Two of my favorite 90s cartoons have finally made it to DVD!
July 18, 2008
July 17, 2008
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20 Examples of Awesome Geek Art
This unidentified individual is clearly a big fan of html. For the uninitiated, the </head> and <body> tags are used to define areas of a web page.
This ‘futuristic motorbike’ called ‘Unlimited Drive’ is made entirely of computer and VCR parts. Created in 1995, this piece measures 18” x 7” x 7”. The wheels are magnetic discs from old computer hard drives. It was created by Alex Andromeda, who has also made dozens more sculptures of recycled computer parts.
Like ASCII graffiti, ASCII art consists of pictures created from 95 printable ASCII characters and also loosely refers to text-based art in general. It can be created with any text editor, though ASCII artists now often use programs to convert pixels to ASCII. This image, showing Ian McKellen as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, was created by ‘Yet Another Language Geek’.
These two paintings depicting Mario and Luigi from ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Are called ‘Rough Night Out’ and ‘Rougher Night Out’, respectively. They’re by artist Bob Dob, who seeks to give his woesome bad-boy characters a sardonic aura of humor and pain.
Glasgow, Scotland based artist Klingatron reflected the sentiments of millions of geeks worldwide with this bit of graffiti, ‘I’m only popular on the internet’. Klingatron only recently got started with stencil graffiti after buying a book on the subject in 2004.
This giant VHS sculpture pays tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Seattle artist David Herbert created this 2×4x8-ft sculpture of foam, plexiglass and latex paint.
You have to be a pretty big Trekkie to get your entire back covered in portraits of Spock, Kirk, Picard and Data, from left to right. Then again, Star Trek fans tend to be a pretty devoted bunch. Few people would argue that this qualifies as a very geeky piece of body art.
In another Star Trek-themed work, artist Deborah Sperber has created this piece called ‘Spock, Kirk and McCoy Beaming In (Barely There)’. The truly amazing thing about this is that each character is actually a beaded curtain. Sperber threads thousands of colored beads onto threads to create the portraits.
There’s nothing quite as geeky as a giant portrait of Stephen Colbert made of 768 Rubik’s cubes. Artist David Litwin says, “What does one do with 768 cubes once you’ve made your company logo? I spent way too much time getting them stickered properly to just leave it at that. No, you move on to doing other pictures. I had considered great works of art (Mona Lisa, etc.), but thought a tribute to Stephen Colbert would be more fun.”
This tattoo adorns the chest of one ‘MC Router’, the ‘queen of nerdcore’. The 22-year-old from Texas also has ‘geek life’ tattooed across her knuckles. Nerdcore, in case you’re wondering, is a subgenre of hip hop characterized by themes relating to nerd life including Star Wars, computers and science.
There have been literally thousands of interpretations of the Mona Lisa, but none that pay tribute to Princess Leia of Star Wars quite so artfully as this one. Artist Jim Hance said that as of late June he was still working on this painting, but it looks great to us already.
If you’ve ever wondered what the skeletons of cartoon characters like the Roadrunner, Tom & Jerry or Bugs Bunny look like, artist Hyung Koo Lee has created a series called ‘Animatus’ that imagines exactly that. The sculptures are made from resin, aluminum, stainless steel wire, springs and oil paint. Pictured is ‘Anas Animatus’, which you may recognize as Dewey, Huey and Louie from ‘DuckTales’.
Paul the Wine Guy found this instance of Mozilla Firefox-inspired graffiti while working on his ‘IT everywhere’ photo series. IT graffiti is getting more and more common, with everything from Microsoft references to pixelated hourglasses and cursors being spray painted on all manner of surfaces.
Mike Rea creates these awesomely weird sculptures including a space capsule, a time machine and this ‘Suit for Steven Hawking’. His sculptures are made primarily of wood with a little foam, rope and burlap thrown in here and there. Of his work, Mike says, “My goal is to create the idea of an object that remains a dream. The objects I create are based on fictions, rather than realities.”
Mark, the proud owner of this math tattoo, wrote to Carl Zimmer’s Science Tattoo Emporium, “This tattoo is the Zermelo-Fraenkel with Choice axioms of set theory. These nine axioms are the basis for ZFC set theory, which is the most commonly studied form of set theory and the most well known set of axioms as well. From these nine axioms, one can derive all of mathematics. These provide the foundation of mathematics, a field that you can likely tell that I love dearly.”
German artist Aram Bartholl created this 3-D Google Maps marker of wood, fabric and paper and made it into an art installation. Bartholl said of the project, “The project “Map” questions the red markers of the location based search engine Google Maps. The size of the rebuilt red Marker in reality corresponds to the size of a marker in the web interface in max zoom factor of the map.”
Pixiles are interactive digital sculptures that turn static objects into an ‘interactive illusion’. Virtual scenes are projected onto spheres on a mobile, which then move and seem to interact with each other and their environment. They respond to touch, body movements, sound and even wind blowing. The resulting holographic illusion makes it seem as though the objects are reacting to gravity and friction.
This is an example of ‘DNA Art’, a visualization of an individual’s DNA on canvas. Customers have their DNA swabbed and it’s then analyzed in a laboratory, and made visible through a special process involving special coloring matter and ultraviolet light. A special camera is then used to take a high-resolution photograph. DNA Art UK, which created the picture above, claims to use the .10% of DNA that makes each person unique to create their DNA art.
A graffiti artist who calls himself ‘Invader’ has been plastering tiles in the shape of characters from first-generation arcade games all over the walls of cities around the world. Invader is, as you can see, especially fond of the classic ‘Pacman’ game. Invader has put up his creations in 35 cities around the world.
The Graffiti Research Lab (GRL), kings of the light graffiti movement and unquestionably geeky graffiti artists, used a high powered projector, computer parts and a camera to ‘write’ on the side of a building with a ‘mega laser’, which has a beam that can reach 5 miles away, for their ‘L.A.S.E.R.’ project.
[Via weburbanist]
The Truth About Plastic
If you know where to find a good plastic-free shampoo, can you tell Jeanne Haegele? Last September, the 28-year-old Chicago resident resolved to cut plastics out of her life. The
marketing coordinator was concerned about what the chemicals leaching out of some common types of plastic might be doing to her body. She was also worried about the damage all the plastic refuse was doing to the environment. So she hopped on her bike and rode to the nearest grocery store to see what she could find that didn't include plastic. "I went in and barely bought anything," Haegele says. She did purchase some canned food and a carton of milk--only to discover later that both containers were lined with plastic resin. "Plastic," she says, "just seemed like it was in everything."
marketing coordinator was concerned about what the chemicals leaching out of some common types of plastic might be doing to her body. She was also worried about the damage all the plastic refuse was doing to the environment. So she hopped on her bike and rode to the nearest grocery store to see what she could find that didn't include plastic. "I went in and barely bought anything," Haegele says. She did purchase some canned food and a carton of milk--only to discover later that both containers were lined with plastic resin. "Plastic," she says, "just seemed like it was in everything."She's right. Back when Dustin Hoffman received the most famous one-word piece of career advice in cinema history, plastic was well on its way to becoming a staple of American life. The U.S. produced 28 million tons of plastic waste in 2005--27 million tons of which ended up in landfills. Our food and water come wrapped in plastic. It's used in our phones and our computers, the cars we drive and the planes we ride in. But the infinitely adaptable substance has its dark side. Environmentalists fret about the petroleum needed to make it. Parents worry about the possibility of toxic chemicals making their way from household plastic into children's bloodstreams. Which means Haegele isn't the only person trying to cut plastic out of her life--she isn't even the only one blogging about this kind of endeavor. But those who've tried know it's far from easy to go plastic-free. 
"These things are so ubiquitous that it is practically impossible to avoid coming into contact with them," says Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri.
Vom Saal is a prominent member of a group of researchers who have raised worrisome questions in recent years about the safety of some common types of plastics. We think of plastic as essentially inert; after all, it takes hundreds of years for a plastic bottle to degrade in a landfill. But as plastic ages or is exposed to heat or stress, it can release trace amounts of some of its ingredients. Of particular concern these days are bisphenol-a (BPA), used to strengthen some plastics, and phthalates, used to soften others. Each ingredient is a part of hundreds of household items; BPA is in everything from baby bottles to can linings (to protect against E. coli and botulism), while phthalates are found in children's toys as well as vinyl shower curtains. And those chemicals can get inside us through the food, water and bits of dust we consume or even by being absorbed through our skin. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 92% of Americans age 6 or older test positive for BPA--a sign of just how common the chemical is in our plastic universe.
Scientists like vom Saal argue that BPA and phthalates are different from other environmental toxins like lead and mercury in that these plastic ingredients are endocrine disrupters, which mimic hormones. Estrogen and other hormones in relatively tiny amounts can cause vast changes, so some researchers worry that BPA and phthalates could do the same, especially in young children. Animal studies on BPA found that low-dose exposure, particularly during pregnancy, may be associated with a variety of ills, including cancer and reproductive problems. Some human studies on phthalates linked exposure to declining sperm quality in adult males, while other work has found that early puberty in girls may be associated with the chemicals.
Does that mean even today's minuscule exposure levels are too much? The science is still murky, and human studies are few and far from definitive. So while Canada and the Democratic Republic of Wal-Mart are moving to ban BPA in baby bottles, the Food and Drug Administration maintains that BPA products pose no danger, as does the European Union. Even so, scientists like Mel Suffet, a professor of environmental-health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, say avoiding certain kinds of plastics is simply being better safe than sorry.
As researchers continue to examine plastic's impact on our bodies, there's no doubt that cutting down on the material will help the environment. Plastic makes up nearly 12% of our trash, up from 1% in 1960. You can literally see the result 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of San Francisco in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic debris twice the size of Texas. The rising cost of petroleum may get plastic manufacturers to come up with incentives for recycling; current rates stand at less than 6% in the U.S. But the best way to reduce your plastic impact on the earth is simply to use less.
Here's how. You can avoid plastic bottles and toys labeled with the numbers 3 or 7, which often contain BPA or phthalates, and steer clear of vinyl shower curtains and canned foods--especially those with acidic contents like tomatoes. Vom Saal counsels that the cautious should also avoid heating plastic in microwaves. But get rid of the stuff altogether? "It's hard to go all the way," says Haegele, who, 10 months into her experiment, is leading a mostly plastic-free life. Although she still uses a plastic toothbrush, she's experimented with her own toothpaste (made of baking soda, cinnamon and vodka; for the recipe, go to her blog, lifelessplastic.blogspot.com She has used vinegar for conditioner and is searching for a decent shampoo that doesn't come in a plastic bottle. She has tried soaplike bars of shampoo, but they make her hair feel sticky. Plus, they sometimes come wrapped in--you guessed it--plastic.
[Via time.com]
July 16, 2008
Levitating Magnet Demonstration!
With the help of a ceramic cup and liquid nitrogen this magnet can levitate. Making it a superconductor by causing it to have really low resistance and thus repels the black magnet from the silver one before the polarity reverses again as the liquid's temparature rises.
I love science!
I love science!
Ferro-Fluid Demonstrations!
A ferrofluid is a liquid which becomes strongly polarised in the presence of a magnetic field.The fluid is basically made up of very small (nano-small) particles of ferromagnetic material. Ferromagnetic items are the same type of magnets you would find on your refrigerator, except these are obviously much smaller. They are usually suspended in water, and something interesting is that although they are a common type of magnet, they do not retain their magnatism on their own, only when an external magnatism is applied. That is what gives them the ability to display the external magnetic field so well. Thus people for a a few yars now have conducted living sculptures with this fluid, the results are amazing!
This one's so crazy that it looks computer-generated. With lots of preperation, the people who produced this video were able to create art with slowly moving magnets around the colloid of liquid and magnetic particles.
The electrons (delocalised) around the molecules are pushed to one side of the liquid by the magnetic field. Like charges repel (in the same way your hair stands on end if you rub a balloon on it.)
This one's long and a bit out of focus, but the music makes it creepy and the setup makes it look very alien like!
TROUBLE FOR JONZE'S WILD THINGS
LOS ANGELES TIMES writer Patrick Goldstein's blog paints a troublesome picture for the upcoming big-screen feature WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE from Warner Bros.Dave Eggers' script, from the classic children's book by Maurice Sendak, received good early reviews. The $80-million film was filmed in 2006 in Australia, originally slated for an October 2008 release, pushed back to fall 2009 and has now disappeared off the schedule.
Rumors have been brewing for months that the film is in serious trouble,
including accounts from a screening in December at which children in the
audience were crying and leaving the theater.
The story follows a mischievous boy who is sent to his room without
supper and creates a world full of exotic monsters. Apparently, the
movie's big problem is the boy, played by newcomer Max Records, is
almost entirely unlikable and comes off as bratty and mean rather than
impish.
Jonze also apparently had problems making the creatures scary or funny, as the actors in furry creature suits with animated faces just seemed
blank, without warmth or emotion. CG is now being used to create more lifelike monsters.
Warner Bros. head Alan Horn told Goldstein the studio's side of the story, denying rumors that Jonze has been taken off the project.
"We've given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film," Horn said. "We'd like to find a common ground that represents Spike's vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge
on our hands. But I wouldn't call it a problem, simply a challenge. No
one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a
very special piece of material and we're just trying to get it right."
Warners isn't in a particular rush, as its trying to fit the 12 to 14 New Line films into its release schedule. But it reveals a weakness in Warners' strategy of combining talented directors with mainstream material. They've had a number of successes, including Christopher Nolan with BATMAN BEGINS and the upcoming THE DARK KNIGHT, Alfonso Cuaron's HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN and Steven Soderbergh's OCEAN'S
ELEVEN series.
They've also had disasters, including giving INVASION to German DOWNFALL director Oliver
Hirschbiegel, both of which flopped.
"We try to take a few shots," Horn said. "Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. The jury is still out on this one. But we remain confident that Spike is going to figure things out and at the end of the day we'll have an artistically compelling movie."
Goldstein speculates if Warners' gamble will pay off with WILD THINGS, especially if Jonze is set on a dark, disturbing film and the studio wants a feel-good family flick.
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