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Much of the village on the Thai island of Koh Panyee is actually floating; the island is too rocky to build much of anything on land. So when a group of kids wanted to start a soccer club, they built themselves a floating soccer pitch…which led to some interesting advantages once they started playing against other teams.
(via @dunstan)
A montage of spoilers from 71 different films, including The Usual Suspects, Citizen Kane, The 400 Blows, Inception, and The Graduate.
Or if you prefer, something similar in t-shirt form. (via devour)
What a great idea…Noah Kalina, Adam Lisagor, William Wilkinson, and Oliver White made an iPhone app that helps you remember to take a daily photo of yourself inspired by Noah’s Everyday project.
Watch closely for the Noah Durden character…
From the excellent blog The Art of the Title Sequence, a short video called A Brief History of Title Design.
The video page has a full listing of the movies from which the opening title sequences are pulled.
Nate Dogg died yesterday; he was 41 years old.
With his deep, melodic voice and smooth soul rumble, Dogg was one of the key elements in the rise of the West Coast G-Funk sound pioneered by Death Row Records in the early 1990s. Though overshadowed by such peers as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Warren G, Nate was a critical participant in a number of major left-coast gangsta hits, including G’s “Regulate” and Dre’s iconic solo debut, 1992’s The Chronic.
There is no 3-D CGI involved in this amazing Saturn fly-by video…it’s made from thousands of hi-res photographs taken by the Cassini orbiter.
Wait for the full-frame full-color video starting at around 1:00. (thx, sam)
Matt Haughey’s SXSW talk, Real World Moderation: Lessons from 11 Years of Community, was quite well received so he posted a version he recorded at home to Vimeo.
After 11 years of running MetaFilter.com, I (and the other moderators) have been through just about everything, and we’ve built dozens of custom tools to weed out garbage, spammers, and scammers from the site.
I’ll cover how to identify and solve problems including identity, trolling, sockpuppets, and other nefarious community issues, show off custom tools we’ve developed for MetaFilter, and show you how to incorporate them into your own community sites.
(via @pb)
On Jeopardy today, a contestant named Ethan responded incorrectly to a $1000 clue with “What is kottke.org?”
The best part is how disgusted the viewer is…”Are you freaking kidding me? Oh jeeezz…” Ethan, if you’re out there and if there was actually such an item, I would totally send you a kottke.org tote bag for working in a reference to kottke.org on a show that has such a storied past on the site. What a lovely 13th birthday present. (thx, justin)
Two videos of the tsunami triggered by the 8.9 magnitude eathquake that struck Japan. Both are from Sendai:
For their latest mission, Improv Everywhere got someone who looked very much like King Philip IV of Spain to sign autographs in front of a Velázquez painting of the monarch.
Both the iPad 2 Smart Cover and the 30-second commercial for it are exceedingly well done.
Watch as some guy upgrades his computer through every version of Windows, from 1985’s Windows 1.0 to the present-day Windows 7.
The timeline of events goes like this:
Last night, I posted the trailer for the sequel to The Hangover.
This morning, my friend David posts the following on Twitter:
Poleaxed by indication that pop culture aesthete @jkottke might actually like Hangover, the execrable frat boy flick
To which I replied a few hours later:
@daveg Are you kidding? That movie is hilarious.
Anil suggested a debate:
@jkottke @daveg I will pay you guys for an Oxford debate about the Hangover’s merits, or lack thereof.
And Michael Sippey went there and posted a video of an animated David and an animated me having a debate about The Hangover:
I thought you were a pop culture aesthete.
No, I’m from the Midwest.
You live in Manhattan.
But I grew up eating hot dogs.
But you write about expensive conceptual restaurants and post pictures of contemporary art like that thing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where the woman sat at the table all summer.
That’s a pretty accurate five-line bio of me.
This is a jetsprint boat race; I’ve never seen a boat turn so sharply at such a fast speed.
A fascinating look at how a Foley artist makes all of the sounds that find their way into Hollywood films.
(thx, deron)
Someone draws a straight line. The next person’s task is to trace that line as precisely as possible. Repeat 500 times. The lines get really messy surprisingly fast:
As David said, this is a nice demonstration of evolution.
A short documentary report from a thousand years into the future about The Beatles.
First-hand records are certainly scarce. There’s a lot we don’t know about The Beatles, but we do know that these four young men — John Lennon, Paul MacKenzie, Greg Hutchinson, and Scottie Pippen — were some of the finest musicians that ever existed. The Beatles rose to prominence when they travelled from their native Linverton to America to perform at Ed Sullivan’s annual Woodstock festival.
Watch as a woman gets chocolate sauce poured all over her face for almost ten minutes.
I don’t know what to think of this one: mesmerizing? yucky? erotic? hunger-inducing? I have a hungry tingling disgust going on here…
The New York Times gets a rare behind the scenes look at Pixar.
(via devour)
Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, more commonly known as Ronaldo, retired from soccer today as one of the most decorated players ever: he won two Ballon d’Ors, three FIFA player of the year awards, was on two World Cup-winning Brazilian teams, and scored the most goals in World Cup history. The video is a bit fuzzy, but here are ten of Ronaldo’s greatest goals:
That backheel in #8 is just otherworldly, as is the spin move in #5. See also Ronaldo’s skills.
A nearly shot-for-shot version of Joy Division performing Transmission live in 1979…with Playmobil characters.
Original version is here. (via hello typepad)
Watch as Chuck Patterson skis (not surfs, skis) the Jaws surf break in Maui.
And for some reason, he’s using poles!
Usher’s OMG sounds suspiciously close to a Christmas carol that Homer wrote in an episode of The Simpsons. Take a listen:
“In France, everyone has a view of the Eiffel Tower” and other French stereotypes:
Also, la version française. (thx, rosecrans)
Angie Dickinson and Lee Marvin “perform” Steve Reich’s Clapping Music. This is mesmerizing.
(via @sippey)
Kirby Ferguson is back with the next installment of Everything is a Remix, his examination of remix techniques used in film.
Featured are two of the most extensive borrowers in film: George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino. Part one is available here.
The GVCS is a collection of 40 machines needed to “create a small civilization with modern-day comforts…like a life-size Lego set”.
Very ambitious, but it sounds like they’re making progress. The brick-making machine alone is impressive and actually available for sale.
This video shows what various planets (Jupiter, Mars, etc.) would look like in the night sky if they orbited the Earth at the same distance as the Moon.
See also Imagining Earth with Saturn’s rings and Helvetica! In! Space!
No one has been able to figure out why humans can’t walk, swim, or even drive in straight lines without reference points. Instead, we go in circles:
(via df)
IBM is celebrating 100 years of business with a pair of videos; the following is a 30-minute film by Errol Morris (music by Philip Glass) on the history of the company.
A second film, 100 x 100, shows 100 people each presenting an IBM milestone that occurred the year they were born; not sure if Morris did this one as well. (via df)
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