A truly unique story from a Canon users’ forum: a New York-based photographer and his lens technician friend unearthed and retrofitted to a new digital SLR a 102 year old cinema lens that was discovered hidden in a box. The resulting photos are haunting and downright gorgeous. Proving that anything can benefit from a touch of the unexpected.
Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.
Not me, but I am sure glad someone did. I think my favorite part is not the images produced by the iPad being used as a stop motion, light painting too but is instead the human ghosts that follow each element of the animation. Very cool combination of people and technology.
(Wired via Case for the iPad)
Anyone who knows me knows that I love both a good science show and the thoughts of Arthur C. Clarke with equal vigor. Therefore, this 1964 BBC program, Horizon, with an interview of Arthur C. Clarke is exceptional:
Was Arthur C. Clarke ever wrong? And, more importantly, was Arthur C. Clarke ever young? I swear he looked the EXACT same even when he died just a short while ago!
(io9)
Artist François Vautier decided to create still of every frame in Blade Runner, lay them out in a grid and then film them all with a virtual camera. The end result (set to Vangelis, of course) is nothing but stunning. I especially like that Deckard’s photo manipulation scene dialogue was included to great effect.
(io9)
I’d normally say “Watch” for something of this sort, but Arcade Fire went entirely HTML5 extravaganza on us with their new project in support The Suburbs. Appropriately, my own experience of this Google Maps-enabled mix of audio, video, text and on the fly graphics wouldn’t work with the childhood address I provided it so I used Kate’s suburban home instead. I think it came out for the better because trees bursting through the ground and birds swooping down from the skies are pretty much par for the course back in the wilds of my home.
Anyway, if you have five minutes to be amazed by the possibilities of HTML5, “The Wilderness Downtown” is more than worth your time.
As part of a feature on the iPad going back to school this Fall, The Baltimore Sun interviewed me about our ongoing iPad pilot program. The reporter was particularly interested in our focus on faculty and staff as many other schools seem to be taking a different approach by giving them to students foremost. Nice to see some recognition on the front page for sure!
(Via Case for the iPad)
I really think that you should watch this short clip of a gorilla playing with a Nintendo DSi XL. A love of gadgets is clear evidence of a highly evolved brain, wouldn’t you say?
(Thanks, Engadget)
Wikileaks has posted a file that is known only as “insurance.” According to Wired, the 1.4 GB torrent file is ten times larger than everything else available combined – with relative heavy encryption. What is it? I have waited all day and no one has gotten through to the truth yet. Intrigue a la The X-Files!
Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring (Wired)
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
Web Bot (Wikipedia)
High and Ure claim that the Web Bot works by using a form of the Wisdom of Crowds, with spiders that search the internet for about 300,000 keywords with emotional context[3] and record the preceding and following words to create a “snapshot.” The technology is claimed to be able to examine the collective unconscious and be able to predict catastrophic events 60 to 90 days in advance.
I sure can’t.
In my world, the weekends exist almost solely for the making and eating of delicious pancakes. There are many kinds that I have built into my repertoire: whole wheat with cardamom, walnuts and almond milk, unbleached white with bananas, cinnamon and curry powder, etc. It’s hardly a Saturday without a pan-cooked treat covered in black cherry jam or orange marmalade.
Which is precisely why this robot who can flip pancakes but never taste them is the most depressing use of technology I’ve ever seen. Thanks for nothing, Engadget.