Skip to main content

Akashic has only been together for a couple of years, and has two mini-albums under their belt, one in 2014, the other this past March. They have the kind of high energy pop sound that makes me think they would do very well doing anime intro songs, but so far I haven’t located any titles they were involved with. The first track is CG Gal posted a month or so ago, the next is Purichi from their 2014 mini-album.

In Divine Gate Adapters are folks with powers over their realms of Air, Water, Earth and Fire, each realm existing on a different plane of existence and each accessible to the others through a mundane gate. The Living, Heavens, and Underworld become connected to each realm after a Divine Gate is opened, adding another set of layers to the situation, and whoever opens a Divine Gate can change the universe as they desire, including changes in the past and future. Adapters use Drivers to control their powers and keep them from going into meltdown, but they don’t always (or often) work. I have been enjoying this one a lot this new season, and can’t wait to see more.

It looks like SpaceX is gearing up to colonize Mars, with the first flight targeted for 2018 (the next time the Red Planet is close enough to give us an orbital shot at getting there quickly). That will just be the first unmanned test flight and attempted non-exploding landing, if they can even make that incredibly close deadline, but damn, I am excited! My favorite article about it so far is the one put together by Space Flight Now, who always do a great job of analyzing all the pros and cons of a proposed space mission. The Dragon 2 spacecraft could possibly deliver 4 tons of supplies to mars per launch (you wouldn’t want to use that craft for the actual mission, since the crew capsule is the size of an SUV), building up to enough food, water, and equipment to make the project viable. No word on when the first humans would head that way quite yet, but I expect them to make some comments once we see how the initial mission goes.

Tan Le developed a wearable EEG, and the other week a team of engineering doctoral students at the University of Florida used it to control drones in a competitive race as the first step to developing a brain/robot interface. One of Tan Le’s more elegant contributions to this telepathic headset was the algorithm that lets it unfold the convolutions of the brain, making it much more accurate and a lot easier for anyone to put on and start training with. This has major implications for everyone from the physically disabled who will gain previously impossible degrees of self reliance, to the military research teams trying to create their own personal Gundams. The major breakthrough’s that made EEGs wearable were developed in parallel in a number of different research projects around the world during the early part of this century, and affordable (as little as $500 a pop) the early part of this decade, and so far every year since has seen major improvements in their functionality. Another major player in this field is Ariel Garten, so I had to include some commentary from her. It seems like her system is a lot lower rez then Tan Le’s, only able to trigger actionable input from the whole brain state (Alpha, Theta) rather than specific mapped neural sites. But they are both on the market with a cheap neural computer interface as are a number of others, and there is no way to know who might come out with the advancement that pushes us into the future.