6 months later, the second round using the Midjourney 5.x release for image creation, worth another visit to same and new design prompts. Some of the design are little practical I guess but certainly create a decorative element in the terminal.
Disclaimer: This is solely for educational purpose and does not reflect any actual products or design I am involved with (until today). No copyright infringement is intended.
Fantasy Dreamland
The Airport Kiosk is a common sight in all small and large airports, it offers a range of self-service features. Upon identification by reading identity cards, credit cards or boarding passes, we can use it to print tickets and boarding passes, print luggage tags, change seat, purchase in-flight-upgrades, spend frequent flyer points and more.
We might reach the stage where these kiosks are a thing of the past, but as long as we need (want) to print something and not 100% of all travellers manage their bookings and ancillary services with their smartphone, we will see them for a some while.
The design and look-and-feel of these kiosks are quite standard, why not create some new designs with our AI wizard assistants ?
I have to admit, I am quite addicted to Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. It is amazing what you can create (or what the AI creates) using nothing but words to describe something.
We are asking for different, fresh designs and want to create an airport experience that is tailored to all kinds of passenger profiles. Let’s give it a try !
We mix the term “self-service kiosk inside an airport terminal” with a variety of art or design styles and settings. Below you find 35 different interpretations. Note, for some art styles, the model didn’t manage to render an airport terminal environment but kept it’s origin. Not all styles are rendered accurately.
Disclaimer: This is solely for educational purpose and does not reflect any actual products or design I am involved with (until today). No copyright infringement is intended.
Disney Theme Park
Follow this Twitter account for more airport AI art.
The online community is going wild with all kind of experiments and playtime with ChatGPT, GPT-3, Stable Diffusion, Dalle-E and Midjourney. Social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even the professional networking platform LinkedIn is full of posts (inclusive the ones I add here..).
Time to experiment further and let the AI create a (mockup) website and some marketing text for our fictitious Airport Groundhandling company called BestEverHandling Inc.
Prompt: create a website for an airport groundhandling services company called “BestEverHandling Inc.”, websites,ux,ui, online
Conclusion: We can create a visual mockup with no readable texts, maybe good enough for an initial design proposal or discussion. The images show disturbing corrupted or ‘Frankenstein’ creations of aircraft and equipment.
We need to create some marketing text for the company. In order to provide some guidance to the language model I use the description from Wikipedia and Law Insider
Prompt for OpenGPT / GPT-3: In aviation, aircraft ground handling defines the servicing of an aircraft while it is on the ground and parked at a terminal gate of an airport.Ground handling services means the supply at an airport, on a fee or contract basis, of the following: airline representation, administration and supervision; passenger handling; baggage handling; ramp services; catering; air cargo and mail handling; fueling of an aircraft; aircraft servicing and cleaning; line maintenance; surface transport; flight operations, crew administration and flight planning. Ground handling services do not include self-handling; security; aircraft repair and maintenance; or management or operation of essential centralised airport infrastructure such as de-icing facilities, fuel distribution systems, baggage handling systems, and fixed intra-airport transport systems. Create a half page marketing style description of groundhandling services provided by the company "BestEverHandling Inc.".
Unlike the website visual mockup we get quickly a quite realistic text proposal.
BestEverHandling Inc. is your go-to provider for all your aircraft ground handling needs. Our team of experienced professionals offers a comprehensive range of services to ensure that your aircraft is serviced, loaded, and cleaned efficiently and effectively.
We offer a variety of ground handling services including:
-Airline representation, administration, and supervision
-Passenger handling, including check-in and boarding assistance-
-Baggage handling and management
-Ramp services, such as aircraft loading and unloading
-Catering services to ensure that your flight crew and passengers are well-fed
-Air cargo and mail handling
-Fueling of aircraft
-Aircraft servicing and cleaning, both inside and out
-Line maintenance services to ensure your aircraft is in top condition
-Surface transport and flight operations assistance
-Crew administration and flight planning
Our goal is to provide high-quality ground handling services to our clients and ensure that your aircraft is ready for take-off as soon as possible. Our team is available 24/7 to accommodate your needs, and we use state-of-the-art equipment to ensure that your cargo and baggage are handled safely and securely. We also use environmentally friendly cleaning products to keep your aircraft spotless.
Choose BestEverHandling Inc. for all your ground handling needs, and experience the difference in quality and reliability. With our expert team, you can be confident that your aircraft is in good hands.
Conclusion: It uses our input and creates text around it that could be used for different businesses, just by replacing the keywords.
As quickly as the AI systems to create text have advanced, powerful tools to detect AI-generated text have kept pace. Lets test our text for fake creation.
General implication:
GPT-2 Output Detector Demo (free tool, but trained for GPT-2)
GPTZero (free)
Content at Scale (commercial, free test)
Looking back at 30 years of experiencing firsthand the (graphics) hardware (r)evolution, it is thrilling to enjoy such a high level of realtime rendering quality, high resolution and performance, available today. My career literally started off in the era of 256KB VGA graphic adapters (operating with bit block transfer), moving from 320×240 and 640×640 to SVGA 800×600. Some of you remember brand-names like S3, ATI, Diamond and others, 25 years back when a 80486DX motherboard had 6x ISA expansion slots for a variety of sound/network/xyz adapters (now down to a single PCIe slot for the GPU).
Today the battle is fought between AMD and NVDIA. The evolution never stopped, I tagged along investing in newer display adapters over the years. Since the late 2000s I stick to NVIDA starting with GeForce 200 Series (GTX 260) and GeForce 10 Series (GTX 1060) and now getting my hands on a real graphics powerhouse.
I managed to purchase a RTX 3080TI. I skip the discussion of the current problems of the industry to produce and ship sufficient parts and the attached price development.
Released in June 2021, running on the Ampere microarchitecture, supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate, 12 GB of GDDR6X memory, using 10240 cores, theoretical pixel rate of 186 GPixel/s and 34 TFLOPS FP32 (complete specs here and here), this card is quite a power-house, only the 3090 being more powerful in this line (3090TI announced in Jan 22, but both unobtainable and most likely absurdly expensive).
Comparing the 3080TI (unfairly) with my 13-year-old GTX 260, released in 2008, reveals the order-of-magnitude in Moore’s law. Running only 896 MB memory, 192 cores, 16 GPixel/s, 0.48 TFLOPS FP32. If this makes any sense to compare, the RTX 3080TI would outperform the GTX 260 by ~3000% (link).
Fun fact, architecture name line-up since 2008: Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing, Ampere.
The RTX 30 series is targeting the high-end gaming consumer market, but its specs are close enough to the GPU workstations and data centre GPU’s, to serve personal research usage at home. Unfortunately, the RTX 30 series is still very much in demand by the everlasting Bitcoin and Etherum mining ratrace, LHR was supposed to defer the usage for mining purposes, though it seems the miner community found ways to bypass the protection (source).
After some further upgrades, inclusive of power supply update (850W to be on the safe side) and more SSD and M2 disk space, the rig is ready for a first performance test using 3DMark running Time Spy.
(Top Score in the hall of fame with a single GPU is 28473 at the time of writing)
I am setting up some test scenarios with Tensorflow to run on the GPU. Will discuss this in another post.
Eventually all up and running, I managed to do my first steps in the Omniverse, get to know the concept, the components and plugins. There is plenty to learn and experiment with, all for free.
Will keep you posted about my adventures in the Omniverse. Especially interested in the context of Digital Twins. Stay tuned..
I am experimenting with generated art once in a while for a couple of years now. It allows me to cross the barrier between coding business systems and the world of art, literally creating software that serves absolutely no sincere business value but creating artistic enjoyment. Using the Processing environment (/library/programming language) it is amazing what fantastic visuals you can produce with little code. Note, Processing runs in its 20th year now, long time before we got into the current hype of AI generated art using GAN‘s (Generative Adversarial Network) etc and people making money with NFT (Non-Fungible Token). To be precise, Processing is more a tool for procedural art, good old algorithm creating visuals spiced up with randomness or picking up external actors (e.g. webcam). Today I wont discuss NFT’s or if it makes sense to buy a JPG file for millions of dollars, nor will I talk about GAN art based on deep learning, like Style transfer and similar (another post will cover that).
How to make generated art accesible to an audience outside the browser? With traditional means we would print the art piece, frame it, hang to the wall. This will limit us to static pieces, but we aim for the creation process and animated pieces as well. I started to work on a setup that runs as an art installation using screens and projectors, people in a public space can observe and witness the process of a piece being created or interact with it. I like the uniqueness of each visual using some kind of randomness as parameter. Whatever you see will disappear forever once the screen moves on (provided no screenshot or print created), the exact same thing you will not see again, though very similar creations coming out of the same alogorithm.
Lets look at the hardware. How to do this with little money ? We need a CPU, an OS, a screen and a stand.
Lets revive thin client hardware that you find for a few dollars on Ebay, usually devices which spent their previous life in an ATM, POS or behind a Checkin-Counter at an airport. Once retired after a few years this kind of equipment gets recycled or find its way into the electronics second-hand market (and hopefully not in landfills or recycle yards in Africa). Using Linux as OS we can use most thin clients built after 2010 with 64bit architecture (32bit no longer supported by Debian based systems), with 1 or 2GB RAM and at least 8GB diskspace. Since we run some graphics here we need a least a decent performance. I found the Fujitsu Futro S920, launched around 2013 with the AMD G-Serie GX-415GA 1.5Ghz Quad-Core CPU, 4GB RAM DDR3 and AMD Radeon™ HD 8330E as graphics adapter, which even supports OpenGL 4.1. All for Euro 29,- inclusive the power adapter. Energy consumption around 10 Watts. Replace the 2GB mSATA drive against a 16 or 32GB for another Euro 20,-.
One could argue, why not using a Raspberry PI ? With a proper casing and power adapter I would reach almost Euro 100,-.
Debian based OS are my choice. Using the Lubuntu distro we use a small memory footprint and decent diskspace requirements.
For the screen I sourced 40″ screens, grade B returns for roughly Euro 100,-, another way to keep this project sustainable by giving electronic equipment a second life. Now comes the handicraft challenge, building the TV stand. I prefer a portrait setup, a professional stand is easily Euro 200,-. Some iron square tubes, basic welding knowledge and some paint do the job. Material spent per stand about Euro 40,-.
This could even backup as super-low budget FIDS screen setup.
I managed to build the whole setup for less than Euro 200,-. Now time to get it ready for public display.
A small desktop version made from scrap metall for a 22″ screen
In the upcoming part 2 I will talk about the software setup of the installation as well share some insights about processing.
Stay tuned..
Another tech memorabilia from the 1990’s hidden away in a box for 25 year to be recovered during the attic exploration, the infamous iomega zip drive 100.
This was certainly a smart innovation in the early 90’s when the predominant (transportable) media was the 3.5″ disk with 1.4MB. Iomega came up with this removable 100MB storage device using a similar form factor like a disk, but offering 70 times more disk space. Take note, at that time the average hard disk space was around 500MB, so 100MB were a decent backup option. The drive was not cheap with a price around U$ 200,- and single disks roughly at U$ 20,-. Various types were offered, supporting IDE, SCSI, USB, Firewire connections. Still the device was not as scuccessful as expected, it had to compete with the (writable) CD-ROM and CD-RW, it faded away in the early 2000’s. Iomega does not exist any longer, the company was acquired by EMC in 2008.
The above device was recognized by Windows 10 and the 20 years old backup files could still be read.
Some other similar devices were introduced during the same decade, all eventually disappeared: Jaz Drive, EZ 135 Drive, Super Disk and a few more. All sharing the same faith and leaving you in trouble if you trusted them for long term archive purpose.
This is a common theme and “retro” problem that we look at here, starting in the last episode with the 3.5″ disk, a few more similar cases I will discuss in upcoming posts. We are now roughly 35 years into main stream office and home computing and we already facing challenges to persist data more than a few years.
Book-printing was invented by Gutenberg in the 15th century, there are still books around from the medival times and we still access the data, aka. read the text. The comparison can be challenged, not feasible to store today’s data volume on paper.
Fun fact: There are some tools and libraries that support creating paper-based backups, though volume-limited, this backup will survive dooms-day and any EMP, as long the paper does not catch fire and is laminated to protect against humidity. Give paperback a try, it even supports key encryption.
Main problems with old storage media and types:
Stay tuned for more retro tech explorations..
A recent visit to our attic during the xmas break revealed a number of technology artefacts from the past. Holding these items in hands you will realize how long you already have been working in IT. Let me share some of the findings with you, like these installer disks (3.5″) sitting in a box for almost 20+ years. Surprisingly the majority of these disks, kept in a dry box, still can be read without problem.
You noticed when 3.5″ disks faded away ? At some point the drives were no longer built-in notebooks (same already happend to CD/DVD-ROM drives today) and eventually disappeared from desktop PC’s too, maybe with the end of the Windows 95 start-disk. In the 1980’s the 3.5″ disk was launched as replacement of the infamous 5.25″ floppy disk. While the initial SD version (early 80’s) only offered 360kB, we could store 1.4MB with the HD version towards 1990. Take note, a 3min MP3 file is roughly 4 MB in size. It was the main media to store and transport any kind of data. Only by 2010 Sony stopped producing them, now in 2021 the disk is extinct.
Some of the above highlights:
Using this USB disk drive I was able to retrieve my digital sourcecode memories. You get these drives for about Euro 30,- . If you look for a 5.25″ solution you have to ressort to the used stuff on the usual selling platforms, plus you require a desktop that still supports IDE.
It took only a few disks to stumble upon a time traveller, the AntiCMOS.A virus from 1994. Survived on the disk for 25 years and being kicked out by Windows 10.
Some sourcecode retrieved from old disks, like these memories of Z80 assembler code. Can you be any closer to the CPU than this ?
Extract of a Turbo Pascal application that manipulated the graphics card directly using Assembler.
Supposedly there was a way to brick or burn the 1992 graphics hardware with a combination of specific direct calls, I remember vivid discussions with the head of the IT institute at my university fearing I would damage something. Today I think that was a tech myth.
I came across Pascal first time in the mid 1980’s at high school in the IT class equipped with Apple IIe and Apple Pascal. Btw, Pascal is 50 years old in 2020 !
I remember my very first PC system, a 80386 SX running at 20Mhz, 256kB RAM, equipped with 5.25″ and 3.5″ disk drives, plus a whopping 20MB harddisk, which I thought would provide enough space for many years to come.. I spent DM 2,500.-, today’s equivalent of roughly Euro 2,300.- for this set, inclusive of a 14″ CRT color screen and a Star LC 24-10 dot-matrix printer.
You fancy to run the old systems ? Let’s go, we have a few options at hand.
3. DOS Emulator
Save the time creating a virtual PC and install a native emulator on your windows environment. Try DOSBox.
4. Online Emulator
As usual, there is an emulator for everything now, any you can spin up an old piece of hardware in your favourite browser without touching a screwdriver or a disk. Drop by the PCjs website and explore all kind of OS and software from the past with the click of a button.
Fun nostalgia experience exploring the roots of software and hardware we use today. I learned a lot during this barebone hands-on times back then, valuable when looking at today’s IT environment where you are layers and layers away from hardware and the basic understanding how things work under the hood.
There are times you need to spin up these emulator or old OS, when you come across files that are no longer supported by modern OS and software releases. I had to install MS Access 97 in order to read old Access 2.0 databases.
Stay tuned for more retro tech exploration..
Some technology related observations from the last few days in these exceptional times we are facing at the moment. A lot of positive actions and activities going on.
A number of organizations try to build apps that help to control the spread or inform affected people. Most ideas take personal data protection into consideration and allow transfer of data to authorities or servers only upon consent and approval. Though nothing has been releases yet at a larger scale.
With hackers, malware and virus producers jumping on the train to misuse the situation (just to mention the ransomware that people behind coronavirusapp[.]site trying to spread an app that locks mobile phones), Google decided not to release any apps in this context until they find appropiate ones. Until a few days ago you did not find any app when searching for the term. By now you find only 1 app in the Germany Play Store with a app released by Singapore government funded app.
Put smart people together and let them work in short time on ideas, this time solely virtually.
While supermarkets run out of toiletpaper and a few other more important products, mainly due to distribution and logistic problems, the net revelead a whole universe of profiteers via the usual selling and market platforms or through self-created shop websites. Interesting to observe the price development, two weeks ago it was very much wild west with skyrocketing prices, by now the market platforms try to remove and ban any ridicolously priced offers and shops. The below screenshots from a local price tracking shows only samples of “reasonable” increased prices.
Good to see other companies like car manufacturers jumping in and trying to produce equipment in high demand (which hopefully can be produced b y non-medical companies). (Link)
Still it need someone to buy these items and willing to pay the price or being very desperate. Open market physics..
Now communication apps like Zoom, Skype, Teams, etc are seeing more downloads. Also streaming apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. But some trending apps are rather weird, like the game Plague Inc. in the current top 10 of games. The game was released in 2012 (not to blame the company) and was not updated since Feb 2019 but getting downloaded more often now. Not sure who wants to play this while we face it for real without a “restart game” button..
Quote description: “Can you infect the world? Plague Inc. is a unique mix of high strategy and terrifyingly realistic simulation. Your pathogen has just infected ‘Patient Zero’. Now you must bring about the end of human history by evolving a deadly, global Plague whilst adapting against everything humanity can do to defend itself.“
You have little chance today to get your hands dirty with electronics or computer hardware, either we deal with small devices like mobile phones, tablet and notebooks which are not made to be opened and tinkered with or our hardware is virtual only and sits in the cloud (no screwdriver required). Few people now still own a desktop size PC where one can add or change hardware (major hardware companies claiming massive loss due to dropping sales in this market).
During my studies in the 90’s we still dealt with CPU’s at a very low level which helped to ‘see’ and understand what’s going on.
If time allows I am doing some DIY projects with Arduino or Raspberry Pi, 2 electronic platforms which seam to be similar at the first glance, but operating very differently.
The Arduino is a progammable microcontroller, designed to work with sensors or to control external components like relays or motors. Is a very hardware oriented device, no OS or whatsoever included. It does basically what you program it to do. More info and getting started at http://arduino.cc
Arduino
The Raspberry Pi on the opposite end is rather a miniature computer, running an OS from a SD card and equipped with ethernet, HDMI and USB plugs. It is clearly more a software platform which can be used for more powerful applications than the Arduino. More info and getting started at http://www.raspberrypi.org
You have the option to combine both, to have processing power of a computer and the myriad of inputs and outputs to the real physcial world.
Raspberry Pi
The internet is huge dump ground full of knowledge and knowhow sharing. A market and meeting place. Given the trillions of websites one must be selective where you spend your time. Certainly StackOverflow is good investement (both to query and to answer).
You ever noticed that you pretty much dont see any jam postings on StackOverflow ?
I also joined LinkedIn (already a few years back) and I still dont understand how many so-called professional groups get flooded with rubbish postings, usually offering jobs where you earn a bomb by filling out surveys and other nonsense. Not sure why either LinkedIn is not capable to sort this out or the group owners let anyone in even without any profile.
For the fun of it (internet forensic for starters)I did a little background check on one of this postings. Quite often posted by someone without public profile, always a woman with a attractive looking profile picture and some fancy names (Cindy H., Evelyn P.,..). The URL in the posting are usually dating sites or other drive surf-by virus sites. You can backtrack an image and check with TinEye where the image is used in the web. I did it with a person called Jessica P. and put the image link into TinEye. It leads to Ukrainian Dating Site. Her name is Irina from Yalta and she is interested in dancing, swimming, shaping, aerobics, travelling. What would she do in an IT forum ? Supposedly she work as a translator. I suspect even this is fake. Anyway you can do the same with these 2..3 simple steps. Continue reading
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