This Trippy Universe (Feynman)

Videos of Richard Feynman gives wonderful explanations of various scientific subjects. From the BBC TV series 'Fun To Imagine' (1983)

1 - Jiggling Atoms

2 - Fire

3 - Rubber Bands

4 - Magnets

5 - Electricity

6 - The MIrror

7 - The Train

8 - Seeing Things & Light

9 - Massive Proportion (part 1)

10 - Massive Proportion (part 2)

11 - Ways of Thinking (part 1)

12 - Ways of Thinking (part 2)

Sign me up for Brain Implants!

[http://spacecollective.org/userdata/Y0RbM3sC/1261685911/go-brain-chips-r9.png]

Image courtesy of www.gigaom.com

Original post:
http://spacecollective.org/TheUndying/5441/The-very-near-future-of-brain-chips

Painted Earth

A beautiful photo of Dasht-e Kavir from space.

[via Gizmodo Satellite Imagery Captures Earth as Painting [Image Cache]]

Cats kill viruses

An informative video showing how cats kill common viruses.

The Living Bridge

These beautiful living bridges are made over time (10-15 yrs) by guiding the roots and vines of the Ficus elastica tree into stretching across rivers to form bridges.
Learn More

ENHANCE THAT IMAGE!!!!!

A groundbreaking video that demonstrates hyper-complex photo enhancement tools at work. Eeeeek, no one is safe anymore.

Embed iTunes Artwork in MP3 [script]

The great script will take all of the iTunes downloaded album art and embed it directly in your MP3. That way, your album art will never get lost or have to be re-downloaded
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/download.php?sc=embedart

Mars From Above

Martian landscape photos are so surreal. See em all here »

Transformers Sound Design

A video about the sound design for the new Transformers movies. The first part is fluff, but It gets good about half way through.

Transformers Sound Design

Erik | MySpace Video

WALL-E Sound Design

A great special feature video about the sound design from the movie WALL-E
Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A6z8QkVHk4
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl7lFPZeIOE&NR=1

Kid-Drawn Santa's

These unique santa drawings drawn by children were posted all over the SF / Larkspur ferry "Mendocino".

X-Mas 2009

Tracing Shapes to Make Sound

Relying on 3D tracking technology developed at the Ishikawa-Komuro Laboratory in 2003, scoreLight uses lasers to trace the outline of a drawing or object. As the laser dances along the contours, scoreLight produces and modulates sound according to the curvature, angle, texture, color, and contrast. An abrupt change in the direction of a line generates a discrete sound (a glitch or percussion sound), resulting in a steady rhythm when the laser follows a looped path (the size and shape of the looped path determines the tempo and structure of the beat). The device creates a layered tapestry of sound when multiple laser points explore different parts of a drawing.

[via Pink Tentacle]

Mechanical Mouse

This motorized mouse set the world record for finding navigating a maze in record time.

Pentatonic Scale [Bobby McFerrin]

Bobby McFerrin shows of the pentatonic scale by proving that every audience inuits it regardless of previous training. No wonder it's such a popular scale historically.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

What is the internet?

Mash-up of experts describing the internet in fascinating ways that make total sense.

Gimbaled Air Jet

Video of a machine that can levitate objects in the air in three dimensions. Done by a computer-controlled gimbaled air jet, powered by a 620kPa using a direct current motor-controlled valve.

Dvein 2009 Reel

Stunning animation.

Dvein reel 2009 from dorsumi on Vimeo.

http://www.dvein.com

Kitten Surprise

Looks like our cat Franklin when he was a kitten.

The sound of Disneyland

Former Disney audio experience engineer, Mr. Q, reveals how he assisted in developing a complex algorithm to arrange over 15,000 speakers around the Disney World theme park. All to achieve the ideal ambient music for "manufacturing emotion."

Apparently the original Disney World speaker system, set up in 1968, had an unnoticeable flaw: minuscule variations in sound volume along pathways. As someone walked closer to a speaker, music would seem louder than a few steps away. Despite not a single visitor ever complaining about this common sound effect, twenty years later good ol' Mickey decided to do something about it. Some work and a team effort later, they had Mr. Q's system and algorithm:

The system he built can slowly change the style of the music across a distance without the visitor noticing. As a person walks from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland, for example, each of the hundreds of speakers slowly fades in different melodies at different frequencies so that at any point you can stop and enjoy a fully accurate piece of music, but by the time you walk 400 feet, the entire song has changed and no one has noticed.

So how is a system which strives to be unnoticed manufacturing emotion? According to Mr. Q, the "life is sucked out of" the park when the speakers fail. Even a slightly flawed speaker system could lead to frowns, while perfect music ambiance only leaves Goofy's creepiness to achieve that.

[via Dustin Curtis, Gizmodo]

Wooden Wave Door

Beautiful door.

Created by Matharoo Associates for a diamond merchant in India. It's 17 feet tall, five and a half feet wide, and is made up of 40 sections of Burmese teak. The door uses a counterweight, 80 ball bearings and 160 pulleys to create the effect of reconfiguring into a sinusoidal curve when you push on any one section.

[via Gizmodo]

Best Reading Device

Taking a magazine / newspaper and showing it off the way we do new electronic devices. This format still rules in many ways.

Nothingness [Alan Watts]

I have always had a strong conviction for nothing. People in the west seem to dislike the idea of nothing or think of it as a starting point. Because of this, they feel threatened. This type of thinking is amateurish and unnecessary because nothing is completely separate and perfectly inverse to something. This means that you cannot have something without nothing, therefore it is not an either or, but an inherent part of life that most ignore. With this new insight, you can stop worrying about nothing and embrace it. I consider this on par with what religions considers blasphemy, because ignoring or worrying about such an inherent part of life will only create problems. And from this, I feel that many problems would be avoided by understanding this undeniable fact.

Alan has us take nothing into consideration:

Geometric Dancer

Performance excerpts from this lecture video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/260

These bite-size, zero-production-value performances are mostly proof-of-concept things that tie into his lecture about his creative process. The full 40 minute lecture is cool too, but I provide this edited video here since there are not many Michael Moschen performance vids on youtube.

Patent for Gerbil Shirt

The Gerbil Shirt wraps your torso in plastic tube passageways, making your bod a super highway of fun for Binky and Bart. The interior surfaces are textured for traction and have air vents for easy breathing.

[via Patently Absurd]

Muppets do Queen [Bohemian Rhapsody]

Cirque du Soleil Trampoline Skills

Video of Oli from Cirque du Soleil doing some surreal trampoline maneuvers.

Burj skyscraper is really really really tall

This video shows the Burj skyscraper in Dubai. Looking down from the top makes the already tall skyscrapers at it's feet look insignificant. Insane at over half a mile high.

Computer Music from 1965

A video of Ray Kurzweil at age 17 in 1965 demoing his home built computer that writes sheet music.

2001 Space Odyssey vs School Band

This video gets really good/busted at about 1 minute in.

2001 Space Odyseey School Band Performance @ Yahoo! Video

New perspective on a water droplet

Super high speed footage reveals a new insight to water droplets.

Placebo Effect Found in Spinal Nerves

Another example of the power of suggestion.

Excerpt from a slashdot article: "The researchers who made the discovery scanned the spinal cords of volunteers while applying painful heat to one arm. Then they rubbed a cream onto the arm and told the volunteers that it contained a painkiller, but in fact it had no active ingredient. Even so, the cream made spinal-cord neural activity linked to pain vanish. 'This type of mechanism has been envisioned for over 40 years for placebo analgesia,' says Donald Price, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the new study. 'This study provides the most direct test of this mechanism to date.'"

If the body can change that significantly on suggestion alone, then to me this just reinforces the powers of other forms of suggestion that people claim work. Things like prayer, homeopathic medicine and feeling the spirit.

Papercraft 3D Head Costume

This guy Eric Testroete modeled his own head in 3ds Max and used a few other tools to finish it so it could be printed and glued together. See his website for instructions or his flickr page for photos.

It's not the most complicated thing to execute, but it sure has impact. Because the light is hitting the polygons in such a natural way, It looks like it's walking the line between physical reality and digital.

Genius!

Where Creativity Comes From

It's shocking to learn the truth about how creativity is grown and sold.

Ignighting Salt Water

If the efficiency ratio is right in order to get salt water to burn, this tech could revolutionize the energy industry. I wonder what the byproduct is.

2012 Date Completely Debunked

The other day I noticed a slashdot article about how the 2012 date is off by 208 years, meaning that the Mayan calendar recycles in 2220. So then I started reading the comments to see if there was anymore info about it. Within the comments, I found a link to an even older article that is a conversation with a Mayan expert who is reporting the same thing.

To put a knife in the subject, not only is the 2012 date wrong, but Mayans don't think the world will end at all. There is no evidence that Mayans think there ever will be a doomsday. Mayans have a fucked up time system just like ours. Like clockwork, the calendar starts over because that's how it was designed. It's the same principle as the big hand on our clock striking 12 twice a day but calculated very differently.

With all the spiritual people worshiping the 2012 year and the big budget film hitting soon, it's funny to reminisce on all the wasted time and effort on an urban legend that was twice wrong.

Kate Perry vs Zooey Deschanel [look-a-likes]

I cannot tell these two apart for the life of me. If it weren't for a few photos that they appear together in, I would doubt that they are two different people.

NYC 400 Years Ago

An amazing feat of reconstructing and approximating what NYC looked like 400 years ago.

Moments [Radiolab]

Amazing video about moments in life.
Source »

Environmental Impact of Pets

From the article Save the planet: eat a dog?

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found.

Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.

The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created bypopular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.

"If you have a German shepherd or similar-sized dog, for example, its impact every year is exactly the same as driving a large car around," Brenda Vale said.

"A lot of people worry about having SUVs but they don't worry about having Alsatians and what we are saying is, well, maybe you should be because the environmental impact ... is comparable."

read the full article here »

Cardboard Animation

Graduation short by Sjors Vervoort.
http://www.sjorsvervoort.nl

Animation & design by Sjors Vervoort.
Sound and SFX by Steven Aerts. (The Netherlands).

Self Referring Statements

"I really hate people that people that complain"

...more statements to be added here as I find them.

Ron "Typewriter" Mingo

160 wpm - "I've lost about 25 or 30 jobs because of my speed. They couldn't keep me busy 8 hours a day, 5 days a week."

Slow Motion Impacts - 1,000,000 FPS

Talking Piano

Bicycle Tricks & Stunts

Inspired Bicycles - Danny MacAskill in and around Edinburgh (April 2009)

Powered Exoskeletons

There are a handful of exoskeletons out in the world. It seems that none of them are ready for public consumption. The ones I am including in this post are the ones that are looking more responsive.

I am looking forward to the day that wheelchairs and walkers are a thing of the past. These have so many potential applications.


Full body - HAL Suite by Cyberdyne


Full body - Robo Suite by Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Though the current model is a hefty 77 lbs (35 kg), researchers say they can halve the weight and put it on the market in 2011. Each suit will sale for $5,600 to $11,200.


Legs - HAL Suite by Cyberdyne


Legs - Walking Assist Device by Honda

Legs On: Honda's Walking Assist Devices from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Esquire House [3D]

Very cool 3D effect.

Another Esquire House Effect from steve mason on Vimeo.

[via Steve Mason's blog]

Strange Instruments [Ken Butler]

If you can muster the attention span to sit through this whole video, there are some really great moments. Ken Butler performs man of his instruments made from household objects.

8 Bit Trip [music video]

Bass playing japanese drag queen [music video]

Warning, this video will either make you laugh or feel very uncomfortable and regret watching it.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt uncomfortable. He's a good bass player.

Music from a tree [Diego Stocco]

Diego Stocco - Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Pies vs Insects

Macroscopic high-speed video of insects being hit by pies.

Flies, Beetles, Fly, Bugs, Bees, Millimeters Matter

Snowflake Crystals [electron microscope]

Nudibranch [sea slugs]

I was searching for Nudibranch's today for making a nice wallpaper and found this gem called "Glaucus Atlanticus".

Hofmann's Potion [film]

This documentary offers a compassionate, open-minded look at LSD and how it fits into our world. Long before Timothy Leary urged a generation to "tune in, turn on and drop out," the drug was hailed as a way to treat forms of addiction and mental illness. At the same time, it was being touted as a powerful tool for mental exploration and self-understanding. Featuring interviews with LSD pioneers, beautiful music and stunning cinematography, this is much more than a simple chronicle of LSD's early days. It's an alternative way of looking at the drug... and our world.

See more films at the National Film Board of Canada website.

Hunt for the Memristor [AI]

Currently we are stuck in a lo-fi era of AI (Artificial Intelligence) that shouldn't even be called AI. Our current systems are limited to strict sets of data and extremely specific rules in order to get decent results. Below is an excerpt from a great article giving hope to AI that would truly deserve the AI title.


========================================================

Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence

EVER had the feeling something is missing? If so, you're in good company. Dmitri Mendeleev did in 1869 when he noticed four gaps in his periodic table. They turned out to be the undiscovered elements scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium. Paul Dirac did in 1929 when he looked deep into the quantum-mechanical equation he had formulated to describe the electron. Besides the electron, he saw something else that looked rather like it, but different. It was only in 1932, when the electron's antimatter sibling, the positron, was sighted in cosmic rays that such a thing was found to exist.

In 1971, Leon Chua had that feeling. A young electronics engineer with a penchant for mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, he was fascinated by the fact that electronics had no rigorous mathematical foundation. So like any diligent scientist, he set about trying to derive one.

And he found something missing: a fourth basic circuit element besides the standard trio of resistor, capacitor and inductor. Chua dubbed it the "memristor". The only problem was that as far as Chua or anyone else could see, memristors did not actually exist...

...read more

Convert photos to a 3D bump map

Photo


Bump Map


This site turns sets of 2D images into 3D bump maps. To do this, you will need five to fifteen photos of your object that overlap at least 80 to 90 percent. Frames from a video could work well.

How to observe dragonflies

This article exposes the great lengths researchers go through just to observe a dragonfly. The result is a synthetic environment with mimicked sun patterns and high-speed cameras pointed at a few leaves they think the dragonfly will land on.

There are also some great audio segments from the researchers here:
• What's inside a dragonflies arena? [audio]
• How to catch a dragonfly [audio]
• All the species of dragonflies [audio]
• What does it take to study dragonflies? [audio]
• Why are dragonflies so cool? [audio]

I found this article because I was curious how mosquito repelling devices work. It turns out that mosquitos find dragonflies a threat, so mosquito repelling devices generate a tone (around 57hz) that mimics the sound of dragonfly wings flapping. So cool!

Bleeding Billboards [New Zealand]

A campaign to promote safe driving when the roads are wet. These sound dangerously distracting.

Shapeshifting Owl

What do physics symbols mean?

The site Sixty Symbols has some great videos that explain the origin and meaning behind those criptic looking symbols used in mathmatic equations for physics.

Cigarette Juice [Good News]

Spagett from the Time and Eric Awesome show is totally disturbing and hilarious.

Chatty Baby

View more in Quick Look

OS Xs Quick Look feature is an awesome addition (10.5 Leopard and above). In the Finder view on a mac, just select one or more files and press the spacebar to get a quick preview of the file(s). The downside is that natively, OS X only supports the most common file formats available. The good news is that people have made plugins that extend Quick Look to support other formats!

I gathered the most useful Quick Look plugins for me and zipped them up here, so you don't have too hunt them down. Check here find more Quick Look plugins.

My Quick Look Bundle (zip of bundle)
• BetterZip - Compressed files (ZIP, SIT, TAR, GZip, BZip2, RAR, 7-Zip, CPIO, ARJ, LZH/LHA, JAR, WAR, CAB, ISO, CHM, RPM, DEB, NSIS, BIN, HQX, DD)
• BrushView - Adobe Photoshop Brushes
• Entourage - Entrourage 2008 emails
• EPS - EPS files
• ColorXML - XML files
• FLV (you will also need the quicktime plugin Perian to view FLVs)
• Illust - Adobe Illustrator files
• ColorCode - Most script / code files (see all formats supported)

Installing Quick Look Plugins:
1. Unzip them to the folder ~/Library/QuickLook.
2. Restart the Finder by typing Command+Option+Esc, select Finder and click the "restart" button there.

Wee See [baby entertainment]

When your talking to a baby, they probably just see abstract shapes and hear trippy sounds. So it's no wonder why these videos are designed for entertaining babies. Visit the official website to learn more: www.weeseeworld.com

1 of 2

wee see - collection one from Rolyn Barthelman on Vimeo.

2 of 2

wee see - collection two from Rolyn Barthelman on Vimeo.

Evident Utensil [Music Video by Chairlift]

This video uses a processing technique called Datamosh that mimics the psychedelic pixelated effect that cable or streaming video does when the buffer is catching up.

Music Video (view in Full Quality)

Chairlift - Evident Utensil (Official Music Video) - The top video clips of the week are here

Learn how to Datamosh by watching the videos below. And check out this link to the software that will let you do it http://www.court13.com/datamoshkit.zip

Part 1



Part 2

Billy Bob Thorton Blow-up

He seems really high and says random stuff. I wish we could see what he sees.

Prius Harmony Commercial

The Making Of:

Steve-O describing dimensions 1-4

Jump to 2:40 min into the video to see Steve-O describs dimensions 1-4 while super high.

E.O. Wilson & James Watson on Charles Darwin [Charlie Rose]

"How do you have a just society when genetics is injust?"
- James Watson on the Charlie Rose show about Charles Darwin (53:40 in) - Dec 14, 2005
source: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6927851714963534233

"In my mind, Darwin was the most important person on earth. ...for the first time he actually saw what was happening. ...If you say that truth comes from observation and experience, not from revelation; which was the way I was raised. Then Darwin was the fist person using observation and experience to really put man in his place in the world."
- James Watson on the Charlie Rose show about Charles Darwin (24:11 in) - Dec 14, 2005
source: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6927851714963534233

Pygmy Jeraboas [cute]

Awkward Family Photos

A site dedicated to awkward family photos.
Site: www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com
RSS Feed: www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/?feed=rss2

Loris loves a good tickle [Animal]

Young owl enjoys ear scratch

Beatboxer: Daichi

This car has everything

Pontiac Stinger

Natures Headbangers

Comments from the poster:
"Algaqueen park... the music is coming from a headset close to us but the camera hasnt picked it up.
for natural perservation of the vid we didnt edit it to put the song on it, but for ppl interested it was "Decade of Therion" from Behemoth."

Fluid Sculpture

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

This is a small prototype of what I'll be showing at the 2009 Maker Faire, May 30-31st in San Mateo.

Are you open-minded?

A great introduction to open-mindedness that blazes by at top speeds. I found this helpful.

Open-mindedness
Uploaded by totocacapouet - Explore more science and tech videos.

60s ladies dancing and slammn

Updated Music


Original Music

Star Trek Facial Recognition Graph

This software analyzes video to display the amount each face appears in a video. [via Face Mining]

Darth Vader in a Canteen (Eddie Lzzard)

Simplistic Music Visualizer

In 1956, György Ligeti composed an electronic piece called “Artikulation”. In 1970’s, Rainer Wehinger created a visual map to the recordings. Some guy out there scanned the images and synced them with the audio. Thanks, guy!
[via ISO50]



Visualization Map

90's nerd version of kraftwerk

The real kraftwerk


[via Gizmodo]

Wii Graffiti

Concept for controlling a painting application on a giant digital display with a wii controller (Wii Sray).
[via Gizmodo]


WiiSpray Teaser from cldfx.com on Vimeo.

Touchscreen dialing for the blind [Android]

Light Paintings [Brian Hart]

This must have taken a while to complete. Looks like fun.
» See em all at PSFK

Follow the money [steady cam]

Casino's dazzling steadicam shots that track the flow of money from the casino count room to the bosses back in Kansas City then introducing top Mafia boss Remo Gaggi.

Speakerphone [audio plugin]

If you ever needed to run your sound through a megaphone, cellphone or some other thing like a toy, look no further...that is if you have $450 bucks. It offers everything you need to simulate just about any speaker source.
Official Site
Online Store

Video demo

SoundSuites [Artist: Nick Cave]

These suites are trippy.

K-Bow

This is a really cool add-on to any stringed instrument. Even a guitar perhaps?

THe K-Bow gathers all sorts of streaming sensor data (like a wii controller) about where the bow is and uses that information for all kinds of things. ...like being able to start an stop loop recording and modulating effects parameters among anything else you can dream up.
Full NAMM Video Demo
Interview with Keith McMillen
Official Site

Intro to sensor data gathered using Max/MSP

Electricity Explained [GE 1942]

Part 1 of 2


Part 2 of 2

Some of my old music experiments [soundcloud]

I recently fell in love with this new service called Soundcloud. It allows musicians to post there music and even link to selling it. It's a great interface and the website is equally easy to use. It's taken too long for uploading your music to be this pleasant and easy. Soundcloud gives the ability to embed single tracks or sets (aka albums).

I love being able to see and interact with the waveform.

Claytronics

Concept video by CMU’s Computer Science Department showing a future display in which molecular voxels, or Moxels, build up display elements physically, in 3D.

Machines made of wires [Arthur Ganson]

Simple and crude machines made of wires. You can get the full collection on his DVD for sale here.

Wishbone


Another Housefly


Faster (Automated Signature)


Machine with oil


Making wire gears