Tonight, I watched the 70mm restoration of 2001 at the Hi Pointe theater. I've always found 2001 to be a little too slow; but on the big screen with such great color and detail, the pacing is perfect. In addition, the "Star Gate" eye-candy scene was extended with material I'd never seen. An excellent experience.

Renderings of Menger Sponges, mathematically-defined objects that have zero volume but infinite surface area. Here are some more.

Biological abnormalities found after the Three Mile Island incident: gigantic dandelions, a four-legged spider, and misshapen maple leaves. I didn't know that radiation and contamination could cause such clear and varied mutations. The whole series starts here.

TouchGraph is a Java program for building springy trees to organize information and links. The data files are XML, and a graphical editor is also included. It's cross-platform, easy to use, and has some smart features.

Sodarace will be a competitive version of Sodaplay; it's currently in development for release in Winter 2002. According to the proposed architecture (pdf), human builders will be able to enter robots made with the current constructor, while programmers will be provided an API and XML format to generate robots with.

Antipixel now has a really nice photo gallery.

By 2003, St. Louis will have a new art venue: the Forum for Contemporary Art. I'm not sure how well it'll fit into the decaying urban landscape, but the building does look great.

I've put up a small gallery of photos taken with the eyemodule2 I received for my birthday last week. Some favorites: my dog Lily, a grainy night shot, and outdated bumper stickers.

"I look up to the heavens
For a ray of hope to shine
And there it is in neon:
'Liquor, beer, and wine.' " - Rev. Horton Heat

(Today was my 21st birthday.)

0L Systems is a free L-System renderer for Palm OS. It's a great application for getting the hang of L-Systems, as it's a basic implementation with only 7 commands.

Stephen Wolfram's new book A New Kind of Science was released recently. I was really looking forward to getting a copy, since the initial reviews were so positive and the online index lists nearly every kind of system I've encountered. But after reading reviews by independent individuals, I'm less inclined to buy the book. Ray Kurzweil does a great job of explaining what cellular automata is and argues some specifics in this review.

On a related note, MIT physicist Seth Lloyd has estimated that a computer to simulate our universe would require 10⁹⁰ bits of memory. Running the simulation from big bang to present would require 10¹²⁰ operations.

base58 « Base58 is a great site for unofficial remixes and bootlegs. The Boom Selection Xtra section of the site features combinations of pop songs, like "Dexy's Enemy" (Dexy's Midnight Runners + Public Enemy) and "I'm Licking Every Woman" (Aphex Twin + Whitney Houston/Chaka Khan). Despite the names, most of these are really well done.