Whoa. Very, very cool — a map drawn by Jack Kerouac detailing the itinerary made famous in “On The Road.”
Useless as a map, of course, but priceless as a cultural artifact.
(From Beau Colburn, via Draplin)
Jan 272010
Jan 272010
Amy left up this wonderful list of the Top 20 Greatest Extended Takes which I have found myself absorbed by.
Extended takes (many people, myself included, mistakenly call them tracking shots) are sometimes a bit of a wank-job by a movie director who is showing off. But sometimes they are integral to the movie themselves, and they can be a virtuoso move that takes a film up a significant notch.
Some of the movies in the list I was familiar with, others I wasn’t. One of my favourite extended takes is on there — the eight-minute opening of Robert Altman’s “The Player”:
As one YouTube commenter notes:
Love how it’s peppered with little comments and encounters that set up the entire plot – the pushy screenwriter who somehow got past security, the upcoming pressure on Griffin to perform in a time of “rolling heads”, mistaken identity, interchangeability of personalities (replacing Julia Roberts with Goldie Hawn in the same breath), and finally the notion that in political thrillers someone always dies – and what else is a Hollywood studio but a huge political pinball machine? Brilliant.
Siskel and Ebert loved it too:
Jan 272010
This is a clever idea, and would be loads of fun in the right decor — perhaps you could have a set of end tables with long tablecloths, in cyan, orange, red and pink which you could call Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde?
I wonder, though, if the effect would be lost if you actually filled the shelves up with books whose spines weren’t bright yellow?
At any rate, you can contact the designer at this website and order one. No price is given, but I’ll bet shipping is pricey. Unless it’s shipped flatpack Ikea-style.
Or unless you can somehow ship it off to the left, appearing simultaneously at the right.
(via)
Jan 262010
This video makes a compelling case that the Internet is made, in fact, of cats, though it you read between the lines, it could easily also be saying that the Internet is made of 4chan.
I challenge you to imagine the horror of an Internet that was made, instead, of dogs.
(thanks, Colin!)
Jan 262010
Yes, really. Based on the complaint of one parent about the inclusion of the term “oral sex” in the dictionary, a school in California has banned the Mirriam-Webster dictionary.
The collegiate-level dictionary was being used in grade four and five classrooms. The school now promises to begin a thorough scouring of the dictionary for other offensive entries.
I wonder whose job it will be to read the dictionary and highlight those words that might be considered offensive to some thin-skinned, overly-sensitive do-gooder.
Now, if I understand correctly, any individual who finds a single term in any book offensive can have the school board pull the book from its shelves. If the dictionary is vulnerable, you’d have a hard time convincing me that any other book could not also be banned easily.
Does this not open the doors to a huge problem?
Last time I checked, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting someone that would be offended by something. (I’m sorry? Oh, the term “swing a cat” is offensive to you?) In a school, you would think that critical thinking would be a skill that would be practiced, if not taught.
As one parent in the article says:
“Pretty soon the only dictionary in the school library will be the Bert and Ernie dictionary.”
Jan 262010
In the classic game of Pong, you and an opponent (perhaps a computer) try to bat a ball back and forth until someone misses, and the ball slides past your paddle, scoring a point.
“Gnop” has reversed that.
In Gnop, which you can play here, it is you who is the ball. The computer controls the paddles. And it’s your job, while being batted back and forth, to avoid and get past the paddles.
It’s a fun twist on an old classic.
(via)
Jan 262010
Darn it — this is the kind of thing I rely on the Internet for, and yet somehow I miss it until the very last 40 minutes.
Today (Monday) is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, marking five decades of bubble wrap. At least as reported by the Christian Science Monitor:
Sealed Air Corporation’s Bubble Wrap, like Kleenex, Post-Its, and, well, Snuggies, has come to occupy one the rarest gems of consumer acceptance: adoption of its brand name as the generic term for the product. And because an Indiana radio station decided it nine years ago, today, the last Monday in January, is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, a day when folks the world over are encouraged to pause, ponder, and, well, pop little plastic bubbles of air.
There are oodles of online “pop the bubble wrap” games. In fact, I’ll embed one here:
But if you want the real deal, head on over to the Sealed Air Corporation website.
Jan 252010
I love that this original personal computer was greeted with cheers befitting a rock star — a rock star with MacWrite, Paint, and rudimentary voice synthesis. But now, as Apple gears up for the release of the rumoured “iSlate,” (which, if you believe the pundits, will do just about everything short of curing cancer, and will be designed well, too) I find it amusing to note that the Apple slogan has gone from “insanely great” to “It Just Works.”
Why do our expectations for features seem to be higher now, while our expectations for implementation seems to be lower?
(via)
Jan 252010
I suppose that, given the sheer amount of back-and-forth traffic, it’s inevitable that there are small numbers of people who would seek political asylum in the UK, even if they are coming from other western democracies like Canada and the U.S.
The Guardian says 60 people — 45 Americans and 15 Canadians — applied for asylum in recent years. All were turned down:
A US government source said the American applications were most likely submitted by self-declared “political refugees” claiming they faced discrimination under the last administration. The applications from the US peaked in 2008, the final year of George Bush’s presidency, when 15 Americans submitted asylum claims.
Between 2004 and 2008 there were 132,640 asylum claims made in the UK, according to government statistics.
The Home Office refused to reveal the rationale behind the claims or why they were refused, saying a manual search of the records would be required, exceeding the time limit for Freedom of Information requests.
But on various online forums, people claiming to be American refugees have outlined their cases. One Texan hoping to be allowed sanctuary in Scotland claimed he had been “persecuted as a political dissident against US government war-mongering”.
Liza Schuster, an asylum expert from the department of sociology at City University, said: “I don’t know the details of those cases, but assume the US citizens are deserting before being sent to somewhere like Afghanistan. With the Canadians I’m really not sure. It is, as is clear from the numbers, pretty unusual – if only because it is relatively easy for those people to leave their countries and settle elsewhere. Why not just apply for a work visa and renew and then apply for leave to remain?
Jan 252010
This interactive LED display can be found at La Vitrine (The Window), a arts and culture venue in Montreal. Developed by Moment Factory, and created by Photonic Dreams, the wall was created for a special event, but is now being kept as a permanent display, and will be lit from 7-11 every night.
The most interesting part, for me, was how the wall reacted when you went to the door.
While watching this video, I was immediately reminded of the scene in Minority Report where with a scan of his eyes, Tom Cruise’s character had commercials calling his name. And then when he gets his new eyes, it amusingly calls out an Asian name.
Personalized commercials and an interactive LED wall are obviously not quite the same in terms of execution, but they are similar in the sense that they both aim to have technology interact with us.
(via)
Jan 252010
This is one brave housecat.
Oddly, though, it sounds like the woman in the video is terrified when the bear ascends her steps, but starts laughing when her cat gets into the fight. Has tabby done this before?
(via)
Jan 242010
Some mashups are great — David Bowie vs. MGMT, for example — and others are not. Now that technology has enabled mashups to move beyond the realm of music and into the wider world, we’re seeing all kinds of weird things. I don’t mind a book table made of books, say.
But a cell phone that runs on Coke?
And yet, such a Frankenstein exists, at least conceptually, thanks to the efforts of designer Daizi Zheng, on behalf of Nokia.
A bio-battery is an ecologically friendly, energy supply system which uses enzymes as a catalyst to generate electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar). In order to use the bio-battery as a power source for the phone all that is required is a small supply of a sugary drink. Once the battery dies only oxygen and water remains. Bio-batteries are fully biodegradable and have, on a single charge, a potential life-span three to four times longer than conventional lithium batteries.
Now, a phone that runs on Coca-Cola is hardly ecologically friendly. But a sugar-powered fuel cell that lasts three times as long as a lithium battery does sound like it has potential.
Jan 242010
I like that this video is promoting safe sex while not shying away from the actual genitalia. It does it in a clever way, although I thought it took a little too long to get to the point. I guess they were going for an “ah-ha!” moment.
Either way, a PSA promoting safe sex = good in my books.
(via)
Jan 242010
I’ve been known to fiddle with a design here and there, but I always like seeing stuff behind the scenes — when a designer pulls back the curtain, so to speak, and gives me a glimpse into the process of design.
Not only is it a great way to get to learn new design methods and ideas, it’s also a neat look into someone else’s thought processes, especially as they work through their creativity from spark to finished product.
Sometimes, though, it’s easy for a designer to say “and then you do this, to accomplish this” without every laying out the logic behind that reasoning.
I was impressed with the detail that went into a post over at Flyosity.com, where designer Mike Rundle posts about icon and interface design fairly regularly. I just learned a ton from this post, on Crafting Subtle and Realistic User Interfaces.
Yeah, I know how to make a 3D button, and I know how to add a drop shadow that doesn’t completely suck (I hope) but some of the subtleties that Rundle exposes are very well thought-out and will really add to my work when I (eventually) get around to pimping up this blog’s design.
Just this bit, on thinking about your 3D button as it would look from the side, is great, for example:
Here’s a button-shaped panel that’s designed to look slightly raised and have a matte surface. It’s thin, has a subtle convex shape, and has a small edge that goes around the outside. In a 3D space, the light source would illuminate the edges (slightly brighter on the topmost edge) and would not fully illuminate the bottom slope of the panel past the apex. The object would cast a small shadow since it’s not raised off the surface very much.
Sure, it’d be easy to play around with gradients and stroke weights until I found something that “looked right” but having a structure like this will be quite helpful.
Good read, good tips. Thanks for taking the time to write it up, Mike.
Jan 232010
(Sadly, this is not really Werner Herzog. But I maintain that if he *did* read “Curious George,” this is how he would read it.)
(Shamelessly pilfered from the Facebook page of Tyler Shipley, who heads a great anti-capitalist band called The Consumer Goods.)