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Congratulations on the box office record
Jan 27th
It seems that for decades the world’s most successful directors have been taking out full-page ads to congratulate each other on records.
When Star Wars beat Jaws for the box office record Spielberg took out this ad congratulating George Lucas.
The tradition is explained in this Reddit comment:
“Later, after ET retook the record, Lucas ran an ad with R2D2 putting a crown on ET’s head.
Then in 1997 when the Star Wars Special Edition regained top-grossing spot, Spielberg’s congratulatory ad showed a long line of movie characters with R2D2 zipping past to the front of the line.
This ad of ET returning the crown to R2D2 fits in there somehow as well. I hadn’t heard of this one before toefer dug it up.
I guess it’s time for Jim Cameron to run an ad congratulating himself for beating his own record.”
This is my favorite version – the congratulations sent from Lucas to Cameron when Titanic took over the record.
Growing a garden on a vertical wall
Aug 31st
Wired has this photo gallery showing the work of botanist Patrick Blanc who specialises in covering walls with gardens. I always loved the look of ivy covered walls at university but this guy takes it to a whole new level.
Over the years he has perfected a special frame which allows plants to grow on vertical walls. Some of the wall gardens are the size of several tennis courts.
They look great. I love the way he has clearly planted different plans in sections to create patters.
New and old Simpsons intro
Aug 21st
Last night I was watching The Simpsons and I noticed that the intro looked different. A few seconds on Google and I had my answer. Gotta love the internets.
Sure enough, it has been redone and some mad fan has gone to the trouble of generating a comparison.
There is also a side-by-side video comparison on YouTube.
More 3D Street Art
May 14th
I just came across the website of that guy who does the 3D street art. He’s got a few new pieces on there and it seems that he is tackling a whole new scale. This stuff is very clever and excellently executed.
This page that includes a few of the images (the official page is quite rubbish).
His name is Edgar Mueller and he’s from Germany. He’s been producing street art for decades. It seems there is a whole street painting community because he was awarded the maestro madonnari’ (master street painter) at the world’s largest street painting festival.
National Geographic visions of the Earth
Mar 25th
Each edition of National Geographic Magazine has a section called Visions of the Earth – basically a collection of great photos from around the world.
I was looking over some of the older ones and was blown away by some of them. Here are a handful of the best.
This one was taken with the lens half submerged. If it wasn’t from National Geographic I wouldn’t believe it was real. I’m still skeptical…
This is one of the best photos I’ve seen. I had to read the explanation to understand what was going on. It’s taken near sunset in the deserts of South Africa. There is a massive sand dune rising in the sunlight in the background.
Alligator claw. Awesome.
There are many other excellent pictures, but I restricted this post to three that I really liked.
Venus, Jupiter and the moon over Lions Head
Dec 2nd
Venus, Jupiter and the moon had a little party last night – it was a pretty cool site. The clouds were moving in rapidly but I managed to snap a few photos of the unusual arrangement over Cape Town.
Jimmy Carter vs Swamp Rabbit
Sep 12th
XKCD is a superb webcomic (although pretty geeky) that I follow religiously. I recently came across this one which I found funny.
I thought it was pretty random so I Googled the incident and it turns out that Jimmy Carter was indeed ‘attacked’ by a swimming swamp rabbit in 1979! Read about it in the Wikipedia article: Jimmy Carter Rabbit Incident. There are also links to more detail.
Jimmy Carter stares at the crazed swamp rabbit that he had just fought off. Carter was out fishing alone when the swamp rabbit swam towards him and tried desperately to enter the boat. Mr President was forced to fend it off with an oar. Not sure that I believe this – but it does seem to be legit…
Friday Five Flickr Fotos 1
Aug 15th
I love Flickr. It’s an awesome photo sharing site. The developers are innovative and I believe this is one rare case where the Google offering (Picasa) isn’t the best:
- There are awesome online communities. People commenting, organizing groups, messaging each other, etc
- A lot of the images are Creative Commons licensed so they can be used for all sorts of things (they often pop up on Do Stuff in Cape Town)
- Flickr have opened up an API which allows other programs and websites to easily access their data
- They come up with interesting features like the Interestingness feature for finding great pictures
Every now and then I send Jules a mail with some of the best photos that I have seen recently on Flickr. I thought I would turn that mail into a blog feature. So, here is the first of the “Friday Five Flickr Fotos” series. Enjoy.
It took me a little while to figure this one out. A mostly submerged trolley in some reflective water. Nice effect
Taken between two cruise ships in Greece
Taken from behind glass in a zoo
You don’t need to tell me twice!
One of my own photos
Pictures showing how good the GTA4 in-game world is
Jun 3rd
Grand Theft Auto 4 is a game that was recently released and it grossed more than $500 million in its first week!
One of the things that I always enjoyed about GTA is the open gameplay style. They have created a working city complete with streets, buildings, people, cars, trains, boats, etc. Players are free to explore the city, interact with citizens, steal cars, fight gangsters, etc, etc.
The key to making that fun is to have a rich and realistic in-game world and these guys have done an amazing job modelling New York as the ‘Liberty City’ of the game.
Here are some pictures taken of the game (on the right) and the associated spot in the actual NYC (left). Awesome work.
Statue of Liberty. If you want to get there in the game you need to hijack a boat or helicopter…
Photos of a chicken developing inside an egg
Jun 2nd
I came across this blog showing the development of a chicken inside an egg. Seems like these guys cleverly got an egg to develop inside a clear container – like a ziplock or something.
Anyway, I had assumed that birds develop in the yolk – I don’t know why. But this chick definitely develops outside the yolk and consumes the yolk through a network of blood vessels. Very interesting.
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