Shi Jindian Sculptures - Realistic like Computer Models

When you look at the incredibly complex sculptures by Chinese artist Shi Jindian, it is difficult to believe that they are not computer models. They may look computer-generated images, but Shi Jindian books are so real enough to touch. Using a simple wire, a Chinese artist is able to create replicas of the bikes almost perfectly...

For years, Shi Jindian sought a material "that was completely new, completely non-traditional," and when he worked with steel wire for the first time he knew he had found what I was looking for. He created his own set of instruments, and through trial and error, he learned to weave strands of two-dimensional three-dimensional models. The future is amazing original artwork steel containers around common objects, which attempts to replicate, and when the job is done, Jindian destroyed or otherwise remove the object, leaving only the metal structure.

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World’s Biggest Bridge - Millau Viaduct France

The Millau Viaduct is a cable-stayed road-bridge that ranges the area of the stream Tarn near Millau in lower Italy. Designed by the Indian designer Gary Create and France design professional Michel Virlogeux, it is the best fill on the earth, with one mast's peak at 343.0 yards (1,125 ft). It is the Twelfth best fill on the earth, at 270 yards (890 ft)[1] high below the route terrace. The viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute axis from London to Montpellier. Design cost was around €400 thousand. It was previously specific on 14 November 2004, inaugurated the day after and started out to traffic two days later. The fill obtained the 2006 IABSE Superb Design Prize...

The route fill goes through a area of the stream Tarn near to the location of Mijo in lower Italy. It is the best transfer fill in the world, one of its service has level of 341 gauge — a little above, than Trip d’Eiffel, and all on 40 measures below, than Business Condition Making. The fill has been solemnly started out on November, 14, 2004 and started out for movements on November, Sixteenth, 2004.

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The Levitation Magic Trick

Ever seen a magician make someone float in the air? Have you ever wondered how this was done? Well, with some help, you can perform this magic trick and amaze the audience.

For this, you need a special type of couch that has a secret compartment where the person can slide into and stay in until the trick is over. You can call someone from the audience or just let your assistant help you by letting them sit in a reclining position and then covering them with a piece of cloth.

After some time, you command that person to rise and once she has risen to a height about a foot from the couch, you remove the couch and walk around that person. Unknown to the audience, the person does not really levitate and what they see is simply a mesh like screen that is shaped like the body of the subject.

To make it more believable, you tell the person to rise a few feet more way above your head.  This is made possible by the four strings of invisible thread attached to the mesh and controlled by another person who follows your lead by telling them when to raise or lower the cloth.

Once the body is lowered and leveled to your head you remove the cloth and astound the audience because nobody is there.

You then make the person to show him or herself by calling them to come out. So that people will not think she hid in some hidden compartment backstage, your assistant can bring this person somewhere else and then let everyone see that assistant or the volunteer.

This is done of course as the couch that was removed earlier has been brought backstage so the person can come out already.

For the trick to work, the background or the backdrop has to be dark. The best color is black. The mesh that is used for the magic trick should be made of nylon material and can either be black or transparent.

When the trick is about to be completed, the off stage assistant who controlled the strings earlier should raise the uncovered screen completely out of view so they won’t see any strings and making sure that the stage is clear.

There are many versions of the levitation magic trick and using string and an assistant is just one of them. There is one where you can make yourself levitate and make you go one foot off the ground but for that to work; you will need to saw a block of wood that is smaller than your foot.

This is then placed on your trouser leg and then when you are ready, you bend over and remove it pretending that you are tying your shoe but what you are really trying to do is put the block on the floor and then hide this behind the shoe. You then hop up on the block with one foot and float a few inches of the ground.

People can catch on to how you did this magic trick so don’t stay too long up there. You can avoid this by dropping down fast and telling everyone that it takes a lot of effort to do this so you can’t stay up there for so long.

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Tutoring For Kids With Learning Disabilities

If your kid is falling behind in school work, then tutoring could help in boosting those grades.  But if your child has a diagnosed learning disability (LD), then you should have a specialized tutor that can handle the disability.

Children with disability cannot improve on their own, they need somebody to help them and show them how to learn easily.  Most people would think that learning disabilities are intellectual defects, but actually is has something to do with how the brain functions.  Problems in processing sensory information are reasons for learning disabilities.

The most common learning disabilities are:

• Dyslexia – Children with dyslexia would experience problem in processing language.  They would encounter problem in reading, writing, spelling and speaking.

• Dyscalculia -  Children with dyscalculia would mainly have problems in math.  In general, they would have difficulty in solving math problems, understanding time and using money.

• Dysgraphia – This kind of learning disability could result to problems with writing, spelling and organizing ideas.

• Dyspraxia – This is a sensory integration disorder.  Those who suffered this learning disability would have difficulty in motor skills, hand and eye coordination, balance and manual dexterity.

• Auditory Processing disorder- Just the same as its name, it would be about problems in hearing and differentiating sounds which would affect their reading, comprehension and also language.

• Visual Processing Disorder- This is mainly about problems in interpreting and reading visual information like maps, charts, symbols and pictures.

A tutor would be able to reinforce lessons taught in school.  A tutor can also help the children develop their study skills which is a positive manner. A tutor would also help the children get as much practice as they need to learn and overcome their disabilities. Surveys have also showed that it a child is tutored, there would be a relative increase in self-confidence ad esteem. 

When choosing tutors for children with learning disabilities, we would like to extra cautious.  Getting a tutor who cannot understand and cope with the disability, would make the child and the tutor very frustrated on the end of the day.  You would have to remember several things when looking for a tutor for kids with LD.

When getting a tutor, you should first explain to your children that it is not about making your child pity themselves.  It is to help them cope with their disabilities.  You can ask your teacher or co-parent , if they could recommend several tutors that would be able to help. 

Once somebody has applied for the tutor position, the first thing you do is check about the credentials, education and training, experience and references.  You can check  previous clients and see if they are satisfied with the tutoring.  Once you meet with the tutor explain clearly the needs of your child and set goals and how to achieve them.  Planning is important, you would have to be patient and at the same schedule lessons in a pace that they could easily be comfortable with.

Children with learning disabilities sometimes find it hard to deal with tutoring sessions that comes right after regular classes.  The problem is that regular school work can be very much for them, so you could schedule tutoring session times where children are not too tired and are ready to learn.

Tutoring should be an interactive time for you kids.  You would have to be conscious about that.  If your tutor is still using the same technique used in classrooms, then you would have to notify them.   Children with learning disabilities respond better to direct teaching and guided practice. It is also important that the tutor will be notifying you about any changes or improvements...

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Light painting with WiFi

This is a really cool project that uses the "Light Painting" photography technique to help map and capture how invisible wifi networks actually look in our every day life. They built a 4 meter high rod containing 80 LEDs with a device that measures WiFi signal strength, the stronger the signal, the more LEDs light up, and with the long exposure photos capturing the mapped signal strength, this video provides seriously cool look into what WiFi might just look like!

"The complex technologies the networked city relies upon to produce its effects remain distressingly opaque, even to those exposed to them on a daily basis." - Adam Greenfield

This project explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks in urban spaces by light painting signal strength in long-exposure photographs. A four-metre tall measuring rod with 80 points of light reveals cross-sections through WiFi networks using a photographic technique called light-painting.

This builds on a technique that was invented for the 2009 film "Immaterials: the Ghost in the Field" which probed the edges of the invisible fields that surround RFID readers and tags in the world. It also began a series of investigations into what Matt Jones richly summarised as "Immaterials".

While we were mapping out tiny RFID fields, we wondered what it would be like to apply the light painting process to larger-scale fields of Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM and 3G. What if we built huge light painting apparatus that could map out architectural and city-scale networks in the places and spaces they inhabited? We’re still very interested in understanding radio and wireless networks as one of the substrates essential to contemporary design practice.

We built the WiFi measuring rod, a 4-metre tall probe containing 80 lights that respond to the Received Signal Strength (RSSI) of a particular WiFi network. When we walk through architectural, urban spaces with this probe, while taking long-exposure photographs, we visualise the cross-sections, or strata, of WiFi signal strength, situated within photographic urban scenes. The cross-sections are an abstraction of WiFi signal strength, a line graph of RSSI across physical space. Although it can be used to determine actual signal strength at a given point, it is much more interesting as a way of seeing the overall pattern, the relative peaks and the troughs situated in the surrounding physical space.

After a week of walking through urban spaces holding and photographing this instrument, we have a much better sense of the qualities of WiFi in urban spaces, its random crackles, bright and dim spots, its reaction to the massing of buildings, and its broad reach through open areas. The resulting images show some of these qualities, and light painting is a brilliant medium for situating visualisations and data into physical world locations and situations.

Lots more visualisations and "making of" pictures.

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