Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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Monkey Island 2 Special-Uber Edition
Monkey Island 2 Special-Uber Edition – Voodoo mama. I wish the real Monkey Island SE looked half as great as this. I’d sell my fine leather jacket if Monkey Island 2 SE came out this faithful to the original art. Double bonus points for getting a thumbs up from Steve Purcell himself!
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First TV Broadcast: Papier Mâché Felix the Cat
This papier-mâché Felix the Cat was the first image to be broadcast over experimental television in preparation for the first public RCA broadcast in 1928. Black and white and made of durable material, they had him revolving on a turntable, beaming out as a tiny test image so engineers could adjust the signal. Early TV technology fascinates me.
There’s more good info on early test patterns over at Design Observer.
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Logstalgia AKA Apachepong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYYX-h4-dpM
Logstalgia (aka ApachePong), a visualizer that turns Apache log file entries into an automated game of OpenGL Pong, with the server-paddle hitting requests back at the calling visitors. Pipe it through SSH and tail to get real-time infoviz. Hey, I’ve seen worse screensavers…
(Via O’Reilly Radar)
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The Timing of Blinks
Update 11/3/2009: RadioLab did a short piece in October on this phenomenon, even discussing the Mr. Bean test with the Japanese researchers: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/10/05/blink/
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From recent research out of Japan: “The results suggest that humans share a mechanism for controlling the timing of blinks that searches for an implicit timing that is appropriate to minimize the chance of losing critical information while viewing a stream of visual events.” In simpler words, the researchers found that audiences watching movies with action sequences have a strong tendency to synchronize their blinking so that they don’t miss anything good.
I’m not sure that this is interesting in and of itself, but it’s, um, eye-opening to think that we have our eyes closed for nearly 10% of our waking life. That’s roughly 10 full minutes of every movie lost to blinking. I imagine that editors already take this phenomenon into account, at least to some extent?
Full text available available in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B – Biological Sciences. Thanks, Creative Commons!
(Via NewScientist)
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I Really Like This Set of 50×50 Pixel Short Films
Pixel Film:Oo. from garth+ginny on Vimeo.
I really like this set of 50×50 pixel short films by garth+ginny. Once again, constraints can lead to effective art.
(Via Offworld)
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Kraftwerk‘s Pocket Calculator on the Nintendo DSi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGUhxgvGb8A
Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator” faithfully played on the Nintendo DSi. There’s a new version of the KORG DS-10 software coming out in September (in Japan, anyhow – here’s hoping that it comes stateside), which will be a must-buy.
(Via 5cience)
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Tom Judd’s Eyebrow Hat Via Swissmiss
Tom Judd’s Eyebrow Hat.
(Via swissmiss)
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Open Face Sandwich?
Steam is gathering behind the open font / redistributable typeface movement, which will hopefully usher in some better typography options on the web. Arguments abound as to whether letting designers use whatever font they want on the web is a good thing, and the situation’s been moving at a snails pace for years due to the reluctance of both the font foundries and the browser makers, so it’s good to see actual, workable options on the horizon. Here are a handful of recent projects, all of which seek to ameliorate the licensing issues inherent in the use of embedded fonts:
- Typekit – http://typekit.com/
- Kernest – http://kernest.com/
- The League of Movable Type – http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
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Dark Flash Photography
Another paper from the upcoming SIGGRAPH 2009 conference: Dark Flash Photography. The researchers have developed a camera flash that uses a combination of infra-red and and ultra-violet light to illuminate a scene before capture, and an algorithm to denoise and color-correct the otherwise dimly-lit normal digital photo, producing a low-light image that is both noise-free and sharp (no need for long exposure, so no worry about camera shake or the subject moving). Seems like a killer idea, and immensely useful.
The image above is the creepy-looking multi-spectral version – be sure to click through to their site to see the final photo compared with the noisy ambient light version.
(Via New Scientist. Photo: Dilip Krishnan, Rob Fergus)
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New Treewave EP: 10inch
New free EP ‘10inch’ available for the downloading from Dallas shoegaze/chiptune band Treewave! Haven’t listened to it all yet so I can’t compare it with their outstanding 2004 Cabana+ EP, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt (and you can’t beat the price).
(Via Offworld)