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MyGadget: Rudi Soedjarwo: Fashion item fits in pocket
Kapanlagi
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Kapanlagi.com
When it comes to telecommunication gadgets, filmmaker Rudi Soedjarwo is a self-confessed loyal Apple user.
He used an Apple II e series desktop computer back in the 1980s and has chosen to use the Apple operating system ever since.
'I'm not too keen on reading manuals. I have tried other makes, but they are not as reliable and durable as any Apple product. Buying an Apple is a long-term investment.'
The director of teen drama hit Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What's up with Cinta?) chooses only phones that fit his no-fuss style.
'A phone is a fashion item, too. I like my phone sleek and with a masculine look with no chrome frame or bulky cover. It has to fit in the pocket of my pants and not show. Otherwise, I won't buy it,' he said.
Rudi is currently wrapping up the production of drama Stay with Me and thriller 1000 Algojo (1000 Executioners), which are expected to be released in coming months.
As he uses his telecommunication gadgets mostly for work (he also plays PC and console games), Rudi keeps up to date with the latest release of Apple products.
'I don't have a budget to buy phones. How can someone restrain themselves from buying what they like on a whim? The beauty of gadget shopping is the spontaneity of it,' he said.
iPhone 6
This is my main phone that I use for work besides my iPad. I use the Notes app to write down story ideas and sequences of scenes to be shared with my crew. They use it to hunt for shooting locations.
I also use it to make film mockups. It has high resolution and is suitable for filmmakers or hobbyists. No one needs a camera to make a film nowadays, as long as you can capture a good scene.
Although the phone seems large, I can operate it with one hand. I don't have to use both hands to type a message, for instance. As a father of three, that's an advantage.
Android phone
I need an Android phone as a backup. For me, any make will do because across the board they all have same operating system. I currently use Huawei's Honor 6. Among the other brands I have tried, this one is perfect for me. It is the right size and has a cool design and stable connection.
Mobile apps
I have many applications on my phone. Go-Jek is one because it's a lifesaver. I rely on the courier-on-motorcycle service to pick up or deliver things and even to do grocery shopping. I'm a registered user of Blue Bird Taxi Reservation, but not a regular user.
Because I like house designs and enjoy buying and selling houses, I have installed the Rumah application on my phone to find houses for sale and to connect with buyers.
I like to open Jango Radio and Torch Music applications for new releases and artists and use Celtx, which is very helpful to manage scriptwriting and pre-production.
The best of them all is SimpleMind, a mind-mapping application that organizes my ideas for the next production, which I can share with my crew.
18 | Technology wednesday June 24, 2015
Lasers, magnetism allow glimpses of the human brain at work
Malcolm Ritter
Associated Press
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut
To the untrained eye, the graph looked like a very volatile day on Wall Street ' jagged peaks and valleys in red, blue and green, displayed on a wall. But the story it told was not about economics.
It was a glimpse into the brains of Shaul Yahil and Shaw Bronner, two researchers at a Yale University lab, as they had a little chat.
'This is a fork,' Yahil observed, describing the image on his computer. 'A fork is something you use to stab food while you're eating it. Common piece of cutlery in the West.'
'It doesn't look like a real fancy sterling silver fork, but very useful,' Bronner responded. And then she described her own screen: 'This looks like a baby chimpanzee'
The jagged, multicolored images depicted what was going on in the two researchers' heads ' two brains in conversation, carrying out an intricate dance of internal activity. This is no parlor trick. The brain-tracking technology at work is just a small part of the quest to answer abiding questions about the workings of a 1.4-kilogram chunk of fatty tissue with the consistency of cold porridge.
How does this collection of nearly 100 billion densely packed nerve cells, acting through circuits with maybe 100 trillion connections, let us think, feel, act and perceive our world? How does this complex machine go wrong and make people depressed, or delusional, or demented? What can be done about that?
Such questions spurred President Barack Obama to launch the BRAIN initiative in 2013. Its aim: to spur development of new tools to investigate the brain. Europe and Japan are also pursuing major efforts in brain research.
The mysteries of this organ, which sucks up about 20 percent of the body's energy, are many and profound. But with a collection of sophisticated devices, scientists are peering inside the working brains of people for clues to what makes us tick.
At the Yale lab, Yahil and Bronner were demonstrating a technique being used there to investigate how our brains let us engage with other people.
That's one of the most basic questions in neuroscience, as well as an ability impaired in autism and schizophrenia, said lab director Joy Hirsch.
As the two researchers chatted, each wore a black-and-white skullcap from which 64 slender black cables trailed away like dreadlocks. At the tip of half of those fiber optic cables, weak laser beams slipped through their skulls and penetrated about 2.5 centimeters into their brains. There, the beams bounced off blood and reflected back to be picked up by the other half of the cables.
Those reflections revealed how much oxygen that blood was carrying. And since brain circuits use more oxygen when they're busier, the measurements provided an indirect index to patterns of brain activity as Bronner listened to Yahil and replied, and vice versa.
The most widely used brain-mapping technique, however, is a different one called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. Basically, fMRI does what Hirsch's laser system does: It uses oxygen levels in blood as tracers of brain-cell activity. But it penetrates much deeper into the brain, using powerful magnetic fields. That lets it seek subtle magnetic signals to track blood oxygen levels on a tiny scale; a bump in oxygen levels indicates active brain cells nearby.
The fMRI technology can detect vanishingly tiny changes in brain activity that are associated with tackling particular tasks. And it can show the activity of a brain that is not focused on doing a task. In this resting state, the brain continues to hum along, and scientists are studying what this can reveal about it and its illnesses.
Another major emphasis in brain mapping these days is delineating the circuitry that lets the brain operate.
Communication flows along an estimated 240,000 kilometers of nerve fibers in the average brain. Individual fibers are too fine to see in brain-scanning machines, but they form bundles that can be detected as they cross the deep central portion of the brain.
Those bundles are one focus of researchers who are mapping out the brain's 'connectome', the complex web of these connections between areas of gray matter, where thinking takes place. One goal is better understanding what parcels of tissue do what jobs in the brain's outer layer, the cerebral cortex.
Some brain-scanning research rises from the informative to the truly startling, like decoding ' looking at brain activity patterns to figure out what somebody is seeing, or even thinking about.
In 2011, for example, researchers reported that they could reconstruct very rough visual replicas of movie clips that people were watching while their brains were scanned. And two years later, Japanese scientists reported evidence that they could get some idea of what people were dreaming about ' at least, better than chance under highly controlled conditions.
Such findings are valuable for learning how the brain is organized. And in the near term, decoding technology might help people whose medical condition prevents normal conversation, said Jack Gallant of the University of California, Berkeley.
If portable devices that peer closely into the brain can be developed, new possibilities open up for brain decoding. And not just for scientists.
Gallant foresees a future in which composers write music just by imagining it. Or 'you can just think about the picture you want to paint' and let a computer do the rest.
Writing a letter, he says 'would be like dictation, except you would just be talking to yourself.'
And in the future, why be confined to your own language?
'I can think in English and my little brain hat would read my thoughts, send it to Google and it would come back in Japanese,' he says. 'You'd talk out of a little speaker in your hat.'
AbortRETRYfail
Europe launches next phase of hi-tech Earth satellites
Kourou: The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the second phase of a ¤4.3 billion (US$4.91 billion) program to deploy new-generation satellites to monitor environmental damage and aid disaster relief operations, officials said early Monday.
Sentinel-2A was hoisted by a lightweight Vega rocket from ESA's base in Kourou, French Guiana, overnight Monday-Tuesday, launch operator Arianespace said.
The 1.1-ton polar-orbiting satellite is designed to loop the world every 100 minutes, providing high-definition optical imaging of vegetation, soil and freshwater to a resolution of 10 meters, helping monitoring of forest cover, water stress and crop health. It will also provide information for emergency services,
It and a partner are the second of six scheduled pairs of Earth-monitoring satellites under the Copernicus program, an initiative headed by the European Union's executive Commission in conjunction with ESA.
Sentinel-1A, designed to scan the Earth's surface with cloud-penetrating radar, was launched in April 2014. Sentinels 1B and 2B are due for deployment in 2016, according to the ESA website.
Copernicus succeeds Envisat, one of the most successful environmental satellites in space history, whose mission ended in 2012.
The program was initially called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), but was renamed in 2013 to honor the 16th-century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who determined the Earth orbited the Sun and not the other way around, as convention had it at the time. ' AFP
Probing the brain: Undergraduate student Jenny Park, right, attaches laser probes to Shaw Bronner, as Adam Noah does the same to Shaul Yahil, at the Yale Brain Function Lab during a demonstration of brain mapping technology in New Haven, Conn. on March 13.
AFP
AP Photo/Richard Drew
How it works: Dr. Joy Hirsch, director of the Yale Brain Function Lab, describes her research in New Haven, Conn. on March 13. The lab is investigating how our brains let us engage with other people.
AP Photo/Richard Drew
improved docking technology to help future missions
BEIJING: Chinese scientists have improved the technology needed to carry out docking between vessels in space with the development of an 'eye' guidance system that will make the procedure more efficient and safer, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday.
Advancing China's space programme has been set as a priority by leaders in Beijing, with President Xi Jinping calling for China to establish itself as a space power.
China insists that its space program is for peaceful purposes. However, the US Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying China was pursuing activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.
In a manned space mission in 2013, three Chinese astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with an experimental space laboratory, the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1.
The new guidance system will be used for China's second orbiting space lab, the Tiangong 2, the Chang'e 5 lunar probe and eventually a planned permanently manned space station, Xinhua cited the China Academy of Space Technology as saying.
China plans to launch the Tiangong 2 next year and send the Chang'e 5 to collect samples from the moon and return to Earth around 2017. A permanently manned space station is planned for about 2022.
'Good 'eyesight' is crucial for one spacecraft chasing another for hundreds of thousands of kilometres to achieve a perfect rendezvous and docking ' it's like threading the needle,' designer Gong Dezhu told Xinhua. ' Reuters
Kapanlagi.com
myGADGET
iPhone 6
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
When it comes to telecommunication gadgets, filmmaker Rudi Soedjarwo is a self-confessed loyal Apple user.
He used an Apple II e series desktop computer back in the 1980s and has chosen to use the Apple operating system ever since.
'I'm not too keen on reading manuals. I have tried other makes, but they are not as reliable and durable as any Apple product. Buying an Apple is a long-term investment.'
The director of teen drama hit Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What's up with Cinta?) chooses only phones that fit his no-fuss style.
'A phone is a fashion item, too. I like my phone sleek and with a masculine look with no chrome frame or bulky cover. It has to fit in the pocket of my pants and not show. Otherwise, I won't buy it,' he said.
Rudi is currently wrapping up the production of drama Stay with Me and thriller 1000 Algojo (1000 Executioners), which are expected to be released in coming months.
As he uses his telecommunication gadgets mostly for work (he also plays PC and console games), Rudi keeps up to date with the latest release of Apple products.
'I don't have a budget to buy phones. How can someone restrain themselves from buying what they like on a whim? The beauty of gadget shopping is the spontaneity of it,' he said.
This is my main phone that I use for work besides my iPad. I use the Notes app to write down story ideas and sequences of scenes to be shared with my crew. They use it to hunt for shooting locations.
I also use it to make film mockups. It has high resolution and is suitable for filmmakers or hobbyists. No one needs a camera to make a film nowadays, as long as you can capture a good scene.
Although the phone seems large, I can operate it with one hand. I don't have to use both hands to type a message, for instance. As a father of three, that's an advantage.
Mobile apps
I have many applications on my phone. Go-Jek is one because it's a lifesaver. I rely on the courier-on-motorcycle service to pick up or deliver things and even to do grocery shopping. I'm a registered user of Blue Bird Taxi Reservation, but not a regular user.
Because I like house designs and enjoy buying and selling houses, I have installed the Rumah application on my phone to find houses for sale and to connect with buyers.
I like to open Jango Radio and Torch Music applications for new releases and artists and use Celtx, which is very helpful to manage scriptwriting and pre-production.
The best of them all is SimpleMind, a mind-mapping application that organizes my ideas for the next production, which I can share with my crew.
