Archive | June, 2010

VR Hair Cutting Simulator

By on June 29, 2010 in japan, Miscellaneous

Just saw a link to this oddity in my Twitter feed – it looks ridiculous at first glance, but if you think about the technology going into it, it is pretty amazing.

This is part of a project from some students at 東京工業大学 (Tokyo Institute of Technology), usually referred to as Toko-Dai or Tokyo Tech, which is ranked in or near the top 20 universities in the world for technology, so it’s a very cutting-edge institution (no pun intended, LOL) and, although the VR hair cut looks frivolous, it no doubt has some real world potential down the road.

I actually recently met two graduates (one a Masters student and one a PhD candidate) from Tokyo Tech and I can honestly say they were two of the brightest, most engaged, people under the age of 30 I’ve met in recent memory (and I meet A LOT of 25 to 30 year olds from all of the top universities in Japan in my day-to-day work).

Just for fun here is a list of Tokyo Tech’s “Notable Alumni” from Wikipedia that gives you an idea of the calibre of the institution:

The understatement here on their “News & Topics” list is so great (and so Japanese):

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Tokyo Dilapidation

By on June 27, 2010 in japan, Photography

I’ve got a little series going of corner buildings that look worn, rusted, or dilapidated, so above is last night’s installment from a walk around Tsukiji.

It is one of things I love about Tokyo: you can see the newest and the latest of everything yet there are so many worn, dilapidated, shack-like structures in the midst of it all.

The shot above is actually 3 shots tonemapped in Photomatix (-2/0/+2), hand-held and shot with one of my favourite low light lenses, the Sigma 30mm f/1.4.

Here’s another corner shack from quite a while ago – this is one of my favourite places, and I’ve taken a number of photos of it (mainly because I keep thinking it’s going to get knocked down at any moment, but, two+ years later, it’s still there…)

勝どき shack

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