HD video by Hubble telescope
This HD video taken by the Hubble telescope of Ganymede going behind Jupiter looks completely computer generated and surreal.
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kottke.org posts about video
Audio aquariums
[Video removed because I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the annoying autoplay. Go here to watch it.]
It works through a camera that uses recognition software that tracks objects based on their shape and color. The software then links each movement to different instruments that change in pitch and tempo as the fish patrol the tank. Fish that move toward the surface have a higher pitch. The faster they move, the faster the tempo.
The idea is to create audio aquariums for the blind. (via clusterflock)
Speedcubing with the Fridrich Method
The Fridrich Method is a collection of more than 50 algorithms for solving the Rubik’s Cube. Developed by Dr. Jessica Fridrich, a Binghamton University electrical engineering professor, it is currently the fastest way to solve the Cube.
Cubing is a deep rabbit hole on the web so just two additional things. Here’s Dr. Fridrich solving the Cube in 16 seconds, which is actually 2 seconds slower than the one-handed world record holder. And this…this is just amazing: 7 cube moves in just 0.7 seconds (same move, a lot slower).
Ok, I lied, one more. Will Smith can solve the Cube in less than a minute.
Citizen cartographers, unite!
Google is soliciting contributions to Google Maps with their Map Maker service.
With Google Map Maker, you can become a citizen cartographer and help improve the quality of maps and local information in your region. You are invited to map the world with us!
They’ve posted several videos to YouTube that show timelapsed edits to maps; here’s Islamabad, Pakistan coming into existence. (via o’reilly radar)
Update: Several people wrote in to recommend OpenStreetMap instead because Google doesn’t make the data available in a raw form whereas the OSM data is under a CC license available for derivative works like OpenCycleMap. (thx, mike and everyone)
Proto parkour
From a 1977 film called Gizmo, some urban tumbling from the 1930s that strongly resembles the contemporary sport of parkour.
The full film is available on Google Video. (via waxy)
The President’s Guide to Science
Aired a few weeks before the 2008 election, The President’s Guide to Science is a 50-minute video featuring several prominent scientists — Richard Dawkins, Michio Kaku, etc. — offering their advice for the incoming US President, basically what they would teach the President about science. (via smashing telly)
Muppet chickens + 2001: A Space Odyssey
After posting the video of the chickens from the Muppets clucking their way through the Blue Danube waltz, I couldn’t resist putting it together with the most iconic use of that tune in contemporary culture. Here, then, is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Chicken Cordon Bleu Danube cut.
The Muppets sing
Beeker from The Muppets sings Ode to Joy.
Meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep, meep meep…
Gonzo, Camilla, and the rest of the chickens sing The Blue Danube Waltz.
Bock bock bock bock, bock bock, bock bock. Bock bock bock bock, bock bock, bock bock…
Somewhat related: Beaker sings Yellow by Coldplay.
Brad Pitt in yellow
For the completist only: Brad Pitt stars in a French? Japanese? commercial directed by Wes Anderson.
As the French would say, QEQLB? (via le fiddle)
Update: A YouTube commenter noted that this commercial is probably based on Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot’s Holiday.
Designing the Obama logo
Great two-part video interview with Sol Sender about designing the logo for the Obama campaign. Includes some early design sketches and other designs that made it to the final phase. (via quips)
1905 subway ride
Here’s a video from 1905 of a NYC subway car going from 14th Street to 42nd Street. It’s funny to see all the men in suits and hats running for the train…it takes some of the formality out what seems from photographs to be a more dignified time. Also, anyone know what line/train this is?
Update: The inbox consensus seems clustered around the opinion that this train is running on the contemporary 4/5/6 line. Here’s a 1904 map which shows the then-IRT line in question (in red). At 42nd St, the line runs crosstown to Times Square and then up the 1/2/3. (thx jason et al.)
How hot dogs are made
How hot dogs are made. It’s true, sometimes you don’t want to know how the sausage gets made. (via cyn-c)
Disney’s 1955 Man in Space film
Man in Space was a short film made by Disney about the possibility of putting humans into space. The film was first shown in 1955 and features several prominent scientists of the day, including Wernher von Braun. The film is available for viewing on YouTube in eight parts.
Prehistory of Rocketry (1/8)
Early Rockets (2/8)
How Rockets Work (3/8)
Space Medicine - Adapting to Space (4/8)
Space Medicine - Dangers in Space (5/8)
Werner von Braun - Designing a Rocket (6/8)
Conquest of Space - Launch! (7/8)
Conquest of Space - In Orbit (8/8)
Watch as they gloss over the use of rockets to bomb Europe during WWII and caution against smoking in space. Man in Space was followed by two other Disney short films, Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond. Particularly entertaining is von Braun explaining his complicated plan to send a manned spaceship to the moon and back, which involves a permanent orbiting space station — which looks not unlike a giant bicycle wheel — with a crew of fifty and powered by a nuclear reactor.
Carts of Darkness
The trailer for Carts of Darkness, a documentary film about Vancouver bottle collectors that have taken to racing shopping carts downhill. More excerpts are available on YouTube.
Inside a frozen pizza factory
Video of the inner workings of a mostly automatic Irish frozen pizza factory. I like the tomato sauce shooter (the way it tracks along with the pizzas briefly as they whiz by on the conveyor belt) and the writhing pepperoni sticks.
Update: Inside an Austrian bread factory where they still made bread by hand.
Short Peter Saville interview
Designer Peter Saville — you know, iconic Joy Division album cover, Factory Records, etc. — talks about his process a little bit in this video interview.
Learning and filing, learning and filing. Sounds familiar, yeah? (thx, paul)
How to Build an Igloo
A fascinating companion to the recently posted book on how to build snow shelters is this 10-minute film produced by The National Film Board of Canada, How to Build an Igloo.
This is amazing. I had no idea that the blocks were arranged in a spiral pattern. (via five whys)
Carrying bricks on your head
Video of a man carrying 20 bricks on his head. And that’s not even the most amazing part…he just kinda throws the bricks up there while staying balanced. I don’t know, this looks fake to me…my extensive block stacking experience over the past few months indicates that this sort of thing is impossible. (via cyn-c)
Randy Farmer talks broken windows online
In this video interview, long-time online community expert Randy Farmer explicitly references the broken windows theory and its application to online spaces. He tells an anecdote about how the quick deletion of trolling questions from the front page of Yahoo Answers led to a decline in the number of trolls. (thx, bryce)
One-man band plays and sings Thriller
In a compilation of 64 videos all shown on the same page, one man recreates Thriller — the beats, the howling, the singing — all by himself. This is pretty awesome, like Christian Marclay on speed. (thx, christopher)
Warning, spoilers
The Fine Brothers spoil 100 movies in less than 4 minutes. See also the spoilers t-shirt and an extensive text list of spoilers.
The Eerie Stillness of Chicken Heads
As this video demonstrates, if you move a chicken’s body around, its head stays marvelously still.
(via waxy)
Charging an iPod with an onion and Gatorade
How to charge your iPod using just an onion and some Gatorade. Oh yeah? When we were kids, we ran digital clocks off of potatoes and loved it! Fear the power of the tuber!
Update: It’s a myth, busted by Mythbusters no less. Like I said, tubers rule. (thx, everyone)
Egypt’s strongest man
If the translation to English is to be trusted, Egypt’s strongest man generates 240 horsepower, is medically exempt from working because he might hurt someone in the workplace, and, well, it just gets better from there. Oh, and HE’S NEVER SLEPT. (via delicious ghost)
Nabokov on video
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
I’m about due for a reread.
Snoop Dogg on Martha Stewart
If you can stomach more than 30 seconds of it, here’s Snoop Dogg on Martha Stewart making cognac mashed potatoes. Here’s part 2, in which Snoop and Martha compare posses — bodyguards in Snoop’s case and personal assistants for Martha. One of commenters on YouTube correctly notes that Stewart has spent more time in jail than Snoop.
Trailer for 2012
Oh, Roland Emmerich, you know how to push my buttons. As an unapologetic fan of The Day After Tomorrow, I am vibrating on my chair in anticipation for 2012 (click for HD trailer, yadda yadda).
Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. ‘2012’ is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.
And John Cusack is in it! BTW, the music is from the trailer for The Shining. (via sarahnomics)
Ant architecture
It’s worth sitting through the annoying “in a world…” narration to see the structure of an immense colony of ants. The scientists poured 10 tons of concrete down into an abandoned ant colony, waited for it to harden, and then spent weeks excavating the results.
During the construction of the giant structure, it’s estimated that the ants hauled 40 tons of dirt out of the holes, the equivalent of building the Great Wall of China. (via cyn-c)
Update: The ant colony was not abandoned. Nice work, scientists!
Driving simulator for fruit flies
First, a fruit fly is tethered to a rod with a cylindrical LED display around it. The display shows geometric patterns that are known to make a fruit fly move left or right - a kind of virtual reality simulator for flies. Since the fly is tethered, it can’t actually move, but it tries to anyway. “The fly’s pretty dumb,” says roboticist Brad Nelson, who created the “flyborg” with colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
The patterns on the display are triggered by images transmitted from a camera mounted on a miniature robotic car. If the car approaches an obstacle, the display shows the appropriate pattern and the fly reacts accordingly. As it does so, another camera detects minute changes in the movements of its wings. “We measure the lift force and kinematics in real time,” says Nelson.
The goal is to figure out how the fly makes decisions about movement so that those decisions can be replicated by a computer.
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