I love my ironing board (extra starch please!) but I am not so sure about this one. Imagine how yucky the starch, lint and dust will look when steamed into the mirror every day. And whats with the ONE set of legs with tacky red shoes on the bottoms? You break that mirror and its 7 years of bad luck wrinkles. Sorry but Fail.
@Curves: Based on the pictures, I don't think you're supposed to use the mirror side to iron your clothes on but the flip side that seems to have a red cover on it.
Kevin, Steve and I will spend all our time windexing the glow right off that mirror. (Do people spend a lot of time looking in the mirror in the dark?)
@Emperor_GitEmSteveDave: @Curves: Wait. You guys actually clean your bathroom mirrors? I was just going for the joke. Maybe I need to rethink my priorities...
* pauses to reflect *
* but can't as there's no reflection through 7 years of toothpaste spittle *
@bosskev: Yes, I do my bathroom mirror after I finally starting flossing thanks to a great little gadget I picked up at the drug store. I have big hands/fingers, and it's tough to maneuver floss in my mouth. I found this cool handle that you can thread w/your own floss, so you don't have to buy those disposable inserts. It puts tension on the floss, and after using that, I understood why Dentists/Hygienists wear the face shield.
I'd get one, but I have problems cleaning my mirrors. I don't think I could stand any fingerprints on the surface getting blown up 500% and glowing blue.
The glow in the mirror would be considerably brighter than the light that illuminates the user (decreases at the inverse of the square of the distance). This would actually make it harder to see yourself when your eyes adjust to looking at a glowing mirror. Functionality aside, it looks cool. I would consider buying it if it were eInk instead of a static photo luminescent print.
I'm no mathematician, but I'll bet that these are more like lenses than mirrors. I'm guessing there is a focal point beyond which you see text (or the image) un-mirrored, but at other points you may see the test out of focus.
It's actually performing the flip between you and the mirror. So if you're in the wrong spot it will just look blurry.
If you can produce such an image using a mirror, then there's no reason you couldn't recreate it agorithmically as well.
So why would a stair climbing robot need such a mirror? It would just create a part which could go out of alignment, and it's not like doing a transformation like this on an image is particularly cpu intensive. In fact, I was doing stuff like this years ago on a 486 in realtime.
oh man shoulda kept reading the whole comment. putting emphasis on 'real time' makes me look like a jackass now.
anyways, if the robotics maker could go without one more moving part, i'm sure they would. i won't pretend to know why they're going the mirror route, but i don't doubt that there are several sufficient reasons.
I find it impossible to believe a 360 image is free of distortion... the mirror has to distort the nature of the image by adjust the scale of objects to provide such a reflection.
it's like the prosecutors trying to talk about bittorrent and failing... talking optics without understanding is a little off.
@freelunch: As with prosecutors, commentors should understand a subject before showing ignorance:
Optical distortion: An optical aberration caused because the transverse magnification may be a function of the off-axis image distance. May be positive (pincushion distortion), or negative (barrel distortion).
There is no pincushion or barrel distortion in the mirror's reflection - all lines are straight as stated in the article.
@Hap: Actually...they're not. I didn't notice this right away, but if you look at all the lines that radiate outwards from the center, yes, they are all as straight as a rail. However, if you look at the vertical line just to the right of the man's right elbow, it does bow outwards a bit.
Really, there is no way to make a wide-angle lens or mirror that won't distort straight lines in some manner. All you have to do is point that thing at a sheet of graph paper and you'll have proof positive.
Aah digital cameras. Allowing everybody to convince themselves that they're an "artist" by buying a 550$ machine, pointing the glassy bit at whatever and clicking the clicky. Poof-o you're an artist!
This is the absolute nadir of art. Now, not only have we taken the world's most accessible "art" form, but we're removed from it any idea that anybody has to actually create something with it, so instead we'll just fiddle with light levels... filters... point it at a mirror and take the vainest picture your 550$ can buy.
But it's actually quite poetic and suitable. Creating an image which essentially reflects the person's vanity by LITERALLY REFLECTING THE PERSON'S VANITY is actually amazing. It's the ultimate aesthetic castration, but I wouldn't expect any of the people in that gallery to understand that at all.
@Pope John Peeps II: "...point it at a mirror and take the vainest picture your 550$ can buy...essentially reflects the person's vanity...ultimate aesthetic castration"
* with an air of icy indignation *
Well, Mr. PJ Peeps Clone, I'll have you know that you are just plain wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And, and...a dunderhead to boot. My camera? It cost $5,000, not $500. And, clearly, money well spent to capture my obviously-worthy self-portrait. Which I've made into a screen saver on my Mac's display. Which is right next to the 8x10 framed glossy of that pic. Both of those underneath my wall-mounted mirror. OK. Mirrors.
So, take that, you, you, you...you dumb guy! No narcissism here. Nope.
@bosskev: GADS. 5000?! Every opinion I've ever had had suddenly reversed itself with that figure. Now I'm going out to buy seven digital photograph frames, a camera the size of a telescope, and several mirrors. When I fall asleep tonight, it shall be to the shimmering vision of my own nakedness, reflected through seven rotating slideshows, at a cost of 21 000$.
OK. There's no way I could let this story pass by without including my own mirror portrait.
This shot was taken last week in my hotel room while on location photographing the Sundance Film Festival; I shot almost 7,000 photos in 11 days! (No, not all of me, of course.) (Well, mostly not all of me, I did begrudgingly get two or three celebrity shots.) (Which I then deleted to make more room for shots of me.)
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
* pauses to reflect *
* but can't as there's no reflection through 7 years of toothpaste spittle *
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
02/27/09
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02/27/09
02/25/09
It's actually performing the flip between you and the mirror. So if you're in the wrong spot it will just look blurry.
02/25/09
all true, except the lens vs mirrors thing. a concave mirror exhibits some of the basic effects of these mirrors, and yet is not lense-like.
02/25/09
So why would a stair climbing robot need such a mirror? It would just create a part which could go out of alignment, and it's not like doing a transformation like this on an image is particularly cpu intensive. In fact, I was doing stuff like this years ago on a 486 in realtime.
02/25/09
"If you can produce such an image using a mirror, then there's no reason you couldn't recreate it agorithmically as well."
there are plenty of good reasons why you can't recreate it algorithmically in real time
02/25/09
oh man shoulda kept reading the whole comment. putting emphasis on 'real time' makes me look like a jackass now.
anyways, if the robotics maker could go without one more moving part, i'm sure they would. i won't pretend to know why they're going the mirror route, but i don't doubt that there are several sufficient reasons.
02/25/09
02/25/09
02/25/09
02/25/09
02/25/09
it's like the prosecutors trying to talk about bittorrent and failing... talking optics without understanding is a little off.
02/25/09
Optical distortion: An optical aberration caused because the transverse magnification may be a function of the off-axis image distance. May be positive (pincushion distortion), or negative (barrel distortion).
There is no pincushion or barrel distortion in the mirror's reflection - all lines are straight as stated in the article.
02/26/09
Actually...they're not. I didn't notice this right away, but if you look at all the lines that radiate outwards from the center, yes, they are all as straight as a rail. However, if you look at the vertical line just to the right of the man's right elbow, it does bow outwards a bit.
Really, there is no way to make a wide-angle lens or mirror that won't distort straight lines in some manner. All you have to do is point that thing at a sheet of graph paper and you'll have proof positive.
01/30/09
"Shower the people you know with you", Then steam up the mirror
01/30/09
01/30/09
This is the absolute nadir of art. Now, not only have we taken the world's most accessible "art" form, but we're removed from it any idea that anybody has to actually create something with it, so instead we'll just fiddle with light levels... filters... point it at a mirror and take the vainest picture your 550$ can buy.
But it's actually quite poetic and suitable. Creating an image which essentially reflects the person's vanity by LITERALLY REFLECTING THE PERSON'S VANITY is actually amazing. It's the ultimate aesthetic castration, but I wouldn't expect any of the people in that gallery to understand that at all.
01/30/09
* with an air of icy indignation *
Well, Mr. PJ Peeps Clone, I'll have you know that you are just plain wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And, and...a dunderhead to boot. My camera? It cost $5,000, not $500. And, clearly, money well spent to capture my obviously-worthy self-portrait. Which I've made into a screen saver on my Mac's display. Which is right next to the 8x10 framed glossy of that pic. Both of those underneath my wall-mounted mirror. OK. Mirrors.
So, take that, you, you, you...you dumb guy! No narcissism here. Nope.
* smirks self-satisfiedly *
01/30/09
01/30/09
This shot was taken last week in my hotel room while on location photographing the Sundance Film Festival; I shot almost 7,000 photos in 11 days! (No, not all of me, of course.) (Well, mostly not all of me, I did begrudgingly get two or three celebrity shots.) (Which I then deleted to make more room for shots of me.)
01/30/09
01/30/09
?
01/30/09
01/30/09
No, no, no, just kidding! No naughty bits in my photo--not in the free shots, anyway.