Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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H2G2 Remake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjUCzY16pE0&feature=player_embedded
Might not be the prettiest thing I’ve seen lately, but it’s a point-and-click remake of Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! It was released on May 25th, just in time for towel day. More about the new version here and here.
(Via GameSetWatch)
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Nasa Spacewalk Snapshot
Astronauts Michael Good and Garrett Reisman peeking in through the aft windows of the shuttle Atlantis during last week’s spacewalk. Hopefully HAL will let them back in.
(Full size version over at NASA. Via The Register)
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NES Music Tracker NTRQ
Old school NES musician Neil Baldwin of Duty Cycle Generator has released a native NES music tracker called NTRQ as a downloadable ROM. Even better, you can now get it in real NES cartridge form (songs you create are saved to the battery backup), with proceeds going to charity!
(Via GameSetWatch)
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Help Save a Piece of Usenet History at Duke University
Duke’s OIT is taking down the Usenet service pioneered by its grad students in 1979, a supremely long-lived Internet resource that helped define modern communication (BBS’s, forums, and P2P software owe much to Usenet and the A news client). Another nail in the venerable medium’s slow, eventual decline.
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Sonar
Sonar from Renaud Hallée on Vimeo.
Sonar by Renaud Hallée. Hypnotic music visualization (keyframe animated rather than generative, though). Reminds me of a cross between a backwards Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and my favorite NASA video of all time, the Huygens Probe Descent Camera.
(Via Kitsune Noir)
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Tangible Graffiti Wall
Digital Graffiti Wall + Stencils from Alex Beim on Vimeo.
Tangible Interaction’s Tangible Graffiti Wall. Rear projection drawing screens with IR “spraycan” interface. The cherry on top is the ability to use virtual stencils while painting – clever.
(Via Make)
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Uncanny Vallery in Richardson Texas
From the Visual Science blog, Life and Love in the Uncanny Valley:
David Hanson’s robots are by now somewhat familiar faces, including his Einstein robot currently being used as a research tool at Javier Movellan’s Machine Perception Lab at UCSD, and the punk rock conversationalist Joey Chaos. A less familiar face is that of Bina Rothblatt, the blonde at the end of the table in the above photograph. Bina is a robot commissioned by Sirius Satellite Radio inventor Martine Rothblatt to look like her beloved wife.
Hanson Robotics is in a house in the neighborhood where I grew up in Richardson, Texas. They’re doing some interesting work in robot aesthetics and materials, crafting convincing android-type replicants in a studio environment that’s busy around the clock. Flickr user steevithak has a nice photo set up of some of the robots they were tinkering with in 2009.
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Medical Paradolia
A handful of medical paradolia on NCBI ROFL: Bad news: you have a tumor. Good news: it’s really cute!
UPDATE: I learn via Back of the Cereal Box that there’s a cancer-causing genetic mutation known in scientific circles as Sonic hedgehog!
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Lego Augmented Reality
[Video no longer available]
LEGO DIGITAL BOX – augmented reality kiosk system
Excellent use of AR for marketing: an in-store display that’s actually fun to play with, and it makes you pick up the box in order to see it come alive. Nice.
(Via Make)
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N.W.A. Posse Cover
Whatever Happened to N.W.A.’s Posse? LA Weekly tracks down all of the guys featured on the cover of N.W.A.’s lesser known first album, perhaps the first photo of gangsta rap. A handful of them were only there to give rides to their friends. For the others, though, this album launched careers that would redefine the 1990’s music landscape (see if you can spot Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren…). Here’s one incredible bit of trivia:
When N.W.A signed with Priority, the group was only the label’s second signed act. The other was the California Raisins. That’s right: The first noncompilation album released by Priority was The California Raisins Sing the Hit Songs. The second was Straight Outta Compton.
