The top 10 new things you can do with Photoshop CS3

There is a nice list at PCWorld with the top 10 new things you can do with Photoshop CS3. A lot of them sound really cool, hopefully I can try them out sometime.

14,000 Visitors

Cool, I just noticed that I've had 14,000 visitors to this thing since August 27, 2002. It's not a massive number, but it's still pretty neat, considering this blog started because it was assigned for a writing class and it's kept going since then.

Complete HDR How-To

Here's a handy guide to HDR using Photomatix (although you can use Photoshop as well) and here are some example shots I took while playing around.

Top 5 Creepiest Robot Clones

Here are the top 5 creepiest robot clones. I actually saw Robo-Einstein and Jules at the NextFest in New York, they were pretty cool, especially watching Jules' eyes track faces in the crowd, that was crazy, almost like a Terminator type thing going on from what I saw on the laptop screen. Of course, he was just a torso, so I wouldn't worry about him trying to cause a robot rebellion just yet.

Some of these approach the "uncanny valley". And I'm still not entirely sure which is the robot in that picture of the man sitting next to his clone.

Gecko-Like Wall-Climbing Robot

This wall-climbing robot uses the same type of adhesive as gecko feet in order to climb up walls, albeit with more wheel-like motions than running, but it's still pretty cool. They're apparently trying to figure out how geckos keep their feet clean while walking in dirt. This article seems to suggest that the gecko's feet are cleaned by the wall itself, as the gecko is climbing, so it should work similarly for the robot.

The five biggest neuroscience developments of the year

This interesting article talks about the five biggest neuroscience developments of the year: mind reading, neural alteration of morals, medicalization of sexual orientation, vegetative consciousness, and artificial intelligence progress.