Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
By dragging a printed paper strip over a linear array of 49 fiber optic strands a 7×7 pixel image can be formed. The effect is very cool, animated text and even motion captured from video can be shown.
I want to know what the application was that the designer used to make the paper strips, looks complex but powerful.
[via ektopia]
You would think that this was done on an old Mac computer but it wasn’t. Very impressive. I need one of their shirts.
Not strictly a work of Machinima; Paul Robertson’s Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 is a masterpiece animation based on the graphic look and feel of platform handhelds. A kind of machinima recursion; where animations inspired by games have inspired animations. Paul’s style did actually get him a job in the games industry, but he was obsessively animating these seductively disturbing game-inspired tales before making games. His work has been shown in many galleries in Australia, but until now hasn’t found a big exposure online. For me, his non-interactive animations are more about what games ought to be than what a lot of games are. The kind of indulgence which triggers all the soft spots of delicious wrongness in a way Reality just doesn’t appreciate.
My friend Greg reminded me of this stuff. Pykrete is a mixture of ice and wood chips that is darn tough, won’t melt quickly, and can be formed using molds. Neat! Now I wish it was 100 degrees cooler out so I could make some of my own.
As my family has just become the proud parents of a bouncing baby iPod Nano (2GB) we might have to use this service in a year. I love the idea that someone has opened a store front to fix these handy devices. His rates are quite good and the wait times are darned short. i just wish there was one near me. Oh well, another reason to visit my favorite Canadian city, Toronto!
Matt Bremner has created quite the buzz with his iRepair services, using good parts from broken iPods purchased from eBay. Bremner’s tiny 250 sq. ft. Toronto store front services walk-in and mail-in "patients," averaging about 30 per day at a 10 minute average wait time.
[via core77]
I don’t think I have ever seen a better collection of airplane videos, ever! Military, general, comercial, R/C, everything is here.
[via presurfer]
Funny how this comes only a few days after I forced my kids to watch the classic movie "Dr. Strangelove". Defcon is a game where both sides are going to lose, it’s just a question of who loses first (or the worst). It reminds me of the classic DOS game ‘Scorched Earth‘ (or the updated 3D version called ‘Scorched 3D‘) where your trying to kill the other tank with tactical nuclear weapons. Perfect relaxation on a Sunday afternoon if you ask me. The graphics are right out of ‘War Games‘!
Taking the role of our favorite Cold War nations, players duke it out on a retro style vector display. They begin with the careful placement of radar dishes and silos, then move on to feeling out each other’s defenses with subs, aircraft, and warships. Tensions rise, conventional warfare erupts, and it eventually escalates into a full scale nuclear exchange. Meanwhile, the computer calmly reports the death toll in terms of millions of lives lost. In a nuclear holocaust everyone loses, but through clever tactics, alliances, and well timed backstabbing, it may be possible to "lose the least."
Oh yeah, it’s a networked game so you can play with your friends.
This is a game that needs to be played on the biggest screen TV you can find, in the dark, and after you’ve spent a day in a cold war movie marathon. ‘Multiple inbound targets are being tracked… Suggest counter measures immediately.’
(A toot of the civil defense siren to Keven for this one)