Years and years ago there was this TV show called Night Flight. I’ve written about the show at least once, remembering all the new and cool things that I saw on it. Well one of the things I remember the best was a short film called ‘Gisele Kerozene‘. It stood out from the other shorts that were shown that night because it was a masterful display of live action stop moion animation. Seeing all those flying broom stick riding witches racing around a city was something I had never seen before. It’s a technique that is very hard on your actors, they have to keep jumping up and down in order to keep hovering (think yogi levitation) and the camera operator needs to be quick on the shutter to catch everyone at the apex of their jumps. It’s hard, some friends and I messed around with it years ago with my super 8 film camera. If I could find the results I’d post them. I haven’t seen ‘Gisele Kerozene’ in years and when I found it on YouTube Ijust had to tell everyone.
Category: Cool
Ninja Themed Restaurant in Japan
Now why can’t I find a place like this in Arizona? Not that I’d mind going Tokyo Japan to have dinner in a ninja themed restaurant, heck, I’d call that a good reason to go to Japan.
After you enter the restaurant, you go to the reception area and are met by a waiter dressed in ninja garbs and told to wait for your personal ninja guide to your table. When the waiter comes, you are guided through a maze of sorts. It is like a ninja castle with many trap doors and hidden passages. While in most restaurants people would be annoyed to have to bend over backwards to reach your table, at Ninja it is part of the experience. It is as if you are actually entering that ninja castle. My most enjoyable moment of the trip was when we had reached a point in our journey and were faced with a pit filled with water and no way to cross. Then suddenly the waiter clapped her hands and a draw bridge drops for you to cross. It was at that point I knew the event was going to be fun.
Read more at Sushicam:
Best DIY 747 Flight Simulator Ever
Woooow! This is sooooo cool! Ok, I feel better now. I was scanning Neat-o-ramma tonight and saw this. This is the best DIY flight sim I have ever seen, even has multi axis movement simulation.
Australian amateur pilot and flight sim enthusiast Matthew Sheil spent 10 years and $230,000 to create a homemade flight simulator that precisely mimics the 747 cockpit down to the last dial, knob, and switch!
Link | Matthew’s website (tons more photos, but I can only see ‘em in IE, not Firefox)
Minuteman III Launch On Wednesday
This is of interest if you are in southern California or, if people are lucky, in Arizona.
For the first time in years, the countdown for a Minuteman 3 missile test will include blasting open the 106-ton silo door at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The year’s first liftoff from the Central Coast also marks a return of closed-door missile tests. It’s planned for 12:01 a.m. Wednesday from Launch Facility 10 on north Vandenberg. The launch window remains open until 6:01 a.m. to accommodate any delays from unfavorable weather or technical problems.
Opening the doors isn’t a small matter. There are four explosives that are fired to generate gas that flings the multi tone octagonal door open so the missile can be launched in seconds. Normally the tests launches are done when the door has been winched open slowly but in this case it’s the whole show. It should be quite a site if you can be close enough to see the base when it launches.
The test is of an unarmed re-entry vehicle to see how well the missile works using GPS based satellite navigation instead of radio transponders.
DIY Valentines
Over on Cool Hunting there’s a lovely list of do it yourself Valentines Day projects.
Often considered a marketing invention to help boost sales in an otherwise slow economic period for retailers, Valentine’s Day needn’t be another excuse to express love through our capalitistic, consumeristic ways. There are plenty of options to give without hitting the mall, so this year CH decided to put together a list of homemade Valentines gifts (and kits).
I’m partial to the naughty ice cream sandwich myself but the sun jar would be cool to give as a gift.
Realtime Mandelbrot Fractal Generation
Now you can explore the wonders of fractals with this online generator. I’m with Revo of Ektopia on this one, I used to sit in front of my Commodore 64 and wait for hours as a short fractal zoom loop slowly rendered on the screen. After I moved to the PC platform I did the same thing with Fractint. Now there was a program!