Ever heard of "kite tubing"?

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Combine a kite, a modified inner tube, a rope, & a boat, and what do you get?  Kite tubing (a.k.a. Darwin award winner).

The Wego Kite Tube is an insanely bad idea — it's totally unstable and will flip you right off.  This video shows a dude falling from 35 feet at 35 mph.  Not surprisingly, it's been recalled due to at least 39 injuries and 2 reported deaths.   YouTube has a bunch more videos.  This blog entry has lots of comments by people who were injured.

The Manta Ray is slightly better.  At least it's stable, although as this video shows it can still be pretty dangerous.  It's not been recalled (yet).

Misunderstanding the security "problem"

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It's surprisingly easy to misunderstand the "problem" you are trying to solve.

Take this example (my emphasis added):

… searching airplane pilots [at checkpoints] regularly elicits howls of laughter among amateur security watchers. What they don't realize is that the issue is not whether we should trust pilots, airplane maintenance technicians or people with clearances. The issue is whether we should trust people who are dressed as pilots, wear airplane-maintenance-tech IDs or claim to have clearances.

Scam alert: "Travel Agents Direct"

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KOMO TV (the Seattle ABC affiliate) did a story on July 6 about a company scamming people over the phone.

The wild thing is that today I've gotten a call at work from this company twice.  The phone number on caller-id showed as 727-683-1119 (a Florida area code).  The tricky thing is that they start out by saying they've got some free rewards.  Then they asked me to confirm my home address, and they correctly tell me my home address.  But then they ask me to tell them what my bank name is and ask for my checking account number.

Fortunately something felt wrong so I never gave them that information.  When I asked why the person calling me why they needed it, they basically said that in order to get my "free rewards", they needed that info.

Based on the KOMO story and also a thread on Scam.com (found via Google), it looks like if you give them your banking information, they send you coupons, but directly charge your checking account for these "free" coupons.  Unlike a credit card charge, because they do it directly to your checking account, it can be a lot harder to get your money back.

So be careful.  If anybody ever asks you to "confirm" any account numbers, the caller should be able read them to you and you say "yes" or "no".  If they insist, ask them to give you the the first 4 or 5 digits, and you will finish for them.  Even then, be wary — if they really are from your bank (or wherever), they shouldn't need this kind of information from you.  If they claim that it's important, hang up and then call your bank (or whatever) directly — if it is legitimate, you will be able to resolve things by calling your bank.

Better faces in computer animation

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This Seattle Times article talks about the problems of realistic human faces in computer animation.   The biggest problem facing computer animators is known as the "uncanny valley".  As animation techniques get better, the tiny remaining errors are magnified.  Paradoxically, this makes the face seem less realistic.  I've always believed that the answer to the uncanny valley is to digitize the performance of real actors, then use that digitized performance in computer animation.  (Some directors hope that computer animation will eliminate the need for prima donna actors, but I suspect that that the most cost-effective technique will always involve actors in some form.)

Production companies have been doing full-body motion-capture for several years by attaching a few dozen reflective spots to an actor, then using cameras and computers to track those dots.  These dots are then used to build the digital motion model.  But to get past the uncanny valley for digital faces, thousands of points would need to be tracked.  The current main-stream techniques aren't practical at these scales.

The Seattle Times article reports on the technology of Mova, a silicon valley startup.  Their solution begins by sponging green fluorescent paint onto a performers face.  They record the actors performance with a set of cameras, then use a program that uses imperfections in the sponged-on paint to build up a detailed digital model of the face for later use in computer animation.  Mova claims their system has sub-millimeter accuracy which will be necessary to get past the uncanny valley.   Their web site has a few movies and Flash presentations, but only a tiny bit of the final product.  That little bit looks very good, so if Mova can deliver large quantities of this type of animation they have an excellent future in front of them.