Orbit Juggling – a new kind of juggling
A pretty hypnotic new style of juggling where the balls are suspended while being juggled. Daniel Rosenfeldt performs his orbit juggling performance called The Star Catcher.
Creating an artificial sun
How to create an artificial daylight/sun effect anywhere and any time.
Robotic nightmare gazing
This isn’t the first video I have put up about the amazing engineering work being done at Disney Studios, but this one is definitely the most visually…unsettling.
This video describes the development of a “lifelike gaze system” for human-robot interactions. They present a general architecture that seeks not only to create gaze interactions from a technological standpoint, but also through the lens of character animation where the fidelity and believability of motion is paramount; that is we seek to create an interaction which demonstrates the illusion of life.
In its current state – it looks a little too like something right out of a Terminator movie; but I think I can see where it’s going. Imagine fully clothed (and with rubber skin) animatronics you can interact with or narrate to you at one of their installations.
Peel P50
A while back Top Gear reviewed the world’s smallest car: the Peel P50.
But did you know that they are still being made and you can actually buy and own a brand new, street legal Peel P50? While they run £8,250 in the UK, US buyers can purchase an all electric one for a mere $1,100.
Not only that, but they are re-manufacturing a number of other tiny cars in the line – with a whole host of colors and features. There is a Cabrio version that is a convertible, a Trident that has a classic 60’s era bubble dome cockpit, and even build-it-yourself kits.
Head on over to https://p50cars.com and see if one suits your fancy!
IMMERSIVE LIGHTFIELD VIDEO WITH A LAYERED MESH REPRESENTATION
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/
How the Charles Bridge was constructed
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.
Yabusame – Samurai horseback archery
Potato Powered Doom
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.
High Altitude Penitentes
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 – 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
03/2024 Update:
There are similar rock formations in the extreme areas of Russian Siberia in the Ulakhan-Sis Mountain Range.
Whimsical Furniture Flashbacks
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.