Story starters and idea generators

The story starts when your protagonist bluffs through something. 

Another character is a bartender who is your protagonist's favorite musician. 

 Refresh for another scenario.

http://www.archetypewriting.com/muse/idea_generators.htm

High Frame Rate Video Playback

Red a publicat un intreg articol foarte interesant in care se compara diversele framerateuri si formate vizuale. http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/high-frame-rate-video

Coldships - short story

It was a shock to learn how short their life spans were but not surprising considering how much naked energy they threw off. We do not know how long we live because none of us have ever died, only changed form.

They called themselves Humans. They are beings of fire. They burn so hot. They seemed to be made of pure radiant heat. They seemed impossible. They had special suits to survive in our environment. Those suits protected us, encasing their boiling energy. They called our environment a ‘vacuum’ and spoke of an ‘atmosphere’ where they lived.

Toata povestea: http://365tomorrows.com/08/18/coldships/

The lost astronauts

Then, on 28 November 1960, the Bochum space observatory in West Germany said it had intercepted radio signals which it thought might have been a satellite. No official announcement had been made of any launch.
“Our reaction was to immediately switch on the receivers and listen,” said Achille. After almost an hour of tuning in to static, the boys were about to give up when suddenly a tapping sound emerged from the hiss and crackle.

“It was a signal we recognised immediately as Morse code – SOS,” said Gian. But something about this signal was strange. It was moving slowly, as if the craft was not orbiting but was at a single point and slowly moving away from the Earth. The SOS faded into distant space.

As the brothers listened, the cosmonaut experimented with zero gravity. They lost the signal as the cosmonaut prepared for re-entry while whistling a communist hymn. It was only then that President John F Kennedy was awoken at 2am to be given the news that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space.
Five weeks later, on 19 May 1961, the brothers picked up what is now their most infamous recording, which they claim is of a woman cosmonaut whose ship burned up on re-entry. Then, a few days after this, they picked up a tantalising few seconds of another transmission: “Conditions growing worse, why don’t you answer?” Both recordings are clear and accurately translated.
One fatality that we do know about from those early days was that of Valentin Bondarenko. At 24, he was the youngest cosmonaut. He met his terrible end on 23 March 1961, while in a pressure chamber as part of a 10-day isolation exercise. Bondarenko dropped an alcohol-soaked cotton swab on a hot plate, which – in the oxygen-rich environment – started a fire that ignited his suit. It was 20 minutes before the pressurised door could be opened. Bondarenko was pulled out barely alive, crying “It was my fault”, and died eight hours later, comforted by his best friend, Yuri Gagarin. News of the accident was hushed up until 1986.

Este fascinant articolul.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/1302/lost_in_space.html

A Pail of Air - short story

A world where the Earth has been thrown out of the orbit with the sun and the air has frozen to the ground. A family continues to survive on this harsh planet everyone used to call home.

Povestea cu Pamantul inghetat nu este singura din colectia asta. Pentru a le vedea pe toate aveti butoane de navigare in dreapta sus. Toate sunt destul de scurte pentru o pauza de la lucru.

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___6.htm

Daca va intrebati ce e un "pail"

Singapore - Disneyland with the Death Penalty

Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore's airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to things. Outside, the organic, florid as ever in the tropics, had been gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself. Only the clouds were feathered with chaos - weird columnar structures towering above the Strait of China.

The cab driver warned me about littering. He asked where I was from.

He asked if it was clean there. "Singapore very clean city." One of those annoying Japanese-style mechanical bells cut in as he exceeded the speed limit, just to remind us both that he was doing it. There seemed to be golf courses on either side of the freeway. . . .

"You come for golf?"

"No."

"Business?"

"Pleasure."

...

The overt goal of the national IT2000 initiative is a simple one: to sustain indefinitely, for a population of 2.8 million, annual increases in productivity of three to four percent.

IT, of course, is "information technology," and we can all be suitably impressed with Singapore's evident willingness to view such technology with the utmost seriousness. In terms of applied tech, they seem to have an awfully practical handle on what this stuff can do. The National Computer Board has designed an immigration system capable of checking foreign passports in 30 seconds, resident passports in fifteen. Singapore's streets are planted with sensor loops to register real-time traffic; the traffic lights are computer controlled, and the system adjusts itself constantly to optimize the situation, creating "green waves" whenever possible. A different sort of green wave will appear if a building's fire sensor calls for help; emergency vehicles are automatically green-lighted through to the source of the alarm. The physical operation of the city's port, constant and quite unthinkably complex, is managed by another system. A "smart-card" system is planned to manage billings for cars entering the Restricted Zone. (The Restricted Zone is that part of central Singapore which costs you something to enter with a private vehicle. Though I suspect that if, say, Portland were to try this, the signs would announce the "Clean Air Zone," or something similar.)

They're good at this stuff. Really good. But now they propose to become something else as well; a coherent city of information, its architecture planned from the ground up. And they expect that whole highways of data will flow into and through their city. Yet they also seem to expect that this won't affect them. And that baffles us, and perhaps it baffles the Singaporeans that it does.

Tot articolul: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson_pr.html?1

Analiza unei iluzii optice

Sanse mari sa mai fi vazut aceasta iluzie optica. "Culoarea albastra" si verde sunt aceeasi (anume RGB 0,255,150). Ce nu ati vazut este acest studiu interesant:

So what we see above is the same greenish blue region, touching the green on top and the blue on bottom — with no particular seams, implying (correctly) that there is no actual difference in color and what is detected is merely an illusion.

And the story would end there, if not for DanKam.  DanKam’s an augmented reality filter for the color blind, designed to make clear what colors are what.  Presumably, DanKam should see right through this illusion.  After all, whatever neurological bugs cause the confusion effect in the brain, certainly were not implemented in my code.

You might notice that while we’re recovering the color, or chroma relatively accurately, we’re losing detail in perceived luminance. Basically, we’re losing edges.

It’s almost like the visual system sees dark vs. light at a different resolution than one color vs. another.

This, of course, is no new discovery. Since the early days of color television, color information has been sent with lower detail than the black and white it augmented. And all effective compressed image formats tend to operate in something called YUV, which splits the normal Red, Green, and Blue into Black vs. White, Red vs. Green, and Orange vs. Blue (which happen to be the signals sent over the optic nerve). Once this is done, the Black and White channels are transmitted at full size while the differential color channels are halved or even quartered in detail. Why do this? Because the human visual system doesn’t really notice. (The modes are called 4:2:2 or 4:1:1, if you’re curious.)

So, my theory is that these color artifacts aren’t the result of some complex analysis with pattern matching, but rather the normal downsampling of chroma that occurs in the visual system. Usually, such downsampling doesn’t cause such dramatic shifts in color, but of course the purpose of an optical illusion is to exploit the corner cases of what we do or do not see.

Tot articolul (cu si mai multe exemple): http://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/17/mindless-equals-blown/

What's cool or fun about a thumping, sweaty dungeon full of posing idiots?

I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only "saddoes" dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled "sad" - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.


Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.


Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they "enjoy" clubbing. They don't. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.

Tot articolul: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/13/fashion.comment/print

Cum sa faci un meniu inselator

There's a science to where on the menu you display that price, too, he says. Take a typical two-column menu: The description of the food is on the left, and the price is an inch or two from the description, on the right. Bad idea, says Mentzer. Get rid of the second column, he recommends, and put the price at the end of the sentence that describes the dish.

"You want people to read the price after they've read the description," he explains, "not before."

Now that you've nestled together price and description, you've got to think about where on the menu to locate each dish. Mentzer has studies that track where the eye travels when it reads a menu, and part of his presentation to clients is a menu divided into sections: the starlets (top right, the place for items that net the most money), the plow horses (top left, ideal for dishes that are higher than average in popularity and lower than average contributors to the bottom line), the dogs (bottom left, lower than average popularity, lower than average profits) and so on.

"The eye goes first to the starlets and it doesn't like to spend a lot of time with the dogs," he says. "I told a guy recently to move his pastas -- which are really high-margin -- from the dogs to the all-stars, and there was a 30 percent jump in sales."

Tot articolul: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/12/AR2008041201225.html

10 Strange Things About The Universe

The universe can be a very strange place. While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around.
10 Negative Energy
9 Frame Dragging
8 Relativity of Simultaneity
7 Black Strings
6 Geon
5 Kerr Black Hole
4 Quantum Tunneling
3 Cosmic Strings
2 Antimatter Retrocausality
1 Gödel’s incompleteness theorems

Tot articolul: http://listverse.com/2010/11/04/10-strange-things-about-the-universe/

Ada Kaleh - oaza orientala de pe Dunare

La trei kilometri de localitatea edilului, apele Dunarii ascund ce a mai ramas din insula turcilor, Ada-Kaleh, inecata de comunisti pentru a ridica barajul Portile de Fier.
Pe strazile de numai doi metri latime, marginite de case mici, din caramida, acoperite cu tigla rotunda, turcii tineau cafenele si baruri, faceau cafea la ibric, dulceata de trandafiri, baclavale, halvita "si cel mai bun rahat din tara - "Lochum" cu alune, fistic, lamaie, cacao, nuci...", povesteste un batran profesor din Orsova, Jean Constantin, pasionat de istoria tumultuoasa a insulei.

Secretul citronadei si al cafelei la nisip

Turcii care nu faceau bani din dulceturi si delicatese lucrau la fabrica de confectii si la cea de tutun. "Tigarile Ada-Kaleh erau foarte apreciate, dar comunistii i-au obligat, pana la urma, sa faca doar tigari Marasesti...", a aflat profesorul.

Pe insula erau si o uzina electrica, posta, o scoala, o moschee mare si o bisericuta ortodoxa cat o bucatarie. Aveau turcii si un pasa, trimis de la Istanbul.

Fiul unui cafegiu de pe Ada-Kaleh, Durgut Husref, are 63 de ani, traieste in Severin si povesteste cu placere primii 25 de ani din viata lui, petrecuti pe insula.

"Faceam cea mai buna citronada de lamaie din tara. Veneau romani, militieni, securisti... Ne-au vizitat si vreo 20 de sefi de restaurante si ne-au cerut reteta. Le-am dat-o, dar nu le-am spus cate zile trebuie sa stea lamaile la macerat, he-he, si nu le-a iesit citronada bine".

Nici secretul cafelei la nisip nu l-au dat. "O faceam din boabe verzi prajite acolo, pe loc. Trebuia sa stii exact cum sa faci caimacul de-un deget si cat de calda sa fie apa. Ca nu se face cu apa fiarta!"

Tot articolul: http://www.newspad.ro/Supravietuitorii-de-pe-insula-scufundata-de-Ceausescu,173001.html

Fucking with the mail: Artist puts Royal Mail to the test

We may be living in the era of the email, but one young illustrator has proved that the art of correspondence is far from dead. While working for her degree at Glasgow School of Art Harriet Russell decided to find out exactly what lengths the men and women of the Royal Mail were willing to go to to ensure the safe delivery of her missives.

Galerie completa: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/return-to-sender-artist-puts-royal-mail-to-the-test-955499.html?action=Gallery

Tot articolul: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/return-to-sender-artist-puts-royal-mail-to-the-test-955499.html

Ikea Beijing

BEIJING — With no plans one Saturday, Zhang Xin told his wife, son and mother to wear something smart and hop into the family sedan. He could have taken them to the Forbidden City or the Great Wall, but he decided on another popular destination -- IKEA.

Zhang said the family needed a respite from the smog and a reliable lunch.

"We just came here for fun," said the 34-year-old office manager. "I suppose we could have gone somewhere else, but it wouldn't have been a complete experience."

Welcome to IKEA Beijing, where the atmosphere is more theme park than store.

Tot articolul: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/25/business/fi-china-ikea25

Imagini: http://gizmodo.com/5673748/beijings-ikea-is-apparently-a-great-place-for-a-snooze

Design: Take Shelter in a Human Habitrail

Radius’ shelters start at $200,000; the multifamily pod shown below goes for $2 million, plus about 25 percent for shipping and installation. They all have fiberglass shells, which are less prone to cracking than concrete and, lacking steel, won’t show up on target-acquisition systems. The bunkers can run for years entirely off the grid, which means that when a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse takes out power on the surface, you’ll still be able to operate your hair dryer. And they’re buried far enough underground to be impervious to radiation. In the event of a chemical or biological attack, you’ll feel secure knowing that the sealed and pressurized units come with specially designed air filtration that uses three different physical purifiers and an ultraviolet-radiation sterilization system.

Tot articolul:http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/pl_shelters_safehouse/

A blind architect relearns his craft

Two and a half years ago, Downey had just started running the architecture practice at a stylish green-design firm. A few weeks after he took the job, he noticed something wrong with his vision. A tumor was wrapped around his optic nerve; he needed surgery right away. When he woke up, everything was blurry, but he could see. “Five days later,” he said, “it all went black.”

Downey returned to the office. But he couldn’t use design software. He couldn’t read plans. A few months passed, and the firm was caught up in the housing crash. Downey scheduled a talk with the owner, an old friend, to figure out how he could be more useful. He was at a workstation, up on a loft, when she came to see him, and he could tell by her footfalls that it wasn’t going to be the kind of conversation he had been planning to have.

San Francisco was full of laid-off architects. Downey could be pretty sure he was the only blind one. It turned out to be an interesting credential. SmithGroup and another firm, the Design Partnership, hired him as a consultant.

Rent a White Guy

Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”

Tot articolul: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/rent-a-white-guy/8119/

From Antivirus to Antibiotics: McAfee Searches for a Last Cure

Allison Adonizio and John McAfee (of McAfee antivirus fame) think they've discovered the next great antibiotic in the jungles of Belize. It's all natural. It's unpatentable. It's untested. And thanks to our business of medicine, it's not coming to America.


When McAfee pulls a bottle from "Topic-Qx" from his shirt and laments that I don't have a wound to test it on, I know how to remedy that. A minute later both of my arms are streaming blood, Topic-Qx is applied to the left incision, and the local workmen are shaking their heads and chuckling.


I returned from Belize with six bottles of Topic-Qx—five in bottles with eyedroppers; one in an atomizer that I'd used on my own arm, all given to me by Quorumex to be distributed as I saw fit, with the special recommendation to find someone afflicted with a staph infection, on which Topic-Qx was said to be especially effective.

I offered three leading researchers in the field of anti-quorum sensing technique one of my samples for testing. They all refused.

Un articol fascinant despre cum un milionar incearca sa rafineze plante medicinale extraordinare din padurea tropicala si companiile farmaceutice incearca sa il opreasca.

Merita citit si din punct de vedere stiintific deoarece mecanismul de actiune al plantei este ceva complet nou.

Tot articolul: http://gizmodo.com/5569746/from-antivirus-to-antibiotics-mcafee-searches-for-a-last-cure

“Change the numbers, but don’t change the conclusion.” - data faking la nivelul miliardelor de dolari

What I could not get my head around was having to force-fit analysis to a conclusion. In one case, the question I was tasked with solving had a clear and unambiguous answer: By my estimate, the client’s plan of action had a net present discounted value of negative one billion dollars. Even after accounting for some degree of error in my reckoning, I could still be sure that theirs was a losing proposition. But the client did not want analysis that contradicted their own, and my manager told me plainly that it was not our place to question what the client wanted.

In theory, it was their money to lose. If they wanted a consulting report that parroted back their pre-determined conclusion, who was I to complain? I did not have any right to dictate that their money be spent differently.

Povestea unui analist/consultant de la BCG care descrie cum se iau deciziile prin ghicire la nivelul cel mai inalt al economiei. Totul este "din burta".


Tot articolul: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/dubai.html(The Story BCG offerd me $16000 not to tell)

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief

Gerald Blanchard could hack any bank, swipe any jewel. There was no security system he couldn't steal.
When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard looked down, checked his parachute straps, and jumped into the darkness.
It was early June 1998, and the evening wind was warm. If it kept cooperating, Blanchard would touch down directly above the room that held the Koechert Diamond Pearl.

Este o poveste reala demna de filme. Merita citit tot articolul.

Tot articolul: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/all/1

The girl who conned her way into Harvard

"There's something I need to ask you," the officer continued. "Are you Brooke Henson?"
"Yes," Brooke said into the phone. "That's me."
On the one hand, she had a purse full of proof that she was Brooke: her student ID, a Vermont driver's license, a U.S. passport, an Ohio identification card, a South Carolina birth certificate. She had a part-time job, a rented apartment not far from campus on New York's Upper West Side and a full course load at Columbia, all registered under the name Brooke Henson.

On the other hand, she wasn't Brooke Henson.

She packed a suitcase hastily, grabbed her two Shih Tzus, hailed a cab and headed straight off the grid. By the time New York police came knocking with a DNA test, "Brooke Henson" was long gone.

Tot articolul: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league