Scylla + Charybdis

Firefox 6: Ok, it's still cool.

2011-08-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

MyWeb I've nearly defected to Opera on Windows because the graphics are so good with all the plush antialiased hotness and scaled fonts with serifs and everything! But then Firefox 6 is pawing at me to upgrade (half the uptight sites I know can't even support Firefox 5 yet) and I did it. Which led me to this incredibly cool feature which was simply a twenty question quiz to make a cute

Scarygirl: 2d needn't be a bore

2011-07-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

Scarygirl Game Trailer from Touch My Pixel on Vimeo. What a job. Part of my work right now involves Unity3d a gorgeous gaming engine. As a result I've been kicking around in gamedev circles more than ever, especially indie games. Some of my favorites are those with 2d graphics that pull out all the stops. This trailer for Scarygirl showcases an endless variety of stylish designs. The characters

Thanks Google, I needed that.

2011-06-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

I found the Les Paul Doodle at 2am when I was supposed to by studying for a final. It's the kind of thing that gives me hope. As a programmer, there's a demand for all kinds of work that's not audio, and not shared, and for the most part I'm just doing what comes my way these days. But once in a while I get a chance to make some music or play with some sound and I really remember why I came to

A Trip Through the Uncanny Valley

2011-06-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

Check out this vid with Hiroshi Ishiguro with blatant suggestions toward the gaming and sex industry. I gotta love his lack of fear. 'Probably it will be more fun.' I've been taking a writing class this semester and my final research paper is being published in serial form on my other blog, Munjeli Cookbook. The paper deals specifically with the superstitions in the Western traditions that

Android Roundup: Joey Chaos

2011-05-07T16:13:00.000-07:00

You
You gotta love Hanson Robotics: it's an art school hi-tech mashup creating ironically lifelike robots. Ironic because the thing people expect in a perfect robot is perception, yet it's something we rarely get out of another person. Joey Chaos' self centered ramblings seem more lifelike than any android searching for something appropriate to say. If you build a personality

Android Roundup: Gemenoid-DK

2011-04-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Some say the market for companionbots will be women; they traditionally are alienated from the institution of prostitution because of the exploitation of women but the number of women paying for it is increasing. They tend to go on vacation and indulge in tourism in the Caribbean or Southeast Asia. It's referred to politely as a 'Vacation Romance'. Well, the market is a bit different in other

Android Roundup: Repliee Q1

2011-04-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

She's been around for a while, and just seems to keep getting better. Repliee Q1 is a Japanese humanoid robot that has made great strides in lifelike movement and expression. I was rather impressed with how fast she was moving in this video which is about a year old. While some people are always going to complain about the smoothness of her movements, there's definitely been improvement in her

Sex With Robots: When Not If.

2011-04-10T19:02:00.001-07:00

I went to a new class today and as part of the discussion we were asked about potential topics for a research paper. When I mentioned I was interested in doing a paper about the emergence of androids in the sex industry it was news to some. It's funny how my media habit has got me seeing it as a done deal when others are completely in the dark. Writing a paper will at least give me an excuse for

From My Reader: The Comics Journal on Lines and Colors

2011-03-20T14:03:00.001-07:00

Lines and Colors is a blog about visual arts that profiles some great illustrators and painters. They linked into this newly redesigned comics site which had loads of information on the production techniques for graphic novels and the like. Sent to you by Ele via Google Reader: New website for The Comics Journal via lines and colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics,

Sounds Like: the Weather in Nebraska

2011-02-01T13:24:00.001-08:00

Nathalie Miebach: sculptureI was chasing links around some sites of women in technology when I came across this gem: Nathalie Miebach uses weather data to generate musical scores and related sculptures. It's worth a look at her site. The playful colors and dynamic shapes are a new take on a complex data source. When we talk about data visualization the reasoning isn't always accurate and detailed

Chromazone

2011-01-12T23:18:00.001-08:00

Chromazone - About Us - Digital Imaging for Display, Exhibition and Point of Sale Graphicstags: flash inspiration webdesign cool_site Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.Found this while researching C# on Stack Overflow. Someone was trying to reproduce the mouse effect. I spent how much time just mousing around

The Year in Review: Infographic

2011-01-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

#year_review_holder * { margin:0; padding:0; font-family:Arial; color:#000; height:auto; width:auto; border:0; } 2010 Year in Review by Online Schools | View Infographic Full Screen To enjoy this go full screen; otherwise you'll never read all the text and the content is half the fun in this detailed and well built infographic. It’s an art form like pulp fiction:

Nerd Music

2010-12-31T13:52:00.000-08:00

I found myself thinking recently about how to integrate science and art. Honestly, I think scientists do it better. Well, put it this way: I can forgive imperfect art better than bad science. If an artist wants to make art about science, they'd better know their stuff. Sloppy, goofy, off the cuff art is merely expressive, and that's an asset in the arts.

Geeks at Christmas

2010-12-22T13:22:00.001-08:00

An software performance at North Point Community Church highlights the pros and cons of the instruments. The musicians are not generally as lively as they would be with acoustic instruments: especially the guitar players looked cramped. Some of the sounds were better than others. Still the fun of the performance for me was the accessibility of the instruments: anyone with an iPhone or iPad can

Snakes and Math

2010-12-16T14:49:00.000-08:00

A really cool and fast paced video by Vi Hart discusses knot theory and some aspects of topology. Her drawing is elegant, and the experiments she produces are captivating. Pick up a pencil when you have some time and enjoy the design possibilities of these techniques. She brings it to the table without a single number, but somehow, you understand the process is logical, and therefore expressible

Arduino Percussion with PureData

2010-11-19T17:53:00.001-08:00

I wonder what the neighbors think about all that tapping on the pipes? What I love about this thing is the objects are chosen so astutely for their sounds: I think it's a lampshade making that gong sound. Nice work.

The Land of Lisp

2010-11-05T11:32:00.001-07:00

Really. I have the soundtrack to Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby, and now I'm dancing around the house to this. Of course one reason to learn Lisp is Impromptu, the live coding app developed by Andrew Sorensen for Mac OSx. He writes in Scheme, and the tutorials on his site are great. Lisp has got my attention for other reasons too. Expression is critical in modern multimedia coding, where

Radiohead cover with old hardware

2010-11-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

Friday Fun With Hard Drives – Stephen Foskett, Pack RatThere's something very poignant to me about old hardware. Once it was the latest and the greatest, but technology moves so quickly, its all disposable long before it's actually falling apart. Still, it isn't a good idea to get sentimental and keep using an ancient machine as your primary. Better to repurpose your hardware into geeky

Fantastic Planet

2010-10-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

Topless Robot - 7 Essential French Sci-Fi Films This groovy article in Topless Robot brought up an old favorite. I remember coming across Fantastic Planet in the middle of the night on some odd TV station when I was in high school. The stylish yet clunky animation and ominous tone of the film was compelling. I didn't realize it was French, but I'm not surprised. If you haven't seen it yet, it's

Xylophone Bicycle Bridge: Designboom Contest Entry

2010-10-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Xylophone Bicycle Bridge Plays Music As You Ride | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World Inhabitat posted about this beautiful design for an environmental instrument. As a cyclist rides over the bridge the keys play a tune. The design was an entry in the Designboom's Seoul Cycle Design competition, and the article includes a map with the potential sites in Seoul. I

If You Don't Have Time to Knit...

2010-10-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Make: Online : Clock knits, tells time Make magazine always has cool stuff, but the artist, Siren Elise Wilhelmsen, from Germany has a whole site full of cool. The clock knits a stitch in time (which I suppose saves nine) for a whole year. I love to knit. One of the reasons I find it compelling is the time it takes to make something stitch by stitch. Even though I'm not a slow

Kinetic Wall Sculptures

2010-10-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

O, I love these things. They are decorative machines. They are witty and wooden. The craft of engineering divorced from function becomes art. In the digital age, I miss the gears showing, and I believe people more regress to magic as the mechanics shrink and hide.

Sonic Interpretations of Sorting Algorithims

2010-10-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

YouTube - What different sorting algorithms sound like: "" There's a odd sync with music and programming. Audio has been among the first disciplines to abandon traditional interfaces with the livecoding movement, and I've noticed the emergence of several high level languages specifically to manipulate audio. In addition, computers are being harnessed to generate sound in order to better

The Lost Thing: I can't wait to see the whole thing.

2010-09-20T10:56:00.001-07:00

Shaun Tan is an artist and author who recently made an animated short of his book 'The Lost Thing'. There is a wonderful interview with him online where he talks a bit about his process. He doesn't have children or know many, he says, and so pretty makes what he himself finds interesting. He goes on to discuss the politics of the day while he was writing 'The Lost Thing' and makes a point about

The Award Winning Hell Creek Mural

2010-09-13T11:28:00.001-07:00

See the Big One! There's a very good article up at Lines and Colors, an art blog I follow, about Paleoart; Paleoart being the depiction of dinosaurs and the like. Link to the big image and check out the detail. Of course, this kind of thing is immensely challenging for the research alone: the foliage is gorgeous, but no doubt, accurate. If you were born before CGI these types of images were what

Spiral Wall: Processing with Arduino and Servo

2010-09-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

SPIRAL_WALL: PROCESSING ARDUINO SERVO on Vimeo Pretty cool concept here. The fabric is being manipulated by motor controlled by the laptop. Its easy to see the application in theater, or some large venue on an entirely different scale.Gotta love Arduino; you can make anything with their parts, judging from what I find online. I’m drooling over an accelerator-midi thing myself.

Snakebot! Bio-Robotics from Carnegie Mellon

2010-09-06T12:16:00.001-07:00

Boing Boing posted this video today and I'm in love with the science. Animal locomotion is a peculiar study from both mechanical and evolutionary perspectives. The snakebot can not only climb but swim, which is an entirely different kind of motion if you've ever seen a snake in the water. It blew my mind to read that some bats can swim as well, using their wings as oars. Other aquatic

The Orwell Project: Be Your Own Big Brother

2010-08-27T23:07:00.001-07:00

trackingtransience.netHasan Elahi reacts to his questioning and detention by the FBI by documenting and posting his every move on the internet. The Daily Beast has an article on the Orwell project as he calls it, and the site is pretty cool as well. The loving photos he takes of his meals speak for themselves, and you can see the 'Kiss my ass' to the FBI as photographs urinals around the globe.

Molecular Gastronomy by the Book

2010-08-25T20:13:00.001-07:00

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of CookingHere we go. Just in time for the holidays, there's a 2400 page set of cookbooks on synthetic paper to cover every aspect of food science. At one time we had a quaint dirty little notebook called 'The Joy of Cooking'. Of course, the recipes kicked ass in that grubby pictureless tome. I'll wait until the library picks this up to pass judgement. Image

YouTube - Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles

2010-08-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles Once I took my mom, a former preschool teacher, to a Hawaiian music festival and a band got up and played the hokey pokey in Hawaiian. After she got up and danced around I asked if she had learned the Hawaiian words for body parts. She said she didn't need to, she already knew the dance. Then, with a scornful look at me lounging in the sun she said, "

A Post Modern Analysis of Laughter

2010-07-24T12:10:00.001-07:00

Canned Laughter: Ben Glenn II, Television Historian | The Paris Review There's an interesting article here on the evolution of laugh tracks. One of the things I find most difficult about watching television is the laugh track on any kind of sitcom. Since I worked as a projectionist, and didn't watch TV at all for several years, the effect is jarring. I find, however, that one rapidly desensitizes

It's Getting Hot In Here

2010-07-03T22:46:00.001-07:00

Squint your eyes and you can almost see the future of this technology. The big money in haptic interfaces is virtual reality, and much of the cutting edge development is happening in the sex industry. The comments are hysterical on any page covering advances; gamers are panting at the glass.

A Fairy Tale Ending, Sort of.

2010-06-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice piece of work; not too long, not overworked, and the score is evocative. The sketchy technique keeps it light.

Nobody Here

2010-06-19T13:05:00.001-07:00

You can choose your own bug. Chat, play, read poetry. At first, it seems just strange. The interface makes little suggestion.. Heremietkreeft was my favorite at Nobody Here.

Paper Animation

2010-06-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

Part of me thought, he's cutting up a book! But it's worth it. Art begets art in this charming video. Check out other work by the artist at this site: 6 DieI loved the interplay between the paper and the form. Elegant.

Flash Animation Embedded

2010-06-12T16:03:00.001-07:00

forked from: 重力マウス（ちょっぴり軽量化してみた） - wonderfl build flash online Kind of cool I think when I stumbled across this interactive animation in flash that it was also embeddable. Nice detailed swarm.

Bobby McFerrin Never Gets Old

2010-06-06T01:58:00.001-07:00

It's hard to say whether the amazing thing here is the ingenuity of the presentation or the energy of the artist. Bobby McFerrin has had one of the most interesting careers in modern music. He pops up now and then in the strangest places, but I always look forward to what he has to say or sing. Inspiring.

Apollo 11 Launch in Slow Mo

2010-05-01T22:10:00.001-07:00

This astonishing video is making the rounds on several sites. I love the voiceover: he's talking as fast as he can for eight minutes, and I was rapt. Its hard to understand forces of this magnitude. There's fire and ice and steam and swirling mad floods. Posted by Spacecraft Films

The Future of Music

2010-03-07T10:33:00.001-08:00

Dig this video from Beeple There's an interesting article in Create Digital Motion where he talks about his process. I loved that he admitted to struggling with the software. A lot of people don't realize that even geeks don't automatically absorb new software. You just buckle down and keep working with a program until you have the hours to know it. I just finish a book by David Levy titled '

The Joy of Vids on the Net

2010-03-03T19:50:00.001-08:00

Here's a vid where the animator by far upstages the musicians. When the manatids hit it, you have to go along. Check out this beautiful collection of animated shorts:10 surreal animated short filmsI found on StumbleUpon. I'm liking that network quite alot, actually. It's like having someone steer my surfing, and I never come up dry.

Robots + Jellyfish

2010-01-01T12:15:00.001-08:00

At some point, I'm not a simple geek. I'm as interested in primitive life as high tech. Basically, this is my porn. The evolution of robotics is borrowing from simple life forms successfully, and in the process, the naive ideal of a machine man crashes and burns. If you could program eight legs, why would you bother with two? If I was a creator (creatrix, rather) I would make life not in my own

Sound and Space

2010-01-01T11:57:00.001-08:00

Hear Here – an acoustic theatre – Ric Lipson | Interactive Architecture dot OrgIts kind of a complicated and wordy article, but I love the images of this space. Its acoustic and intimate, sculptural and functional. The physical properties of sound are fascinating, and often overlooked: though invisible, sound has shape and size, and you can feel it with your skin (the booming bass when a car

Whoa. Lucky you weren't standing closer.

2009-12-24T10:13:00.001-08:00

500kV Switch Opening - StumbleUponI haven't posted in a while; I'm busy with a promotion at work, and moving again, plus the holidays- but I couldn't resist this crazy vid of a switch opening. There's a bunch more too. It's a stunning display of the quantity of power that is carried in our system everyday: look how fat the lightening is! Scary, but fascinating.

Bio-Concrete, Explained.

2009-11-25T22:39:00.001-08:00

Here's a thought. Some brilliant engineers inoculated concrete with bacteria and organic matter which produce calcium carbonate when exposed to air. The result is a self-healing concrete. Of course, the best part of this is the hot, but geeky guy explaining the science.

Eigenharp Alpha: What the Hell Is It?

2009-11-24T17:14:00.001-08:00

I found this YouTube Video with three cats playing controllers (MIDI) that have wind, and keyed interfaces. Kind of cool. The two instruments traditionally most poorly represented by MIDI are brass and guitars; brass because there's a certain technique of expression via embouchure, and guitars because they have tactile expression. The wind mouthpiece seems more like a woodwind, which means you

Spacious Thoughts

2009-11-21T19:46:00.001-08:00

I don't do much double posting, but I put this on facebook a few days ago. Tom Waits in a vid that showed up on Boing Boing; mad animation makes a brilliant display, and the tune is over the top. Rap and all, I loved this thing. The project is NASA, North America, South America: a collaboration. The interview with the animators on Boing Boing was a trip too! They used every technique they knew,

Muto, by Blu

2009-11-20T19:15:00.001-08:00

I started babbling about this at work: astounding animations painted on public walls like graffiti art. The artist has been traveling all over the world working on his projects. There's a groovy portfolio and flash site at his link.

Alice Cohen imagines Three Girls

2009-11-18T20:22:00.001-08:00

Electric Literature just released a new single sentence animation on YouTube. I'm a bit twisted as to where to post it: generally, book news goes on my other blog, but I just posted a trailer over there for Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and besides, these always strike me as groovy technology, more than literature. I'll link again, though, to an article in Slate critical of the rise of

The Apple Store Wasn't Very Helpful For Me Today

2009-11-16T21:45:00.001-08:00

A discussion of the Pantheon on an architecture blog linked to this gem on YouTube. Built with 3D Studio Max, a software that only works on PC, the ending was like a punchline to me. I went into the Apple store with a minor issue after loading Windows on my laptop; I need a double boot system so I can better troubleshoot my web design. I ended up having to answer my own question online. I wish

Math Glam: 3D Mandelbrot Images

2009-11-15T11:48:00.001-08:00

Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot FractalThere are some astonishing images at this link, along with a little math, and a dab of graphics know how. The discussion brings in some aesthetic issues, like focus and zoom, plus lighting and coloration to demonstrate how to express the object to its best potential. If you don't care about all that, you'll still be hooked by the

The Comedy of Change, by Rambert Dance Company

2009-11-10T18:53:00.001-08:00

The Rambert Dance Company was asked to create a work of modern dance to commemorate the ideas of Charles Darwin. They collaborated with a bird scientist to create a movement based on the tango of manekins in Argentina, and created other pieces as well. I couldn't find a video with performance in costume, but the interviews were interesting anyhow.

Portraiture and Inspiration

2009-11-09T12:18:00.001-08:00

Americans Who Tell the Truth Portraits 1Here's a collection of paintings with quotes from artist Robert Shetterly. No doubt you'll find some of your own icons among them: I did, and discovered others. Its a pleasure to see an artist bring modern meaning to the art of portraiture. I discovered these on a blog discussing the ideas of an American thinker: the blogger linked to Shetterly's site

Lucid Living, by Miwa Matreyek

2009-11-04T23:54:00.001-08:00

Miwa Matreyek at the CalArts Experimental Animation Program is both the musician and the artist of this compelling video. The breakdown of traditional media is happening faster than ever before: there is little reason for a digital artist to commit to audio or visual work. The processes are all performed with software.

Eclectic Method: Live and Now

2009-11-01T12:37:00.001-08:00

Create Digital Motion » Eclectic Method: Audiovisualists Talk Streams of Perception in Babelgum FeaturetteThe techniques these cats use are great! One of the reasons their stuff works so well is the underlying narrative philosophy creates obvious visual relationships. Also the echo effect of pop historical (i.e. Fraggle Rock) and cutting edge news balance each other; the juxtaposition of

Fabio Viale: Sculpture

2009-10-31T12:35:00.001-07:00

This wonderful video of sculptor Fabio Viale demonstrates one of my fundamental axioms about the art: sculpture is the study of materials and their properties. I think that to sculpt well is to use a material in such a way that it expresses its properties without cliché. You can appreciate the possibilities of a vessel shape or form differently when its made of distinct materials, whether its

The Music Instinct: Trailer

2009-10-27T19:59:00.001-07:00

The Music InstinctIts interesting to see the evolution of musicology and neurology coming together. I haven't read any of the books on the subject; there are several out, and I'm feeling inspired now. Besides Bobby McFerrin, always a wonderful interpreter of the musician's side, I thought I saw Evie Glennie, the famous percussionist in this trailer. She was the focus of a documentary a few years

Blink: An Installation by HC Gilje

2009-10-26T15:32:00.001-07:00

BlinkInteresting project here from HC Gilje. The room is defined via the projections; flat projections, actually cleverly fitted to create three dimensional spaces and effects. What I really enjoyed about the projections was the attention to detail in the quality of the light. While in many respects quite minimalist, some the projected images have a very natural quality; sunshine on water or

AudioGeekery: Vintage HiFi

2009-10-25T23:49:00.001-07:00

THEVINTAGEKNOB : vintage audio museumI came across a link to this site at A Time To Get, a tasty style blog coming out of L.A. I'm a digital engineer, but I'll admit, I enjoy all these knobs and sliders. It reminds me of the good old days, and the sweet sound of big hot analog boards. Still, I celebrate the liberation of sound from a studio to a laptop. It's democracy.

Where does all that junk go? Now you know.

2009-10-23T22:21:00.001-07:00

Trash | TrackAn interesting project out of MIT: refuse is tagged with a transmitter and mapped until its destroyed or reaches the end of its journey. While not as enlightening as my own experience living on a farm with no refuse disposal (everything had to be buried or burned) it's still probably close enough to your own backyard to make you realize garbage doesn't just magically disappear.

Twitter Synchronicity: BBC Protesters and This!

2009-10-22T20:12:00.001-07:00

Reading my twitter feed I was struck by the alignment of a couple of author feeds: Impre88 is the British author Hari Kunzru, whose feed pulled a Lazarus tonight (its been dormant since what? summer?) linked me to the protests at the BBC, then I got a link to this YouTube Video from Great Dismal, author William Gibson. It's like the cyberstars aligned.

Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong

2009-10-21T22:01:00.001-07:00

Funny how these things go. A fabulous video of Bruce Lee playing ping-pong using a martial arts device is being used to launch a Nokia phone. There's arguments all over YouTube about whether or not its real. I don't care actually; it's real cool.

New York Times Debate: E-books

2009-10-20T13:40:00.001-07:00

Does the Brain Like E-Books? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.comThere's an online debate at the New York Times about E-books which goes into detail about the various design issues, and how the interface affects readers. It's an interesting article with great experts; I'm glad to see the E-Book discussed in technical detail because I suspect the dominance of the format is near upon us, and the

Papa: a photoessay

2009-10-18T00:21:00.001-07:00

Papa. « A Continuous Lean.Blog to blog, I occasionally stumble on something that really makes me think. Recently, I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and couldn't help but consider him a brilliant writer, quintessentially American. So much of the language in his books is mired in rural America, and the fifties; he is like Papa was, to the twenties. I read A Movable Feast while I was in high school

Hand from Above

2009-10-15T20:44:00.001-07:00

Hand from Above | Interactive Architecture dot OrgDoes God exist because we crave dialog with something above us? This piece is really great, I think. I love the reactions of the audience; how they immediately begin to play with the image. It's evocative, godlike, and yet playful.

Unfolded Book: A Video of Reading a Book

2009-10-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

We Make Money, Not Art has a wonderful review of a an art book called Unfolded including a video that demonstrates the book jacket being turned into a poster featuring groovy paper art. The video goes on to record a pair of hands turning the pages of the glossy coffee table style volume, giving you a chance to glimpse the photos of exotic paper constructions inside. It's another teaser for

Lechuguilla, the most beautiful cave in the world.

2009-10-09T21:49:00.001-07:00

Glassy pools, extremophile bacteria, mineral chandeliers: welcome to Lechuguilla. There's a slideshow at Nova if you want more pics of gorgeous caves. For the triple feature, check out the blog A Time To Get for a field trip to The Rock Yard, and some astonishing photos of granite.

Photomicrography: It's an aquatic larvae!

2009-10-08T22:52:00.001-07:00

Nikon Small World - Photomicrography CompetitionThe winners have been announced for the 2009 competition. This whole site is eyecandy, but my favorite is this image of some sort of aquatic larvae by Fabrice Parais.

Phantom City: Now Available on the iPhone

2009-10-08T22:35:00.001-07:00

BLDG BLOGHere's an interesting article on an app for the iPhone. It demonstrates a conceptual movement called locative art, meaning art which is location dependent, enabled by technologies like GPS. Locative art is a kind of augmented reality, and relates to ubiquitous computing (computers everywhere). There's an app out where you can see the twin towers as well. The iPhone kind of makes the

Rome wasn't built in a day, but you can work on it all night.

2009-10-07T21:04:00.001-07:00

I admit, I hadn't even thought of CAD for urban design. Here's the software in action; CityEngine can be yours for a mere $4950. Of course, you need a pretty mean machine to run it well. Combined with an omnidirectional treadmill, and some groovy goggles, you can take a stroll through Pompeii (as seen on the BBC)

Free Human Skull Paper Model!

2009-10-07T01:31:00.001-07:00

free Human Skull paper modelSpooky! Download and print the PDF for this life size human skull! Put it together with tape. You could make a whole bunch to decorate for Halloween. I love it! By the way, I found it on Boing Boing

All that is solid melts into the air.

2009-10-06T23:56:00.001-07:00

kultnation.com/echolab.tv/I've seen this piece slipping between the cracks of the web for some time already. It combines sculpture, animation, and sound design into a formalist expression. What kind of art is it? Multimedia, I guess. The soundtrack by echolab is a critical part of the tension in the work.

Serial Novels: Back to the Future

2009-10-05T13:34:00.001-07:00

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Cory Doctorow’s Makers, Part 1 (of 81) Cory Doctorow's most recent book (described by the author on twitter as an econopocalypse hacker novel) is being serialized on Tor.com. I can't help but notice that RSS Feeds, Email, Bookmarks and QuickDial browsers make revisiting a site so simple, serializing has made a giant comeback. Charles Dickens

Maurice Sendak: Laughing at a Funeral

2009-10-04T11:26:00.001-07:00

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. March 12, 2004 | PBSWhen the trailer came out for Where the Wild Things Are I was amused to realize the Wild Things were Jews. Of course, as a huge Sendak fan, I knew he was Jewish, and the darkness of his work was distinctively Eastern European, and Jewish to me. But Judith and Ira? A little research turned up this hysterical story about drawing the monsters

Carl Jung's Red Book

2009-10-03T12:03:00.001-07:00

The Red Book goes on exhibit today, and the New York Times has a gorgeous layout online. Who knew Jung could draw like that? I particularly enjoyed the Deco influences: this is no scribbley notebook à la Cobain, but an uncelebrated document of the Craftman, or Arts and Crafts sensibility.

Electric Literature: New Approachs to Fiction

2009-10-01T21:08:00.001-07:00

The online magazine Electric Literature has just launched a new blog called The Outlet. I'm looking forward to their posts: the EL series of single sentence animations on YouTube are tempting teasers for the stories they publish, not to mention an innovative promotion of digital media.

Metropia

2009-09-30T20:47:00.001-07:00

I hadn't heard anything about this animated film until today, but the style of it blew me away. Bonus: the hero of the dystopian marvel is a cyclist, resisting the influence of evil commercial forces in his head.

Check out the Gorgeous Spiders

2009-09-29T22:23:00.001-07:00

Unlike silkworms, spiders will fight among themselves. That's just one of the problems faced by researchers trying to recreate a technology from the 1880s to harvest natural spider silk. The spiders themselves are more incredible than the fabric; I've never seen the like.in reference to: 1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth | Wired Science | Wired.com(view on Google Sidewiki)

Weather Skeptics talk about the End of the World

2009-09-29T20:28:00.001-07:00

Weather Guy | 2012 End Of The World It's not like I'm watching Fox on a regular basis, but somehow I came across a link to a video with a skeptical newscaster explaining the alignment of 2012. If the world does end, though, they'll cover it. I also loved the trailer embedded as entertainment. I guess I've spent as much time with the Maya as most, and am somewhat familiar with their ruins and the

People Playing with Giant Multitouch Screens

2009-09-28T20:57:00.001-07:00

Multitouch Barcelona is a group working with various kinds of interactive technologies. In this video, we see people playing with several distinct programs, each of which is scrupulously designed with its own parameters and characteristics. The potential for installations is boggling.

Post-modern Eco Fashion

2009-09-27T11:17:00.001-07:00

Bio-Accessories Breathe New Life into Wardrobes Bio-Accessories – Ecouterreby Ben Landau and Brittany Veitch These accessories by two industrial designers in Australia each have a living organism attached; the wearer will care for their accessory and develop a symbiotic relationship. The idea is to carry the environment with you through the cement and noise of the urban milieu. Are they telling

Projection on Buildings

2009-09-25T19:24:00.001-07:00

On Spatial Robots a incredible video demonstrates an interplay between graphic art and architecture: animations projected onto buildings. What a wonderful way to enjoy a familiar building anew. Its a project of NuFormer Digital Media in the Netherlands.

Egg-Shaped Sludge Digesters

2009-09-24T22:26:00.001-07:00

Pruned While assembling a collection of rss feeds featuring architecture, I came across this site. Great eye, you'll no doubt see me link here again.

Restaurants with Bad Names

2009-09-23T22:27:00.001-07:00

I don't care how good the food is, I'm not eating there! Found via Fark: Restaurants with nasty names. They missed Fuk Yuen Seafood in Honolulu, a great place just outside of Waikiki that would serve Peking duck without an advance order until 1a.m.

Oolala! Tentaculum!

2009-09-22T20:24:00.001-07:00

Freaky New Ghostshark ID’d Off California Coast | Wired Science | Wired.comPreviously, my favorite shark was the cookie-cutter shark, an ancient shark that was known as the most bioluminescent of its kind. This might be even better. It has a thing coming off its forhead for mating. Handy for a quickie, I guess.

A Fossil of a Dinosaur Giving Birth

2009-09-21T20:53:00.001-07:00

Found this in my RSS feeds today: a cool article at Not Exactly Rocket Science shows a prehistoric animal actually giving birth. There's more than one fossil like this around I gather. Beautiful.