Nitroglycerin, otherwise known as the explosive essence of dynamite, is so sensitive AND powerfully explosive that when hit with a hammer, it creates "a supersonic shockwave and a flash of light almost too fast to film, even with the latest specialist cameras". In the blink of an eye (literally) extreme detonation occurs. Shooting super slo-mo is absolutely necessary (600x slower, to be exact).
Art nerds rejoice. With the aid of Photoshop, the folks at Artcyclopedia have doctored Van Gogh's paintings to give the effect of a three dimensional model (the same effect used in tilt-shift photography).
Imagine this scenario: Late for work, you jump in the car. Going your usual 10 or maybe even 15 miles over the speed limit, suddenly a ball tumbles into the road, closely pursued by a little girl! Scared sh*tless, you slam on your brakes.
The economic mini-camper isn't a particularly new idea, but German designer Cornelius Comanns' Bufalino concept is about as sleek as I've seen them.
I'm particularly interested in his point about 3D being darker. I saw Avatar in 3D with 2 different projection systems: RealD 3D and 3D at the Arclight Dome. Both times, throughout the film, I snuck a peak over my glasses and saw the colors and exposure at the saturation and brightness I thought the DP (haha) intended. It looked beautiful. The colors were more saturated and I could see important story information in the shadows. When you're losing over a stop of light transmission through tho...
Representational painting requires great skill and practice. The best examples aptly capture light, breathing life into the work. Accurate proportion and perspective is an asset. Matching what you perceive as the correct color to what actually is the correct color requires a highly trained eye.
We love the photo booth. Inevitably the best pictures from any wedding come from, not the professional photographer, but the photo booth stationed in the far corner where tipsy guests act very very silly. Brett Ratner, director of Rush Hour and X-men, has a photo booth installed in his house. After several years of parties...he decided to publish a book of all the candids. Jay-Z, Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake and many others mug for the camera without the aid of fancy lighting or make up ar...
What do these egg-carton lamps by American designer Victor Vetterlein have in common with Frankenstein's monster? More than you'd think! Both are green. Both have bolted necks. And both are assembled from materials most would be happy to let decompose.
Did you ever, as a know-nothing kid, push against your closed eyelids for the pleasure of the resultant light show? LCD bending takes the low-tech fun of physical retinal stimulation and updates it for the 21st century. And, as the title suggests, the end result looks very much like a sort of angelic, fractal-based fingerpainting.
Experimental house, "Roll It", is a collaborative project within Germany's University of Karlsruhe. The basic concept is as follows: using a cylindrical design to maximize space within a minimum housing unit. Not sure how "space efficient" this would actually be, but using it as transport could be fun (until the nausea inevitably sets in).
Here is a chart I created which indicates what each baby will grow up into when it is placed in the Nursery Barn. Be forewarned that the foal or calf you put into the Nursery will NOT usually grow up into the large version. This was done to keep it fair for those who bought special horses with farm cash.
Hubble Catches Star Consuming Its Planet Hubble Telescope has discovered a planet-eating star.
You'd think a Hummer couldn't get any more over-the-top (unless you're talking a horse-drawn Hummer or remote-controlled Hummer, of course), but Japanese tuner Calwing’s US division, 213 Motoring has come out with a Hummer boasting a whole extra set of wheels. I'm not quite sure why this is necessary, but nonetheless, Bornrich reports:
If you're in New York, you absolutely cannot miss this beautiful exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens. Emily Dickinson, the famed reclusive poet of the 19th century, was a lover of nature, and her garden was recreated in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. What can I say, except that it's just stunning...
100% functional LEGO ATM by Ronald McCrae. This bonafide brick bank performs the following functions:
F.A.T. creates the illusion of graffiti with an iPhone application and a projector. The best part? There's a HowTo (click through & scroll down). Previously, Magical LED Graffiti "Paints" With Video.
As a fashion pedestrian, my exposure to high fashion art and understanding is limited, but this looks pretty hot. I love the diner scene lighting on her face.
As a fashion pedestrian, my exposure to high fashion art and understanding is limited, but this looks pretty hot. I love the diner scene lighting on her face.
With the advent of the iPad and large inexpensive monitors, movie posters have not only gone digital but they have gone moving as well. Now we are not talking a trailer, we are talking moving Key Art or what is now known as a Living Moving Poster. This term is similar to a motion graphic Title card that has a "Living Hold" which simply means, the title is resolved but there is still movement in the background and lighting effects. Here is the final results. These same guys are now pushing i...
Kojiro the robot has muscles, tendons and a flexible spine- just like you! Combine Kojiro with the doppelganger bot and you'll have something supremely sci-fi freaky.
I bought a canon 7D and used it for an entire weekend. I noticed it dropped frames much more than my Canon 5D. There were many more aliasing problems with fine detail in the background. The camera is just plain awful in low light situations. Anything above 400 ISO I was getting too much noise to deal with. The only thing it was great at was taking lots of stills at a high rate of speed. This feature is great for certain types of sports photography. Overall I was very unhappy with the ...
Hacked Gadgets recently featured Csaba Bleuer's LED wave display, a device that projects LED messages midair. Bleuer had also previously created a similar device that spins on a fan motor.
The secret to the perfect homemade pizza? No need for a professional pizza oven, apparently a cast-iron skillet will do the trick.
In this two part tutorial from Alvaro Castaneda you will learn how to create a logo in Maya. We begin by tracing the logo in a vector app, then use that to start building the logo, using Maya to bring it to life. In part two we add shaders to our geometry to later light and render our final logo. Create a logo in Maya - Part 1 of 2.
In this two part lesson we'll discuss the differences between open chords and barre chords, then introduce the 4 main primary barre chords. I'll give a few tips on how you might position your hand to play the barre chords cleanly, and explain how each barre chord pattern relates to the guitar neck to produce a chord in all 12 keys. With these 4 patterns and some practice you should be able to play 48 chords. I'll suggest a couple of practice routines and give you a quick demo using "Light My ...
This holiday season, don't go the old-fashioned route when decorating for Christmas, stay in the present. To see how to joyfully adorn in the present, and no I did not say "presents," just check out this video on how to decorate a Christmas tree in a contemporary style.
At its March 8 event, Apple showed off the new green iPhone 13 and alpine green 13 Pro models, as well as the third-generation iPhone SE with 5G. Each comes with new wallpapers, and you can get all of them on your phone right now.
By default, when there's a new event in Samsung's Calendar app, it pops up with an obnoxious full-screen window to let you know. Thankfully, there's a way to turn these into regular notifications.
The monochrome layout on Samsung's default keyboard can make it a little hard to view keys. Fortunately, there's a setting you can enable that makes your keyboard significantly easier to view and type on.
Magic Leap has some seriously awesome tech behind their augmented reality vision, and has made it a point to add a ton of adrenaline into the industry with a revolutionary focus on 3D layering. Today, they gave the public another glance at how they go about it. The image above displays the complete setup that Magic Leap uses to accurately capture someone's entire facial structure. The associated caption to this image reads: "This is where we study the 22 bones & 43 muscles of the face & head."
A fully functional steampunk computer workstation. With attention to detail this unique computer was manufactured from old materials. The ensemble consists of iron, steel, wood, brass, glass and leather. Perfect for timetravelers office or as ether terminal. Consists of a 150 years old base frame, a keyboard, a monitor, a mouse, together with a separate, free-standing mouse pad, webcam, plasma tubes, lighting, a Nixie clock and various gadgets ...
Christmas is only a few days away with New Year's right around the corner. If you're like me, you count down the days until Christmas for family and presents like a little kid, and then count down the days until New Year's like an adult that can't wait to have their first cocktail.
Are you expecting a lot of guests for an upcoming holiday party? To make your home smell like the holiday season, simmer orange peels, cinnamon sticks, cranberries, and cloves with water on a stovetop for several hours to make your indoor space smell really good.
If you're tired of using the same old ornaments on your Christmas tree year after year, then it's time to experiment with borax snowflakes. It's not only a fun decoration to make, it's a great science project to try out with family and friends. All you need for to make DIY crystal snowflakes at home are pipe cleaners, borax, a wide-mouth jar, string, a pencil, and boiling water.
Feeling the winter blues? While it is common to experience a little bit of a letdown when the daylight hours get shorter in the fall and winter months, for some people it becomes a persistent depression that lasts for days, with symptoms that include fatigue, crying spells, body aches, irritability, loss of interest in activities, and more.
The Nexus 9 is the hybrid update to the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. It's in the sweet-spot for great size and portability, and it'll be one of the first devices to natively run Android's new Lollipop update.
Using copper pennies (be sure they are older than 1983), lemon juice, paper towels and sandpaper, you can construct your own DIY battery that generates enough juice to light up an LED.
Make your summer memorable by whipping up some ice-cold, homemade soda in the comfort of your own kitchen, then take it along with you during your next picnic or beach trip.
Unless you're a bartender or a hardcore drink aficionado, understanding the different types of carbonated water and their best uses can get confusing. This is especially true since most people use the terms "club soda," "sparkling water," and "seltzer water" interchangeably when ordering drinks.
While it's still a few months before iOS 8 and Yosemite are released to the general public, that doesn't mean you can't get a part of Apple's new operating systems on your devices right now.
