Tuesday, November 26, 2013

More Fossils in 3D

After my previous post about the Smithsonian's 3D website..
Sketchfab sent me a link to this cool site - africanfossils.org

the site has 3d models of various fossils and relics..
heres an example
 This nearly complete cranium was found in 1975 by Bernard Ngeneo. The brow ridges above the eyes were just visible, exposed on the surface. 

Richard Leakey carefully excavated this very fragile specimen over about three days. This is one of the most complete skulls of Homo erectus from Africa, with a face and teeth. 




Dated at 1.75 million years, it lived alongside several other species of hominins. 
At the time of its discovery this was not believed to be the case; there were still paleontologists and archaeologists who believed that there was only one lineage of early humans and all hominin species ascended in one single line. 

This large brained hominin is on our direct line of decent. 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus became the first hominin to migrate out of Africa.

and  i was able to download it.. 

and it opened in Blender.. beautifully

Monday, November 25, 2013

The Smithsonian in 3D

The Smithsonian's website now has a 3d tool for viewing and interacting with some of their historic artefacts & scientific specimens.. right there in your browser! 



check it out here
the online experience is pretty neat on their site..
you can embed these on your blog(like below) but the controls are limited.


 first time users and 3D first timers will need to get oriented with the controls. Users familliar with 3d software or sites like Sketchfab, P3d and Verold can jump right in.

Some of the models are even available for download. 

Granted the scans are extremely hirez(CT Scans)..so each is around 200mb .. there are one or two print ready files that are 6mb..(thats right, you can 3d print these files!) 

the results however are a bit mixed.

for example i downloaded a Panama dolphin cranium and it was just 13mb(unzipped to 30mb).. 

heres what it looks like in Blender:

seems to be a mistake of somekind.. the lower jaw intersects with the upper skull.. 
hmm .. will try another model soon..

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Blog Migration

So i just found out that the myopera service will be shutting down in a few months. Had suspected this would happen and so had already been maintaining a few mirrors on wordpress and blogger. however Opera never gave me an option to extract all my old posts.. i could only manage to setup a rss feed or IFTTT recipe that would post what i posted on myopera to the corresponding mirrors. Anyway now that they have announced the shutdown, they have made the export option available and simple to use(scroll down for instructions). So all my myopera blog friends listen up, am now properly migrated over to Blogger/blogspot(and wordpress).
from: my.opera.chaitanyak (will no longer work from march 2014)
blog migration001


to this link:  http://chaitanyakrishnan.blogspot.in/

(this version also supports sketchfab and webgl embeds)

theres also a wordpress mirror at this link: chaitanyak.wordpress.com

as you can see i've tried to maintain the same look and feel, to avoid confusion.

I'm sad to see the myopera comunity shutting down, but am also glad i'm finally on blogger(fulltime) since it supports all the new webgl embedding etc..
example:


Instructions for migrating your blog from myOpera to Blogger:

1) Log into your myopera blog and go to Account

2) go to Blog Settings
3) Click on the new button that says "Export your Blog"
this will mail you a file. don't download that file! its got a bug(will cause a lot of pain and suffering). 
instead go to "Files"
and download the newest xml file(check the date, and file name)




4) Now go to wordpress.. create an account or login to an existing account and create a new blog(will work with an existing blog.. but it won't merge/delete any identical posts.. so you may end up with a lot of duplicate posts)

 5) select "My Opera" and then upload your xml file.
after wordpress does the import and sets up the blog it will send you a mail. go to the next step only once you get that mail. if you get an error, do it again. 

You may use the wordpress blog if you like. its a great service! 
I only moved to blogger since the free wordpress blog service doesnt support iframes, and i need iframes to display some of my 3d work.

6)  now go to the export page of wordpress

7) export the whole blog(pages, comments posts, etc..)

8) now go to this online tool
 this will convert your wordpress file to a blogger format. once its done, save it.

9) on the blogger site, login and go to Settings..and click on "Other"

click on "Import Blog" and then import your newly converted xml file. now you have a blog that supports iframes and all that. enjoy.


Thursday, November 7, 2013

Random thursday


Saw this article today about a new Muslim superhero(i know there are many).. this one stood out.. coz..

1)her first name rhymes with Malala,

2)last name is Khan..

and

3)She is of Pakistani origin..



Its like they had a check-list to make her as recognizably Muslim as possible.



Heres the original article with more details about the comic- http://designtaxi.com/news/362022/Marvel-Comics-Introduces-Muslim-Girl-Superhero/

So anyway I posted a few pro and critical tweets about it on twitter ..

https://twitter.com/chaitanyak/status/398480764603342848


obviously I was having mixed feelings about it.

Wound up getting invited onto an talk with the creator of the series G Willow Wilson on a BBC radio show.

I didn't get to say much(was quite engrossed in listening to them all..and a bit nervous).. just managed to say that i wasn't happy with her being another in a long line of Ms.Marvels .. should have made her an original sounding superhero.

Listen to the podcast here ,its an mp3 so click to listen or rightclick and download it(around 23mb)

The segment about the comic starts at 23:10

My part is at 32:32


The BBC page is here

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Like I mentioned earlier, this isn't the first time someone's created a muslim superhero..

A recent one infact was a differently abled muslim boy - Silver Scorpion read it here.



and then of course theres The 99 a comic-book series based on characters that each personify one of the 99 qualities that the Koran attributes to God(soon to be an animated series). The first issue is available here for free.


and then there are all the characters already in the marvel and DC universes.. go google them.

UPDATE:
I read issue #1 of Ms Marvel.. and liked it. Of course she doesnt have any super powers yet.. lets see how it progresses. so far the storytelling and art have been great! 

via Inaccessible is Accessible http://my.opera.com/chaitanyak/blog/show.dml/111212002