links for 2008-08-29
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The trailer for The Dark Knight, remixed by whipper-snappers who surely have a future in the movie business. Really, surprisingly, good.
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August 29, 2008
August 28, 2008
links for 2008-08-28
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"It's gone officially rubbish and leapt with gusto over the Carcharhinus leucas". The last straw was that fucking McDonald's ad.
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From 1982, Jim Henson talks about how High Definition Video is the future of both filmmaking and TV, how we’ll eventually have widescreen televisions in our homes, and how George Lucas once had good ideas.
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"The coolest thing about it is its Alien-like retractable jaw, which seems to leap out of its mouth to catch its prey" the coolest thing is also the most fucked up thing. Watch the video, it's fucking weird.
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Absolutely fantastic article about the Red One 4K digital film camera, it's creators, and the future of modern cinema techniques.
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"Toy Story is a Meditation on the Trails of Puberty and Sexuality", amongst other things. Interesting advertising from Volkswagen.
August 27, 2008
links for 2008-08-27
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The iconic end emonomous mouse may actually be in the public domain?
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Absolutely brilliant Mona Lisa parody featuring everyone's favourite danish-pastry-haired space princess. [/Film]
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Fascinating tale about farmers reclaiming the desert in Burkina Faso. Awesome. [kottke.org]
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What DID happen to that "these aren't the droids we're looking for" dude from Episode IV?
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Video clip shows a wind turbine exploding during high winds in Denmark [snopes.com]
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Great remix of the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" t-shirt. I want.
August 25, 2008
links for 2008-08-25
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Great remix of the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" t-shirt. I want.
August 23, 2008
links for 2008-08-22
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This guy has way, WAY too many t-shirts. And that's saying something coming from me.
August 20, 2008
links for 2008-08-20
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I'd hate to be a music nerd.
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"the battle droids all sound like Erkle from Family Matters" Wired thinks you're better off waiting to see it on TV.
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Hmmm... seems this is actually even easier than I thought. Might have to give it a go soonish.
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Just because all of the information in the entire world is at your fingertips, doesn't mean it's actually useful.
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Imagine if George Lucas decided to re-shoot Star Wars, Cloverfield style. This would be the proof of concept. Really nice work.
August 19, 2008
Rainbows Are A Conspiracy!
According to Wikipedia, "Rainbows are optical illusions and meteorological phenomena that cause a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere."
Try telling that to this lady.
I'm hoping that the phrase "only in America" can be applied to this video, because otherwise we're all screwed.
links for 2008-08-19
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I want that "Data" poster more than I want to continue living (that's Data from The Goonies, not the Star Trek one). And the Leon poster as well. Awesome.
August 6, 2008
When You Know Them It Seems Closer
By now pretty much everybody who reads this will know of the ten climbers that were tragically killed after reaching the summit of K2 last weekend, in the worst accident that has ever happened on that most dangerous of the worlds' highest peaks. Most of the media attention in Ireland is focussing on Ger McDonnell, a Limerick native, who had been living in Alaska with his partner Annie prior to his K2 attempt.
I had the good fortune to meet Ger and Annie in July of last year, in McCarthy, Alaska. He was a worker on the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay, working one week on and one week off, and was visiting McCarthy for a bit of craic, being that it was open mic night in the New Golden Saloon (aka "The Golden") and he wanted to share his considerable bodhran-playing skills with the locals and tourists in McCarthy.
Myself and Nikki were inside the Golden when we heard that someone outside had heard that someone inside was Irish, and that they were Irish too (an Irishman is definitely a novelty most places in Alaska, and for two of them to randomly meet is an occasion for boisterous drinking and merriment). We went outside and chatted to Ger for a while, told him what we were doing during our time in AK and he talked about what he was doing and how he came to be in Alaska and general small-talk. He played a bit of bodhran while we chatted, he had an amazing talent with the goatskin. We told him that we would be in Anchorage for a day at the end of our trip, and he insisted that we come over to his place for dinner, even though he was going back up to Prudhoe Bay, and he wouldn't even be there at the time! The real pity is that we actually missed him playing inside the bar for the open mic, because we had spent the entire day trekking on a glacier and were falling asleep standing up.
You hear of people being killed in climbing accidents and other "extreme" activities all the time, and although it often makes headline news, it's rarely talked about for longer than a few days. I know I will think about Ger's tragic death for longer than it's in the news.
Indeed, any time when I think back to myself and Nikki's amazing holiday in Alaska last year, where I proposed to her and we had the most amazing time we've ever had, I will think about Ger McDonnell. My heart goes out to anyone who was close to him, especially his family and friends, and his partner Annie Starkey.
Book of condolences here.
August 1, 2008
The Antikythera Mechanism
There's an amazing documentary over at Nature all about The Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as the first known "mechanical computer") designed to calculate astronomical positions over time, which was built over 2,000 years ago, most probably by Archimedes in the colonies of Corinth in Sicily. It's absolutely mind-blowing.
The The Antikythera Mechanism is basically a big (very complicated, and way ahead of it's time) clock, which calculates the date of solar and lunar eclipses, as well as when the various "games", including the Olympics, are scheduled to happen. In that way it's one of the few ancient mechanisms which displays not only astronomical events, but also events of cultural significance.
I highly recommend you click on that there link above and spend a few minutes learning about one of the most important archeological finds in history.
There is, of course, also a (long!) page all about it ovar at Wikipedia.
I also recommend spend a bit of time going through the Nature Online Video Archive, there's loads more there that will blow your mind.
For those of you who don't watch the video, it's pronounced "ANT-EE-KITH-ER-A".
(I'd embed the video, but there's no easy "embed video" option and I'm too tired to fiddle with embedding .swf files the hard way. Sorry!)
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