Geekologie recently featured a 360 Degree Light Field Display, which sounds pretty vanilla… what is that, a panel of LCDs that surround you? Actually, this is very exciting technology: it’s the closest equivalent to the three dimensional display we see in movies that we currently have. The technology combines a extremely fast spinning specially shaped mirror with a custom image output system to project objects in three dimensions, which you can actually walk around as if they really existed. Plus there are no special glasses required.
The video of the phenomenon, combined with the demonstration of the scanning and subsequent reproduction of a three dimensional object, is pretty stunning. However, the running man animation at the end is the single most stunning display demonstration I have ever seen.
Want to make an Old West style wanted poster? Well, Clarendon would be your typeface of choice. See it (or a very similar derivative of it) used to great effect on the tremendously well-designed site for 31Three, the design studio of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain.
Coudal Partners brings you another entry in the series entitled “Regrets.” This film is a cautionary (and incredibly funny) personal tale about… well, you’ll have to watch.
Since you’re so interested in model railroads, maybe you should, you know, buy a model railroad.
Jeremy Messersmith, a Minneapolis musician who Mykala brought to my attention recently, has a good set of tunes from his latest album at his website. You can listen to his entire track “7:02,” which Mykala had been searching for. Perhaps she found it here. You can, too! If you really dig the stuff, you can purchase Jeremy’s latest effort, “The Alcatraz Kid,” for $10.
How about a Staple Free Stapler, which attaches up to 5 sheets of paper without the need for crazy metallic staples! Amazing. As an office supply junky, I’m inclined to spring for this, as it is only $6.
Time for a spot/spate/bit of recent t-shirt items I’ve seen that have the rare quality of humor and viability for personal wear.
Stupid Cupid by Budi Satria Kwan pictures a hapless would-be couple on opposite ends of a couch surrounded by missed arrows, with a determined cupid overhead trying to hit someone below. Pretty good approximation of love.
Heroism from Penny Arcade pictures a stylized Guitar Hero headstock and frets set into a brilliant blue flame. If it’s a parody of a famous shirt, can someone let me know what shirt that is? I don’t know.
With that we conclude this irregular edition of t-shirt redux.
The Wikipedia entry about Jeremy Bentham, a 1900s “philosopher and social reformer,” proves that the British have better senses of humor than the Americans:
As requested in [Jeremy Bentham’s] will, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet, termed his “Auto-icon”. Originally kept by his disciple Dr. Southwood Smith, it was acquired by University College London in 1850. The Auto-Icon is kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the College. For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the Auto-Icon was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where he was listed as “present but not voting”. Tradition holds that if the council’s vote on any motion is tied, the auto-icon always breaks the tie by voting in favor of the motion.
An interesting introduction to the world of set designing for TV: you get 8500 square feet of space and 8 weeks during which you have to assemble a convincing (and in this case obsessively accurate) reproduction of a 1960’s office. Read more about this project at Dwell Blog - “Mid-Century Madness .” What I find particularly cool:
“All the executive chairs in cast aluminum and leather are original Time-Life chairs that were in the Time-Life building,” she tells me. “We found them at an office surplus store in Gardena called TR Trading.”
So what this is saying: basically, there are giant warehouses with awesome “old school” and authentic furniture in them. All we get here in Minneapolis is small, overpriced boutiques of mismatched mid-century pieces. An overstuffed warehouse would be a refreshing change. Anyway, talk about attention to detail:
“The typewriters are way off. The Selectric didn’t come out until 1961 and we’re in 1960. But we explain it away by saying that what the secretaries have are all prototypes that they got because Sterling Cooper is handling the Selectric advertising account.”
Anyone who calls 1 model year difference (during a period over 40 years ago) “way off” is pretty detail oriented. That said, if this is what a TV show I haven’t yet heard of goes through to make its sets, I can only begin to comprehend what a major motion picture studio brings together in period films such as Pleasantville.
In this video, a mobile phone salesman on “Britain’s Got Talent” sings Nessun Dorma. I won’t spoil the results, though you may have seen this one already.
