1auralynn

I have lots of thoughts - I made a platform for them and am partnering with various collaborators to see how they want to use it. Right now, you can import and visualize any PDB file, among other formats. There is also an open source plugin called UnityMol that has more standard molecular visualization features. My interests have always tended towards visualizing larger amounts of proteins together, so I'm not using it in my platform.

So yeah, there are lots of people working on little bits, all over the place, duplicating efforts again and again. In my opinion, what is needed is real funding and a coordinated effort to establish open source tooling, or at least some kind of platform that brings everyone together. And then more money on top of that ;)

I mean, why try to do anything? There are tons of science educators working on low-tech tools like you describe, with success. My point is, we can all be armchair critics, but from my experience when you actually try to make one of these visualizations "right", you run into a never-ending torrent of complex decisions that need to be made, both on the scientific end of things and pedagogical, most of which end in some kind of compromise that others can pick apart. There's also a severe lack of funding to support this kind of work.

Totally agree on XR and scientists - biologists LOVE visualization, particularly XR. That's definitely not the problem. In fact, one of the things I've been trying to do is to make XR tools for scientists to make their own visualizations using their datasets (http://10k.systems). There just aren't enough headsets yet, but it's possible Quest will change this.

Yeah! I've been seeing bits and pieces of this project over the last few weeks, and it really does look great.

I've made a fair amount of these kinds of animations in the past, and it's much harder than it would seem to portray the random nature of interactions. Another common criticism is that a lot of these visualizations don't show how completely packed full of molecules/cells each of these environments are.

You're tasked with the almost-impossible goal of clearly conveying accurate information, visually, in realms where a) though there are a lot of structural data, the visual relationship of things gets VERY complex, b) not everything is actually known, and c) the time and visual scales aren't naturally perceptible to humans.

It's definitely not impossible (see Drew Barry's work, and from the glimpses of this project I've seen it looks pretty great actually), just difficult, and there's not a huge amount of money in it unless you want to work for pharma. Personally, I've been moving more towards 3D interactive content vs. linear videos because you can show a lot more layers, and having users drive what they're focusing in on can be a lot more powerful than trying to design one animation for every learning style.

Oh I was talking about John R. Neill, who was a big influence on me :) I hadn't heard of Jack Snow!

Not to mention amazing illustrations.

Yeah, it's an insult that's pretty indiscriminately thrown around.

With SBIR funding you retain your IP

The purpose of the program is to help grow the economy by supporting development of innovative and risky new technology. The regular SBIR program is not about building something specific.

If I recall correctly, the fate of that planet in one of his later books was basically a small population of androgynous people who reproduced asexually and lived on robot-run plantations.

It's something I think about from time to time.

I think it might be something about the shared mental state and bonding... maybe releases serotonin and/or oxytocin - kind of a "monkey grooming" type thing.

I noticed this one time when I was in college: I had come home on a break and couldn't relax, I was super stressed out and felt generally bad. I went over my best friend's house down the street, bitched to her about some small stuff that had annoyed me that day, she mirrored me and I INSTANTLY relaxed. I remember it 15 years later because it was such a marked effect.

Social media and cell phones are the partial solution to the isolation brought about by the way we design our communities - sprawl, no town centers, etc. Also, drunk driving becoming more penalized (rightly so) so less gathering in bars, people becoming less religious. Isolation is the cause of the rise of social media, not the opposite, in my opinion.

I know it's practically sacreligious, but if you drink coffee, you should stop.

I worked at a Macy's in college one holiday season, right across the aisle from the dancing santas that alternated their tinny versions of "rockin around the christmas tree" and "jingle bell rock". The tinny sounds on top of the general background muzak was extra-insanity-inducing. One day after being at work for 10 hours I got in my car and jingle bell rock came on and I totally broke down crying.

I've a lot of sympathy for retail people since then.

The giveaways are weird-looking teeth and background artifacts.

I bought a house in Pittsburgh when I was 26. Sold it and moved to the West Coast, where I rent, though.

I'm not overly concerned about the three data points I give them every month.

Well, I read this to see horror stories about the one I use (Clue) and it turns out that it's not actually sharing any data except with academics. So... great?

Yeah Heinlein was kind of a dick. Asimov, who was a good friend of his, said something after his death like he hoped Heinlein's personal journals wouldn't be published so he could be remembered only as a brilliant author.

Agreed. I have a platform that runs a headless version of the Unity editor on an EC2 instance, and I read their terms of service ~2 years ago that indicated that it might not be totally "ok". I then chatted with the guy from Unity who handles these kinds of licenses/partnerships and he said basically once real money starts coming in, then we'd put together some kind of licensing deal. Until then, totally fine.

My suspsicion is the price was too steep for Improbable, but they should have been talking to Unity about costs from the beginning. Even I have a backup plan.

And Epic... I didn't like the way they rolled out the "free" version of UE4, perfectly timed to fuck with Unity and this certainly feels similarly sleazy. Back in 2006 when I was first attempting to do some 3D interactive projects, I couldn't even EVALUATE unreal engine without paying something like $500. Unity was a miracle.

To non-gamers, Steam looks kinda wacky - there's crazy popups, really intense graphics, nonstandard UIs, and it has to update most times it launches. It's also blocked on lots of networks - businesses, schools, etc. I personally love Steam and its craziness, but that's the main reason - HTC wants Vive to become mainstream and to capitalize on other uses for VR besides gaming.

I don't use an alarm clock, but I'm privileged to set my own schedule. I think I check my phone ~5 minutes after waking though. For a while I put it to charge in another room, which I think was healthier - I might do that again.

I recently started making to do lists that only include things I know I can ABSOLUTELY get done today, and I only make them in the morning. It includes a lot of things like "take a look at feature X"

It's kind of like what happens with the people who invest in startups... the founders who fit the investors' conceptions of what brilliant people look like get funded. It's also a big problem in philanthropy and why many times it's better to have (even slow and inefficient) government depts with set criteria and review processes deciding who gets funding.

This is so sad. I met him once when my company was doing some work for Vulcan and I was impressed that his manner was so understated but SHARP, he just "got" things very quickly.

My favorite anecdote from that time period was someone telling me that the first time they met him they were seated next to each other at dinner and he turned and asked "So, what's your favorite shark?"

(I mean I think it was at a dinner for something to do with the ocean/sharks so not totally crazy, but still - charming)

RIP

People always say Minecraft doesn't have good graphics or whatever, but that game's color palette and overall design aesthetic is VERY good. Everything is consistent, and when you're playing it you forget that it doesn't look "real." The game from the article is not in the same league.

I watched the Ken Burns documentary about the dust bowl, it covers the science and farming practices that led to it - VERY interesting and well done, if a bit dry.

My main takeaway was that they "solved" the dust bowl by pumping water up from the aquifers, which are now like 70% depleted - scary.

Apparently we synthesize ~10,000 IU just from being outdoors on a sunny day for a couple hours.

I've actually found that forced "tangential" thinking makes me fall asleep really fast. Basically, free association but you have to move onto the next thing instantly (eg. Think of a feather and then it's like a comb and maybe the comb is green then green grass, etc). I just seamlessly transition into dreaming. The key is not dwelling but moving on right away so you don't get stuck on things like "where are my car keys" or whatever.

If you're having a bunch of angsty feelings, listening to music can really help make you feel better and more connected with other people and the world.

I think this is a matter of correlation doesn't equal causation.