Here’s another one discovered via Boing Boing (Link): the Cabestan watch. From the Europa Star article they reference (Link):

As Jean-François Ruchonnet (JFR to his friends) declares right up front, “This new timepiece, the Cabestan [capstan] is certainly very spectacular, but it is what I would call ‘techno-design.’

I don’t know if I’d call that “techno-design”, but I do know one thing: the widening gap between the wealthy and the rest of us(!) makes this an interesting case study for piracy. I’ve little doubt this could be fabricated for much less than the reported US$220,000 for which it sells, but anyone who wants to try first has to get one of them (maybe steal it), figure it out, replicate the parts in CAD, and then produce them at what is likely a considerable cost. That means they’re not going to be going for $10 in the Hong Kong night market. Why bother?

Unlike a Rolex, this thing is sufficiently unique to be a royal pain in the butt for someone wanting to pirate it. Additionally it would perhaps have to achieve the kind of iconic cultural status of a Rolex to sell in the volumes needed to yield a return on investment that would make this project worthwhile. Seems to me that pricing this thing so high and making it so unique is its best defense against rip-offs. We’ll see. Even I’m not sure as there are plenty of people out there who’ll do it for nothing more than a challenge.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Europa Star}

Just a quick entry to call attention to something I posted over on the Core77 main page concerning some steam-powered toys (Link). Very cool (and funny too).

Additionally, I got to thinking that as quaint as those devices are, most people probably don’t realize that much of the power flowing through the grid is the result of steam turbine-generated electricity. Whether it’s the relatively straight-forward heat exchange system of a nuclear power plant or one of the newer “combined cycle” power plants (e.g. coal-derived gas is used to first turn an electrical turbine and then sent to heat water to generate steam which turns another turbine), “steam power” is all around us. Given that fact of life, it’s seems odd how steampunk devices are often depicted: as something originating from the Victorian age. Here’s one example (Link – see the “Stevenson” image links) I came across yesterday and which I recall from a CGChat competition some time back. Great piece and good example of what I’m getting at.

Having succeeded in my attempts to capture data from Doom3 (see comments in earlier post – Link), I decided to start playing with the captured .obj file… mostly to see how easy (or hard) it would be to get the geometry to go “solid” in CAD. For me the most intriguing object in the entire game was the little critter above, a Sentry Bot, so I decided to pluck one out for some experimentation.

Below are some screens to show what the mess looked like after importing the file into Maya.

The wide angle view of everything captured is shown in the view above. The model’s spherical rotation handles make a nice locator here.

Zooming in on the model you can start to see the walls of the room in which the character is positioned.

Within some odd “blur-triangles” that permeate the mesh I found the Sentry Bot.

And here’s the little guy extracted and scaled (each grid is a square foot). Click on the above layout to see a larger view.

After I got that far I started playing with converting the mesh, but I’ve not been happy with the results so far (and it takes over an hour for a Sub-D to NURBs conversion). I have something I want to try, so I’ll be getting back to this soon. Also note that while I could have gotten a geometry screengrab when the model was in a symmetrical pose, I thought something dynamic would be more interesting. We’ll see how that turns out (it’ll most likely make the CAD conversion more difficult if what I’m planning to try next doesn’t pan out).

{Image source: Doom3 © id software}

I caught this last night over on Vinyl Pulse: an interview with Wheaty Wheat’s Richard VanOver (Link). Very cool. {Here’s Part II of the interview – Link}.

So why did I wait to post that link? Because I had to get a reminder in for everyone to check out the weekly update on Muttpop’s “El Panda” project. It’s Friday, so head on over for the latest development entry (Link).

Just wanted to make mention of Raph Koster’s heavily-trafficked blog where he’s posted an entry (Link) pointing back to my earlier post outlining a potential future for global commerce (actually, my entry is about the future convergence of virtual and real world commerce). I suspect there might be a few interesting comments posted there, so I’ll not link to my entry in the hopes you’ll come across someone else’s thoughts which spark new ideas/questions/concerns on your end. Enjoy.

{Update: Via Wonderland (Link):

MSN Spaces has just integrated some new modules that can pull in data from their Xbox Live stats: both your gamercard and your recently-played lists can update to your MSN Space (if you have one).

To continue the thought I started with the comment I posted over there: … let the data implosion begin.}

{NOTE: for VW Golf forum, my apologies:

“VW” = virtual world
“commerce” = $$$
“Koster” = name

Internet translation is bad. Wish I could help. Kindest regards.}