We have been under new server arrangements for a working week, and already the difference is glaringly obvious – this server setup actually works, and our code executes almost flawlessly. As many of you will have noticed, throughout the week, recalcitrant scripts were brought back online, their errors previously unnoticed, because they'd stopped working entirely on the previous server – along with the error logs.

Almost every page now functions, and that disclaimer is only because we have not yet tried every page and combination. We are aware of a few missing files, because the logging routines on this blessed server actually function as they are supposed to, and attempts are under way to contact the relevant organisations for replacements.

Behind the scenes is also functional, and we can actually start doing the most important aspect of the site once again – namely keeping on the crest of the wave of VR and AR development. A great deal has happened, and continues to happen, in the time we have been regrettably idle, and as it is part of our job to tell you what all of it means, we had best get back to doing just that!

Latest Term: Negative Obstacle

A negative obstacle, is an obstacle of nothing. A hole in the ground, that is not safe to pass, but presents no physical barrier for sensors to detect. It is a particular problem for augmented reality AI pathfinding, for virtual reality pathfinding when the AI has no access to a pre-made heightmap, and for unmanned ground vehicles of all kinds.

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Other recent entries:

Body Image

Motionless Gesture

Wearable Device

Virtual Output >> Virtual Voices: Replicating the Sounds Produced By Big Cat Throats
(added 20/11/2011)
It sounds highly unusual when you first consider it. After all, whilst there are people who would be quite happy to embody in the total sensory immersion of a lion or tiger avatar form, and interact with the virtual environment as a powerful feline, why would there be any desire for them to sound like one?


Legal >> The Fragility of Internet-Enabled Communication
(added 12/11/2011)
In the wake of the recent London riots in the UK, uncomfortable truths have come to light regarding the security and privacy of messages spoken or otherwise transmitted over technological networks. Specifically that communicating via technology is never going to be as potentially private as a whispered conversation in a secluded locale.


Artificial Intelligence >> Robot Researcher For Glass-Glues
(added 12/11/2011)
Computerised researchers are becoming an increasing trend it would seem. We've seen an increase in recent years of drug-testing robots and automated researchers. Glass researchers are apparently the latest field to be hit with the automation bug.


Augmenting Hospital Care >> Speedy 3D X-rays in the operating room
(added 12/11/2011)
ORBIT, a new motorised arm X-ray system is being trialled at a surgical unit in Germany, where it is successfully allowing surgery to continue uninterrupted whilst millimetre-precise 3D X-rays are taken of the surgical site, as often as the surgeon requires.


Telehealth >> Gene-Z Device Applies Microfluidic Diagnosis at Low Cost
(added 09/11/2011)
The GeneZ device is an extremely low-cost field diagnosis unit for telehealth in the developing world. Designed to identify cancer and a host of other diseases, and to run indefinately, outside the power grid.


Detractors >> Video Games and Virtual Environments increase Creativity in Children
(added 09/11/2011)
The findings of a large-scale study of 12 year olds performed by Michigan State Universit found a strong correlation between increasing video-game usage and increasing creativity in children.

Embodied Avatars >> Futureworld
(added 16/04/2010)
Futureworld is the sequel to Westworld, yet it takes an entirely different direction. Meant to be the film that spun the Westworld franchise into an anthology set, instead it was the film that buried it. Futureworld has some great ideas, and like many films of the era, is a goldmine of nuggets concerning robotic technology, virtual reality, augmented reality and social implications.


Pure Research >> Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos
(added 25/03/2010)
Programming the Universe is a Simulation Argument book. Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program.


Pure Research >> Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information
(added 25/03/2010)
Decoding Reality is very much a Simulation Argument book. In its pages, physicist Vlatko Vedral argues that we should regard the entire universe as a gigantic quantum computer.


Teaching and Training via VR >> Women and Gaming: The Sims and 21st Century Learning
(added 21/02/2010)
Video games have become both big business and a technological focal point for new forms of learning. Today games are not just played; players engage in game design, write fan fiction, and organise themselves into collaborative learning communities. In these communities players acquire 21st century skills in technology, but, in the best of these communities, they hone these technical skills and strengthen emotional and social intelligence.