Thursday, April 30, 2009

Car Drives into Dutch Queen's Day Parade 2009

Not sure if it was intentional yet, but it certainly looks that way. Dutch article...
Shocking video at RTL4. More videos. It now appears that seven people, including the driver, have died and 11 are wounded. The act was intentional. Really shocking and gruesome images.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Crucifixion Fail

Such a beautiful fail. The scream he makes is awesome.

Survival in de Vogezen

Mr Wiggles en ik zijn weer levend thuis gekomen. We ontmoetten elkaar in het romantische Ribeauville en moesten, helaas, vlakbij Le Bonnehomme weer afscheid nemen omdat Wiggles ziek was. Toch nog twee nachten gezellig samen in het bos, onder de blote hemel, geslapen. Daarna twee nachten alleen.

10 Marsen, 10 Snickers, 10 Sultanas en 5 pakjes Noodles moesten mijn spieren van brandstof voorzien, daarnaast zullen ook nog wel wat vetreserves zijn aangebroken want genoeg energie zat er niet in die "heerlijke" maaltijden. Het weer was wisselvallig met zon, wolken en af en toe een bui. Herten, Ooievaars, Spechten, Koekoeks, Zwijnen, Hommels, Naaktslakken, Hazelwormem, Mieren, Berggeiten en een Vos, Das en Marter behoren tot het gespotte wild dat veelal snachts de heerlijke nachtrust kwam verstoren en mijn hartslag vaak tot boven de 180 bpm dreef.

De mannelijk lange wandelingen (25-29 km) met stevige klimmen (>1000 m stijgen), af en toe door de sneeuw, waren achteraf voor ons allebei misschien wat te zwaar om meerdere dagen vol te houden. Het lange afdalen met 16 kg op de rug heeft mijn knie geen goed gedaan. Dat, de mist en harde wind op de top, natte slaapzak en de route kwijt zorgde ervoor dat ik een makkelijkere route (alsonog 26 km, maar zonder klimmen) door het dal, langs pittoreske Franse dorpjes, heb genomen en een dag eerder terug was.

Het enige dat me niet in de steek heeft gelaten is mijn conditie(spier en zuurstof) en de flora en founa. Mijn bed is nooit zo zacht geweest en brood heeft zelden zo lekker gesmaakt. Morgen een paar dagen uitlopen in Belgie :) Hier mijn GPS coordinaten met icoontjes (click de icoontjes voor meer info!):

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

skilled fox with a one shot one kill

David Attenborough: "There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive". This little fox shows one of them.

How to instantly fail a drunk test

This way you don't have to wait for the results.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Researchers Create Swimming and FLYING Penguins

I want a helium filled flying penguin right now! Or at least see them in real life. They look awesome, dreamlike, so unreal that it's like CGI.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The rainbow obsession

There are more people with a rainbow obsession
If he wasn't colorblind this would be the real rainbowboy. 
This would be some nice travel candy for on our euro trip

The TENORI-ON

Media artist Toshio Iwai and Yamaha have collaborated to design a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century, TENORI-ON. A 16x16 matrix of LED switches allows everyone to play music intuitively, creating a "visible music" interface. TENORI-ON layers can be thought of as “performance parts” or “recording tracks.” The TENORI-ON has a total of 16 layers. Separate notes and voices can be assigned to each layer, and all layers can be played together in synchronization.
Here is another nice track.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Smartest Dogs: Moscow Stray Dogs

Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. The four legged oldest human’s friends demonstrate real smartness such as riding the Moscow metro every morning to get from their suburban places of living to the fat regions of Moscow center. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen for the dog skills. Those skills can include “the hunt for shawarma” for example, the popular among Muscovites eastern cuisine dish. This hunt scene can be seen as this: Regular Moscow busy street with some small food kiosks. A middle-aged man buys himself a piece of hot fast food and walks aside chewing it without a rush. Then just in a second he jumps up frightened - some doggy has sneaked up on him and barked out loudly. His tasty snack falls out from his hands down to the ground and the dog gets it. Just ten minutes later, on the same place, the teen youngster loses his dinner in exactly the same manner. The modern Russian dogs are on their urban hunt.
Full Article...

Sunday, April 19, 2009

1000 FPS SprintCam v3 Showreel

This is a showreel for the SprintCam V3 high speed HD camera. I recommend clicking on HD on the video embed.
The red jello at the end really seems to defy gravity.

Irukandji Syndrome

wiki Irukandji syndrome is a condition induced by envenomization through the sting of Carukia barnesi, the Irukandji jellyfish, and other cubozoans.[1] It is seldom fatal, but is nevertheless one of the most painful experiences a human can experience. The condition was given its name in 1952 by Hugo Flecker, after the Aboriginal Irukandji people who live in Palm Cove, north of Cairns, where stings are common.
Fucking scary.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Kinetic Mirrors

Kamiel's two posts on kinetic art reminded me of these kinetic mirrors made by Daniel Rozin.
Wooden Mirror
Weave Mirror
How they work:
This last piece blurs the line between kinetic and digital art. An interactive easel.
More...

Friday, April 17, 2009

Kinetic sculptures from Athur Ganson

My excuse for this obsession with kinetic sculptures, but i really like the combination of mechanical engineering, art and craftsmanship. Its nice to see how these "artists" are solving their problems, that can even lead to making some fascinating home made tools.
One of the greatest Kinetic sculptures in my opinion is the Cory's yellow chair from Arthur Ganson:
Also some of his sculptures got some kind of humor in it like the luscious in oil bating machine link
This is Athur Ganson at a TED talk, with more sculptures:

Kinetic sculptures from Reuben Margolin

The kinetic sculptures that are made by Reuben Margolin remind me of the work of Theo Jansen. The technical and philosophy aspects of Theo Jansen are better in my opinion. But Reuben Margolin makes a better show of it. Also i like the hypnotic and natural way his sculptures move. Anyway here is one of his "wave" movies.:
And here is a movie about the maker:

Pirate Bay founders found guilty

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website. Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay 30m kronor (£2.4m) in damages. The four indicated earlier this week that they would appeal if convicted.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Army training

Army lessons in physics:
this day we explain the moment of force.
This movie works as a commercial for me i really wanna sign up the army to do this all day long.  

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Arborsculpture

wiki Tree shaping, known under a variety of names, is the art and technique of growing and shaping trunks, branches and roots of trees and other woody plants. By grafting, shaping, and pruning the woody trunks, or guiding branches, trees are made to grow into ornamental or useful shapes. Tree shaping is similar to espalier, Bonsai and sometimes includes some topiary.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Meat Grinder Gun

Real man eats meat and fire guns!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe

New Scientist IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power. A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun. It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that. Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction. Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences. The projections of just how catastrophic make chilling reading. "We're moving closer and closer to the edge of a possible disaster," says Daniel Baker, a space weather expert based at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and chair of the NAS committee responsible for the report. Full Article...

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Zombie emergency box

fail-owned-prep-win
see more pwn and owned pictures Here wiggles, this is what you should get instead of your pansy crowbar.

Great Stop Motion Clip From the 1930's

From the 14min movie It's a Bird, too bad I can't find the full version of the movie.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Fun and Trippy Point and Click Flash Game

Quite an enjoyable and bizarre adventure game with a great graphical style.
Samorost

LIES!

In response to this post: Annom edit:

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

First Live Action Movie of Individual Carbon Atoms in Action

It might not look like much, but this truly is one of the most amazing things I've seen in a long time. I never expected scientists to be capable at this point in time of not only seeing but filming at this atomic resolution.
TEAM 0.5 is capable of producing images with half angstrom resolution, which is less than the diameter of a single hydrogen atom.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), working with TEAM 0.5, the world’s most powerful transmission electron microscope, have made a movie that shows in real-time carbon atoms repositioning themselves around the edge of a hole that was punched into a graphene sheet. Viewers can observe how chemical bonds break and form as the suddenly volatile atoms are driven to find a stable configuration. This is the first ever live recording of the dynamics of carbon atoms in graphene. “The atom-by-atom growth or shrinking of crystals is one of the most fundamental problems of solid state physics, but is especially critical for nanoscale systems where the addition or subtraction of even a single atom can have dramatic consequences for mechanical, optical, electronic, thermal and magnetic properties of the material,” said physicist Alex Zettl who led this research. “The ability to see individual atoms move around in real time and to see how the atomic configuration evolves and influences system properties is somewhat akin to a biologist being able to watch as cells divide and a higher order structure with complex functionality evolves.” Full Article...

The new Shii: Wii for women

Make sure to check the last game in the series!


Sunday, April 05, 2009

North Korea satellite in orbit or ocean?

North Korea claims the rocket it sent up Sunday put an experimental communications satellite into space and that it is transmitting data and patriotic songs. The U.S. military says whatever left the launch pad ended up at the bottom of the sea. North Korea has a history of hyperbole. In creating a cult of personality for its leader, Kim Jong Il, its media rewrote the story of his birth along biblical lines and once said that when he took up golf, he was firing holes-in-one with regularity. Full Article...

I'm Not Alone in this Dream

Part of a Time article about "Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense"
For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver's licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We'll let you proceed with your lives — much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case — without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We'll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: "Tune in, turn on, drop dead."
I've long held this idea as the ideal retirement :)

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Cumulonimbus Cloud from ISS

Here is another cumulonimbus.

Interesting Acoustic Properties at Chichen Itza

Tourists delight in the strange chirping echoes they produce when they clap their hands at the base of the steep staircases that sweep up the face of Kukulkan, a 1,300-year-old Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan. While amusing themselves, the tourists may unwittingly be replicating an ancient Mayan ritual, says David Lubman, an acoustical consultant based in California. The echoes are eerily reminiscent of the call of the quetzal, a bird the Maya considered a representative of the gods. Lubman recorded the enigmatic echoes while on vacation in Mexico and analyzed them when he returned home. The echoes sound like chirps, he realized, because the sound from the tapping doesn't hit a solid wall but hundreds of small steps, producing hundreds of echoes. The difference in the distance traveled by echoes bouncing off lower steps is rather small, so the echoes follow each other closely and make a high-pitched sound; the distances and intervals between successive echoes returning from the higher steps, however, are longer, so their pitch is lower. When the echoes reach a listener's ear, the change in pitch sounds like a chirping bird. More...

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Obama :(

This is no question to brush aside and it certainly isn't a laughing matter. What about all the people hurt by current policy? The young people who lose all their chances and end up in jail just for using it. The people who die by violence of warring drug cartels and dealers. The people suffering from cancer and other diseases who are greatly benefited by marijuana. Who benefits from the status quo? To name a few: The anti-drug organizations like the DEA, the police and jails and of course the drug cartels.