January 1, 2012
The Kraakdoos (or Cracklebox) is a custom made battery-powered noise-making device. It is a small box with six metal contacts on top, which when pressed by fingers generate all manner of unusual sounds and tones. The human body becomes a part of the circuit and determines the range of sounds possible — different people will generate different results.
The concept was first conceived by Michel Waisvisz and Geert Hamelberg in the 1960s, and developed further in the 1970s when Waisvisz joined STEIM (STudio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. The kraakdoos is a simple device, based around a single operational amplifier (one of the earliest models to be produced) and a few transistors, and can be easily constructed by someone with a basic understanding of electronics.
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December 25, 2011
Google Goggles is an image recognition application used for searches based on pictures taken by handheld devices. The program proposed will be able to identify virtually anything. Currently the system can identify various labels or landmarks, allowing users to learn about such items without needing a text-based search. The system can identify products barcodes or labels that allow users to search for similar products and prices, and save codes for future reference, similar to the failed CueCat of the late ’90s, but with more functionality. The system will also recognize printed text and using optical character recognition (OCR) produce a text snippet, and in some cases even translate the snippet into another language.
Google is currently working to make the system able to recognize different plants and leaves, which can aid curious persons, those wishing to avoid toxic plants, and botanists and environmentalists searching for rare plants. Goggle applications are in the process of being used for metaverse virtual world image indexing and catalog applications. Regional coordinates are cammed by avatar-based movement in virtual camera scripted vehicles. In 2011, version 1.3 was released; it can solve Sudoku puzzles.
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December 21, 2011
Aaron Koblin is an American digital media artist best known for his innovative uses of data visualization and crowdsourcing. He is currently Creative Director of the Data Arts Team at Google Creative Lab in San Francisco.
Koblin’s projects have been shown at international festivals including Ars Electronica, TED, and are part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
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December 19, 2011
Taubman Sucks is an award-winning short documentary about a precedent-setting intellectual property lawsuit. The documentary was written and directed by filmmaker Theo Lipfert. The six-minute film explores Taubman v. WebFeats, a lawsuit that involved the complex relationships between domain names, trademarks, and free speech.
As the first ‘sucks.com’ case to reach the level of the United States Court of Appeals, the decision in Taubman v. WebFeats established precedents concerning the non-commercial use of trademarks in domain names.
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December 17, 2011
A cat café is a theme café whose attraction is cats that can be watched and played with. Patrons pay a cover fee, generally hourly, and thus cat cafés can be seen as a form of supervised indoor pet rental. The world’s first cat café opened in Taiwan in 1998. In Japan, the first cat café opened in Osaka in 2004. The popularity of cat cafés in Japan is attributed to many apartments forbidding pets, and to cats providing relaxing companionship in what may otherwise be a stressful and lonesome urban life; other forms of pet rental are also common in Japan.
There are various cat cafés. Some cat cafés feature specific categories of cat such as black cats, fat cats, rare breed cats, or ex-stray cats. A cat café must obtain a license and comply with the strict requirements and regulations of the Animal Treatment/Protection Law. Japanese cat cafés feature strict rules to ensure cleanliness and animal welfare, in particular seeking to ensure that the cats are not disturbed by excessive and unwanted attention, such as by young children or when sleeping. Many cat cafés also seek to raise awareness of cat welfare issues, such as abandoned and stray cats.
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December 15, 2011
Breakbot aka Thibaut Berland (b. 1981) is a French producer and DJ born.
After studying at the School of Graphic Supinfocom, he made short films (with Oury Atlan and Damien Ferrié called Overtime), advertisements and videos. He is also a CG artist with credits including ‘Arthur and the Invisibles.’
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December 15, 2011
Michael Jackson (1942 – 2007) was an English writer and journalist. He was the author of several influential books about beer and whiskey. He became famous in beer circles in 1977 when his book ‘The World Guide To Beer’ was published; it is still considered to be one of the most fundamental books on the subject.
The modern theory of beer style is largely based the book, in which Jackson categorized a variety of beers from around the world in local style groups suggested by local customs and names. His work had a special influence on the popularization of the brewing culture in North America, and he would later host a popular show entitled ‘The Beer Hunter,’ which was shown on Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel. During his 30 year career as a critic, he wrote columns for a large number of newspapers and magazines. Jackson considered beer as a component of culture and described beers in their cultural context. Although he traveled around the world and discovered different beer cultures, he was especially fond of the Belgian beers.
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December 14, 2011
Train surfing is riding or climbing on the outside of a moving train. This activity is illegal in many countries, but is a common and usual way to ride trains in India, Indonesia, and South Africa. Individuals may train surf to avoid the cost of a ticket or as a recreational activity. With the creation of the internet, the practice of filming the act and posting online videos of it is on the increase worldwide.
The London Underground is now running an advertising campaign against ‘tube surfing.’ The advertisements now at most underground stations show a female figure with one arm and the caption ‘she was lucky’ next to it. In Germany, the practice was made popular on TV in the 1990s. There it was called ‘S-Bahn Surfing.’ Slowly, the former train surfing culture changed and integrated into the German graffiti culture. The phenomenon was forgotten until the millennium, but in 2005 it was rediscovered by a group from Frankfurt. The leader of the crew who calls himself ‘the trainrider’ famously surfed the InterCityExpress, the fastest train in Germany.
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December 14, 2011
Elevator surfing is an activity involving moving around on top of elevators, or jumping between moving elevators where possible. The activity is illegal in most locations and several people have died or been injured attempting it. Surfers can be crushed between the elevator and the top, sides, or bottom of the shaft, be struck by the counterweight, or simply slip or be knocked off and fall to their deaths. Elevator surfing typically occurs in skyscrapers or on college campuses, especially those with tall buildings. Most large buildings have groups of elevators close together, which are most commonly used.
To begin, participants will usually go into such a building early in the morning, before too many people arrive to use the elevators. Once in an elevator, they hold the elevator between floors and open the safety hatch. They then climb on top, release the emergency switch, and pull the last person out. Another method of entry involves opening the exterior doors on the floor above the elevator, and jumping on from there. Doors are either forced or opened with an elevator key. While easier to execute, this is uncommon unless no others are nearby. Accomplices will sometimes press buttons on the inside of the elevators to provide the movement. Movement can also be provided by means of service controls located on top of the elevator car.
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December 14, 2011
Insect fighting is an activity involving insects (and sometimes, arachnids, centipedes, millipedes and mollusks). It is practiced in areas in China, Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand. Cricket fighting is a traditional Chinese pastime that dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Originally nurtured by emperors, it was later popularized by commoners. It is also a casual activity for youth in western countries and is known colloquially as ‘bugfighting.’
Some of the most popular species used are the Stag Beetle, Rhinoceros Beetle, Kabutomushi, Jerusalem Cricket, and Goliath Beetle, as their sheer size and jumping ability make them formidable opponents. They are trained by their owners to become stronger and more aggressive. With beetles, a small noisemaker is used that duplicates the female’s mating call (fighting beetles are male). Getting beetles to fight requires patience and is much different than other types of animal fighting. The loser is pushed onto its back by the winner, pushed off of a tree limb, or a predetermined area, or is killed.
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December 14, 2011
Stratolaunch Systems is a space transportation venture specializing in air launch to orbit, with its corporate headquarters located in Huntsville, Alabama. It was founded in 2011 by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan, who had previously collaborated on the creation of SpaceShipOne (which won the Ansari X-Prize by reaching 100 kilometers in altitude). The newly envisioned launch system will use similar components to that of Virgin Galactic though it will be made for orbital launch instead of suborbital.
The startup will build a mobile launch system with three primary components; a carrier aircraft to be build by Scaled Composites, A multi-stage launch vehicle built by Space Exploration Technologies, and a mating and integration system to be built by Dynetics. Allen and Rutan stated that the carrier craft would have a wingspan of 385 feet (117 m), making it the largest aircraft ever to fly, and will weigh in at over 1,200,000 pounds (540,000 kg). The aircraft will be powered by six turbine engines, sourced from a Boeing 747. It will use a 12,000 feet (3,700 m) long runway and is expected to test fly in 2016.
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December 13, 2011
The Billboard Liberation Front practices culture jamming (a tactic used by anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising) by altering billboards by changing key words to radically alter the message, often to an anti-corporate message.
It started in San Francisco in 1977 as an outgrowth of the Cacophony Society, a secret society responsible for a number of anarchic pranks.
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