I’ve mentioned my blog-buddy John Tolva and his blog here a number of times. He’s one of those people who is always doing something amazing. Well, last Friday his most amazing thing to date became a “reality” — IBM’s virtual re-creation of the Forbidden City of China went online after three years in the making. John was the project manager for the whole thing, and posted about his travels to China and the ongoing work throughout the project all along the way.
In order to experience the virtual Forbidden City, you’ll have to download the software necessary to render and run the simulation, but it’s free and available for Win/Mac/Linux platforms. Borrowing from the engine and conceptualization of the “Second Life” virtual world website, you create an avatar for yourself and then explore the vast confines of the palace grounds, encountering other real people similarly involved in the site, as well as some computer-generated NPCs. All the characters are historically appropriate to medieval China at the height of power of the dynastic emperors. I haven’t had a chance to dive in yet, but am looking forward to it a lot.
One of my clients, a very wonderful lady named Jean K. Mason, has just published her memoir about her father, a Midwestern industrialist named Raymond Kaltwasser (pictured above in 1925). A hard-headed, imperious and eventually mentally ill man, he domineered his family, disowned his daughter, and continued to wreak havoc even after his death. Jean eventually was drawn back in and had to fight against other family members and controlling interests in the company to restore order. This is the book that Jean was working on when I first started to help her with her computer, and I had a very small part in its creation through cleaning up her 20-year-old word processing files, so I’ve been able to read snippets of the book, but not yet the completed manuscript. She gave me an autographed copy last week and I look forward to reading it a lot. If it sounds interesting to you, you can order a copy directly from her at that website.
This article in yesterday’s New York Times features the company where my wife works — SiOnyx. As the article explains, they are developing a process for manufacturing a revolutionary black silicon light receptor for use in applications such as digital imaging; their process results in a material that is 100-500 times more photosensitive than current technologies. Harvard University is announcing a licensing deal with them today, and they’ve just completed a round of venture financing to the tune of $11 million. The article focuses on the “A-ha!” moment when Professor Ed Mazur, the Harvard professor who is SiOnyx’s chief scientific advisor, realized the potential of an accidental discovery made by his graduate students and how that has been turned into an enterprise with tons of potential. They’re still a tiny little startup, but all signs point to them being a big deal in the not-so-distant future.
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