Jeep techno stunt
All the sounds are actual sounds coming from that Jeep Cherokee – recorded live!
Very cool. Makes me wonder how the European car techno would sound, compared to the American seen here. Or the East Asian, that could be interesting!
via Geekologie
Why David Lynch turned down Return of the Jedi
If Lynch had taken up Lucas’ offer, Return of the Jedi would definately have looked felt very different.
What strikes me is how bold an idea this was to George Lucas at the time. Lynch had just finished The Elephant Man, and before that, Eraserhead, none of which had any elements even close to what Lucas needed for RotJ. However, Lynch’s next project was actually a sci-fi adventure movie. The 1984 epic Dune, starring Kyle MacLachlan, has many similarities to Star Wars, and I’m not all sure David Lynch would be a bad choice for directing a Star Wars movie (but if so, I think it should have been Revenge of the Sith).
The Copenhagen Wheel
Photo: SENSEable City Lab, MIT
Yesterday, at the COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen, MIT students presented the Copenhagen Wheel, a hybrid smart wheel that harnesses your kinetic energy created when braking and stores the energy in the wheel for later use. The wheel can communicate with your smart phone, which may tell you how fast you’re going, where you’re going and when you’re likely to get there. Having the smart phone mounted on the handlebars, you can lock or unlock your bike, change gears and select how much the motor should assist you. The Copenhagen Wheel also monitors pollution levels, and this information can be shared online, making for a map showing you and your fellow citizens where to go to avoid pollution and traffic congestion.
My brain hurts from studying this photo
Click to see larger version
Nice mind-bending picture. Also, can you spot Trogdor?
via Bitsandpieces.us
The Face Transformer
In my blog article “My clone looks nothing like me“, I present the thought of having your own look-alike somewhere in the world.
Today, I found this marvellous Face Transformer created and hosted by the
University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Here, using the transformer script, my friend Sigurd has been given west-asian, afro-caribean and east-asian features, suggesting what his look-alike looks like:
Photo: Vetle Skatvoldsmyr
The Face Transformer also has options to show how you might have looked like as a baby, child or teenager, and how you might look like as an old man (or woman). Also, you can feminise your features, see yourself as a Botticelli painting or even mix fifty percent chimp DNA into the gene pool. Good fun.
Resizing your photo aforehand to 640×480 is recommended, as large images will load slowly in the script (standard webcam size should be fine).
18 clever logo designs using negative space
Over at WebUrbanist.com, Steph has collected a nice set of company and organisation logos that makes good advantage of “negative space”, using background colour actively to form the logo and add optical effects (like the nice 3D effect in Harris’ logo above). Taking your time to look closer at these seemingly simple shapes and forms makes you realise just how much thought is put into it. Sometimes, it almost seems as they’re designed to appeal to your subconscience. Can you honestly say you’ve noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo before? Well, you might have, subconsciously.
18 clever logo designs using negative space @ WebUrbanist.com
My clone looks nothing like me
Yesterday, my friend Richard from London told me he saw someone over there that looked a bit like me. It got me thinking.
The idea of having a twin is strange. Of course, with 7 billion people in the world, chances are there’s someone out there who resembles you so much that people could be fooled, should you bring your twin to your hometown. That is, before your twin starts talking, laughing, moving, gesturing, all those other things that makes you you to other people. But at a certain distance, in a certain light, standing upright without moving or talking, you probably should be able to fool your own parents (or HE would fool your parents, rather). Somewhere out there is a man (or a very ugly woman) who looks pretty much like me.
Today, I came across http://facialprofiler.com, which is an ad campaign for Coca Cola Zero (they want us to believe it’s standard Cola’s twin – utter nonsense of course, tastes nothing like it). At the site, your picture is taken via webcam, pictures on Facebook or pictures from your harddrive and then compared to other people’s faces in their database. And then you’re waiting in excitement as “People ahead of you in the queue” gets matched – and their match actually looks like them! If you try this procedure a few times though, you’ll see the “people ahead of you in queue” are the same people every time, so that’s just something they’ve put in there to have you believe this thing works.
Well, does it work? You be the judge:
First try. Using photo from harddrive.
Second try. Adding a smile as parameter.
Golden calf or holy cow?
This calf was born a week ago in Sterling, Connecticut. Owner is one Brad Davis, who says “Well, I think it’s maybe a message from up above. I’m not sure. We’re still trying to figure that out.”
via BoingBoing
Christmas light musical show
The American tradition of decorating houses in christmas lights came to Norway a few years ago, and has spread like a plague. It’s really, really annoying for those of us that finds it … annoying. But I still think this video is kinda cool.
EDIT: Just found this, which is just over-the-top crazy:
via Bitsandpieces.us
Surfing back in time
Using the utterly wonderful WayBackMachine at http://web.archive.org, I have spent a while walking down memory lane. On the internetz everything becomes old fast, and revisiting playgrounds brings back memories. Or, well… I hadn’t heard of Google yet back then.
This is what you would get if you pointed your browser to Facebook.com in 1999.
The up-and-coming Hewlett Packard features a modern website with an easily accessible drivers section. HP support hasn’t changed much since 1996 though.
Apple, 1997. The not-yet-full-white apple launches a bold new look with integrated Internet functions, while BMW offers free CD-ROMs.
And also, my very first homepage, from 1999. I remember feeling smug about the Loading Time Indication Diamond System. The missing GIFs are “Under Construction” signs, of course! There were still people on the internet who thought these things were cool. Or I did, at least.
The address was short and simple: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nova/9565 (though later I found I could use the redirect go.to/vetlemakt just by adding one more ad to my page!). GeoCities.com closed down earlier this year, taking my baby with it.
How to: build a snowman
Snow people reproduction is SFW
WikiHow has many interesting articles. And some that just plain ruins the fun.
This “howto” for building a snowman (or snowperson is more politically correct I suppose) will probably do the trick for those lacking imagination though:
1. Before you start, plan where you want the snowperson to go, and how big you want it to be.
2. Find a nice big patch of snow which you can use to make big snowballs with. Snow that is very icy or very fluffy will probably not work very well.
3. Gather a handful of snow and pack it tightly with your two hands, shaping it into a ball. Place the ball on the ground and roll the ball along your snowy patch. As you roll, the ball will pick up more snow and will grow larger and larger as the snow from the ground sticks to it.
4. Make one very large snowball. A height of 1 foot to three feet or more is recommended.
5. Make another snowball a little bit smaller. This will become your middle section.
6. Make another snowball which is smaller still. This will be the head.
7. Stack snowballs up from largest to smallest, being careful to pack tightly and balance them so they won’t fall down.
8. Place a carrot in the middle of the head to act as a nose.
9. Use buttons or pebbles and place them above the carrots to represent the eyes.
10. Use a row of pebbles or coal to show a dazzling smile beneath the carrot nose.
11. Top off the snowman with a hat and place a purple scarf around its neck.
12. Voila! You have now built a snowman that is wonderfully amazing!
My very own howto is even easier:
1. Use snow
2. Build a man
Mysterious “Star Gate” over Norway
Photo: Jan Petter Jørgensen
Wednesday morning, Norwegians all along the northern part of the country could observe a strange light phenomenon. Although I didn’t see it myself, for those who were awake and had clear sky it could be seen from Trøndelag in the south (where I live) up to Finnmark (bordering Russia).
Thousands of awe-struck Norwegians bombarded the Meteorological Institute to ask what the incredible light — that could be seen in the pre-dawn sky for hundreds of miles — could possibly be.
The phenomenon has been dubbed ‘Star-Gate’ — as the world’s top scientists and the military lined up to admit they were baffled. (The Sun)
Now, what could this thing be? Alien activity (of course, that’s my first guess anyway)? A meteor? Or maybe a Russian missile gone rogue?
Strange behaviour for a meteor, so that’s unlikely. The Russians shows good sportsmanship and denies they’ve had a faulty banger over the Arctic sea. The aliens have still not made a statement.
The stunning photo above was taken with long exposure by a tripod mounted camera, while the video below lets you see the last seconds of the two-minute spectacular show.
EDIT: Of course, didn’t take long for someone to come up with a boring, although admittedly plausible explanation:
Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShip 2
Photo: Mark Greenberg
When I was 17 or so, I had a moment of clarity one night walking home from a night on the town. I then told my friend who was walking with me that I had two ultimate goals in life: The first was having children (-check-). The other was to visit outer space.
I first heard of Virgin Galactic two years ago. The company’s been around since 2004 though, and has always had a plan to allow for commercial sub-orbital travel, with the possibility of orbital travel some time in the future.
Interstellar voyages still seems to be a bit far away (dlum-tss!), so for now I’ll be content with weightlessness and seeing the Earth from above, if even for just a little while.
Now, Virgin Galactic has released the first photos of the SpaceShip 2, which will hold six passengers in addition to flight crew. The starting price for flights starts at $200.000 though, so it might be a while until I get to finish my to-do list.
Photo: Mark Greenberg
http://www.virgin.com/travel/inside-virgin-travel/virgin-galactic-unveils-spaceshiptwo-1/
RIP Victor Jara
Photo: Antonia Larrea
Victor Jara, the Chilean folk singer and humans rights activist, was laid to rest a second time this weekend.
Jara was killed just days after General Augusto Pinochet’s violent coup overthrew the elected socialist Salvador Allende September 11th 1973, but as his body was exhumed for the purpose of forensic analysis earlier this year, a second, proper burial took place December 3rd.
The crime of Victor Jara was that he dedicated his artistic abilities for the betterment of humanity and socialism – a crime indigestible for the cronies of Imperialism. Through his songs Jara spoke for the struggle of people against dictatorship, fascism, capitalism, and Imperialism. (Red Diary)
After the coup, Jara, alongside 5000 other Chileans, was taken to the Estadio Chile, a football stadium in Santiago, where he was kept as prisoner, tortured and later shot to death. His body was dumped on a road outside the capital city, and later brought to a morgue. His wife Joan was allowed to come and retrieve his battered body, and after holding a hurried funeral for her husband, Joan Jara fled the country in secret.
During his imprisonment at the stadium Jara secretly wrote a poem commonly known as “Estadio Chile”. The poem was written on a small piece of paper, hidden inside a shoe of a friend, and reads (english translation):
There are five thousand of us here
in this small part of the city.
We are five thousand.
I wonder how many we are in all
in the cities and in the whole country?
Here alone
are ten thousand hands which plant seeds
and make the factories run.
How much humanity
exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain,
moral pressure, terror and insanity?
Six of us were lost
as if into starry space.
One dead, another beaten as I could never have believed
a human being could be beaten.
The other four wanted to end their terror
one jumping into nothingness,
another beating his head against a wall,
but all with the fixed stare of death.
What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.
Nothing matters to them.
To them, blood equals medals,
slaughter is an act of heroism.
Oh God, is this the world that you created,
for this your seven days of wonder and work?
Within these four walls only a number exists
which does not progress,
which slowly will wish more and more for death.
But suddenly my conscience awakes
and I see that this tide has no heartbeat,
only the pulse of machines
and the military showing their midwives’ faces
full of sweetness.
Let Mexico, Cuba and the world
cry out against this atrocity!
We are ten thousand hands
which can produce nothing.
How many of us in the whole country?
The blood of our President, our compañero,
will strike with more strength than bombs and machine guns!
So will our fist strike again!
How hard it is to sing
when I must sing of horror.
Horror which I am living,
horror which I am dying.
To see myself among so much
and so many moments of infinity
in which silence and screams
are the end of my song.
What I see, I have never seen
What I have felt and what I feel
Will give birth to the moment
BBC via BoingBoing
The Olympic flame rides economy class
Photo: AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward
We’re all used to seeing the Olympic flame being handed over from one athlete/physically disabled/cultural significant to the next, who in turn gets to dress up in a silly sports suit with matching hat and gloves, carrying a propane fueled torch that looks more sci-fi every four years, managing a forty-five minute smile for all the local press coverage.
Of course, when moving the sacred flame between continents, airplanes is an easy alternative to hiring Aquaman for the job. Anything else but planes and superheroes would be too slow and expensive, right?
Well, money is no problem, it seems. For the winter games in Vancouver, the Olympic flame demanded six seats for the flight from Greece. Of course, it’s not just the ONE flame, but twelve little flames in twelve little miner’s lanterns.
To be fair to the flames, they did share seats, and they travelled economy class.
via The Boston Globe via Gizmodo
