Sunday, November 4, 2012

Solve Puzzles for Science

Protein structure prediction is one of the hardest problems in biology today. If we can predict how the amino acids in proteins fold to form their structure, we can then use that information to design drugs to target diseases or design new proteins that help prevent or treat diseases like HIV, Cancer and Alzheimer's.

Foldit is a computer game that uses our pattern recognition skills and puzzle solving abilities to fold proteins and use these for training the artificial intelligence programs.


Saturday, October 27, 2012

Custom one man band

An amazing one man custom built orchestra. In this video, Diego Stocco not only builds his own instruments, but composes and plays the full orchestral piece.


Diego Stocco - Custom Built Orchestra from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

As seen on ada fruit industries blog.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Learning to Code

I'm proud of my 10 year old son who has completed the JavaScript Fundamentals Track on Codecademy as part of Code Year.

He has also completed 99% of the Web Fundamentals Track, 36% of the Python Track and 11% of the JQuery Track.

I am lagging behind him with only 86% of the JavaScript Fundamentals Track complete and none of the other topics started yet.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Caine's Arcade Global Cardboard Challenge

Last year Nirvan Mullick discovered Caine's Arcade - a cardboard game arcade built by Caine Monroy during the summer holidays in his dad's auto parts shop in East LA. Nirvan was Caine's first customer and he invited heaps of people to a flash mob to play and Caine's Arcade went viral.


This year to follow up, Nirvan and the Imagination Foundation are following up with the Caine's Arcade Global Cardboard Challenge on October 6.


Go play!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

How monsters are made

During our travels in New Zealand we visited the How to make a Monster exhibit at the Waikato Museum.

Featuring animatronics, props and special effects from movies such as Inspector Gadget 2, George of the Jungle 2, Peter Pan and Pitch Black, the display highlighted some of John Cox's Creature Workshop's work.

Inspector Gadget hands

George of the Jungle gorillas

Animatronic head