Days of miracles & wonder, part 6,392…

Today, we’re excited to announce our latest AIY Project, the Vision Kit. It’s our first project that features on-device neural network acceleration, providing powerful computer vision without a cloud connection. […]

The provided software includes three TensorFlow-based neural network models for different vision applications. One based on MobileNets can recognize a thousand common objects, a second can recognize faces and their expressions and the third is a person, cat and dog detector. We’ve also included a tool to compile models for Vision Kit, so you can train and retrain models with TensorFlow on your workstation or any cloud service.

You can pre-order it here. 

Mmm—who wants techno-smores, just like mom used to make?

I can hardly believe that this little GoPro toughed it out, continuing to record even while catching on fire—but that’s indeed the story. Good stuff starts around 1:25 here:

[YouTube]

Does Google seem like exactly the kind of company that would celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Guggenheim Bilbao by commissioning a freerunner to launch off the iconic facades & carom around monumental works by Richard Serra? Why yes, yes it does. Explore the museum via Google Arts & Culture, and go behind the scenes of the short film below here.

[YouTube]

Julian Tryba scripts After Effects to produce carefully segmented, meticulously choreographed “layer lapses” that produce a “visual time dilation” that juxtaposes the same scene shot at different times of day. Here, just check it out:

You can read more about the project on PetaPixel:

Tryba visited NYC 22 times, drove 9988 miles, spent 352 hours shooting 232,000 photos with 6 cameras (5 Canon DSLRs and a Sony a7R II) and 11 different lenses, and paid $1,430 in parking fees.

Get vertigo a go-go as this drone pilot goes spinning in infinity:

Orbital drone movements are the ones with power to convert two-dimensional images into dancing focal layers escaping out of the frame. We wanted to further explore the technique, with high altitude long orbits, along with ones very close to the ground, we call them “Orbital drone-lapses”. These shots are a mix of automatic and manual flights. 

“The shots were done using both automatic and manual flights over the Folegandros island in Greece,” notes PetaPixel.

[Vimeo]

I see echoes of The Upside Down in these beautiful macro videos (and still images) showing chemical processes unfolding:

When a piece of metal salt is dropped in the solution of sodium silicate, a membrane of insoluble metal silicate is formed. Due to the osmotic pressure, water enters the membrane and breaks it, generating more insoluble membranes. This cycle repeats and the salt grows into all kinds of interesting forms. This film recorded the osmotic growth of 6 salts inside sodium silicate solution. The growth is so life-like, no wonder Stéphane Leduc thought it might have something to do with the mechanism life over 100 years ago.

[Vimeo 1 and 2]

Mike Krainin & Ce Liu go into detail about how optical flow techniques are helping Google Street View produce panoramas that are not only freer of artifacts, but easier for machines to read (producing a better understanding of business names, hours, etc.):

I wonder whether these techniques might be useful to pano-stitching in apps like Photoshop & Lightroom. I’ve passed the info their way.

[YouTube]

Happy Thursday.

On extremely rare days cold air is trapped in the canyon and topped by a layer of warm air, which in combination with moisture and condensation, form the phenomenon referred to as the full cloud inversion. In what resembles something between ocean waves and fast clouds, Grand Canyon is completely obscured by fog, making the visitors feel as if they are walking on clouds.

[Via Bryan Lamkin]

Heh—I’ve seen stuff like this done before, but props to Max Lanman for taking lifestyle marketing somewhere new. I love that the eBay link is http://bit.ly/luxuryisastateofmind, and that the car is now commanding a bid of $150,000!

[YouTube]