Liquid Rescale is a software plugin for the open source image editing program GIMP. The plugin is based on the content-aware resizing by seam carving algorithm by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. Liquid Rescale resizes pictures non-uniformly, while preserving the features of the original picture, i.e. avoiding distortion of the important parts of the picture. It can also be used to add or remove portions of the picture while minimizing noticable distortion.

What I find most engaging about this technology is how it illustrates our expectations of scale, dimension, and details, and their transience. Liquid Rescale basically performs all the manual, time intensive tricks of image manipulation we are used to, but now with fast food style delivery.

Want a better understanding of life in an early 19th Century Industrial Iron Producing Community? Then Allaire Village is the place to visit. Situated an easy 34 miles of continuous strip mall (4 Home Depots, 3 Barnes & Nobles, 5 Staples, etc.) down Routes 18 and 9 from the New Jersey Turnpike, Allaire Village offers a sudden and pleasurable yank 200 years into the past. Don’t forget to bring cash! Despite the abundance of little red flags in the ground announcing ‘buried electrical line’, there is no ATM, and credit cards are not accepted in Allaire Village.

One item I particularly enjoyed was this large mural at the entrance to the interpretive museum. The mural makes more sense if you know that Allaire Village was posthumously named after its most successful inhabitant.

For more information and directions: allairevillage.org

Michael Kanellos posted an article on CNET on November 1 reporting on Chevron’s plans to collaborate with the National Renewable Energy Labs on identifying and developing strains of algae for fuel production. According to the article, some strains of algae are 50% lipid, making them an extremely oily option for fuel. One of the major benefits would be reduced reliance on one unstable region of the world for the majority of the world’s energy. There is also the benefit of oxygen/carbon dioxide cycling to take into consideration. And since most of us would prefer corn to algae, using the latter as fuel would eliminate the food versus fuel debate going on currently within the context of biofuel research and development.

Quoting Kanellos, “So the catch? It’s not easy to convert into fuel. Separating water from algae has been one of the big problems. It’s not uncommon to have 1 gram of usable algae in every liter of water, according to John Sheehan, vice president of sustainability at LiveFuels. “That’s 1,000 parts of water for every part of algae,” he said in an interview earlier this year.”

Imagine the great plains covered with terraced lakes of deep blue-green. Perhaps the predictions about the return of an inland ocean are accurate after all.

Read the original CNET article at www.cnet.com

An exciting opportunity has presented itself this week. An eco design firm in New Hampshire, Design Eco Futura, recently saw an installation (on this website!) that I did on the Rutgers campus and inquired about the possibility of collaborating on an actual design solution for erosion control. The design that I have proposed is a modular system similar to the paper I have been making for installations, which has impregnated grass seeds. There are several advantages to impregnating grass seeds in the paper: birds cannot eat the seeds before they sprout in the paper, the paper is biodegradable, its natural fibers collect moisture for the sprouting seeds, and the cushioning mesh layer attached below the paper provides proper aeration for the growing roots.

The scientists at Design Eco Futura will be working with me to optimize a growth-enhancing fertilizer that is active primarily during the stage at which the grass seed sprouts, so that we can enhance the growth of certain areas of the modules to communicate to humans ’stay off’ or ‘keep off’ to protect tender sprouts. Once the grass has grown in fully, this ‘text’ will no longer be visible, having served its purpose.

You can visit the Design Eco Futura website at: designecofutura.com