Example: Gosper's Glider Gun

When Target decides to step it up a notch or ten, it is apaprently no joke. With their new Go International collections, every month there is a new famous designer collection at ridiculously low prices (i got this dress for 25$!) ~ and their third collection is by Parisian Paul+Joe's Sophie Albou, available only from Aug1-31st. While only partial collections are available at your standard Target stores, the FULL collection is available in at the Target Pop Up Boutique on the corner of Melrose Place and La Cienega.

This is all over the web today, but it's too cool to not post here. --MM

CVG has posted some brand spanking new screenshots of the upcoming Sonic Wii title -- called Sonic Wild Fire for now -- with demonstrations of how the Wiimote will be used in conjunction with the game.

It's a little tough to tell the actually graphical quality of the game through the screenshots, but from the looks of it, it appears to be not so next gen. At least, not from what you'd expect in a 2006 machine. Either way, as Nintendo says, it's not all about eye candy, it's the experience.

Check after the break for more screenshots.

Whooooosh! --MM

Ken Fischer, over at Ars Technica, has a great breakdown of a Q and A session at Siggraph that got a little heated. Apparently Mitch Singer, executive director of the digital policy group at Sony, had to endure some awkward questions about DRM. Ars Technica has that story.

Karen Sandler, an attorney from the Software Freedom Law Center, challenged Singer: "I am deeply suspicious of DRM technology in part because the DRM we see now says that it protects copyright law, but it also prevents legitimate use, for parody, news and education. (It) is overbroad for legitimate use. As the restriction stands now, when public material falls in to the public domain, the DRM tech stays in place and does not fall away. DRM also has the potential to compromise privacy and security."

read more

, originally uploaded by atari2600.

Latte land kansas city

Amazing Polish painter. --MM

Normalized is a project by Andreas Mølgaard (RCA), Mikkel Fredborg and Lasse Cleveland. Normalized is a place for exploration and relaxation. This game like environment has no beginning and end, there are no objectives, simply explore and listen. This synthetic environment was influenced by nature and the outdoors.

The level was constructed of structured boxes in 3D Studio Max. The boxes were then twisted, turned and squashed, thrown together at will and taken apart with deliberate imprecission. Created in BlitzMax (3D game engine based on the Basic programming language).

The sound engine allowed filtering and fade depends on distance and obstruction between the user and sound source. “The sounds were all build from scratch using 4 band wave generators and a lot of filtering. My main aim was to merely represent real sounds from nature, to support the representative stylized and artificial feeling of the visuals while as accuratly as possible sound like nature”.

Watch trailer

Semi-related : Here Be Dragons

Radiosity is clearly the new hotness - see also Alex Dragulescu's Spam Architecture and Michael Frumin's OGLE renderings of New York. --MM

The Wi-Fi in Your Handset - New York Times

It's a pretty innocuous headline and photo, but make no mistake this is an early salvo in what looks to be a heated battle over the control of the wireless infrastructure. The cell phone service providers are on one side, the equipment makers and software companies on the other. Governments? They are both omnipresent yet conspicuously absent from the core of the debate, they seem to only have a clue as to what is happening at certain key junctures (ie when municipal WiFi discussions get serious like in SF or Philadelphia).

Lacking any tact or decency, I therefore determined to create an alphabet using only subjects that, while they might have been unremarked a few decades ago, are now outside acceptable usage. But only just.

Ok, I'm behind most of the movie going public in that I just saw The 40 Year Old Virgin on Saturday night. Anyone who's seen it knows that part of what makes Steve Carell's character a dork is that he rides a bike. It's all tied up in his prolonged adolescence and, well, lack of "masculinity." Part of his growing up involves learning to drive -- as though it's de facto an aspect of adulthood. Scenes of him peddling furiously, carrying his wheel, tucking his pants into his socks, are all used for comic effect. This got me thinking about other cinematic representations of people whose primary mode of transport is the bike. What's your favorite? The most sympathetic? Continue reading for an extensive online "cycling in film" resource.

Bring back Puck for maximum bike-messenger road bike cool. --MM

A ruggedly handsome man emerges from under the hood of a car, rubbing his grimy hands on white cloth. Leaning against the dark sedan, another man, young and athletic looking, gifts the mechanic a neat new watch. His reward? The man leans in and the two share a kiss. Some kind of underground gay romantic comedy? No, it's a recent TV commercial for Italian designers Dolce & Gabbana, and it's part of a growing trend in European advertising toward ad campaigns that better represent consumers' diversity. And if those consumers are gay, so much the better for advertisers, who have found a way to tap into a disproportionately affluent slice of the market.

Chicago Tribune

That's because what motivates a person to e-mail a story is often different from what motivates that person to read one, says Steve Johnson. "Talk to people involved in digital publishing, and mostly they'll tell you that a story rises to the level of being e-mailed when it contains practical advice or cautionary tales -- on travel, say, or diet -- or when it has a 'holy-cow' factor," he writes. "Sometimes that means hard-news stories, as in, 'Holy cow, Israel is dropping bombs in Lebanon.' More often, though, it seems to be on the order of, 'Holy cow, a man tried to molest a cow.'"

Makes sense, and explains the breathless prose style of top headlines on Digg or Cosmo. --MM

The community of people who criticize Wikipedia form an interesting culture, as I noted earlier. If you want the links to do the research yourself, here's some places to start.

• The Onion, "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence": The first Onion piece that's actually made me LOL in years. "Did Betsy Ross, as legend has it, really have the biggest boobies in the New World?"

• ASCII: Jason Scott's weblog. Jason's done some amazing work with his BBS Documentary, his collection of text files, and he wrote a great post explaining why his documentary is Creative Commons-licensed, complete with a followup. But that's not why I mention him...
• Jason Scott's also written the most definitive critique of Wikipedia policy, here hosted by the Internet Archive.
• I mentioned Stacy Schiff's New Yorker article on Wikipedia, but this week's New Yorker features an article on the rise of amateurs that's really just a gloss on the most recent Pew Report on blogging. Apparently, most people want to use communication tools to communicate, but a few want to do journalism or make money.
• Finally ,Ikkyu2's Wikipedia user page, complete with a list of what's wrong with Wikipedia. See also LiveJournal and a phenomenal history of Ask MetaFilter answers.

Derek Daniels, a low-raking designer on the God of War team, recently broke the industry down like this:

"In the videogame design world you have Miyamoto, Kojima, Will Wright, David Jaffe, and a handful of others that have risen to the top that have a little more control of their future. Then you have the other faceless designers that no one knows working on games doing some downright nasty things that I'm sure their mothers do not want to hear."

Sounds like the porn industry, right? Well, that's Daniels' point at least. He reckons that videogame design is a young man's gamble, with a lifespan about as long as a girl doing porn. And when you finally burn out and leave the game behind, you're left with "a skillset that cannot be applied to anything else in life."

[Thanks, Art]

a collection of 3200 individual parts that make up a real Honda Racing F1 car, suspended in air on fine wires, just like an infographical, 3D exploded diagram. as a combination of engineering & sculpture, the resulting installation allows race fans to get closer to the engineering secrets of one of the world's most technically-advanced sports.
[ueba.net|thnkx analogAI]

The Church of St. Pierre has stirred debate among Parisian academics about the ethics of finishing a work left behind by a legendary architect.

Looks a lot like the Japanese sewer photos from last year. --MM

1. Rising cost of Energy
2. Experimental monetary system
3. Where are we in the Economic cycle?
4. Exodus of money from West to East
5. Decline of the American Empire

Great. --MM

Now that Macs are PCs -- we mean really real PCs that run Windows n' stuff -- the beige box world is having a harder time than ever keeping peoples' interest when their inner John Hodgman longs to walk on the wild side and snap up a Macintel. Re-enter Microsoft: the company's latest kick is, of course, vertical integration (see: Zune), so it should come as no surprise that Redmond's supposedly been issuing a strict aesthetic best-practices kit, called the Windows Vista Industrial Design Toolkit, to PC OEMs like HP and Gateway; apparently Microsoft's got a team of twenty some-odd designers working to guarantee the first round of Vista boxes are "objects of pure desire," sure to re-obsess jejune PC-buyers like it was Win95 all over again, even in spite of Cupertino's best laid plans. The claim is that Microsoft is in no way enforcing these guidelines or requiring PC manufacturers to pretty up their boxes, but even if they were, well, given how often Windows boxes tend to get hit with the fugly stick it might not be such a bad thing.

[Thanks, CoreyTheGent]

SUMO LOUNGE REVIEW!!! Andrew over at Sumo Lounge sent over this black Omni and Otto about a month ago, and i've been test driving it and having others come play with it as well. It is extremely comfortable for sitting and working outside i've found ~ a bit large for people crammed for space, but i love relaxing and working out here on the patio, where i'm posting this from. For the full verdict see below.

So here's my breakdown ---

So lazy. --MM

While a number of European countries are moving full-steam ahead on wave power development, the idea of harnessing ocean waves to generate electricity has remained a concept here in the US. That may be changing soon, as New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies Inc. has applied for a permit from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a 50 megawatts (MW) wave power installation off the Oregon coast. If approved, this would be the first utility-scale wave energy project in the country.

One step closer to harnessing the rotation of the earth as an energy source. --MM

Example projects made with visual programming software, vvvv. It looks like a mutant offspring of Max/MSP, Processing, and NodeBox. My absolute favorite feature is that it looks like you can submit screenshots of works in progress to the vvvv website directly from the application interface. --MM

The increasing number of obese Americans means two things for radiology: first, many are too heavy to be safely accommodated by scanning devices. Second, more people have so much body mass, the rays can't penetrate enough to yield quality imaging.

Scott Snibbe makes big, simple biofeedback amplifiers. --MM

"Sixteen Needs Met by Ingenuity" - Popular Science 1927. I like the pedal powered merry-go-round and the high speed bread toaster - Link.

See link for fabulous German hay gun. --MM

Wal-Mart Stores, admitting defeat in Germany's giant but cutthroat retail market, announced Friday that it would sell its 85 stores here to a German retailer, incurring a loss of $1 billion.

The decision to sell out to the Metro Group came two months after Wal- Mart sold its stores in South Korea and amounts to a rare retreat by the world's largest retailer from its breakneck global expansion.

In Germany, analysts say, Wal-Mart never got traction in a market characterized by unrelenting price competition, well-established discounters and the cultural resistance of German shoppers to hypermarkets, which sell fresh vegetables a few aisles away from lawn mowers. (THE NEW YORK TIMES)

(Nelson voice) Ha, ha! --MM

For the nomadix relaunch project i have coached 3 students from the school of art Hyperwerk (Basel, Switzerland). The goal was to design a new audiovisual content of a previous installation: nomadix. The Nomadix installation is composed of seven inflatable, motorized “screens” with a shape of a cone. The devices are made of a beamer, a computer, speakers, and a motor for each of the two axis of rotation.

Following students participated in the project: Markus Abt | Jan Dusek | Leander Herzog.

Non-rectangular projection screens are yummy. --MM

Lots of the DigitalGlobe satellite photos around the world have small lens flares like this one in Reykjavik which appear to be simply the sun reflecting off a shiny surface - no big deal there.

But reader Andrew Grannis brought our attention to this example of one such flare in Cincinnati, which is much larger than any other examples we’ve seen. If this is the result of a reflective object on the ground then it would have to be the size of a field. Any suggestions?

Thanks: Andrew Grannis

Categories: Weirdness and Ohio

View in Google Earth

Solar power installation, perhaps? --MM

Check out Flickr user 0_darcy_0’s awesome SpokePOV animations posted in the adafruit flickrpool…I can’t imagine anyone recognizing Duck Hunt from 50 ft away but it looks great anyways! This rodent one is my favorite.

Get your SpokePOV kit here and post up some pics to the flickr pool, OK?

I think I owned one of these when I was 8 or 9, but it was yellow. --MM

Spotted on the Wooster pool in Flickr

From geerard's Flickr stream, taken in Silesian castle Lubiaz. --MM

Pick a card, solve a problem. --MM

Martin Wittfooth (previously) has updated his site with a whole buncha new paintings and ink drawings, and they are fantastic. His work will be on display at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in L.A. from August 4-27.

Setpixel is a collection of articles written by a small group of like-minded individuals. The general focus of the articles contained in the site are on interactive installations, aesthetics through computation, reactive experiments, creative computer vision, et cetera.

The direction of the collection of writings will be affected by the independent opinions and directions of the selected artists. These authors were carefully selected because of their works, thoughts, and outlook on the topics above. If you would like to contribute and feel like you have something to contribute to the viewers, please email us.

Current Authors: Charles Forman, Media Artist. New York, USA. Chris O'Shea, Digital Artist. London, UK. Chris Sugrue, Artist, Designer, Programmer. New York, USA. Christian Giordano, Interactive Designer/Developer. Milan, Italy / London, UK. Cristobal Mendoza, Media Artist. Philadelphia, US. Glen Murphy, Programmer Designer Artist. Melbourne, Australia. Josh Nimoy, Undefined. Brooklyn, US. Ubi De Feo, Creative Developer. Amsterdam, Nederlands.

Originally from artificialeyes.tv reblog by exiledsurfer reBlogged on Jul 27, 2006, 7:48PM

Tessellated folding by Eric Gjerde.

A whole blog devoted to these! --MM

Esa writes - "Here's a huge hot air balloon made from grocery bag plastic. It generated enormous lifting power, so much that several persons couldn't hold it down. It flew for 200km in winter even though the heating source "failed". The balloon continued to fly being heated by the winter sun." - Link.

Insightful Slashdot post explaining MySpace's apparent natural niche. --MM

George W. Bush WTF candy. Extra-Fancy candy for when life Extra-Sucks.

Via a seekrit submittor, news that Microsoft Flight Sim and Navteq are teaming up for the next in the series of Flight Simulator. This is beyond awesome:

Microsoft is using data from NAVTEQ to create much of the world in "Flight Simulator X". NAVTEQ data such as road network information, ferry landings, railroads, detailed water information (e.g. oceans, rivers, lakes, harbors, etc.), parks, golf courses, and recreational areas, enhances the "Flight Simulator X" user experience.

...

Appropriate for a Superman game, perhaps? --MM

BibliOdyssey regularly features gorgeous illustrations from old books. --MM

What's even more interesting is what happens when those signals get to the striate cortex - all kinds of space-time FFT goodness! --MM

I'm mostly reblogging this for the awesome logo, but I sure the service is worth a look too. --MM

While Os Gemeos has been traveling the world doing projects in such countries as Japan, Cuba, China, Greek, Italy, Spain, Germany, South America, USA, until today they