessity when dealing with hundred of thousands of C++ lines. The main components of the engine are the ethers, materials and chromes. Simply put ethers are the shape of things, materials define how light interact with things and chromes define the color of each point. These 3 main elements can be freely combined between them so any new one that is implemented provokes a combinatory explosion of new possibilities. To improve performance an automatic steradian dispersion ray calculator has been included so the optimum child ray count are generated in each photon bouncing.

OK, after a lot of debugging the Raydiant engine is starting to behave, so much so that even transparent, translucent and diffuse reflective materials look good even on preview mode. And preview mode generates frames at an interactive rate, I’m having so much fun moving around in this test scenario. At this stage of developing only 1 thread is still currently being used. I can’t wait to increase that number to 8, the optimum for my i7. Of course once this mechanism is coded and debugged you will be able to select any number of threads, something appropriate for your particular system.

The new Raydiant engine will be able to accurately simulate light dispersion and coupling a new architecture several times faster with the new multithreaded ability with no synchronization overhead things are looking good. The ability to visualize the recursive grid spatial partition has been very useful for debugging and intellectual enjoyment also. But all this is still theory because by now only preview mode interactive and static renders had been obtained:

So after finishing and using the Raydiosity engine I could see some ways to improve the quality and performance of the renders. And with the new true multikernel CPUs may be even realtime true radiosity interactive movement could be achieved, a game can be made… . As with the previous Raydiosity engine a fundamental feature is a strong and easy procedural geometry and texture generation API. This time I linked with Qt library. After 6 months of redesign and heavy coding this are some of the screen shoots of the new Raydiant engine in preview mode (most of them are obtained at interactive rates):

   Fractali abstracţi, uşor decalaţi .