e-clecticism: October 2011

Monday, 31 October 2011

Meltdown

Hopefully you'll enjoy this superb amateur film by Dave Green. A witty idea sees leftover foods battle for their very survival.

MELTDOWN from Dave Green on Vimeo.

Saturday, 29 October 2011

I see a lot of street artists, some better than others. But this young man filmed on the streets of Yangon in Myanmar has to be one of the best. Watch as he creates a perfect scene in just minutes. I would quite happily fill may walls with art like this. What a talent!

Friday, 28 October 2011

Slimming Technique

Ladies, are you looking for a new fun way to lose wait. This rather contrived but nonetheless fun commercial from Contrex might just be the answer.

Thursday, 27 October 2011

Abducted!

If you're still short of ideas for a Halloween costume this year, why not give this a try. For me though the funniest part is the "wise words" from the guy. Is he a member of the fun-police?

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Chain Of Fools

This is a rather interesting experiment. Well OK, its interesting if you're a geek. A gentleman by the name of Andy decided to see if he could upgrade through every version of Microsoft OS from MS-DOS 5.0 to Windows 7 using VMWare. Apart from a little issue around Windows ME he did it too. What a great trip down memory lane. Enjoy the video and read more about it on Andy's blog.

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Eric Hjorleifson

I used to be a very keen skier but these days I never seem to find the time. Something I hope to rectify soon. In the meantime this video makes me long for the fresh snow. Eric Hjorleifson from Canmore in Alberta (arguably the best big mountain skier in the world right now) uses a POV camera on his helmet to take us on a great ride downhill.

BeardyMan

Darren Foreman aka BeardyMan is a beatboxer who likes to combine comedy in to his live-looping act. Here he is performing at this year's Montreal Comedy Festival. Enjoy!

Saturday, 22 October 2011

Whole Lotta Police Academy

Do you recall the Police Academy films? A bit cheesy now, but a highlight for me was the voice talents of Sgt Larvelle Jones (Michael Winslow). It seems Winslow is still going strong as the following video shows. Appearing on Norwegian prime time television he performs an amazing version of Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. This is awesome! You can visit Michael's website here.

Friday, 21 October 2011

Seeing Is Believing

Kevin Karsch and some fellow researchers at the University Of Illinois have developed an impressive technology that inserts objects into photographs as if they had been there all along.

We propose a method to realistically insert synthetic objects into existing photographs without requiring access to the scene or any additional scene measurements. With a single image and a small amount of annotation, our method creates a physical model of the scene that is suitable for realistically rendering synthetic objects with diffuse, specular, and even glowing materials while accounting for lighting interactions between the objects and the scene. We demonstrate in a user study that synthetic images produced by our method are confusable with real scenes, even for people who believe they are good at telling the difference.

Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs from Kevin Karsch on Vimeo.

Thursday, 20 October 2011

Quantum Levitation

Do you remember the hover-board from Back To The Future Part II? Well perhaps we are a little closer to getting them thanks to the boffins at Tel-Aviv University. The 2011 ASTC Annual Conference (Association of Science-Technology Centres) featured more than 100 sessions, which highlighted how science centres and museums are putting new ideas to practical use to serve their communities. This demo shows quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field. For an explanation of the physics behind this, visit www.quantumlevitation.com/levitation/The_physics.html

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Niagara At Night

I was lucky enough to visit Niagara Falls on my trip to Canada earlier this year. I had a wonderful time and even the bad weather didn't spoil anything. However, just look at what you can do with a clear night and plenty of time to kill. A beautiful time-lapse that features some tilt-shift too.

Niagara Falls in Motion from Matthew Wartman on Vimeo.

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Dueling Kermits

A wonderful performance of Queen's Under Pressure to help raise money for homeless charities. This is a lip-dub that just goes to show you how talented Kermit The Frog really is. :-)

Sunday, 16 October 2011

3D Immersion

A simple, featherweight headset, a 10' x 10' x 10' white room, and $600,000 worth of projector and computer equipment, combined with the smarts of the folks at Eon Reality, results in one insanely real experience. For more info visit labs.ideo.com.

Personally I just like to laugh at the guys reaction. :-)

Amazing 3D immersion technology from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

Saturday, 15 October 2011

Dangerous Science

Did you have a chemistry set as a kid? I remember burning magnesium ribbon to produce that arc bright flame and dropping sodium beads into water to see it fizz. These and other experiments were everything a twelve year old boy could hope for from science. In a word "exciting". However there is no way we would let our kids do those sorts of things today. Wired Science recently featured this look in to the lost toy of the chemistry set and what impact its absence has had.

Friday, 14 October 2011

Ian Ritchie

If you have ever made a decision in your life that you later regretted, watch this video, it just might make you feel better. Imagine it's late 1990, and you've just met a nice young man named Tim Berners-Lee, who starts telling you about his proposed system called the World Wide Web. Ian Ritchie was there and...he didn't buy it. A short story about information, connectivity and learning from mistakes.

Thursday, 13 October 2011

1000th Post

Wow! When I started e-clecticism, way back in 2008, I never thought I would one day be writing my 1000th post. I really wish that I had something more profound to mark this auspicious occasion for you my loyal readers but sadly no. Just the usual geeky stuff that interests me and sometimes you. So do me a favour please...Go out there and tell people about the blog so that I can be letting down even more people in my 2000th post. :-) Seriously, a huge thank you to you all for sticking with me.

A simple one today. One of my favourite songs of all time. Someone Like You by Adele wonderfully acoustically covered by Youcef Preston. Enjoy.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

The Placebo Effect

Some very interesting facts concerning the placebo effect. In medical research, placebos are given as control treatments and depend on the use of measured deception.

Common placebos are inert tablets, sham surgery, and other procedures based on false information. However, placebos can also have a surprisingly positive effect on a patient who knows that the given treatment is without any active drug, as compared with a control group who knowingly did not get a placebo.

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Optimist

Photography is my joy and not film-making but if I were to try out the latter, then the following is the sort of thing I would love to work on. As Vimeo user Brian Thomson explains...

This video was shot at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah. Their annual Festival of Colors was a great opportunity to test the slow-mo capabilities of my Cannon 7D. After hearing Zoe Keating perform this song in Portland, Oregon, I was inspired to edit this footage to her beautiful music. I hope that she and her son enjoy the video.

I just hope that he kept his rather expensive camera protected.

Optimist from Brian Thomson on Vimeo.

Monday, 10 October 2011

Size Of A Planet

This video shows how some of the planets of the solar system would look if viewed from Earth as if they were orbiting around our planet at the same distance as the Moon does. A very novel way of illustrating the size difference.

When a duplicate Earth is shown in the sky, it shows how large our Earth really looked like for the Apollo astronauts who witnessed it during their stayon the moon, and hopefully it will be what future generations of explorers and maybe even colonists will experience.

Sunday, 9 October 2011

6 Month Old Cheerleader

Do you think my granddaughter has a future career with the Worcester Wolves cheerleaders? Well perhaps not just yet but with her mum and auntie to guide her, you never know. :-)

Friday, 7 October 2011

Vintage

I'm a nostalgic kind of guy so it was logical that it would translate in to my photography at some point. Below is a photograph that I took recently of some cows grazing on a lovely summer's evening near my home (click to enlarge).

I thought it might be fun to have a little play in Photoshop and to give it that vintage feel that is popular today. From a time of Polaroid cameras, washed out colour, film grain, vignettes, light-bleed and blur. After an hour or so of experimenting I came up with this. I hope you like it. You can see the rest of my photographs here.

Thursday, 6 October 2011

Landscapes

Time-lapse films have become a bit of a fixation here on e-clecticism but when they're as good as the following, I make no apologies. Vimeo user Dustin Farrell and Crew West have created a simply stunning series featuring landscapes shot in HDR using a Canon 5D2 dSLR. This is volume two that contains footage of both Arizona and Utah.

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

This One Time...

Marching bands are nerdy right? Well some perhaps but the Ohio University band are not. Check out their rocking version of LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem. Smooth moves and all!

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Boss Sayings

Image by mkrigsman via FlickrAnother email I received recently comprises a list of the oddest things that a boss has said to a new employee on their first day of work. These may not all be true but they do make me laugh and having worked for some proper numpties in my time I can well believe they are true.

"That is the person you'll be replacing. She doesn't know that we're going to fire her yet, so please don't say anything. We need her to train you."

"... And this is the beer fridge."

"How quickly can you load a handgun?"

"Didn't we hire the hot chick in the red dress?"

"We don't provide web browsers on the PCs in this agency because people might use them." (employee was hired to build them an intranet and write all their web pages).

"Welcome to Microsoft. You know the company name was inspired by a remark made by Mrs. Gates on their honeymoon!"

(said to a guy) "Wonder what you would look like in a white sundress?"

"This is the best we could find in 48 hours!"

"Hey, if you see the new guy, tell him I'm not here. Make up something about a family emergency or some junk. My tee-off time's in ten minutes..."

"Did you get those projections done that I asked for on Friday?"

"Around here, we put the FUN in dysFUNctional"

"If you bring a weapon to work, keep it hidden."

"Since you're female, I can't ask you to walk with me to the restroom, so I guess I'll have to discuss your duties here."

"Hello ... Had any sex lately?"

"Despite what your coworkers say, that's not a blood stain."

Monday, 3 October 2011

Final Countdown

Words fail me...But then, nothing really needs to be said about this. Enjoy!

Saturday, 1 October 2011

Switcheroo

This is a really stunning illusion. Don't blink or you'll miss it. Although I have some theories as to how a part of it is achieved, the rest is truely baffling. Great work.