Pixilation project

This is a pixilation project I did for university. Enjoy!

These boots are made for walking

Pixilation Project from Garg Unzola on Vimeo.

Details

• Camera: Canon PowerShot A430. Tip: Don't try stop motion with a happy snappy. Use some decent hardware.


• Images: about 324. Excluding the ones I had to redo because my Canon gave blurry shots, despite the fact that I'd used a timer and wasn't touching the camera.


• Beer: about 4 l.


• Music: Peaches En Regalia by Frank Zappa. We are allowed to use copyright content for our projects because they are only for evaluation purposes.

Help Wanted

Are you charismatic, intelligent and arrogantly over-confident? If so, a dynamic international company might be seeking your services to further its objectives.


Our secret volcano base. These are the kind of challenges you could expect during your new employment. This microfilm is for your eyes only.

Scientists and industrialists who feel that morality is relative and that the terms megalomaniac and elitist are often abused will enjoy preference for this once in a lifetime opportunity. Candidates will be flown to an exotic island location for selection and training. Candidates must love pets, especially Persian cats, and be immune to British accents. Maniacal laughter is a bonus. You must be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.


Meet the boss: This is our CEO, Mr Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The cat is called Solomon. That's Mr Solomon to you.

Compensation: your share of $1 000 000 $100 000 000, negotiable. SPECTRE is an apolitical organisation. We are concerned with economics, not politics. A basic understanding of capitalism and anarchism would benefit you in your new job.

Contact Us

Number 1
Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion
Post Office Box ****
Secret Volcano Base
****

Superman vs Alien

Sometimes, it's not so bad when franchises collide:



I still rate Predator would whip Superman. Predator is the sickest alien out there.

Bayesian Analysis: To probably be, or probably not be, depending on something else's probability

That man of science, Urikalish, loves to torment us superstitious, intuitive mortals who adore the Secret and the Law of Attraction with logic. This is his latest riddle:

Urikalish's Riddle

Let’s assume there’s a deadly disease that affects 1 in every 10 people.

Let's say there’s a pretty good test for this disease which is 90% accurate (that means that if a person is sick – the test will say he’s sick in 90% of the cases, and if a person is healthy – the test will say he’s healthy in 90% of the cases).

Now, assuming you took this 90% accurate test, and got a positive result that implies that you are sick - what are the odds that you are really sick?

Bayes's Theorem

The key to solving this riddle is Bayes's Theorem. Don't ask me why. I'm an elitist and I don't need to explain myself to the likes of you. Especially when I have no idea what I'm talking about.

• P(A|B): This is the probability of A, given B. This is what you are looking for. This is the posterior or revised probability that you have the disease, given the fact that you test positive.


• P(B|A): This is the conditional probability, or the probability of B given A. In other words, the probability that you test positive, given that you have the disease.


• P(A): This is the prior probability of A, or the prior probability that you have the disease, regardless of whether your test is positive or not.


• P(B): This is the prior probability of B, or the prior probability that you test positive, whether you have the disease or not.

Smart people can fill in the data directly from Urikalish's riddle into Bayes's Theorem and get a result. Unfortunately, I played more with the glue and crayons than with the abacus and the clay when I was a kid, so I need something simpler.

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, that boy genius who tells us about his AI (that is, Almost Implemented) research, has the remarkable ability to make some really, really smart stuff seem really, really simple. This is Yudkowsky's explanation of Bayes's Theorem, which still went over my head (must've been toxic glue), so I tried something that is even more simple and more familiar to me, namely decision trees.

Using Decision Trees in Bayesian Analysis

Start at the beginning and make a split for those who have the disease, and those who are healthy. Branching of each node of the tree has to add up to 1, otherwise you're cooking Dutch books. Proceed up the tree, splitting each node into all the possible scenarios, and you'll eventually cover your entire sample space and thus have a visual representation of your full joint distribution.

Explanation

The probability of having the disease is equal to the amount of people who have the disease and test positive, divided by the total number of people who test positive.

If you said 90%, you are stating the probability that the test is right. This is a different probability than having the disease. If you said 10%, you are stating the probability that anybody has the disease, regardless of taking the test or not. The probability of having the disease is affected by both the probability that the test is right and the rarity of the disease.

The total number of people who have the disease here is 0,1, which is 10 %, or 10 out of the 100. The total number of people who test positive is 0,1 x 0,9 for those who have the disease (or 9 out of the original 100), and 0,9 x 0,1 of those who do not have the disease (also 9 out of the original 100). This means the total amount of people who test positive in the original population is 18 out of 100.

Finally, your answer 0,5 ie 50%. You get this from the 9 who test positive and do have the disease divided by 18 who test positive in the total population. The decision tree makes it visible who tested positive, so you are less likely to get confused. How likely? I don't know, draw your own damn tree.

How to remove toolbars

Toolbars really annoy the manure out of me. It is simply poor interface design to have some junk from your previous page hover over your next page. Upon navigating to a new page, the user expectancy is to see a new page, not clutter from the old page.

Why toolbars are bad

Jakob Nielsen is the guru of user interface design. He offers some heuristics to guide interface design, which make the peasant user experience much more pleasant. You may cast an eye on that list and see for yourself how many heuristics are ignored because some social networking Mafia wants to spam your browser. Tsk, tsk, social networking sites. David Bowie is very disappointed in you.

How to make toolbars go away

Yet one of the most useful heuristics I've learnt from real-life is that there are two ways to solve a problem: the political way and the technical way. The political way to make toolbars go away is to grovel and beg the social networking Mafia until they make the toolbar disappear. The technical way is just to remove the toolbar.

Removing the toolbar on Facebook

I'm on a few social networking sites. The same basic method seems to work for all of them, but since the whole world and the kitchen sink seem to be on Facebook, I'll only include the procedure to remove the toolbar on that site:

• Step 0: Install Greasemonkey.
  Greasemonkey good! Greasemonkey works on Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer, good luck with your porn viruses and your vi4g0rag0ra spam.


• Step 1: Install this simple script.
  All you need to do is to click on the URL. Greasemonkey will give you a pop-up window and ask you if you want to install the script. You might want to click on install.
  
  Get the script here:
  http://herzbot.netii.net/my_dir/javascripts/facebooktoolbarblocker.user.js. The link may not work due to Blogger's security. Just copy the URL and paste it into a browser window.

Remove the tool and keep the bar, I always say. Except when I'm saying something else like jam out with your clam out, or get your yah-yah's out or something.

From now on, Facebook's annoying toolbar will no longer haunt your external links. Unfortunately, they still malform the URL sometimes. Bloody useless bunch.

Herzbot: A prototype music recommender

Herzbot is a music recommender application on Facebook. This is the prototype:

Find Herzbot on Facebook.

The prototype uses a combination of collaborative filtering and a novel way to model social context I thought up to make music recommendations to you.

How does it work?

Herzbot constructs a profile for you and other Herzbot users. These profiles are then compared to give you recommendations from similar profiles. This is how ordinary collaborative filtering recommendations work. Herzbot also asks you for a few elite friends, which is your social context. This makes Herzbot unique. Your profile is constructed as follows:

• You give Herzbot the name of one of your favourite artists and it gets a list of similar artists that you rate on a scale of 0 to 100%. Herzbot uses the Echo Nest API to get similar bands.


• Then, you pick your elite friends who you think have more influence on your music taste than your ordinary Facebook contacts. Herzbot then constructs a profile for you. This is the only information Herzbot uses (user names and your band preferences and ratings that you dictate). I'm not browsing your profiles or spying on you or spamming email addresses. I'm not Santa Clause, although I would like to know where all the bad girls live.


• Finally, when those friends also add the application, you get to see what they like and exactly how much. You also get recommendations straight from their listening profiles (that's the social context modelling part) or ordinary plain vanilla with a bit of flake recommendations (that's the collaborative filtering part, however your elite contacts still count a little bit more than ordinary Facebook users when it comes to making recommendations to you).

Can you listen to free music?

Yes! If you want to explore the recommended bands, you can find them on iLike with a link straight from Herzbot. iLike has quite an extensive database and you don't need to sign up to listen to streaming audio, which is why I chose iLike over Last.fm and the others where you need to join.

You can listen to your recommendations, listen to the top bands your friends like or listen to the entire profile of your elite friends. It is about exploring new music, after all.

Keep in touch

If you are on Facebook and you'd like to try it out, feel free to add it:

Add Herzbot, the socially conscious Facebook music recommender.

UPDATE: The questionnaire is now up and running. If you added Herzbot, please take the questionnaire (that's a survey for the Yanks):

The Herzbot Survey on Survey Monkey.

You are also welcome to join the developer's group and give me feedback:

Join the Herzbot developer's group.

If you add it, please check back daily over the course of the next two weeks. I will add a questionnaire, which I need to make my hairbrain scheme seem more plausible to academia. I would greatly appreciate your feedback! The other reason is that your recommendations will improve as your elite friends join and as more people join Herzbot.

Best Bands on Myspace

Why the Best Bands on Myspace?

Myspace has long lost its status as a safe haven for emo. Maybe hepatitis culled emo numbers a bit, but the Myspace target marget of late seems to be people in their late twenties who must like rap music, R & B and not so racy comedians. A lot.



The first thing you should do upon joining Myspace is to delete Tom Anderson as your friend. Who the fuck is that guy anyway? I don't want to be friends with someone who looks like he washed his mom's car with his shirt and then put it on as some kind of post modern fashion statement. He looks like he cut his own hair. With a lawn mower.

The second thing you should do on Myspace is to search for metal bands. The bands listed here are mostly unknown, unsigned and willing to give away free mp3s so you can form a good idea of their music. If you disagree with my opinion, I can't help that you have good taste, but feel free to rant about it in the comment section.

The third thing I did was look for busty porn stars and skanky hos, but you don't have to do that. Here are the best bands on Myspace in no particular alphabetical order:

Aesma Daeva

How they describe their sound
Aesma Daeva blends world instruments such as the bawu, a Chinese flute-like instrument, with a symphonic rock backdrop bringing a wealth of musical cultures together.

How I would describe them
I know what you are thinking: who needs another Nightwish? Only Aesma Daeva does not sound like Nightwish at all. They have more in common with Therion, if you kicked out the orchestra and had one decent looking singer with a more natural voice than Nightwish's Tarja. They sound more brooding, like gargoyles coming alive. Plus they gave me free shit for my birthday so I can't exclude them.

Stalk them

• The official Aesma Daeva website.


• Aesma Daeva on Myspace.

Architecture of Aggression

How they describe their sound
The wails from your local priest as his church is burning down around him. Also like your local priest being sodomized.

How I would describe them
I knew priests secretly liked that sort of thing. Copious amounts of tequila and buckets of blood. That's all I remember from last seeing them live.

Stalk them

• Architecture of Aggression on Myspace.

Bile of Man

How they describe their sound
Reapers Ripping Caverns Through Your Mind.

How I would describe them
Rapists Ripping Caverns Through Your Doberman.

Stalk them

• Bile of Man on Myspace.

Bukkake Birth

How they describe their sound
Shit. No, really. They say they sound like shit.

How I would describe them
I have no idea what they sound like but with a name like that, it can't be shit.

Stalk them

• Bukkake Birth on Myspace.

Heart of Cygnus

How they describe their sound
Heart of Cygnus. Not a very imaginative description.

How I would describe them
Their latest release, Over Mountain, Under Hill, showcases their sound which is based on bands who are mostly over the hill and under the mountain by now. That's a good thing.

Stalk them

• The official Heart of Cygnus website. A very fancy site.


• Heart of Cygnus on Myspace.

K.O.B.U.S

How they describe their sound
South African METAL is upon Thee!

How I would describe them
Lemmy from Motörhead on vocals, Mike Scaccia from Ministry on guitar, Johannes Kerkorrel writing lyrics.

Stalk them

• The K.O.B.U.S Myspace page.

Lesbian

How they describe their sound
Yep, the band's name is Lesbian. Why? Well, equally cool names like Black Sabbath, Venom and Pentagram were already taken. But also, the name Lesbian evokes pure, sexually charged freedom - and that's what rock music is all about.

How I would describe them
Freddy Kreuger teaching at a nursery school. This band is seriously impressive. They sound like Mastodon with less sludge and more intricate guitar. Let's put it this way: I am not a big Mastodon fan, but I can appreciate what they are trying to achieve. Lesbian sounds like they achieve what Mastodon is trying to achieve.

Stalk them

• Lesbian record company website.


• Lesbian in Myspace.

Mind Assault

How they describe their sound
Youtube, Jackson, Boss and Zildjian. Perhaps I am confused.

How I would describe them
A fairly interesting mix of genres that doesn't end up being gay the way Trivium does it. A potjiekos of modern metal, with a mix of Afrikaans songs too.

Stalk them

• Mind Assault on Myspace.

Neter

How they describe their sound
Atypical Spanish band.

How I would describe them
Initially, the band played a mixture of Swedish death metal and thrash. I really enjoyed that. Now, they are moving more towards an Opeth progressive rock vibe, which to my ears is less impressive although it is more technically demanding. Still a very accomplished band with an interesting sound.

Stalk them

• Neter on Myspace

Pegazus

How they describe their sound
Not many believed in what the boys were aiming for except themselves. Many critics would say "Classic metal was dead", and that playing traditional classic metal was a bad move and so out dated.

How I would describe them
Like a battle axe clefting a skull. If you like traditional metal, this is one seriously good band. I'm glad they found me on Myspace.

Stalk them

• Pegazus on Myspace.

Pica Fierce

How they describe their sound
Pica Fierce brings you back to the heydays of thrash-metal. Thrash-metal without compromising in its original form - fast, technically, brutal and with no respect for trends.

How I would describe them
Mind blowing. Unfortunately, they seem to have split up.

Stalk them

• The official Pica Fierce website.


• Pica Fierce on Myspace.

Sathern

How they describe their sound
Established in late 2006, Sathern finally took form after 3 years of relentless auditioning and various lineup changes that saw the band grow from a one-man project to a fully fledged band, incorporating the energy of fast drums, dual guitars and aggressive bass with the atmosphere of keyboards and a furious vocal attack.

How I would describe them
Imagine the bastard child of Dimmu Borgir and Children of Bodom having sex with your mom. And her liking it.

Stalk them

• Sathern on Myspace.

Xerath

How they describe their sound
Film score metal.

How I would describe them
A very accessible kind of Meshuggah, mixed with atmospheric keyboards. They seem to have impressed the whole world in a very short amount of time. Film score metal is a very accurate description.

Stalk them

• Xerath on Myspace.

You may also stalk me on myspace if you wish. That's as extroverted as I'm willing to get.