This 3D Light show was projected on the Kharkov Regional Administration building in Ukraine on August 24th to celebrate the country’s independence day. The interesting part only starts after about 30 seconds, so if you don’t want to wait, don’t hesitate to skip ahead in the video.
Santa vs. Edward Cullen [Pic]
[Via 9gag]
50 years of Japanese Concept Cars
Pink Tentacle, a Japanophile focused blog, shows 50 years of concept cars from Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and others.
Some of these concept cars showed off features and designed that made it into later year models – the 1997 Nissan Hypermini looks very much like the Smart Car that made it into production in 2000, and even some of the wilder cars, like the 1999 Honda Fuya-Jo shows a boxy, tank-like design that brings to mind the Nissan Cube.
Even so, some of these concept cars are Jetsons-level out there, including the 1993 Mazda London Taxi (which looks like the car Homer Simpson designed), the 1987 Daihatsu TA-X80, and the 1969 Toyota EX-II (which also brings to mind the Smart Car… which makes me wonder if maybe these things have a 30-year or so time from concept to production…)
Beam Me Up Scotchie: 10 Star Trek-Themed Cocktails to Get your Party Started
With names like “Beam Me Up Scotchie” and “Phasers on Stun Punch”, there’s no possible way to go wrong if you mix these at your next “Trekker” party… unless the borgs decide to show up of course. Then having a “successful” party is probably the last thing you’ll care about.
How Leaves Change Colors
I honestly hate to disagree with my fellow geeks, but the previous post contains some erroneous information. It is the result of bad science. Herewith is the actual method used for turning those trees into a beautiful fall display.
Tags: autumn leaves, fall, funny, Video
Federation and Klingon napkin rings made by a CNC
Xiph.org Explains Digital Media
Ever wonder how a song gets from the guitar to an MP3, or video gets from the camera to your screen? Sure, everyone knows that an MP3 takes up less space than a WAV file because of “compression,” but do you know exactly what compression is?
Xiph.org, which is responsible for all the Ogg media projects (including Vorbis, and Theora), has put together a video which explains just about everything you want to know about digital video and audio, including what “frame rate” is, what a “gamma curve” is, why CRT sets use RGB, and explains everything from the invention of the telegraph to the latest in video computer files.
It’s a very informative watch, and it would have saved me a lot of headaches back when I had to explain concepts such as “interlacing” to coworkers.
It also uses HTML5 and the <video> tag to display the video, but they also provide a downloadable format in WebM and Ogg Theora.
Fake Science: Why Do Leaves Change Color?
[Via]
16-bit ALU in Minecraft
On one hand, this guy has produced a VERY impressive working 16-bit arithmetic logic unit (which performs arithmetic and logical operations in your CPU).
On the other hand, there’s something just fundamentally wrong in running an ALU on a CPU to power an operating system to render a 3D environment for a video game where you implement an ALU. (And by “wrong,” we mean “awesome.”)
Poop Powered Lamp
At a dogpark in Cambridge, Massachusettes, Matthew Mazzota installed a gaslamp powered by methane generated from dog poop.
Burning the methane, which is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, helps the environment, he said. And with dogs dropping tons of poop in cities everywhere, he thinks the idea of using its untapped power has broad appeal.
Broad appeal… FOR ME TO POOP ON!