Most of you know that I spent several years in college helping out The Digital Michelangelo Project, a research project headed up by my undergrad advisor, Marc Levoy. For those of you who've never heard of DMich, it is a project to create 3D computer models of several of Michelangelo's sculptures, the most famous of which is the David. The data was gathered by using a laser to capture 3D scans of the statues, which are all currently housed in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.

I wasn't involve in the initial scanning, but I did join the project my sophomore year after essentially pestering Marc until he would let me help. I was responsible for aligning the 3D scan pieces (the statues were made up of several different scanned pieces) to create a single mesh for the entire statue. I helped out on the project on and off until I finished my graduate degree.

One of the applications of this project is that we now have the ability to create physical replicas of these statues with unrivaled accuracy. I helped create the David mesh which was used to make the first replicas. It was during my last quarter at school, and since I was only taking one class, I did the work for free. As payment, Marc said I could have one of the replicas.

This was about a year ago, and I had nearly forgotten about this promise, but 2 days ago, I received an e-mail from Marc saying that my "Davidino" (little David) was ready. I picked it up from him yesterday, and it is incredible. It is an amazing feeling to know that I was holding in my hands the most accurate replica of the David in the world. Anyway, long story short, here are two pictures: [Michelangelo's David] [David Head]. Don't worry; the full-body photo has been sanitized for your protection.

Edit: By popular demand, the David image has been restored to its full glory.

I was excited to find out that in honor of their 1-year anniversary, iTunes is giving away 1 free song a day for this whole week. What I was not so excited about was that getting the free singles requires you to upgrade your version of iTunes. You all may or may not know that I am very much resistant to what I perceive as unnecessary upgrades; I'm very much a "if it ain't broke" sort of person when it comes to software. I guess it's possible the software had to be upgraded to allow $0.00 purchaces, but I'm worried that I've somehow accidentally sold my soul to Apple. Because you know nobody ever reads those Terms of Service agreements...

Well, if I show up one day with an Apple logo tattooed on my forehead, you'll know what happened.

There was one thing that I was pleased about, though: iTunes lists Avril Lavigne under "Pop". Go iTunes!

1) Our apartment gets hot in the evening
2) Enzo gets hot in said apartment
3) Enzo likes to eat ice cubes when he is hot
4) Too many ice cubes make Enzo throw up
5) Enzo eats his own barf.

Can't get this kind of learning from a book.

I recently had a little discussion with Nick about comment spam. This was after I had implemented the little hack which required you to re-type a six-digit number in order to post comments. Nick said that he thought it was a reasonable solution, but had the good point that he didn't like the idea of making his readers do anything differently. He had the idea to embed a hidden generatable number which would verify that comments posted to his site were actually posted through the form on his site.

I, being unoriginal, decided to steal his idea. However, as I am not only unoriginal but lazy, I figured that it's enough to just embed a fixed hidden value in the form, rather than a generated number. This is similar to Eric's idea to combat comment spam by asking users to type in his last name in the comment form.

So... there ya go. We'll see how it works.

Edit: I just realized that ever since I implemented the above-mentioned number hack, people have been unable to post comments on my photos page. Oops. This has now been fixed.

I was looking at Enzo a few days ago, and I noticed something: Enzo needed a haircut.

Before he started telling me, "You're fired!" I made an appointment for a grooming, and he seemed happy with the results.

Here are my predictions for various upcoming TV shows and movies. These are mostly here so that I can look back later and see if I was right. Please note that I am "spoiler-free", as the cool kids say, so if you know something that I don't know, please don't say it here.

Alias: Lauren will have a change of heart towards the end, but will be killed (possibly by Vaughn,) leaving Vaughn guilt-ridden. This is what will prevent he and Sydney getting together right away in the next season.

Secondary prediction: Sloane has some sort of hidden motive (besides the whole daughter thing.) I'm still torn about the good-or-evil question, but I think he will eventually become evil again, although maybe not this season.

American Idol: George Huff will win, LaToya London will be runner-up, Fantasia Barrino will be third. I don't think that George is necessarily a better singer, but I don't think LaToya has the rabid fan base to make her win.

Secondary prediction: John Stevens will be painfully boring.

Friends: Ross and Rachel will end up together.

Survivor: All-Stars: Rob will win. Note: I've never actually watched Survivor: All-Stars, and thus am not 100% sure there is actually a contestant named Rob.

Star Wars: Episode III: The death of Amidala will tip Anakin over the edge to the Dark Side. I see two possible scenarios here. The first, and I think more interesting, possibility is that Anakin himself will kill Amidala, forcing Obi-Wan to fight him to stop the madness (in the Dark Side sort of way, not the Susan Powers sort of way.) The second possibility is that Amidala will be killed by someone else, and Anakin will blame Obi-Wan for Amidala's death, leading to the show down which will produce the Sith Lord we all know and love.

Secondary prediction: Senator Palpatine is not Darth Sidious. Unless George Lucas thinks we are all idiots (which is a possibility, I admit,) I think it's way too obvious that Palpatine and Sidious are the same person. I think there's some sort of cloning action going on there.

Tertiary prediction: the movie will be full of poorly-done CG, wooden acting, and I will likely weep in sadness at its conclusion.

Edit:

The O.C.: Marissa will be a bad actor and look older than the rest of the cast, despite being the only true teenager on the show. Ryan will be dark and brooding and look like a young Russell Crowe. Seth will be dorky and annoying, and I will feel geeky when I recognize the names of all the comic book writers he talks about. Theresa will be in love with Ryan. Eddie will look like Satan. Sandy's eyebrows will be magnificent.

Speaking of The O.C., did anyone find it kind of creepy last night that Summer took her dad's opinion so seriously? "My dad is my best friend" isn't a very good excuse. Also, I found it funny that Julie's sister mentioned Julie getting botox, when clearly her swollen upper lip was partially paralyzed by the stuff.

I have now officially regressed to age 12.

It's a weird feeling to be in the company cafeteria making a tuna sandwich while standing next to your CEO, knowing full well that over the past 2 years or so, he has made nearly $40 million in company stock sales.

But then he accidentally dropped the sandwich bar tongs into the trashcan. I guess even multi-millionaires screw up sometimes.

Some of you might have noticed that occasionally, I get spam in the comments of this site, usually offering to sell things of varying legality. A while ago, I installed MT Blacklist, which rejects comments based on a blacklist of phrases or URLs. This is a neat idea, but I've realized that I simply can't predict what URLs to place in my blacklist, mostly because they're often non-sensical or only slight variations on each other.

I'm keeping MT Blacklist running, but in order to further prevent comment spam, I installed this little Movable Type plugin which generates an image with a random 6-digit number on each comment posting form. Each time you post a comment, you have to type this number (sort of like the random words you have to type in when you buy tickets from Ticketmaster.) This is basically just a simple test to see if there is an actual person writing the comment rather than an automated script. I hope it's not a huge inconvenience to anyone.

I'd like to extend another lukewarm welcome to my friend Nathaniel Chongsiriwatana, who recently started his very own website: lomtick.com. Maybe now he'll stop bitching about how his site doesn't show up on Google.

Another week come and gone... I've been discussing with my friends recently about how our lives have become really routine and boring. So much so that when people ask me, "What's up?" I really have nothing to say. If I posted every day, I wouldn't have much more to say than "Work, Eat, Sleep." Fortunately, last week was a little break from the boredom, since Mariel's sister Myra was visiting during her spring break. She claims that she didn't get bored, but it is true that 90% of her day was spent sitting on our couch while Mariel and I were at work. We did, however, find the time to watch American Splendor, (okay I fell asleep halfway through, but only because I was really tired), beat another level of the mediocre Buffy: Chaos Bleeds game, and played a few other games. On Saturday, we had an excellent meal at Cascal, a new Spanish restaurant that recently opened on Castro. Mmm....tapas...

I have now run out of things to say, so I'm just going to stop typing now.

Edit: One exciting event from yesterday is that, while double-checking my tax return (I haven't mailed it in yet) I found a mistake, and after correcting it, my federal refund more than doubled. [Cue "Were in the Money"]

Dammit.