Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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Timeline of Analog Video Synthesizers
From the ANIMAC to the FairLight Computer Video Instrument, a nice roundup of mostly analog video-mangling technology from the 1960’s to the 1980’s. Lots of pictures and back stories, too.
(Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals)
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LEGO Hole Punch!
LEGO holepunch + hip Japanese retailer MUJI = sublime new construction paper fun.
(Via Make and a million other design/crafty blogs)
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Vanja Mrgan’s Game Character Updates
Illustrator Vanja Mrgan is updating various game and cartoon characters (and some non-imaginary folks, too) with thick, full beards. I particularly like this version of Nintendo’s Mr. Game and Watch.
(Via GameSetWatch)
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The Last Days of Gourmet Magazine
From Last Days of Gourmet, a photo set depicting the offices of the now-defunct magazine. There are plenty of better photos in the group, lots of scenes of office supplies in the trash and empty workspaces, but I liked this one the best: evidently someone went all Hawkeye Pierce.
(Via Coudal Partners)
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The Web may have won, but Gopher tunnels on
“[…] gopher [was] an Edenic protocol of innocence (in comparison to HTML, the protocol of commerce and experience)”
Ars Technica checks in on Gopher, the largely-forgotten pre-www protocol for getting information from servers in a simple, hypertext format. It’s out there still, just like the old BBSes, telnet MUDs / MOOs / MUSHes, Usenet, etc., and still useful in some contexts. Very few contexts, maybe – I can’t imagine there’s much in the way of Gopher pr0n or warez trading to give continued backwater life to the old medium, but hey, 4chan’s /b/ is available through Gopher…
What would things would be like if Gopherspace’s concision won out over HTTP’s ability to cram graphics and ads onto every resource? Sounds like our current mobile web app landscape.
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First Test for Election Cryptography
The difference is that a special type of ink and pen are used. When the voter fills in a bubble on the ballot using the pen, a previously invisible secret code appears in that space. The voter can record the code or codes and then check them later online. If the code is found in an online database, it means the voter’s ballot was counted correctly. Each ballot has its own randomly assigned codes, to prevent this process from revealing which candidates a voter selected.
Using a bit of invisible ink and a unique code to help fight election fraud. Not a bad idea, really, in that it gives at least one form of anonymous checksum to add to the evidence trail. The trouble is whether it will end up confusing the average voter. At least it’s better than trusting in a closed software-based system with no paper trail…
(Via O’Reilly Radar)
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Roy Lichtenstein Makeup
Pretty awesome makeup job imitating an iconic Roy Lichtenstein pop art print. Not sure who the actual artist / model is, but found via Make.
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At Home with English: Austin, Texas ESL Public Access Show
“At Home with English”, a fabulous early 1990’s low-budget ESL public access TV course filmed here in Austin, TX, dredged up by the Found Footage Festival. A truly exemplary bit of late-night public access weirdness. I’ve been mentioning this guy to friends for years, always hoping to catch it on so I could tape it. Glad someone’s found a copy, and they’ve even tracked down the star for an interview! This highlight reel’s pretty good, but it’s edited down considerably: each segment was made all the more absurd because they would go over each of the verb tenses repeatedly using the same odd inflection, interspersed with a super-macro-closeup shot of a woman’s lips reciting the vocabulary.
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Vic Mizzy, RIP
We had a piano when I was a kid, and the only songs I really knew how to play were the ones out of a TV theme song music book. I mostly learned the Vic Mizzy ones, since they were the best (well, the Bill Lava ones were pretty cool, too). Truly the master of the catchy jingle theme. Most folks are commenting on his tunes for the Addams Family (he was the singer, too?) and Green Acres, but he also penned many a Don Knotts film score, along with tv themes for a number of less-successful sitcoms. There’s also the very catchy “In the Middle…In the Middle…In the Middle” street safety song (which has a refrain melody similar to the later “Muppet Show” theme by Sam Pottle), covered by They Might Be Giants on their “No!” kid’s album.
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Oh My Yes the Firefox Team Has an Experimental
Oh my, yes. The Firefox team has an experimental specification for making use of the advanced features of OpenType and AAT, possibly through the CSS @font-variant property. This could get hairy rather quickly and I have to imagine it’d be tricky to write out the full description by hand, but the typographical goodness would be hard to pass up. Be sure to check out the hack.mozilla.org page about this to see some nice preview images.
