I worked with a little bit of early lightfield photography back in the day. Looks like they’ve expanded and possibly found an interesting VR application. These researchers present a system for capturing, reconstructing, compressing, and rendering high quality immersive light field video.
Here’s the Siggraph paper and some more examples:
https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/
The Charles Bridge is a historic, gorgeous bridge that crosses the Vltava (Moldau) river in Prague. I was fascinated by it and the whole city of Prague when I visited.
Its construction started in 1357 under King Charles IV, and finished in the beginning of the 15th century. It stands today – which means it has seen an amazing amount of history.
The associated video collection on the channel also goes through how the bridge was constructed – and has videos of other historic Prague buildings.
How many potatoes does it take to run Doom? About 770 potato slices if you run it on a TI-84 calculator. 770 very stinky potatoes.
Snow can get funny at high altitudes and on mountains. It can be powdery soft, squeeky and crunchy, wet and gummy, or even form strange shapes depending on pressure, humidity, temperature, and a host of other conditions. It’s one of the fascinating parts I love about climbing mountains.
In the high Atacama desert, Penitentes, or nieves penitentes (Spanish for “penitent-shaped snows”), are snow formations found at high altitudes. They take the form of elongated, thin blades of hardened snow or ice, closely spaced and pointing towards the general direction of the sun.
The name comes from the resemblance of a field of penitentes to a crowd of kneeling people doing penance. The formation evokes the tall, pointed habits and hoods worn by brothers of religious orders in the Processions of Penance during Spanish Holy Week. In particular the brothers’ hats are tall, narrow, and white, with a pointed top.
These spires of snow and ice grow over all glaciated and snow-covered areas in the dry andes above 4,000 metres (13,000 ft).They range in length from a few centimetres to over 5 metres (16 ft).
Penitentes up to 15 metres (49 ft) high are suggested to be present in the tropics zone on Europa, a satellite of Jupiter. According to a recent study, NASA’s New Horizons has discovered penitentes on Pluto, in a region informally named Tartarus Dorsa
I’m pretty sure I’ve met Dust Furniture‘s Vincent Leman back in the day when he was using a studio right next to the computer shop I worked at in Brookston, Indiana. His company makes very Disney-esque style whimsical furniture pieces that would also look just as at home in a Tim Burton feature.
I hadn’t thought of his work in years, yet ran across a pintrest pic of the stacked cabinet and it all came back. Great to see he’s still at it and doing well.
John Robertson is here to guide you through an adventure of expertly crafted chaos and anarchy. And in the end, eeeeeverybody plays!
YOU AWAKE TO FIND YOURSELF IN A DARK ROOM is a live action video game that has the audience trapped in an interactive, retro gaming nightmare; choose an option, find a way out, and escape The Dark Room! If you succeed, you’ll take home £1,000… but if you fail, YOU WILL DIE!
David Suchet, famous for his portrayal of Hercule Poirot, take a real-life trip on the Venice Simplon Orient Express. While very expensive, it is definitely on my bucket list. Give it a watch.
I got to do a one day murder mystery trip on the train on my last trip to England. It appears this has gone so well, they’ve really upped the cost and length.
Most people have heard of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian refugee who was forced to live in the departure lounge of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport from 1988 until 2006. His story was made into a book and then the 2004 Tom Hanks movie The Terminal. This is not that story.
Instead, this is set in Japan about a very different man. One I am almost certain I taxied right past in one of my trips to Japan.
Takao Shito is a farmer living in the Narita International Airport in Tokyo, Japan. Unlike other farmers who left when the airport was built in the 1960s, he chose to stay and continue to cultivate his farmland. He’s been offered the equivalent of $1.5 million USD – but refuses to leave the land his family farmed for 100 years. It’s a rare an interesting view into land rights disputes and Japanese culture.
And when I say he lives right in the middle of the airport – I mean it. Here you can see the red spot exactly where his farm is located on the north end of the terminals right between the terminals and runway 34R.
Other info:
https://www.odditycentral.com/news/farmer-lives-in-the-middle-of-japans-second-largest-airport.html
Star Trek TNG B-Sides is a clever fan edited series that re-contextualizes the secondary subplot that arise within episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation to make them the primary focus. The result is an entertaining series of 15-minute videos that effectively look at things in a different way than the original.
