March 14, 2009
Done Manifesto poster
Recently Bre Pettis and Kio Stark sat down and came up with a list of 13 rules called The Done Manfesto to help you get your projects done. The list (which contains a surprising number of items that don't so much tell you how to finish a project as how to tell when a project is finished) has hit a real nerve with many online folks, who are searching for anything that will help them get more stuff done.
Now James Provost has turned the 13 rules into a poster, using Rubik's cubes as a metaphor. Print one out, put it up in your cubicle, and accomplish more while confusing your office mates. It's available on Flickr here.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:36 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
February 24, 2009
Milky Way Transit Authority
Nothing like a good map to help you get your bearings. That's true when you're in an unfamiliar city, or an unfamiliar country, so why wouldn't it also be true with an unfamiliar galaxy?
Samuel Arbesman, a postdoc at Harvard University, has just the thing to help you find your way around this vast collection of stars we call home. He's created a map of the Milky Way galaxy in the style of Harry Beck's iconic map of the London Underground. The lines correspond to the spiral arms of the Galaxy, and our own neighborhood rates a minor station (the Sol stop on the Orion line).
Arbesman has a page describing his map. You can also download a PDF of it there.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:36 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
Give me Freehand, or give me death
If you're a digital graphic designer, the odds are overwhelming that you use two tools to create your images... Photoshop and Illustrator, both made by Adobe.
But, according to an article on Creative Review, there's a tiny dedicated minority out there who pledge their allegiance... and their clients' artwork... to a obsolete and discontinued program called Freehand.
Freehand was originally made by a company called Aldus. Aldus got bought by a company called Macromedia, and then a few years ago Macromedia got bought by Adobe.
Since Adobe already made -- and heavily promoted -- two graphics programs of their own, it came as no suprise when they announced back in 2007 that there would be no further Freehand updates. Since then Freehand disciples have lovingly guarded their aging software (for instance some designers make sure to never update any software on the machine holding their precious Freehand, just in case some random new printer driver or security patch could be Freehand-incompatible).
There's more than just stubbornness or technophobia going on here. An artist's tools are an extension of their mind and soul, and you trifle with them at your peril. I'm usually all about change, but if I had a design gig to farm out and had to choose between a designer who creams over the latest features in Illustrator and one who has a solid decade with Freehand, and can make it do exactly what they want it to do without hesitation, I may just have to go with the Freehand guy.
By the way, the image illustrating this post is from a limited-run poster called "I Would Save Freehand" by the influential British design firm The Designers Republic.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
February 16, 2009
Data + Art
If, like me, your favorite thing in life is the beautiful display of complex data, you gotta make it to Pasadena, California, for the best art exhibit of the year.
Data + Art: Art and Science in the Age of Information at the Pasadena Museum of California Art has brought together some of the most notable recent infoporn works, as well as some timeless classics.
There's a working installation of the laser ranging system that Aaron Koblin used to create Radiohead's mind-blowing "House of Cards" music video, as well as a couple other of Koblin's best-known works, the time-lapse display of air traffic, and the hundred dollar bill drawn by 10,000 anonymous online workers.
There's an adorable pair of tiny solar powered robots who draw patterns in response to light in the gallery, amazing MRI videos looking inside an egg at the bird developing inside, an actual copy of the Long Now Foundation's Rosetta Disc, and a wall-size homage to perhaps the greatest data chart ever created, Charles Minard's graph of the destruction of Napolean's army in Russia.
The show runs through April 12. As an added bonus, there's a couple of really great mini-exhibits running simultaneously at PCMA: 3-D stereo murals of Mars from JPL, and stunning electron microscope images by David Scharf.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
February 15, 2009
We're All Gonna Die
A little bit of beauty at the end of your weekend... as veryshortlist.com tells it, Danish photographer Simon Hoegsberg spent nearly three weeks photographing pedestrians as they walked across a bridge in Berlin. Hoegsberg then montaged the portraits into a 100 meter long uber-mural.
Scroll through the online version of the mural, and see if you get the same slightly surreal feeling that I did.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
February 09, 2009
Where are all the extraterrestrials?
For at least a century scientists have speculated on the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Many, perhaps most, scientists are of the opinion that given the vast number of stars and planets in just our galaxy, the possibility of Earth being the only planet with life is virtually zero. The galaxy must be TEEMING with life.
Back in the 1950s, Nobel Prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi heard the arguments in favor of extra-terrestrial life and posed a simple question: if the odds say there should be many other civilizations scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy, why haven't we heard from them? Why have we yet to detect a single signal from an alien civilization? In other words, where is everybody?
That simple question, known as the Fermi Paradox, has stymied astronomers ever since. But Reginald Smith, from the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester, New York, thinks he's gotten around the paradox.
Smith says physicists have neglected to take into account the fact that radio signals get weaker the further they travel, and that eventually the signals become so weak they are drowned out by background radiation.
After doing some calculations on the size of the galaxy and the distance typical signals can travel before they become too weak, Smith has determined that it would take at least 300 alien civilizations before we earthlings would have a decent chance of discovering one. Or for that matter, before any civilization could detect any other. If there were only, say, 100 advanced civilizations we could all think we were alone forever.
You can check Smith's math, and plunge into the pro and con comments on his research, at http://arxivblog.com/?p=1167.
the inverse-square law into account
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (2)
Greatest chemistry videos
Back when I was in grade school, chemistry was totally cool, even bad-ass. It still is, but you'd never know it from the wimpy live-in-fear-of-an-accident-or-terorism way that chemistry is taught these days. And don't get me started on how chemistry sets have been emasculated over the years.
The time has come for chemistry to get its mojo back, to once again convince kids that chemistry can be as cool as computers or art or anything else their schools have to offer. If you need some help, sit your kids down in front of this great collection of videos from Kent's Chemistry Page.(*) Magnesium burning inside dry ice! Gummy Bears dying in potassium chlorate! Mixing thermite and liquid nitrogen! Great stuff.
(*)I have no idea who this Mr. Kent is. I gather from his extremely old-school website, he's a high school chemistry teacher somewhere.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (1)
February 03, 2009
The Impossible Project
One of my most prized possessions is an original Polaroid SX-70 camera, IMO one of the greatest technical achievements of the 20th century. But alas, even brilliant design objects like the SX-70 eventually lose their sheen, and decline in popularity. Polaroid stopped making SX-70s in the late 1970s.
Happily however, Polaroid kept making SX-70 film (which also worked in later model Polaroid cameras) for another 30 years, finally ceasing film production in last June.
You would think that would be that...Polaroid aficionados would use up their remaining film stock, and then move on to other things. But you underestimate just HOW SERIOUS a Polaroid obsession can be.
Case in point...a group of Polaroid users has leased a closed SX-70 film manufacturing plant in the Netherlands, hired a team of film chemistry experts from around the world, and set themselves the task of reverse engineering Polaroid film packs and then manufacturing new batches of SX-70 compatible film that matches, or even exceeds, the specs of the original. They are aiming to have the first film packs roll off their assembly line in 2010.
This is such a crazily complex mix of chemistry, mechanical engineering, electronics, assembly and testing that the folks behind the idea chose the most obvious name for their dream, The Impossible Project.
I'll be watching their progress (they have a mailing list), hoping they can do the impossible, and let my beloved SX-70 live again!
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
January 15, 2009
Gallery of flash preloaders
When Macromedia Flash burst on the scene last century it ushered in a new world of online interactivity. It also introduced us all to the preloader...those little mini-animations that helped keep us entertained as we waited percentage point by percentage point for the flash movie to finish loading.
The vast majority of preloaders were non-descript and boring, but once in a while a preloader was above the pale.
The design firm Big Spaceship has paid homage to the preloader with their online gallery titled Pretty Loaded. Check it out and see how many different ways people came up with to count to 100%
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (1)
January 11, 2009
Is disputing God false advertising?
Earlier this month buses starting appearing around the UK with ads bearing this provocative message...
""There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life.""
The ads are the brainchild of British comedienne Ariane Sherine, who says she got tired of seeing religious ads that threaten non-believers with eternal damnation. Volunteers quickly kicked in the £140,000 cost, and the signs started popping up on buses and in tube stations from Glasgow to London.
Not surprisingly, many religious groups have taken offense to the ads(*), and this is where things get interesting. A number of groups have filed formal complaints with the UK's Advertising Standards Authority, saying that an ad denying God's existence amounts to false advertising. (Atheists have been saying the same thing about religious ads for years, but evidently they never went through the formal complaint process).
Even though the ASA is not an official government agency, it holds significant influence in British society. Many organizations, such as municipal transit companies, will not accept ads that are not approved by the ASA. Which means the ASA, if it decides to act on the complaints, may end up having to make an official ruling on God's existence. The Telegraph newspaper's website has a story and video on the whole thing.
By the way, atheist bus ads appears to be a growing movement around the world. The official Atheist Bus website is tracking the latest developments.
(*) In fairness, it needs to be said that many religious groups do not object to the signs, saying that they welcome the public thinking about God's place in their lives.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (2)
The spread of steroids in baseball
OK, I admit it, this one pushes all of my buttons...baseball, data analysis, visualization, and illegal drug use...but nevertheless you too may be interested in orgnet.com's analysis of the spread of steroids in Major League Baseball.
Using information from the 2007 Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball, orgnet.com graphed all of the players mentioned to see the inter-relationships among steroid users, dealers, and team-mates.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
December 20, 2008
Pranking Google Street View
For more than a year Google has been photographing streets all across America and making the panaromas of the photos available on their maps as a feature called Google Street View.
To gather the photos, Google has a fleet of vehicles equipped with a ring of cameras that slowly drives the streets of urban areas.
As the Google cameras snap away, they occasionally capture random little slices of life... people bent over, someone caught jumping over a puddle, odd looking vehicles going past, all sorts of stuff.
But what if you knew exactly when the Google Street View vehicle was going to come down your street? And you got ready for it, lining the street with more weird and wonderful scenes than a Where's Waldo book?
That was the idea behind the Street With A View Project. Artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley filed a tiny street in Pittsburgh called Sampsonia Way with a marching band, sword fighters, marathon runners, people escaping from upper floor windows via bedsheets, a gigantic roast chicken, all sorts of wonderful things.
Check out the project site for all the details, and links to the images that made it onto Google Maps.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (1)
December 09, 2008
Mona Lisa created via genetic programming
If you wrote a computer program that threw pixels on the screen in the hopes that it would create something that looked liked the Mona Lisa you'd have to wait for... well, forever.
But if you added a bit of natural selection to that process... take a bunch of copies of the program, compare their output to the real Mona Lisa, keep the ones that match the best, tweak 'em, check their output again, repeat about a million times, and voila!...the Mona Lisa, generated via genetic programming.
Swedish programmer Roger Alsing did just that, knocking out a program in C# that uses genetic programming to get closer and closer to an exact copy of DiVinci's masterpiece.
Interested? Check out the details of Alsing's project.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (0)
December 07, 2008
Paper airplanes from space
If all goes according to plan, early next year the wonderfully quirky world of hard-core paper airplane flyers will have set a new milestone. Next February an astronaut aboard the International Space Station will toss several paper airplanes out into the void, sending them on a multi-day journey through atmospheric re-entry and back down to the Earth's surface.
The origami-folded airplanes are made from sugar cane fiber paper that has been chemically treated to resist heat and water, and they've been tested in wind tunnels at hypersonic speeds. The planes measure about a foot long and are covered with instructions (in ten languages) of what to do if they are, against all probability, found back on the surface of the Earth.
Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who will be stationed aboard the ISS next year, will toss the pre-folded planes either by hand or via the Station's robotic arm.
Full coverage of the planned paper airplane flight is on Pink Tentacle.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (1)
December 04, 2008
DIY Lenticular Printing
Lenticular priniting is an odd little backwater of the graphics world. That technique that combines multiple images with a plastic lens overlay that makes the image appear to change as you move it has long been used primarily for cheezy stuff(*) like Cracker Jack prizes and creepy Catholic art of the Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
But not any more! Now anyone can make their own lenticular images. An online service called Snapily lets you upload your own images and have them turned into lenticular business cards, notecards, notebook covers, etc. (A typical price is about eight bucks for a pack of 20 business cards). In the near future they plan to add the ability to take a short video clip, strip out the frames and make a multi-image lenticular "movie" card.
(*)A big exception are the Panamaps by Urban Mapping. They use lenticular technology to combine transit, street, and neighborhood views of Manhattan and Chicago into the same map. My vote for the cleverest piece of cartography of the last decade.
Posted by Chris Spurgeon June 26, 2009 06:37 AM Permalink | Comments (1)
