Explore:
Flickr Group: flickr.com/groups/hdr/
Dave Hill photography: davehillphoto.com
Local photo group: phototricities.com

Learn:
Youtube tutorial (CS3): youtube.com/watch?v=CVuDbcAfN_I
Photoshop Cafe tutorial: photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/HDR_ps/hdr-ps.htm

Buy?
Adobe PS Lightroom 2: adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom
HDRSoft Photomatix (free trial): hdrsoft.com

This month’s GeekSouth meetup will happen on July 29th at 7:00pm at the Thunderdome in Johnson City, TN (google map).  Come out, play a few games, and hear Ben Collins talk his adventures in dabbling with amateur HDR.

Ben Collins is a sometimes-photographer at The Bliss Agency, where taking his own images for web design projects has been a huge help.  A couple of his images have been used nationally in print publications for larger agencies.  His only training has been a mentoring under award-winning photographer Malcolm Wilson, a photo journalist and long time graphic designer.  Since then, he’s been exploring and learning as much as he can on his own, mostly in real-world situations where the internet and accidents are his primary teachers.  Lately, he’s been exploring something called “HDR” imaging and has begun to incorporate this technique in his work.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and the idea has been around since the 19th century, when Gustave Le Gray took two images, one of the sky and one of the sea at different exposures.  He then combined the two negatives to make one positive, and voila, a HDR image (source, Wikipedia).  The basic concept is if you take a picture, you have to choose an exposure amount.  If you expose an image for too long, any spot with a lot of light will be “blown out” or just white.  Likewise, any dark area that is not exposed long enough is just black.  The whole idea behind HDR is combining different photos using different exposure to make a single, “dynamic” image.

Ben uses two techniques to explore creating dynamic photos, manual and Adobe Photoshop’s automated process.  The manual process involves layering different images from the same scene with different exposures and then just erasing areas that are over or under exposed.  The automated process is a complex algorithm requiring 32-bit images which are then mathematically combined into a single image which you can then manipulate using special preset modes of HDR imaging.  Ben will demonstrate both processes for GeekSouth.

Please make plans to come out!  Big thanks to Thunderdome for hosting us, Ben Collins for the presentation, and Donna Dingus for getting us organized!

It was decided that the first meeting of 2009 will be a review of the decisions made at the planning meeting for those who were not able to attend so that we can look forward to all the cool things coming. Also, this will be a “working meeting” so come armed with ideas and laptops so that we can tweak various things dealing with the GeekSouth website.

Location: ETSU Innovation Lab (map) Big thanks to lab directory Rayford Johnson for letting us use the space.

Date/Time: Thursday, January 29th @ 7:00pm

Signup: Over Here

Tag It!: gs0109

What about food you say?!? Several of us are planning to order delivery from Mid City Grill.

If you want to order food from Mid City, please check out the menu (found here).  Sam Mays and myself are offering to go pick the food up right at 7.  If you want us to pick up the food for you, you must do two things.

1. Email your order to geeksouth@gmail.com before 5pm on the 29th.  At 5pm I will be forwarding the order to Jeff @ Mid City.

2. Be there at 7, with enough cash in hand to cover your order.  I’m not taking everyone’s debit/credit cards with me, also will be a pain to do exact change so if you give me .73 more than your order that will just be a tip for the cook!

If you would rather, you can paypal enough money to cover your order to Austin (paypal email: austin.moody@gmail.com) and he will just slap it on his card.  Either way.

You can always just call in your own order and go nab it yourself.  Either way is fine.

Emailing in an order and not showing/paying is bad mojo and will cause Buffalo Mountain to catch on fire again.  You don’t want that haunting your dreams to you?

Bruce Klein, someone involved in the business and theory of modern Artificial General Intelligence, recently forwarded me (and everyone else he could think of) a rough draft of a statement on the importance of AI and accelerating change and requested feedback.  I think this summarizes things pretty well but I think statements like this can always use clarification and lean towards (ironically) generalizations.

“Throughout the past half-century, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been progressing steadily. As progress continues, it is likely that the problem-solving abilities of AI systems will approach and then surpass the brightest human minds. If so, it is also likely these systems will acquire the ability to improve their own programming without human assistance. The development of such systems should be approached with considerable forethought.

The prospects and implications of powerful machine intelligence has been called “singularity” by analogy to singularities in mathematical physics, particularly black holes. This analogy invokes the concept of the “event horizon” that shields the singularity from outside observation. This point of view is informed by the notion that it is difficult for us to predict what will be done by intellects that exceed our own mental ability.

We consider it plausible that advanced AI systems may arrive in the next few decades, and the policies and precedents we set in the present will have significant influence over what will happen in the future. We think it is time for AI researchers and engineers to work together with society at large to craft a roadmap for the development of this technology to bring about a desirable and beneficial future.”

The myths and realities of AI.

The mythos of Artificial Intelligence has been around for a long time.  For example, Wikipedia’s list of ficional robots and andriods throughout history and the Times Online “Top 50 Movie Robots.”

Generally there is a theme that revolves around our AI creations not having something importantly human or being distinctly different from humans.  For example, the tin man in the Wizard of Oz doesn’t have a heart.  Data from Star Trek: TNG is missing emotions entirely.  The Terminator, depending on it’s programming, is equally emotionless and generally sociopathically bloodthirsty. In a recent modern twist, WALL-E is a friendly robot that while hyperactively politically correct also discovers love and redemption. The most famous exception may be the love affair between androids Deckard and Rachael from Blade Runner. What, you didn’t know Deckard was a replicant?

Why do we paint our visions of Artificial Intelligence this way?  Humans have long felt that we were in fact made in God’s image. At the very least, our consciousness, our feelings, our soul is somewhat untouchable by anything other than God.  Our belief is that it’s impossible to create something equal to or greater than human intelligence beyond having a child. As it’s turned out, it’s been incredibly hard to do just that.  Sure, we can have “narrow” intelligence creations (such as chess games) that are superior to humans in every way.  But as far as “general” intelligence, common sense, and emotions, it’s widely believed that it’s impossible to create a machine with these qualities.

These questions, these myths, and the realities of surrounding Artificial Intelligence today may be some of the most important ones ever asked of our species.  There’s a lot of wonderful philosophy about what it means to be human, the definition of intelligence, and the nature of creation and evolution. Also, there is a lot of danger and risk associated with our tampering with these concepts that merit careful observation and research.  This is the primary focus of many modern scientists in the related fields of AI.  How do we control our future in regards to technology?  How do we ensure a safe happy world for humans?  What if we can create something more intelligent than us?  Are humans really the last step in evolution or… just one step?  Is that a good or bad thing?

Fortunately, smart (geeky) people all over the planet are working on it. Many of them have a lot of hope.  Many have trepidation. There are extremes and there are nutcases. At the very least, the quest for Artificial Intelligence has never been more interesting or dramatic.

Important events and interesting links:

In San Jose, California on October 25th the Singularity Summit 2008 is being held.
This is one of the most modern examples of AI researchers gathering to discuss the future.

March 6-9 in Arlington, VA will feature The Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence

Interesting people:

Francis Heylighen (papers)
Douglas Hoftsadter
Kevin Kelley
Kwabena Boahen
People M.I.T. AI labs

Modern examples of AI

Gaming. Programming “agents” in games to be more and more unpredictable and “intelligent” is big business.
Searching Software. Google seems to get “smarter” every day.
Linguistics, Facial Recognition, Handwriting Recognition. Machines are getting better and better at “understanding” more and more complex things.
Customer Service.  Businesses value automated Customer Service and pour millions into systems for this and it’s way beyond “press 1 or press 2″ now.
Problem Solving.  Most recently, a massive distributed network was established to process data from the LHC.

The format will be a dialogue / discussion based on an outline of themes.  Everyone is encouraged to bring their skepticism and their questions.  The main topics will be:

1. What is the status of Artificial Intelligence today?  What is intelligence anyway?

2. What are the potential benefits and harm of AI?

3. What are the philosophical implications of AI and the evolution of intelligence?

4. What is technological acceleration? Where do we see this taking place?

5. Other!

We will be congregating at Machiavelli’s in Bristol, TN (google map) at 7:00pm. Surf over to this site if you will and RSVP so we’ll know how many to expect: www.mobaganda.com/geeksouthoctober2008

Please come out to check in with all your geeky friends, make new geeky friends, and see what Ben has in store for us.

Also… if you have a Robot please bring it along