Tiny Volumetric lamp
Nick Electronics shows how he built a motorized volumetric display that uses a small grid of LEDs and wireless power.
80’s brand logos for modern companies
Graphic designer Kostya Petrenko create logos for modern brands as if they existed in the 1980s. He has both Instagram and TikTok channels with lots of interesting retro clips.
Song of the Lark
Jules Breton’s “Song of the Lark” was deemed the most popular painting in America in a poll conducted in 1934. A young peasant woman stands silently in the flat fields of the artist’s native Normandy as the sun rises, listening to the song of a distant lark. It currently hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago, one of my favorite museums.
The painting was Eleanor Roosevelt’s favorite work of art; it also inspired Bill Murray to try again while he was struggling actor in Chicago.
Zooming in
Jesse Martin does an extreme zoomin on his art (I’m betting there’s some splicing, but it’s a great zoom-in). He also has a ‘making of’ video how he used ProCreate to do it.
Reminds me of the ‘Powers of 10’ video from 1977
The lost arcade game: Akka Arrh!
Akka Arrh was a never released arcade game developed in the 80’s by the ever-wacky Llamasoft/Jeff Minter for Atari. A few cabinets were made, but only 3 are known to exist. None of the cabinet owners were willing to copy and share the roms. However, that all changed in 2019 and you can now play the old version via emulation.
As the story of the controversy goes on the MAMEWorld Forums, one of those collectors had a technician come to his home to repair some other game. In the process, the technician allegedly went into the Akka Arrh cabinet, copied the ROMS, and then anonymously posted them online. This generated a lot of controversy in the collector and retro gaming controversy.
Jeff Minter was hired to re-build the game in 2023. He said the original game’s design was “interesting but flawed” and lacked a compelling design to draw players back in when they lost. The much improved version is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, and PC.
I think the interesting part is the gameplay. It plays like a multi-level Missile Command in which you start zoomed out and as attackers break through your defenses you zoom in and back out again. I think that kind of mechanic is pretty difficult, and makes me ponder how that kind of mechanic could either be done differently or applied to very different kinds of games…
Die Hard Musical Parody
Funhouse Lounge in Portland puts on an amazing show each year: Die Hard, the Musical Parody
AI Black Mirror
The AI Black Mirror YouTube channel has some real nightmare fuel videos. The All Purpose Everything Sauce ad demonstrates what a hard time AI has with understanding how people eat.
Wacom leaves Portland
In 2016, Wacom moved from their Vancouver offices and opened their Pearl office and Wacom Experience center. At the time, they joined an influx of technology businesses opening Portland offices when the city became a destination for software startups and large tech companies based elsewhere.
Sadly, Portland’s tech scene began fading several years ago. Some of the city’s most prominent companies were sold and many tech companies moved out of Portland during the pandemic when riots and new taxes stressed businesses. In 2024, Portland now has the highest commercial vacancy rate, over 30%, of all major US cities.
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Visit the Deetz Beetlejuice house
As part of the Airbnb’s Icons series, you can now visit the old Beetlejuice Maitland’s house.
Sign up for an opportunity to visit the house this November.
Neat visualization
This could make a fun little demo – flying through a cityscape with buildings that are constantly generated by AI – getting funkier and funkier as you go along