A Taipei-area woman thought she saw a ghost in her storage room. The “ghost” turned out to be a lingerie enthusiast trying on her bra and panties. When the woman found out that the intruder was a pantie thief rather than a malevolent spirit, she was furious. “I just bought those,” she said, “now I don’t want to wear them.” In his haste to flee the scene, the lingerie enthusiast left behind all his clothes and a bag with his ID inside.

Did you know that the seventh month of the lunar calendar is traditionally the Ghost Month here in Taiwan? For one month out of the year, the gates of the underworld are open ghosts are free to roam among the living. Although not all ghosts are bad, it’s just as well to appease them to be on the safe side. Every year before the doors to the underworld close again, we throw the ghosts a huge party to send them off.

Are you afraid of ghosts? Let us know in the comments!

After more than a century of peaceful co-existence, the Wall Street Journal has decided to take on the New York Times head on with its Greater New York section. New owner Rupert Murdoch declared “let the battle begin.” Is this going to be a newspaper war for the ages? Or have the readers already moved on….online?

‘Thumbs-up’ on YouTube if you have read the WSJ or the NYT in the last seven days.

A judge in Taipei said a woman who put strict rules on her husband went too far. Mrs. Yang took control of her husband’s salary and only gave him a paltry allowance. She also demanded to know his whereabouts at all times. Her controlling behavior finally got too much for Mr. Yang, who sued for divorce.

‘Thumbs up’ on youtube if you think the judge made the right call.

Taiwanese Air Force Major General Wu Bing-chiu has been accused of defrauding his former in-laws out of NT$ 17.76 million. Wu cheated on his wife as she was dying from leukemia. His girlfriend gave birth to a baby just a month after his wife died.

‘Thumbs Up’ on YouTube if you think Wu is a scoundrel

Passengers on an EVA airlines flight from Shanghai to Taipei were given a scare when their airliner veered off the runway upon landing, bursting three tires.

The Labor Party swept to victory in 2007, with Kevin Rudd coming into power as Prime Minister. For a while, Rudd was enormously popular, but his plans to institute a new tax on mining companies and his failure to implement the government’s emission trading scheme caused his popularity to plummet. The Labor party rose up against their wounded leader. In the end, he was replaced by his deputy, Julia Gillard. In this weekend’s election, Gillard’s toughest rival is Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal Party. Abbott promised to be tough on immigration if he becomes Prime Minister. Although polls show Abbott way ahead of Gillard, the Labor/Green party coalition still has more support when counted together. ‘Crocodile Harry’ has predicted a Labor victory. This is the closest election in Australia in 50 years.

Workers at a Taiwanese haunted house attraction have had enough after being repeatedly beaten up by scared visitors.

Has Google gone evil? Sergey Brin and Larry Page co-founded Google Inc., one of world’s most successful and loved corporations. Or is it? One of its most criticized services, Google Street View, has been scanning pictures of streets and alleys across the globe. It admitted to accidentally collecting 600GB of fragmented personal data from Wi-Fi networks in 33 countries, raising worldwide concerns over personal privacy. The latest upheaval involved a partnership with Verizon, where the two proposed a two-tiered internet system. Critics call it “Schminternet.”

China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s in the 2nd quarter of 2010, making China the 2nd largest economy in the world. Some expert believe that China could overtake the US as the largest economy in the world by 2027. However, because the Chinese population is so huge, GDP per capita remains low despite the large overall size of the Chinese economy.

“Smart Pills” embedded with computer chips can help patients stick to their medication regimes in the future. The “Raisin” system, already approved in the EU, has a sensor patch on the patient’s skin that communicates with the computer chip swallowed with the pill. The patch will send an SMS message to the patient’s phone of they neglect to take their meds.

American first lady Michelle Obama has caught a lot of heat for taking a luxury vacation to Spain while the American economy languishes.

Michelle traveled with her daughter Sasha, leaving President Obama to celebrate his 49th birthday shooting hoops with his friends. Malia is away at camp.

Steven Slater, 39, a flight attendant for US airline JetBlue, dramatically quit his job on Monday after arguing with a passenger and fleeing via the plane’s emergency exit slide. Slater had argued with a passenger who struck him in the face with a bag. After launching an expletive filled tirade over the public address system, Slater grabbed a beer from the beverage cart and fled. He drove home, where he was consoled by his boyfriend.

Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi shot to fame as a cast member of the hit reality show “Jersey Shore”. The self-described “Guidette” has got a big personality in a petite package and her antics are always in the news. Between criticizing Obama’s tanning tax, proclaiming her love of pickles and getting arrested for disorderly conduct, Snooki has been keeping her profile high. But what will she be up to next and when will her 15 minutes of fame finally be up?

While on a state visit to Taiwan, Swaziland’s King Mswati heard news one of his wives allegedly cheated on him. Nothando Dube, his 12th wife has been linked with justice minister Ndumiso Mamba. Under Swaziland Law, Mamba could face a death penalty.

LiLo was once a promising Hollywood starlet, but a series of drunk-driving arrests, drug charges and court troubles have wrecked her career. A judge sentenced her to 90 days in jail for probation violations. Her father, Michael Lohan, immediately sought help from other celebrities who had also done time in prison. Michael attempted to cheer Lindsay up with a song. He’s also facing potential prison time because ex-fiancee Kate Major is accusing him of assault. Lohan’s sentence was cut short to just 13 days. She will now spend 90 days in rehabilitation. This animation tells it all.

We like to experiment here at NMA. The Obama clip you’ve just watched above was produced using a technology known as facial motion capture (or mo-cap for short.) Motion capture involves using a computer to track the movements of a series of reflective dots attached to the body, or in this case, the face.

The model, for this video President Obama, is then driven using the recorded movement of the nodes.
The following series of photos shows how the nodes are attached before the motion capture takes place.

Photo 1 shows our mo-cap model (we used an English-speaking model for this job) having the locations of the nodes drawn on his face by our mo-cap experts.

Photo 2 shows the model’s face with half the reflective nodes in position.

Photo 3 shows the model with all nodes in position. He is practicing the poses needed to record a full set of facial expressions.

Photo 4 shows the model’s face as seen by the mo-cap cameras. As the voice model reads the dialogue, the computer records the movement of the modes using in this case 10 mo-cap cameras.

The Obama model is then integrated with the recording of the node positions. The finished product is what you watched at the top of this post.

Hope you enjoyed this introduction to motion capture technology. If you are still curious, you can read about another cool gadget we have in Taipei. Keep your eyes peeled for the next episode of Inside NMA.

Thanks for your support,
The NMA team.

T

American car company Dodge, made an advertisement with a monkey. When animal rights group Peta saw the video they were very angry and contacted Dodge. Peta said that any use of apes could promote mistreatment, and asked Dodge to not use the monkey in the commercial. Dodge immediately agreed to remove the monkey, and apologized because they had not known about the history of monkey mistreatment. To solve the problem, Dodge agreed to switch out the monkey, and use an invisible monkey instead. That way, Peta was happy that no real monkeys were used, and Dodge was still able to show their commercial. The invisible monkey solution left everyone happy and made the ad popular on the internet.