-
Dartmouth
Engineering Cycle Book
A fantastic introduction to using engineering problem
solving in science and math problems by the Dartmouth Engineering
school.
-
ATT
Cambridge Research projects
This ATT research center in the UK has some cutting edge
projects outlined.
-
Canoe
Cements a Place in History
As engineering college competitions go, concrete canoes
are as solid as they come. But thinking out-of-the-box allowed
these students from the U of Alabama to use resonance as their
winning strategy.
-
Project
Ideas: CS 599 Intelligent Embedded Systems - HOMEPAGE
A USC graduate level course in using sensors and
computers to make "smart" systems. What our students
might do in a few years. See the "Student Projects"
link to get an idea.
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Sensor
Webs Home
Leave it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop some
great DSP and wireless sensor technologies. These Martian pods
may find their biggest use here on Earth.
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What
Is Engineering- John Hopkins
These engineering projects are classics (towers, bridges).
However, this virtual course has many direct connections to
math topics (matrices and vectors) and how to implement the
process. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to open the .pdf files.
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Engineering
Your Future - Precollege Site
The American Society for Engineering Education lays out
how students can get on track for engineering at college. A
very well-done site.
-
Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers
The largest professional organization in the world. A meeting
point for electrical engineers from all branches of the field.
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The Scholastic Assessment
Test
A great opportunity for building a base for a great career in
engineering or pother fields. Contact your teacher and school
academic counselor for details on this examination. A college
education is as essential as a good primary education for an
engineer. For more sites and information, check out the search
for "SAT" on Google.
-
The
Electrical Engineer
A site explaining the basics to become an electrical engineer.
Engineering is not only for the nerds, it can be very exciting
as well!
-
The College Board
A list of colleges offering undergraduate programs in engineering
and technology.
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ABET Home
The Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology
is the gate-keeper for the accreditation of some 2400 universities
in the US.
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Digital Imaging
Tutorial
A comprehensive coverage of all the topics we cover in the Infinity
curriculum. A must see!
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Cornell
University Tutorial
A slightly higher level tutorial.
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Matrix
Multiplication Demonstration
If this topic is too hard to understand then just watch
these matrices reshuffle and do the math in real-time animations.
-
Matrix
and Quaternion FAQ
Basic introduction to the math of matrices used to describe
images.
-
Interactive
Illustrations of Color Perception
A Brown University research project aimed at designing better
interfaces for computing. Take the survey of how you perceive
the color patterns.
-
Ohio
State Tutorial
An introductory course in digital image processing. A good revision
for the students.
-
Image Smoothing
A technique for impulse noise removal. Shows a sequence of noisy
images as they are cleaned up.
-
ABCNEWS.com:
VinylVideo Puts Images on LPs
How to use the analog technology of vinyl to store images?
A reinvention of the audio "wheel" that is so retro
it's on the cutting edge.
- Face
scanning software
Faces at the super bowl were scanned with image processing
software to try and ID felons in the crowd. An invasion of privacy
or a new tool in the fight against crime? We'll need to decide
soon.
- Squant
color spoof
A little humor for those web designers who have to worry
about RGB color outputs. Have you had your monitor squant-corrected
yet?
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You will need the Macromedia
Flash player for most of these media
rich sites.
-
BitStreams
The Whitney Museum's Flash-intensive site that explores
the nature of digital art. A fascinating experience.
-
Vertex
Blending for Lifelike Poses
Ever wonder how digital joints have gotten to appear so seamless
when different parts that have to be connected together and
move in the same worldspace? ATI's Hardware Technical website
gives some details on how gamers can literally keep their shirts
on in first-person games.
-
Pixar Animation Studios
A true pioneer in computer graphics and animation! See trailers
of brand new animation movies. The How
We Do It section describes the
14 stages a movie moves through from start to finish.
- Synthetic
Actors Guild
This LA Times article discusses something that Hollywood
will be facing soon enough- how do you make completely digital
actors and what sort of perks do they get on the set?
-
Industrial Light and Magic
A studio that came out of the Star Wars movie. These were the
guys who developed the animation for T2! The Toolbox
has some updates on the latest from their bag of tricks.
You'll need to register to view their latest short movies.
-
The Matrix
Enter the construct! The Matrix was a revolution
in movie making. An excellent example of technology taking a
giant leap forward. Take the red pill! The geek in you will
love this site. The
Bullet time walk-through page describes
how this SFX was created.
-
Final Fantasy : The Spirits
Within
The first movie created entirely on a computer! There are no
actors and actresses here. The first few steps to the future
where movies will not require any humans at all has been taken.
Get the Macromedia
Flash player. Pay particular attention
to the Production section with descriptions of the basic CG
challenges and how they were met. Here you'll find Behind
The Scenes and Motion Capture descriptions
for how accurate, fluid human motion was imported to the CG
characters.
-
Final
Fantasy: The Technology Within
This multi-part interview describes the Polygon meshes,
Lighting, and Hair modeling required
for this epic CG movie.
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Mojoworld:
Fractal
Planetary Modeler
- Pandromeda Home page
The source of the free download, Mojoworld Transporter, that will
literally open up new worlds of possibility for 3-D real-time
modeling.
- fractional
Brownian Motion (fBM)
The heart of many common fractal effects, this advanced
procedural texturing, this Intel tutorial discusses the NOISE
function used in Mojoworld. A little noise in an image can be
a good thing!
- Ken
Perlin's lecture on the above topic of NOISE!
How is noise like a little salt in the soup? How can you model
fur? This set of slides and commentary from the man who is now
working for ILM and George Lucas is a nice intro to creating pseudorandmoness
in fractals.
-
Animated Waves on Mojoworld
Swiss programmer Bernard Krummenacher has created some amazing
animations of wave motions using Mojoworld. A sample of what is
to come!
- Tutorial
for using the Mojoworld Generator software
A step-by-step guide to building your own planet using the various
procedural texture editors in the program.
-
The Hubble
Telescope
Digital techniques allowed crystal clear images from the Hubble
to be obtained by laboratories spread throughout the world.
Here are some beautiful images
captured by the Hubble.
-
Spy
Satellites
Images captured by spy satellites allow the US government to
keep a watchful eye on the rest of the world. Without CCD cameras
and digital transmission of images, real-time supervision would
be impossible. This BBC site outlines their uses in Aghanistan.
-
Satellite
Images
Have fun finding your house!
-
The
Search For Asteroids Procedure
A slightly more serious use of image processing to look
for the sorts of rocks that the movie Armageddon
was written about.
-
Chandra X-ray
Observatory
Digital images can be captured in the x-ray spectrum as well.
Most of the radiation from space lies in this band and hence
the Chandra x-ray observatory project gains so much significance.
Just check out the pictures on the site, simply breathtaking!
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CS 105 The Web: Technologies and Techniques
This Williams College Computer Science Course overlaps
with much of Infinity Chapters 7 & 8. The Digital Transmission
lecture notes are worth the visit.
-
Hobbes' Internet Timeline
A veritable mine of information listing places and people instrumental
in developing technology for the web. A true inspiration for the
budding engineer.
- PBS History
of the Internet
A concise overview of the major events.
-
Short History of the Internet by Bruce Sterling
Tired of the jargon engineers can become immersed in? Read this
very literate article about how the internet was developed.
-
Cisco
Do you know how actually this giant was born? It was in a small
apartment way back in 1984. Just two decades later it is a virtual
monopoly for routers, the backbone gatekeepers of the web. This
is their product documentation website.
- How
do routers work?
Marshall Brain's How Stuff Work's examines this specialized computer
that is at the heart of the internet's ability to connect.
- Call
routing in telephone networks
Another superb site illustrating math applications from
the PLUS website in the UK. Algorithms to make efficient network
connections are illustrated.
- Video on "Warriors
of the .Net"
Great intro to the Internet. A large streaming video
that you shouldn't try to downloaded under 56K conditions!
- Visually
tracing your data packets
Want to see how routers send your data packets from point A to
point B via the fiber-optic nervous system of the internet? Take
a look at this free demo (a java applet) from Visualware.com that
will map the geographic connections between routers on the internet.
Type in your school's website and see where your data "hops".
The quickest route between two computers isn't always the shortest
one if there is congestion!
- Internet
2 Project
Imagine a fiber optics backbone with a bandwidth so large as to
accommodate several million simultaneous users at speeds up to
155 Megabits/second. This overview from MIT has a list of common
I2 vocabulary.
- Defense Science
Study Group -Future Network Threats
What sorts of threats might the information nervous system
of the US face in a connected world? The NIPC is proposed in this
study.
- U.S.'s
Defenseless Department
Why hasn't the NIPC worked over the last two years? Read
this Wired report about how turf wars, lack of leadership, and
other bureaucratic issues have crippled the NIPC.
- Reading
Email Headers
The Stopspam.org website details how to tell where your
email originated and how it was transmitted over the Net.
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- As
We May Think- Vannevar Bush
This famous 1945 Atlantic Monthly article was uncanny
in its predictions of where science and technology might lead
as America emerged from WWII. The conceptual underpinnings
for the Internet are laid out here.
- Comms
pioneer Claude Shannon dead at 84
Obituary (2/01) of the man who established Information
Theory as a discipline in 1948. One of the founders of modern
computer science, he was also well known for unicycle riding
at the Bell Labs where he worked.
- RIP
Claude Shannon
This UK site has a brief tribute and some good links to
the pioneer who made modern digital communications possible.
- Bell
Labs Intro to Information Theory
The best introduction to this field and how it relates
to electronics and networks. An excellent site!
- Information
Theory Introduction
This Cambridge professor's lectures outlines the field
of Information Theory as of 1995. Written for college seniors
and grad students.
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What is Data Encryption?
A site with a cool demo of real-time encryption of text.
-
The
Ideal Cipher
An outstanding website by John Savard in Edmonton. It should
be your first stop for serious crypto information.
-
CIA
to Mask Web Moves with SafeBoy
No NetNanny or cookies for the CIA. Some Berkley grad
students tried to prevent the Saudi's from blocking access
to their website and created anonymous web surfing that
would make any hacker happy. Now the CIA is giving them
venture capital to use this technology themselves. You've
got to love the irony.
-
Cryptogram
Helper Source Code
Some nice java scripts to help crack simple cryptograms
like you find in the Sunday paper.
- Cryptography
-- PGP
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) caused quite a stir when it
was first released. This Trinity College website details how
it works.
- Cryptologic Nooks
and Crannies!
Codasaurus.com has everything a crypto enthusiast might
want.
- CryptoQuote-
genetic coding
A new and very useful algorithm for attacking difficult
problems- genetic coding- is outlined here. Finding the "fittest"
solution is a problem for all sorts of fields, not just cryptography.
- EFF
Cooperative Computing Awards Press Release (Apr. 6, 2000)
The Electronic Freedom Foundation's $50K award for the
biggest prime number. And who said math doesn't pay.
- Electronic
Sample Issue of The Cryptogram
Starts with the Caesar alphabet (Rome wasn't decoded in
a day when all you had was a papyrus) and moves on through
time.
- NSA
- NCM The HARVEST Exhibit
Now that the NSA can exist in the light of day, take a
look at their crypto deciphering machines from the 1950's
and other time periods. A fascinating intertwining of military
history, American technology, and spy vs. spy stuff.
- NSA
- VENONA History Release 2
An actual case history of breaking Soviet codes in 1942-43.
Details Soviet operations in Washington DC during WWII.
- Rijndael:
The Advanced Encryption Standard
The new block cipher standard proposed in 2001 for the
federal government comes from the Netherlands. Complexity
wrapped in an enigma folded into... well, you get the idea.
- Bin
Laden: Steganography Master
The hottest topic in cryptography today is being used
by the bad guys as well.
- Secret
Messages Come in .Wavs
George Mason University professor's research in how to
conceal information in MP3's during the compression of a .wav
file. The NSA even certifies his graduate program.
- Steganography
Outline: Hiding in plain sight
The same Georgetown professor's own website and intro to information
camouflage.
- Slashdot:
The Rise of Steganography
Good overview from the website of choice for the computing
community.
- Wired
7.07 What Does It Do?
A fun little puzzle that makes a great lecture kick-off.
Make sure you print it off so it will fill up an entire sheet
of paper. Just don't ask for the answer ;-).
-
Web Security
General hints and demos on maintaining security over the
web. Has a cool page on choosing good passwords.
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File Encryption
You can encrypt your files here and mark them with a password!
Try all the different encryption algorithms.
-
Public
Key Cryptography
Public Key Cryptography. A popular encryption program by
RSA, a trusted name for web security.
-
Secure
Sockets Layer
A method to keep your private data secure while transferring
files over the net. A good primer on data security in large
networks.
-
Cryptography Research
An exhaustive site with cool puzzles to solve and description
of the major encryption standards in use today. Do your
math and become a cryptanalyst.
-
Beyond
2000 Cyberlife-Communications Mark My Words
An easy-to-follow overview of digital watermarking
to protect intellectual property rights.
-
Hashed
Music
The technique known as "hashing" creates short
chunks of encrypted code to represent longer, more complex
signals. By hashing the sound signals of popular music you
can create a searchable database of tunes that can be reached
via a web-enabled cell phone. Your Nokia can now tell you
the name of the muzak at the mall!
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DSP in Practice
A very useful site for DSP. Contains tutorials,
demos and FAQs
on filtering, images, university sites, software, books
etc.
-
Technical Paper Signal Processing Fundamentals
Dennis Bohn at HeadWize has written an introduction
to signals from an audio engineer's viewpoint. Written at
an intro college level, the technical issues in making a
great stereo sound system are detailed here. Lots of filter
info here.
-
FIR
Digital Filters
Demo of various digital filters on user defined signals.
A great site to see a visual real-time effect of filtering.
-
Info
on Sound
Canada Science and Technology Museum website. Whole bunch
of information on sound.
-
New
Scientist Tuning in
A personal earpiece with a DSP that can quiet
or sharpen various sounds in a noisy environment. Parties
nor combat will ever be the same again.
-
Speech
Codecs
Listen to industry standard speech coding rates. Speech
codecs are characterized by subjective tests on people.
-
A/D
Speech Demos
Digitizing an analog signal. Listen to digitized versions
of speech.
-
Air
chaining
A clear and detailed tutorial on how to setup wireless
links for the remote broadcasting of radio. Digital filtering
is also covered.
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Origins
of Wireless Communications
A brief history of how radio transmission was invented and
the developments till date
-
Guglielmo
Marconi
The first person to transmit voice without wires!
-
Samuel
Morse
Without this intelligent code, telegraphy would have been
difficult indeed.
-
Heinrich
Hertz
Heinrich Hertz showed that electromagnetic waves could be
used to transmit information over distances.
-
Alexander Graham
Bell
The father of the modern telephone instrument. An inventor
and a true engineer.
-
Wireless
options primer
This large Adobe Acrobat .pdf details all the possible
ways an entity (like the county public safety dispatch system)
could go about getting wireless communication systems in
place. Written for the county board, this easy to follow
guide details technical, economical, and political issues
surrounding large-scale wireless deployment.
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Electromagnetic
Fields
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Cell phones & Cellular Networks
- Radio
Controlled
The PASS website examines the use of radio networks
and the algorithms behind cell phone transmissions.
- How
Voice Processing Will Change the Web
Will 3rd Generation (3G) cell phones (you've probably
have a 2G phone) allow voice-activated surfing of the web?
Industry standards are outlined here.
- Stealth
Jets Unmasked
What might happen if cell phone technology was to
render Stealth technology visible? It's happening...
- Time Domain Corporation
The holders of the UltraWideband technology patents,
this company is using wireless in a completely novel way that
will have profound consequences for society. Imagine personal
broadband access unhindered by interference. Imagine
radar-like flashlights that can see through buildings.
The government has.
-
Ultra Wide Band Implications
Is it possible that there could be 10,000 different cable
companies in town at some point? It could happen if you deliberately
use noise to send signals.
-
Ultra Wide Band Basics
A nice primer on this digital picosecond-based protocol.
-
Adaptive
Antenna Technology
ArrayComm makes smart antennas for "intelligent"
cells (i-BURST™)
that note the strength and direction of each cell phone
and then work to optimize that signal's reception by allocating
resources in that direction.
-
Technology
Review - Wireless Triple Play
A new wireless antenna design to help boost overall
performance.
- Technology
Review - The Universal Cell Phone
To boost cell phone reliability in congested networks
software is fixing the gaps left by hardware issues.
- German
design site for 3rd Generation phones
What might you be able to do if your phone was Wireless
Application Protocol (WAP) enabled? See some of the hopeful
"killer apps" being proposed by these German grad
students.
-
Nokia Mobile
Phones
The leader in mobile phones. Makes some funky looking cell
phones and networking equipment.
-
Texas
Instruments Wireless
A little known fact, TI is a leader in special purpose chips
required in the cell phones used today and essential for
the fancy phones of the future.
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Wireless Standards
& Applications
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The Electromagnetic Spectrum
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-
Hewlett Packard Scanners
Just one of the companies making desktop scanning and printing
devices. Color scanners and printers are essential transducers
in digital image processing.
-
Kodak
DLC
Kodak has been at the forefront of imaging technology, right
from the first chemical film processes. A very exhaustive
site describing every step of the process in a digital imaging
system.
-
Medialink
Worldwide, Inc.
An example of a company built on providing video
services and tracking over the internet. What do they know
when you watch the streaming BMW films?
-
Texas
Instruments
DLP, the TI Digital Mirror Device, is an extraordinary engineering
innovation that is sure to change the way movies are shot
and viewed in the future.
-
Delivering Digital Movies
Pixar and QBit software are teaming up to deliver compressed
digital movies on hard drives to theatres. You can see their
efforts at the Spring Creek Cinema on I-75 in Plano, Texas.
-
Digital
Light Projector Papers
Adobe acrobat files from TI.
-
Philips
Medical Imaging
A major player in the medical imaging business. Digital
imaging techniques have enabled medical practitioners faster
and more effective diagnostic means. Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (MRI) is just one such technology.
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Tutorials
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- BABEL:
A Glossary of Computer Related Abbreviations and Acronyms
A quick guide to all things geek-speak.
- Binary:
a Bit Behind Quantum Math
This Jan. 2001 article in Wired goes discusses new algorithms
that go beyond bits to use "qubits" based on quantum
fingerprinting.
- Computational
Design Visualization Thesis
Now this is a true university publication. This is where
art meets academia in the digital age. Semiotic theory, cognitive
processing and the nature of symbols discussed in computing
terms. Graduate art students about to be web designers take
note.
- Great
Microprocessors of the Past and Present
(V 5.0.0)
On of the great websites from the Medieval days of the
web (ca. 1995) that lets you know what happened before and
after Intel ruled the roost.
- How Ram
Works - What's RAM
A very nice website from Micron Technologies that uses
interactivity to show how memory works in your computer.
- Howstuffworks:
How Boolean Logic Works
Before Gates ruled the world computing was ruled by...gates.
Logic gates that is. Boolean algebra from the mid 1800's found
its way into computing in the 1930's in basic circuit design.
Silicon took this idea to the nth degree and the
money followed.
- KurzweilAI.net:
Artificial Intelligence Compendium
Timed to open with the Spielberg movie in July '01, this
flash-dependent site may take a while to download but is a
great overview of where we now stand in the field of AI. Winner
of MIT's Lifetime achievement award for his work in pattern
recognition using software, Kurzweil continues to pursue his
work on digital brains.
- Kurzweil's
Future Coming Fast
A Wired magazine interview with Kurzweil's perspective
on technological growth and human society.
- Mega
Steps Toward the Nanochip
Nanoscale (read really small) computing seeks to rise
from the ashes of silicon's ultimate demise when our current
technology's physical boundaries are reached. When will this
be? Stay tuned for the next twenty years.
- Beyond
2000 Engineering-Construction & Design A Light Touch
Micromotors out of silicon are progressing through the
research stage. Where will the first applications be?
- New
Scientist Future Technology Special Reports
The British version of Scientific American is always
on the mark and well written. This page of links is full of
intriguing topics that might have an impact in the near future.
Even if they don't they're still very high in 'coolness' factor.
- New
Scientist Technology : Your wish is my machine code.
The ultimate application of block programming- like VAB-
may be when the machines are intelligent enough to wire it
all up themselves.
- New
Scientist Silicon and cells: Biocomputing
In case you thought you were spending too much time interacting
with your computer, just wait for the time when it could be
part of you. Spinal injuries are a major driving force in
this research. Resistance is futile?
- Quantum
Computing: An Introduction
Professor Tom Hey's lectures at the University of Southampton
in the UK are a nice intro to the paradoxical world of qubits.
- QuBits:
Quantum
computing Introduction
The Qubit.org website is more information dense than
the previous link but it details where Einstein's and Schrodinger's
theories might take us in computing.
- Transistorized
The transistor was probably the most important invention of
the 20th century. Read about the history and developments
leading to this remarkable achievement in engineering at this
PBS website.
- TeraHertz
Transistors
Intel announces (at the end of Nov. 2001) a novel way to keep
Moore's Law on track as it faces some fundamental barriers
imposed by physics. By using new insulating materials to prevent
electron leakage between extremely (read sub-micron) small
pathways in the chip, Intel can pack more transistors into
the same space and still keep it functional. And we were excited
about 2 Gigahertz CPU's....
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