The Writers at io9.com have been running through a fantastic series of blog posts, in which they're teaching their readers about the history of great 80s sci-fi and fantasy. Because so much of this is right up my alley, I though I'd aggregate their aggregations, so to speak, and write a little retrospective of my own.
UK-based designer Dominic Wilcox's Speed Creating Project presents the challenge of making something creative everyday, for 30 consecutive days. Wilcox's best results are pointless in an utterly delightful way. True junk drawer resourcefulness. My 7 favorites below; click through for all 30.
If you were to look on the roof of your local city bus, what would you find? A little bit of dirt, most likely, and a whole lot of space. Precisely the stuff you'd find in an empty container garden! Enter NYU graduate student Marco Castro Cosio's Bus Roots, a project which, through installing gardens on the rooftops of New York City buses, seeks to "reclaim forgotten space, increase quality of life and grow the amount of green spaces in the city."
Fashion designer Manel Torres has teamed up with scientists at Imperial College London and designers at the Royal College of Art to invent spray-on clothing, an instant, sprayable, non-woven fabric-in-a-can.
We've seen wearable electronics before, but we've yet to see a dress that dually operates as a cell phone. The idea is interesting, though not especially pragmatic (yet).
If you're a believer in the power of logic, may as well skip the game tomorrow. Two math professors at the University of London have supposedly determined who will win the World Cup, and have displayed their findings as a sophisticated infographic:
Oscar the cat is one lucky feline. After losing his two hind legs in a combine harvester, his loving owners had Oscar outfitted with two prosthetic paws, or metallic pegs to be more specific. This revolutionary veterinary procedure is nothing to scoff at - biomedical engineering experts and a neuro-orthopedic surgeon were both called in to create the world's first bionic cat. Via BBC:
World Cup World asks: "How'd North Korean fans get to the game?" Fair and valid question. It's seeming IMPOSSIBLE for any North Korean citizen to get a visa to leave the communist regime (not that they could afford it, anyway) to attend this past week's game. After much initial speculation on whether these fans were the real deal, the mystery has been resolved by multiple news sources.
Via WonderHowTo World, CAKES! CAKES! CAKES!: Martha Stewart Living Radio recently held a cupcake contest, and unfortunately the winner was NOT these Alexander McQueen cupcakes, by Julia Cunningham, DJ on SiriusXM U.
Martha Stewart Living Radio recently held a cupcake contest, and unfortunately the winner was NOT these Alexander McQueen cupcakes, by Julia Cunningham, DJ on SiriusXM U.
Skoda has created an amazing car constructed with CAKE! for their latest advertisement. Via Car Pages,
Another creation by Bang Goes the Theory, the "car-puccino" is a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco powered solely by roasted coffee granules.
Apple announced today at WWDC that Apple Maps is about to get a lot more detailed with its inclusion of floor plans of shopping malls and airports. This will be a welcomed feature to Maps as users will be able to quickly see which stores the malls have and how to get to them easily. The feature will also allow consumers to know exactly where their gates may be to get to their flights faster, or where to grab coffee. These maps will be created for cities such as Boston, New York Chicago, Hong ...
Well, that's one way to get a leg up on Samsung! Announced earlier today, Carphone Warehouse has stated that the new HTC One, dubbed the M8, will go on sale around 4pm on Tuesday, March 25th, "minutes" after the official announcement to unveil the product from HTC. According to the press release, the "handsets will be transported directly from the venue of the launch announcement to six Carphone Warehouse stores in London". A first for a smartphone manufacturer, the move will give HTC a coupl...
No exaggeration in today's headline, design student Anna Schwamborn has actually designed a jewelry line made from the hair and cremated ashes of dead loved ones. Human hair sure makes a nice accent to the black bone china (note the word "bone" - human ashes are mixed in).
Uh-mazing...London based designer team Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz have created a dress embroidered with 24,000 LEDs.
Remember Grandma-approved eco-friendly mud graffiti? London native Helen Nodding has taken a similar approach: non-destructive moss graffiti. Helen was inspired by the cold hard steel, glass, and concrete of the city:
(We did not know about these, either...until we discovered these videos.) The fixed gear bike, also called a fixie, was designed for track racing in the velodrome. Working bike messengers brought them to the NYC, Tokyo, SF, London streets on account the cycles gave them far more control to maneuver the urban jungle. The Chinese acrobat peddling a bike with 18 contortionists wrapped around him, must have a fixie.
In my opinion, Isaac Newton is definitely the number two astronomer, right below Galileo Galilei. His discoveries were very important to uncovering the secrets of space, and he deserves to be remembered.
As my in game name (TehGeekFather) would suggest I tend to like things on the Geekier side of things. Games being one of them. (duh I'm on a Forum dedicated to Minecraft) That being said I am a huge Fallout fan. (NO! not the band. <Sigh>) I'm referring to the post apocalyptic series first developed by Black Isle Studios, the roll playing game division of Interplay, back in 1997. Fallout 1 and 2 were pretty big back then open game play, being able to complete tasks in different ways depending ...
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
Most kids who play video games will never become professional gamers. Those that do are part of a very select group— it's like being a professional actor or athlete. It's nice work if you can get it. For everyone else, the sad realization usually arrives sooner or later that time spent playing games might not have the practical rewards that homework or working hard at your job might deliver.
By now you may have heard that the Diablo 3 Friends and Family beta testing has begun. Diablo III is the next highly anticipated addition in the Diablo trilogy, and is the sequel to Diablo 2, originally published all the way back in 2000. The game is the product of Blizzard Entertainment, a company well known for its very successful Warcraft and Starcraft franchises. Like the other Blizzard series, Diablo III will be exclusively for PCs at launch. Console players can rejoice as the lead proje...
Danish developer Playdead has made only one game, a little indie, side-scrolling, puzzle platformer called Limbo. It just happens to be far and away the best video game of that prominent genre (and perhaps the best indie game period) on the Xbox 360, and quite possibly for PlayStation 3 and PC, too. Critical and financial success has followed in droves, and today... Playdead has taken advantage of that success and indie-fied themselves even further by purchasing back the portion of the compan...
Electronic Arts is the biggest game publisher in the world, and have been for years. And yet, their only successful internally developed games nowadays are the EA Sports mega-franchises like Madden. Most of their success has stemmed from their ability to buy other companies on their way up, squeeze the creativity out of them, and then sell them to someone else or just let them go. This week they made their largest acquisition ever when they purchased PopCap Games for $750 million upfront—as m...
In the last decade, burglary rates in the United States have fluctuated little with over 2 million burglaries each year. In 2009, nearly three quarters of all burglaries were from residential properties, with over sixty percent being forcible entry. But we all know burglars don't like confrontation—they prefer breaking into apartments and houses when its owners are away. And that's why it's a must for apartment dwellers and homeowners to be on the defensive, even when they're not home.
Xe Systems, the Private-Defense-Contractor-Formerly-Known-As-Blackwater, has been busy attempting to re-brand themselves. They have a new name, several new sub-names, and have at least titularly shifted their focus to training rather than mercenary work. Controversial founder Erik Prince is no longer with the company, which is now owned by a large investment consortium.
He may have just started his teenage years, but Laurence Rock's future is looking pretty good after inventing an ingenious doorbell device called Smart Bell. He's already sold 20,000 units to telecoms giant Commtel Innovate, and is securing a second deal with an unidentified company that will land him £250,000. That's over $400,000!
Angry Birds might be the most visible video game franchise in the world today. It has sold 100 million units, as many as all the Sims games put together. It has been incorporated into board games, birthday cakes, and Israeli sketch comedy shows. And yet, this piece of seeming mass-media whoredom is an indie game. Wha?
ANIMATED FEATURE: Thanks to Tom Berger for another animated movie review!
Does size matter? When it comes to optical illusions, it does. The size of a human brain's visual cortex determines how he or she sees the world, meaning not everybody observes optical illusions in the same way.
Yes, they are May numbers, NPD is late by a month due to "IT" problems. They might have well blamed it only oil spill crisis.
Yeah it's... that's a good movie there Thanks to Tom Berger for another animated movie review!
Boston.com's The Big Picture posts 2009's most amazing Guinness World Record holders. My favorite fanatics below.
Popsci has posted 2009's most amazing scientific images, and there's quite a few great ones in there. A few of our favorites below, click through for all 62.
Destroy Black Ops Noobs First of all, these tips are great for any consoles that run Black Ops. Whether it be your Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, XBox 360 or your PC.
Zynga just added another game to their Zynga with Friends series called Scramble with Friends. If you've ever played Boggle, it's basically the same thing, but is dedicated to playing your buddies just like Words with Friends or Hanging with Friends.
GRAMARYE n pl. -S occult learning; magic 64 points (14 points without the bingo)