kottke.org posts about video
Wearable computing is heating up. Jawbone and Nike are vying for your wrists, Google and Lat Ware want your face, Fitbit owns the hips, and Apple might want to make your shoes smarter. But one of the most intriguing demos I’ve seen, if the footage in the video is to be believed, is the Myo gesture control armband.
It’s an eye-popping demo. The copy on the site reads “unleash your inner Jedi” and you pretty much do look like Obi-Wan using the thing. Which is to say, like a crazy person cosplaying Star Wars in the middle of the street. Adam Lisagor called Google Glass a “Segway for your face” back in April. The Segway was another great idea on paper that failed in part because of human vanity. Segways weren’t cool…you looked like a dork riding one. You’re gonna look like a dork wearing Google Glass. You’re gonna look like a dork unlocking your car with a swipe of your Myo-enabled arm.
But the uncool factor can be overridden in various ways. Nike can make anyone wear anything, especially if it’s packaged like a watch with superpowers. A few years ago, you looked like a dork wearing headphones in public but Apple made it cool. Beats By Dre made wearing huge over-the-ear headphones in public cool a few years later. You look like a dork wearing a Bluetooth headset and talking to yourself, but they are cheap and useful enough that it doesn’t matter. Mobile phone usage in public used to appear very strange…for awhile it was difficult to tell the brokers-in-a-hurry from the mentally unstable homeless folks muttering to themselves.
That’s the challenge for Google Glass and Myo: are these things useful enough and cheap enough to overcome that dork factor or can they somehow be made cool? Because if they aren’t and you can’t, no one wants to be seen using a Nintendo Power Glove in public and no amount of extreme sports dubstep transitions can save you.
What are all those models in the J.Crew catalog doing anyway? By cleverly piecing together narratives from catalog photographs, Meghan O’Neill imagines that they are solving crimes, misbehaving on honeymoons, and such. Here’s the most recent episode:
(via @sippey)
A popular option for moving companies to offer in Japan is, not only to transport your belongings, but to pack them and unpack them for you.
I’d move to Japan just so I’d never have to pack up my own apartment again… except I’d have to pack up my apartment to get there. (via @ohheygreat)
You’ve gotta wait for it. Nope, not that one. Not that. Or that. THAT. THAT’S THE SHOT.
Literally unbelievable. Totally lucky but unbelievable. (via @DavidGrann)
Is it permissible to squee about Westeros?
Squee! I still miss Sean Bean though. I wouldn’t mind a little Six Feet Under Late Ned action. Maybe bring him back as a White Walker or something. They’re headless zombies, right? Hello?
The electric lighbulb, the phonograph, and the movie camera were invented (or significantly improved upon) by Thomas Edison, so lets give him credit for one more: LOLcats:
This short film was shot at the world’s first movie studio, The Black Maria, located in West Orange, NJ. The entire building was built on a turntable so that the building could rotate with the sun for the best lighting conditions. (via “robin sloan”)
This is really simple: these are goats who sound like people. You have probably seen this before, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to watch it at least once a day for the rest of your life.
Michael Jordan just turned 50 and so Deadspin’s Emma Carmichael asked former Cavs guard Craig Ehlo what it was like to guard Jordan in his prime. Sometimes Jordan would tell Ehlo what he was going to do ahead of time and still score.
Usually, Ron Harper would start on him, then I would come in and go to him, and Ron would go to Scottie Pippen or something like that. I always felt very lucky that Coach Wilkens had that faith in me to guard him. Michael was very competitive when he got between the lines. He was never a bad talker or too arrogant, but it was just like what Jason [Williams] said: He’d tell you. He only did that to me one time, from what I remember. It was his 69-point game, and things were going so well for him that I guess he just went for it. We were running up the court side-by-side and he told me: “Listen man, I’m hitting everything, so I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do this time and see if you can stop it. You know you can’t stop it. You know you can’t stop this. You can’t guard me.
“I’m gonna catch it on the left elbow, and then I’m gonna drive to the left to the baseline, and then I’m gonna pull up and shoot my fadeaway.”
And sure enough …
Ehlo famously guarded Jordan during The Shot:
See also Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building and Jordan’s top 50 greatest moments.
This Reddit group is collecting links to full-length movies and TV shows that are available on YouTube. Like this unauthorized copy of Django Unchained:
See if you can get through the whole thing before it gets taken down.
Update: David reminded me that you can actually watch full-length movies and TV shows on YouTube for a rental fee. (thx, david)
Google is making a wearable headset called Google Glass and here’s a look at how the heads-up display is going to work.
Maybe it’s the jetlag talking, but that looks pretty fricking great. But I have a feeling that Glass is going to be a Segway for your face.
With the northeast still smarting from their two+ feet of snow, it’s worth watching this two minute video to see how those trillions of flakes were born.
For more, this recent 16 minute Radiolab segment looks into whether perfect snowflakes exist.
There’s a blizzard bearing down on the northeastern United States and here’s some essential information you need to know if you live in an affected area:
But seriously, you should follow @EricHolthaus for the latest storm info. (Ok, so we have our first celebrity Twitter weatherman. Weather and climate are going to become a lot more important in American pop culture…at what point do Gawker or Buzzfeed launch their climate verticals?)
Update: Gawker now has a climate vertical, The Vane. (via @bgporter)
What a day! First we were delighted by a madcap U-turn video that is probably fake, we learned there’s such a thing as windless kite flying, and now we’re learning that competitive wood planing is a thing. In Japan, the best wood planers gather each year to see who can shave the thinnest shaving off of a piece of wood. My literal jaw literally dropped when I saw how thin the shavings are:
9 microns! A micron is one-millionth of a meter or one-thousandth of a millimeter. For reference, the diameter of a red blood cell is 8-9 microns, a cloud water droplet is about 10 microns across, and an average human hair is about 100 microns across. How do you get such a thin shaving? A really sharp blade. Like maybe a knife sharped with .025 Micron Polycrystalline Diamond Spray? (via @Colossal)
Remember the guy who rode the alleged 100-foot wave? Here’s a video of some other tow-in surfers from that same location (Nazare, Portugal) on the same day. The waves aren’t quite as big as 100 feet, but the sequence starting at 1:52, where the guy falls off his board and swims like hell to get out of the way before the whole ocean crashes down on top of him (watch the top of the wave), gives you a real sense of how insane this sport is.
Great use of high definition and slow motion. (via @alexismadrigal)
From the 2013 Windless Kite Festival, Spencer Watson does a routine to an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black.
(via @dunstan)
This is straight out of an episode of Mr. Bean or Austin Powers: a driver in a tiny car tries to make a U-turn on an even tinier street in Naples and gets stuck. Traffic starts backing up. A crowd gathers. A gang of motorcyclists shows up. A church procession is blocked from going down the street. Eventually the priest gets involved in moving the car.
This better be real because it’s one of the most improbably cinematic things I’ve ever seen. (via @DavidGrann)
Update: WHY CAN’T WE HAVE NICE THINGS??! This is probably a fake.
Republic had presented the video of the jam so become “viral” on the web. In fact, the movie is the result of a staging. residents hired as extras, 24 hours and no camera but only iPhone and iPad to shoot. These are the ingredients of the video style “Benvenuti al Sud” that drove him crazy social networks and turned the spotlight on the town in the province of Naples.
Stupid Fiat. (thx, pb)
In January, I linked to a piece in the New Yorker about master pickpocket Apollo Robbins.
One day, over lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant in a Las Vegas strip mall, Robbins demonstrated his method on me. “When I shake someone’s hand, I apply the lightest pressure on their wrist with my index and middle fingers and lead them across my body to my left,” he said, showing me. “The cross-body lead is actually a move from salsa dancing. I’m finding out what kind of a partner they’re going to be, and I know that if they follow my lead I can do whatever I want with them.”
Robbins was recently a guest on the Today show and the amount of criminal shenanighans he pulls off in this four minute video is astounding:
(via digg)
Because of “the evolving experience in the stores” (aka live music is too expensive), after 27 years of playing the piano at Nordstrom in the Tacoma Mall, Juan Perez was let go in January.
Perez remembers his audition at Nordstrom, one morning in January 1986.
“There were five of us. Four beautiful young ladies, and me. They were carrying music books.”
They were dressed, he said, as if they had shopped at Nordstrom. He was not. They were carrying sheet music. Perez did not, and does not, read notes. He plays by ear.
“I was the first one to play,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting they would hire me, and I was dressed in a regular shirt. I started playing and playing as the store opened up. I didn’t even have an application.”
After playing, he drove home.
“My wife said, ‘They called. They want you to start tomorrow.’ I almost cried.”
Perez arrived in the US with $300 to his name and through hard work at the piano, has put seven of his children through college, with two more currently in college and one more attending private high school. (via brooks review)
Update: Here’s a quick update on Perez. After leaving Nordstrom, he quickly got some other gigs, including one at an upscale steakhouse and another at the Space Needle, but was also diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo surgery.
On that last Sunday in the store, Perez ended with “Piano Man” and “How Great Thou Art.”
And “Unforgettable” was the first song he played following a five-surgeon, 10-hour surgery last July to remove a tumor tangled near his heart.
A round of radiation followed surgery, and Perez has continued playing at El Gaucho, and at the Space Needle, Bellevue Square, the Bellevue Hyatt Regency, the Tacoma Yacht Club, Tacoma Golf & Country Club, the Old Cannery in Sumner and the Weatherly Inn and Narrows Glen retirement homes in Tacoma.
Recently, the management and co-workers at El Gaucho decided to help Perez with medical bills and other expenses. Management would donate half the house receipts one Sunday night, and the servers and other staff would offer all their tips.
Total raised: $31,000.
A co-worker established an online funding request.
Total raised: Nearly $12,000 at the time this story was written.
Last year, Perez returned to Nordstrom for a final performance, which was attended by the three co-presidents of the company and hundreds of his fans.
“I’ve known him for 25 years. He’s a beautiful man,” said George Lund, a 40-year Nordstrom employee who is now retired.
“Juan was the face of this store. He was the personality of this store. He could be the mayor of this city,” Lund said. “It was a magical time for a lot of customers. He made them feel comfortable, relaxed.”
After 20 minutes of greetings, of hugs and embraces, Juan returns to the piano. Four friends gather behind him and sing along to “Edelweiss.”
Then Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”
The crowd fills the aisles between women’s shoes and fine jewelry. Shoppers ascending on the escalator look down and smile.
Toes tap.
“He is a blessing,” says Patricia Reynolds of Steilacoom. “He is helping people with his music.”
Perez shifts from a swift boogie-woogie riff into “Canon in D” by Johann Pachelbel.
“He just brings such beauty into people’s lives,” says Maria Fleischmann of Tacoma.
“I don’t even have words for this,” said Juan and Susan’s daughter, Agnes.
Then, “The Way You Look Tonight.”
A collection of starlings is called a murmuration and when they roam the skies together, it’s beautiful.
This video is more artistic than the one I linked to in 2011, but the birds are super close in the older one:
This didn’t feel like 8 minutes at all, which I guess, at my age, is the whole point. (via @mrgan)
In a report from 1967, Walter Cronkite takes us on a brief tour of what they imagined the home office would be like in the 2000s.
In the 21st century, it may be that no home will be complete without a computerized communications console.
Cronkite also toured the kitchen and living room of the future.
(via viewsource)
This video of artist Li Hongbo demonstrating the complexity of his paper sculptures will blow your mind. More wild images at Dominik Mersch Gallery.
(via ★stellar)
David Friedman profiles Martin Goetz, who received the very first software patent granted by the US Patent Office in 1968.
Goetz’s patent is here.
Former three-term mayor of NYC Ed Koch died this morning at 88. Worth reading are obituaries by Robert McFadden in the NY Times:
Mr. Koch’s 12-year mayoralty encompassed the fiscal austerity of the late 1970s and the racial conflicts and municipal corruption scandals of the 1980s, an era of almost continuous discord that found Mr. Koch at the vortex of a maelstrom day after day.
But out among the people or facing a news media circus in the Blue Room at City Hall, he was a feisty, slippery egoist who could not be pinned down by questioners and who could outtalk anybody in the authentic voice of New York: as opinionated as a Flatbush cabby, as loud as the scrums on 42nd Street, as pugnacious as a West Side reform Democrat mother.
“I’m the sort of person who will never get ulcers,” the mayor - eyebrows devilishly up, grinning wickedly at his own wit - enlightened the reporters at his $475 rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village on Inauguration Day in 1978. “Why? Because I say exactly what I think. I’m the sort of person who might give other people ulcers.”
and Ben Smith at Buzzfeed:
Koch, New York City’s dominant political figure of the 1980s and the architect of what remains its governing political coalition, stayed politically relevant through his long political twilight, courted aggressively by figures including Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama for his role as a proxy for pro-Israel Democrats willing, but not eager, to cross party lines.
But Koch’s later years of quips, movie reviews, and presidential politics remain secondary to his central legacy, which is in New York’s City Hall. Tall and gangly with a domed, bald head and a knowing smile, Koch was New York’s mayor and its mascot from 1978 to 1989. Through three terms, he repeated one question like a mantra: “How’m I doing?” At first, the answer was clear to observers who had watched the city slide toward bankruptcy: exceptionally well. Koch managed New York back from the brink, drove hard bargains with municipal unions, cut jobs where he had to and reduced taxes where he could. He presided over a boom in Manhattan, and spent his new revenues on renewing the south Bronx.
But as the Koch administration moved its third term, the mayor lost his momentum. As Wall Street boomed in the 1980s, Koch took advantage of the new revenues to double New York City’s budget and offer tax breaks to real estate developers. But the largesse couldn’t buy him friends: he clashed with black leaders and his old allies among Manhattan’s liberal democrats. New York became famous for its racial tensions and rising crime. He courted the Democratic Party bosses of Queens and the Bronx only to be tarnished by the corruption scandals that surrounded them.
Here’s the trailer for Koch, a documentary on the former mayor that coincidentally opens today in limited release:
The Perennial Plate videos always make me jealous, and this beautiful cut of a “day” in India is no exception. This is gorgeous and you should watch it on full screen.
Carlin Isles is one of the world’s fastest men at the 100 meters but that wasn’t good enough to make the US Olympic team. So he looked for other sports in which to make his mark and settled on rugby sevens. The difference in speed between him and the other players on the field is startling.
I saw this video back in December and didn’t think much of it, aside from “wow, that dude is fast”. But on Twitter the other day, Robin Sloan suggested it was Kottke-esque. Now that I’ve watched it again, I think I know what he was getting at.
People in tech talk a lot about innovation and disruption but there’s a lot of hand-waving that happens when you attempt to pinpoint what those things mean. One of the reasons I enjoy following sports — and in particular the sporting world’s outliers (Messi, Jordan, Billy Beane, Rodman, Magnus Carlsen, Vonn, Belichick, Federer, knuckleball pitchers, Barry Sanders, Serena, etc.) — is that you can see innovation and disruption in action, more or less directly. When Carlin Isles takes a pass from one of his teammates and blazes past the other team, it’s clear he’s playing an entirely different game than the other 13 players on the field and profiting handsomely from it…innovation results in disruption.
(Oh, and it’s not that Isles is necessarily any good at rugby…that remains to be seen. But the combination of speed and size that he brings to the game is a disruptive innovation and opposing teams will have to change the way they play when he’s on the field.)
Update: Like I said, it remains to be seen whether or not Isles has a big impact on rugby, but Jonah Lomu was a star rugby player who had a long-lasting influence on the game:
Lomu in his prime was not quite as fast as Isles (10.13s vs 10.8s in the 100 meters) but at 6’5” and 276 lbs, he had a brutal combination of pace and size. (via @dan_connolly)
Paperman accompanied Wreck-It Ralph in the theaters last year but was released online yesterday. The short film is nominated for an Oscar in part because of its aesthetic: it’s a CGI-animated film from Disney that looks like it’s hand drawn.
Director John Kahrs told Cartoon Brew that the origin of Paperman “really came out of working so much with Glen [Keane] on Tangled.” After looking at the work of Keane — a classic Disney animator who worked on The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast and Aladdin, among many other projects — Kahrs found himself with a new appreciation for traditional animation and drawing techniques. “I thought, Why do we have to leave these drawings behind? Why can’t we bring them back up to the front of the image again? Is there a way that CG can kinda carry along the hand drawn line in a way that we haven’t done before?”
The answer was yes. It just required a technology that no one had actually created yet.
Reminds me a bit of what Wes Anderson did with th stop motion animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox…he went back to a more traditional look that made the whole thing look less polished than it might have with newer techniques.
Well, this is amazing (in the way that things requiring a ton of organization, commitment, and time are amazing, not in the way life-saving vaccines are amazing). Artist etoilec1 drew the Gangnam Style video, the entire thing, and presented it as a flipbook. Here’s his original Youtube where he says he had to remove the music because of copyright, so the embed below will likely not last long. Visit etoilec1’s page for several Dragon Ball Z flipbooks.
(via ★stellar)
Help Lord Grantham find his cigars, puff up pillows for Anna, and spy on other staff for Lady Mary in this “tastefully exciting” SNES version of Downton Abbey.
In June 1985, 17-year-old LL Cool J and his DJ Cut Creator played a gymnasium at Colby College in Waterville, Maine with maybe 120 people in attendance. At this point, his debut album hadn’t even come out yet and rapping/scratching was not widely known, so LL and CC give the unenthusiastic audience a little demonstration of what it’s all about.
This is amazing. The footage was digitized from VHS by the show’s organizer’s son and he adds more information about it in the comments:
LL was paid $500 for the show. Since he was the only rap act, he was worried it would a be short performance, so my dad suggested he fill it in with the scratching and beat boxing.
LL was signed to Def Jam. My dad tried to get RUN DMC, but could not afford them, so Def Jam told him he should bring up LL Cool J.
(via @sampotts)
Update: Here’s some more information about the show and the recording. (via @kaf19991)
Newer posts
Older posts
Socials & More