4/4

Having trouble deciphering what type of electronic music you are listening to? House, trance, techno, breakbeat, jungle, hardcore, downtempo and all their sub-genres are explained by Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music….tongue in cheek with examples. Know your music. Whatever.

The Looking Glass

Artist David Hockney has come up with a theory of how past masters painted using lenses and camera obscura and explains in amazing detail how they achieved the photo-realistic effects so thoroughly admired…..Drawing Aids to Perspective illustrates some of the methods used.

Blink of an Eye

Matt Stewart possesses either excellent sense of timing, or unlimited patience. Either way his photographs are a treat to look at.

…

Once you’ve tried to change the world you find it’s a whole bunch easier to change your mind.

Author Unknown

Broken Treasure

As many of you know some of the marble pieces from the Parthenon in Athens are at the British Museum. I got to see them when we visited London back in 2001 and found them breathtaking. I soon started thinking that it was wrong. They were out of context. Yes, most museums around the world have material from other places…But these were no objects. They are part of an architecture. They must be experienced as a whole. Marbles Reunited wants to see the Parthenon Sculptures reunited and displayed as one complete work of art in the New Acropolis Museum now being built in Athens. Take a look, and you’ll soon agree.

Escape From Flatland

Jim Gasperini has invented Time for Space a simple way to see 3D images. He “wiggles” a stereo pair creating a most superb effect. Many other examples are available on his website. Want to give me a gift? Send me a stereo camera!!! I definitely want to go 3D from now on…

Underground Loop

SMS is David Crawford’s study through photography of people’s behavior in the subways of different cities. But these aren’t ordinary photos…They are stop motion.

Know The Answer

Roddy Lumsden has what I consider the best trivia site…Vitamin Q. Obscure, fascinating, irresistibly interesting.

Hill of Crosses

Intense devotion produces mountain.

BoxSurprise

Rolling Thunder

Can you imagine what 320.000 ping-pong balls rolling down a hill would look like? Don’t miss the videos! What a fun way to study avalanche dynamics!

FFD or RWD

It was so cool when I would get a new CD and suddenly find that it contained a hidden track. That hardest one I ever found was in Blind Melon’s Soup album…It is song number 0! Hit play when the first song starts immediately rewind and you’ll find it…right before the first song! The Hidden Song Archive is a comprehensive list of well, you guessed it…hidden songs. Look for your favorite Cd’s maybe you are missing a hidden masterpiece!

Grow Your Garden

Some sites are Worth mentioning even if everyone else already did. Tinygrow is a flash based program that is quite addictive. Surrender to its beauty!

They Don’t Suck

Wanna know what’s one of the coolest most creative design companies?
SUCK UK
They have an excellent collection, and most of their products are truly original. Hey, they are an inspiration! Some things I like: The Key Bottle Opener, Low Volt Light, and the Salt&Pepper Shakers…(can’t link to them though).

Going Round And Round

And you thought that garbage is only an earthly problem?
According to NASA Orbital Debris Program Office approximately 11,000 objects larger than 10 cm are known to exist, orbiting around the Earth. Known as space debris they are remnants from rockets, and space exploration. All of this garbage is constantly tracked in order to avoid a collision. One of the Space Shuttle’s windows was once cracked by an orbiting flake of paint. I read somewhere that there is a piece of chicken and a toothbrush that escaped from MIR orbiting as well…
Click on the image for more.

Wrist Idea

Excerpt taken From Alberto Santos-Dumont’s Bio:

On October 19, 1901, Santos-Dumont won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs for flying his dirigible number six from the Park Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back under thirty minutes. His victory was celebrated at Maxim’s that evening, and at some point Santos-Dumont complained to his friend Louis Cartier about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch to time his performance. He wanted his friend to come up with an alternative that would permit him to keep both hands on the controls. Cartier went to work on the idea and the result was a watch with a leather band and a small buckle, to be worn on the wrist. Cartier invented the wristwatch for his friend in March of 1904. Santos-Dumont never took off again without his personal Cartier wristwatch and he used it to check his world record for a 220-metre flight, achieved in just twenty-one seconds, on November 12, 1907.

BDAY

Today I am 29 and my beautiful Mitla 28!
Blow the candles; we’ll eat the cake.

Spun

El Ultimo Grito, that funky Spanish based in London design group has come up with a very clever and simple lamp shade. Produced by Mathmos, it has only one piece, and it slides gracefully on a bare bulb. Kewl.

Red?

Yesterday I ended up reading an article that describes in detail how NASA is altering the colors of their Mars photos. We are being duped! Didn’t think much of it, conspiracy theorist abound when space is the theme. This morning I found a very thorough explanation of what is really happening.

While we are at it, here is an explanation for all you Moon Hoax aficionados!

More Than Meets The Eye

Mega super cool CG animation of a Mazda RX-8 transformer.

Rolls Royce vs Model T

Trevor Blackwell has assembled his own version of the Segway using off the shelf parts. It looks pretty cool (no silly looking plastic), and in the video you can see it works like the real McCoy for a fraction of the price!

How to render the Segway obsolete.

One Wheel Wonder

Monowheels are one big wheel with rider and engine inside it’s circumference. I remember once seeing one on TV going down a staircase…cool shit! Anyway here are some websites dedicated to it. Via MeFi, and JWZ.

Monowheels, and other vehicles with insufficient wheels

Le Tractoroue

Kerry McLean?s Monocycles . More Photos

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

One of the things I like the most is magic. When I was about 13 I spent a summer going to magic lessons…How cool is that? I learned card and rope tricks, most of which I’ve forgotten already, but the fascination remains. At the MagicVideoDepot you can download many magic videos. Sign-up Required.

This is a Test

Just finished upgrading MovableType to a new version.
Better Spam protection!

Space is the Place

Space has always been the realm of huge government budgets and little private sector participation, but that is about to change: The X-Prize is a 10 Million USD price to anyone that privately builds and launches a spaceship able to carry three people to a height of 100 km altitude, return to Earth and repeat again within two weeks. Over two dozen teams are competing, and some are really close. My favorite since the beginning has been Scaled Composites. Remember Burt Rutan? He was the designer of the first airplane to fly around the world without refueling in 1986. Rutan and SC have made many paradigm breaking craft since. SpaceShipOne is their entry into the X-Prize and just recently it broke the sound barrier. So let’s keep our finger crossed, I hope to be able to take that trip to the edge of the atmosphere! Check out their other aircraft…

Spam Will Eat Itself

I know Spam will never die, but it is getting a bit troublesome. This morning I received the first hit of comment spam. Viagra this, Viagra that. Who would have ever thought that Penis Enhancement would have been the most emailed thing! Well maybe some knew!!!
Another thing driving me mad is the SpamSearch….you do a search and you get a hit that seems it is what you are looking for. You click it an enter a page that wants to bookmark itself and has no info whatsoever, only links for you to keep searching using their “search engine”. $%”%&!)^? Ahhhhhh! Just tired of it!

Fine Sounds

The best violins in the world are the Stradivarius made by Antonio Stradivari, they have always been the yardstick by which other instruments are measured. Stradivari was born in Cremona, Italy in 1644 and died in 1737. He also made harps, guitars, violas, and cellos, more than 1,100 instruments in all, by current estimate. About 650 of these instruments survive today. His instruments have been studied, copied, and analyzed for over 250 years; Many theories have come forward, and yet still nobody knows what makes it special. Science and the Stradivarius is a small article that tries to piece together a great puzzle that may never have a solution.

Stradivarius Photos
Read Antonio Stradivari His Life and Work (1644-1737)

Mind the Gap

Before The Panama Canal existed ships wanting to go from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific had to sail around the southernmost part of South America. This magnificent marvel of engineering was completed in 1914 and it’s use could shave off 7872 miles of a trip. An interesting thing is that the locks do not have pumps, they work by gravity alone.

See an animation of how a ship crosses it. See the how the locks work.

Fractal Mind

Louis Wain always painted cats. You can see his slide into schizophrenia through his work…1, 2,
hmmm, schizophrenia = acid?

The Decline of Fashion Photography

Slate has put together a photo tour of how fashion photography has been going downhill. A lot of people will argue, but I do agree that trying to sell a catalog photo as art is a bit ludicrous. After all it’s clothes they are selling.