Archive For October, 2009
I don’t suppose that there’s any reason why holograms have to be created on a flat sheet.
It’s traditional to do it that way, and it probably makes the optics easier, but there doesn’t seem to be an especial reason why all of the sheet has to be at the same angle. If you created a hologram on a curved sheet that surrounded an object, then as long as the sheet kept the same shape, it should presumably look as if the object is inside the volume (rather than appearing to be in front of or behind a flat “window”). There’s also no obvious reason why you can’t produce cheap printed lenticular holograms on curved sheets either, other than that it’d make the initial processing more difficult.
So, Halloween. Once we’re set up for manufacturing curved holograms, the obvious application (at this time of year) is the creation of the world’s most scary Halloween masks.
Put a hologram of a human skull onto a curved transparent sheet, use the sheet as a visor, fitted inside the cowl of a black cloak, and make the inside smoked or semi-mirrored, and you have a “Death” Halloween costume, where, if anyone gets too close and peers under the cowl though the sheet to try to see who’s face is behind the visor, they get a rather nasty shock!
Okay, on reflection, maybe not such a great idea after all. 
You don’t want people dropping dead of heart attacks when they realise that “the death guy” appears to be wandering about with what seems to be a real, genuine, gaping skull on the top of his neck. I mean, realism is all very well, but to be striding around town leaving a trail of traffic accidents and screaming people and dead bodies in your wake would probably be taking authenticity a bit too far. Oh well.
Sometimes it’s fun to try to take the most ludicrously-abstract and pointless geometrical results and to try to turn them into something useful. It’s a fun game, and the more abstract the thing is, the higher the chance that nobody’s actually brainstormed it properly before you. The “square-cutting” exercise ended up as a possible idea for new storage media for hydrogen-powered cars, so after uploading the “Cutting up Doughnuts” post, I was scratching my head to try to think of some real-world application for the “Villarceau Circle” result, that might turn the pastry-cutting exercise into something with actual physics applications.
The best I could come up with was a variable-geometry magnetic containment device.
If we take our two interlocking Villarceau circles, and delete one of them, we’re left with a simple ring that wraps once around the torus limb and its central void. This counts as a special-case toroidal winding. We can interleave a series of these single angled rings around the torus, intersecting, without any of them clashing or colliding. If current is circulated around each ring (perhaps by “breaking” the rings and wiring them in series), you have yourself a rather unusual toroidal coil.
What’s unusual about it that it has variable geometry. Each circular ring-segment can be a rigid wound coil, and by tilting the angle of these coils we can create a larger torus with arbitrary proportions (major axis radius fixed, minor axis radius variable). Okay, so there’s a limit to how fat or thin we’d be able to go due to the finite thickness of the rings that we’re using to construct it, but essentially, we have something that looks like a toroidal accelerator and containment device, that can actually change shape while it’s running.
Provided that the “open” configurations of the resulting toroidal coil aren’t too open, this might let you prototype a device without having to calculate the ideal proportions beforehand – you’d be able to adjust the torus shape while the device was actually operating.
Now, suppose for the sake of argument that you wanted a containment device that allowed you to open it out, fire high-energy particles into it in low-energy mode, then close the coils, squash the plasma density to encourage some sort of reaction, and then open the coils again to allow the reaction products to spill out into the surrounding coolant. You could have a system that “breathes”, and holds different shapes for different parts of its cycle.
Okay, I’m trying not to be too glib here – because nuclear physics is NOT my specialist field – but this thing would look awfully like a cross between the “cage fusor devices” and the “tokamak” configurations that people use for nuclear fusion. When it’s closed you have something that looks like a tokamak, and when it’s open you have something that looks (superficially) more like a fusor cage. One of the annoyances of the tokamak designs is that once you’ve built them, they’re usually locked into particular configuration – with a Villarceau coil, the variable geometry means that you should be able to get some pretty significant changes in internal volume and field strength without having to vary the current flow to the coils. And if the internal pressure gets too great, the thing’s going to have a tendency to self-adjust by opening out like a flower-bud, reducing internal pressure and temperature, and releasing excess plasma into the surrounding coolant in a semi-controlled way (rather than being all bottled up until things go more badly wrong).
Anyhow … bottom line is, that even if this configuration is no damned use at all for conventional nuclear fusion, it’d still look damned cool as a piece of hardware.
Designers and art directors for science fiction movies take note. Remember how cool people though the Big Scary Spinny Machine was in Contact (1997)? Well, this configuration would be a really nice thing to use next time you have to design a cool fictional device for a spaceship reactor or engine pod. Shiny silver interlocking steel circles that tilt and swivel, with a whizzy blue plasma glow inside. Mmmm.
I want to see this cool thing in a movie NOW ! 
Who’s going to be first?
PS: I did spent the last couple of weeks seriously consider building one of these as a toy, sticking it in a small vacuum chamber and whacking a high-tension voltage into it, as a version of those plasma balls that you find in gadget shops. I figured that with that, plus a set of circular coil units, and I might have a cool little device that could spin plasma (or bits of shiny silver paper) in an amusing way. I got as far as looking up coil formers. But sanity prevailed. Plus, I think my current landlord might take a dim view of his tenants trying to build small prototype nuclear fusion reactors on the premises.
Max Richter – Memoryhouse
A reissue of the astonishing debut recording from Max Richter, a composer whose mastery of tonality and melody place him alongside Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and Michael Nyman in the modern classical catalogue. there are other elements of Max Richter’s work that recall Gavin Bryars, John Cale’s soundtrack projects and even [...]
Such is the speed of technology that the once proud LP cover, 12 inches square, gatefold and legible has undergone miniturisation via illegibly tiny CD covers replicating cherished original artwork, to its current status as a 200 pixel square icon pressed into service as a usability aid in iPlayers, Squeezebox Duet, SqueezeCenter server and just [...]
Last night I started a Contemporary Dance course run by Evolution Arts. The course is led by dance duo Avis Cockbill and Janine Fletcher aka The Two Wrongies – the double act who dare to do the dirty! I’ve just checked out their website and there are s…
Last night I started a Contemporary Dance course run by Evolution Arts. The course is led by dance duo Avis Cockbill and Janine Fletcher aka The Two Wrongies – the double act who dare to do the dirty! I’ve just checked out their website and there are s…
I wandered past the Lego store in Churchill Square, Brighton this morning, to see that someone had shoved a plastic traffic cone through the window. Leaving aside the sheer strength required to propel a chunk of plastic through a sheet of glass, I found myself musing upon the fact that cleaning up the mess, replacing [...]
My friend Fiona Robyn is planning to blog her next novel, Thaw, beginning on the 1st of March next year.
The novel focuses on Ruth, who has given herself three months to decide whether she wants to carry on living.
In order to promote the novel, Fiona is looking for 1000 people willing to create a blogsplash [...]
Amongst the many projects I got involved with there and after countless years of deliberation over the idea, I also finally got around to starting my first novel – even managing to get as far as writing something like 70,000 words of it. However, as the idea of being a novelist took greater hold in my imagination, I realised that the book I was writing was actually more of a third or fourth novel rather than the first out of the stable. A bit too complex to be my initial offering, and I’m keen that my introductory tome should be a little more palatable to new readers. Nevertheless, I still had a burning desire to get my first book out before I hit 40, now just a couple of years off.
Returning to the UK in 2008 and as a part of processing what I’d been through, I hit upon the idea of putting my archives to use to introduce Japan to those who’d never been there and hopefully provide a little deeper insight for more seasoned Japanophiles. Using print-on-demand service blurb.com, I assembled my first full book release and issued it last year.
Life being what it sometimes is, there was no real opportunity to let anyone know about it at the time. There were also a few kinks to iron out in it, the result of some rather hurried proofreading. Now I’m back in Brighton and things have settled down enough to the point that I’m able to at least finish off some of the projects that had been shelved, I’ve created and issued a second edition of the book.
Out now, ‘Japan From The Inside‘ is a window into a land of superlatives. Including 238 pages, over 500 photos and my collected writings on Japan from 2003 to 2008, it unmasks the world’s biggest city, explores the heights of the frozen North and the pleasures of the subtropical South. Readers can also investigate the ancient capital of Kyoto, witness Hiroshima’s recovery from the atomic bomb, and wander amongst the great beauty of the Japan Alps.
Showing sides to the country that visitors rarely get to see and which the Japanese are often too busy to take time over, the book covers the old, the new, and unique. It looks at some of the customs, food and heritage in Japanese culture, examines a Japanese approach to gardens and nature, and captures some of the 127 million people that call it their home.
It is currently entered in the Best Blurb Books Contest, which runs until Nov 9th, 2009. Books that receive the most votes in three separate categories (Family, Travel, Pets) go through to a second round of judging by an expert panel, with each category winner receiving a Grand Prize.
To vote for the book, visitors create a profile at blurb.com (with username and password) and click on the ‘Vote For This Book’ button on my book’s page. Every vote is very highly appreciated! I’m also keen to get some comments on it too, as the more comments the book gets, the easier it is for other people to find it.
I’m usually a bit shy about marketing my own products (it sounds a bit like blowing your own trumpet, which can be a little crass if not done tastefully), but am biting the bullet and giving this one the big push. So if you really like the book or are stuck for what to buy someone for Christmas this year, feel free to buy a copy! The softcover is priced at £30.95 while the hardcover is going for £39.95.
Thanks in advance for any extra votes that come via this blog!
Ruminants get a pretty raw deal when it comes to debates about climate change. Not only does their flatulence create massive amounts of methane (a gas which traps about twenty times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, albeit for a shorter time period); they also consume vast quantities of grains. Grains which [...]
