This visionary / futuristic video from Microsoft Labs really impresses and inspires. Watch it if you want to get excited about technology again (where is the video like that from Apple, I wonder?)
<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&showPlaylist=true&from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a> Link - via
Today's pictures & links:
Arabic Calligraphy + Light Painting = Awesome
Julien Breton-Kalaam from Nantes, France, makes elaborate light-painted art with Arabic letters (or rather latin calligraphy with an Arabic aesthetic), which seem to be ideally suited for this kind of artistic presentation. Now somebody just has to do the same with Japanese hieroglyphs, and the new trend in "light calligraphy" will be complete.
We received a tip about one more unusual railroad accident: one Portuguese railroad Linha do Tua for long time had an extraordinary large number of derailments and train accidents. At some point, the railroad officials even suspected terrorism. But one day the ground gave completely, resulting in a significant landslide:
Last night I took a look at the "most searched" words in my right column on DRB (look to the right, under categories)
"steampunk sexy japan women octopus dangerous roads iran guns abandoned ark russia dubai russian caves fish cars accidents cat robot star wars wiring lego tank castles motorcycle socotra furniture portrait funny animals"
- and suddenly realized that this exact word sequence (with a little editing) reads like a pretty cool story!
Check it out:
"Steampunkish-sexy Japanese women (with octopuses as pets) are driving on the most dangerous roads in Iran - on a mission to bring the abandoned Ark from Russia (and the Russian caves) to Dubai!
Their car fish-tails... and they get into an accident - with a bunch of cat-like "Star Wars" robots and hard-wired LEGO tanks, who were going between castles on motorcycles - carrying funny Socotra furniture and portraits of funny animals"
This is a BMW, rebuilt by R.P Morris, Longfield, Kent, in 1967 - it's now called a "Railway Taxi".
------------
Russian Dark Fantasy Covers from 1905
Great collection of rare Russian periodicals from 1901-1907 can be seen at Beinecke Library (type in search: Russia 1905). It looks like Russian artists predicted (or had some sort of premonition) the atrocities that were coming in less than a decade... Anyway, the art itself is fearfully intense and simply beautiful:
"Our story begins in December of 2003, St. Louis Missouri. Curt found a cave while searching for commercial property in our area on Ebay. That’s right, we found our cave on eBay! A couple of weeks later we visited, and fell in love with the place. It took us nearly five months to complete the purchase, and just over four years to build our offices and home here. We managed to sell our home in Sunset Hills and use that money as 50% down payment and the balance created a five year Balloon note. That note expires on May 1st, 2009..." The rest of the story, and why they have to sell it, read on their eBay page and on the family's website - Caveland
------------
Stressed-out dogs
Dog's life has these intense moments....
(originals unknown)
In the meantime cats concentrate on the task at hand:
(original unknown)
------------
The King of All Bean Bag Chairs
Andrew from Sumo Lounge sent us a sample of his "SUMOSAC Gamer" bean chair, deep red color, the coolest thing in my office right now. It weighs about 30lbs, comes vacuum-packed, and then unfolds in about 12 hours into a... "bean", which will morph and support your body in all sorts of positions. It also invites you to jump right into it, with utter abandon. As for long-term comfort, I found it very good place for reading and playing games on a laptop. As this is radically different from normal furniture, but a step above in comfort and good value, we are thinking of replacing the old stuff with these "alien beans" to throw ourselves around.
Don't forget to check out other groovy options - Sumo Omni, Sumo Sac and Chief Rocker! They all different by size, by it's impossible not to love them, or not to long for more of them.
The photo you labeled "Ice Train" appears in the fantasy art compilation "Spectrum 15 here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Spectrum-15-Contemporary-Fantastic-Underwood/dp/1599290278
It's one of my favorite images in the book! If you are a fan an fantasy art (like me) you should check it out!
Wowsers, Mr. Simon is the real deal. About time the Future looked like itself again, isn't it?
Looking at these images takes me back to the best psychedelic trip of my life. One merry night in 1981 I spent a pile of cash on naughty things and a copy of Syd Mead's book "Sentinel." Hours and hours in Tomorrowland...
If it weren't for the creepily starved and pin-up girls he envisions as pilots... Maybe they put so much money in their vehicles that they could afford neither food nor protective clothing.
Those will never sell. Here's the design process that works:
Homer: All right, you eggheads! I want a place in this car to put my drink! Designer: Sir, the-the car has a beverage holder. Homer: Hello! Hello, Einstein! I said a place to put my drink. You know those Super Slakers they sell at the Kwik-E-Mart? (Makes a large circle with his hands.) The cup is this big! Designer: (Talks as he writes on a clipboard.) Extremly large beverage holder. Homer: I'm not done yet. You know that little ball you put on the aerial so you can find your car in the parking lot? That should be on every car! Designer: (Talks as he writes on a clipboard.) Little ball. Homer: And some things are so snazzy, they never go out of style! Like tail fins and bubble domes and shag carpeting.
The picture with two green tram cars is most probably taken in the AnsaldoBreda workshop. The damaged vehicle on the right was involved in a crash in Milan, near Porta Romana, on 10 october 2008: it derailed due to an error of the driver, who was using his mobile phone while driving. After going out of the track, the Jumbotram hit another tram, an older model made in 1927 (those tram, called "Carrelli" are one of the symbols of the city). Noone was injured, but people on the older vehicle got blocked inside the car due to a failure of emergency opening of the doors.
The video at the end isn't a train hitting a concrete wall, it is a crash test for nuclear waste transport containers. The container is on a flatbed train car that has been turned on it's side, and the train hits the container (the yellow box)
Sorry if you know this already, but it has happened that trains that are to be scrapped have been cleaned up and then dumped in the sea to make artificial reefs for wildlife and divers to enjoy. That may explain the underwater image. Or maybe not! :-)
The crushed black tanker car was the result of implosion. "The general-purpose tank car in the photo below was being steam cleaned in preparation for maintenance. The job was still in progress at the end of the shift so the employee cleaning the car decided to block in the steam. The car had no vacuum relief so as it cooled, the steam condensed and the car imploded." Keep in mind that steam has around 1600 times the volume of condensed water.
Two links:
How tank car implosions work. http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2008/04/22/how-tank-car-implosions-work/
Lessons Learned in 2001: Over/Under Pressure Relief Required for System Safety from the Richland Operations Office Department of Energy http://www.hanford.gov/RL/?page=525&parent=506
I'd have to watch the episode again, but the underwater subway car is probably a screencap from an episode of CSI: New York. It' looks awfully familiar...
The train on the "unfinished" bridge is out there deliberately; there's nothing that will stop it from backing up in that image.
The imploded tank car might be from a test/demonstration that was done - I'd have to dig out the video again and see if it's the same location.
Train disaster happen quite often, luckily mostly without fatalities. One example for a catastrophe is the disaster in Eschede/Germany, where a high-speed train derailed and collided with a bridge, killing 101 people on board.
montparnasse is a station in paris, france, quite in the center of the city. its original name is "gare montparnasse". from there, trains depart to the south-western part of france.
You should look up the train wreck in Prince George, British Columbia about 2 years ago. We all stood in the park and watched the train burning across the river. You could see the smoke all around town.
Picture #6 in the Russian section shows two rubber tired wheels attached to some wreckage between the two trains. The spiked objects to the right are diamond harrows which are not quite obsolete farm equipment. There's another harrow in the center further back and a badly bent on on the left. The wreckage with wheels is the harrow cart. It looks like a farmer was crossing the track when he shouldn't have.
Ad. Utterly Surreal: Tilt-Shift Train Wrecks I'm not convinced... these look as actulal tilt-shift photos, not "PS trickery". Of course tilt-shift can be immitated by retouching a photo on PS or other software but why bother? The fun You get with a tilt shift lens (such as PC-E Nikkor 24mm for example) is worth a lot more than time spent on your PS. The PS tilt-shift retouched photos will NEVER look as good as taken with an actual perspective-correction lens. Peace to You all. I love this blog.
The photo of former New York City rollingstock unit 9577 is *definitely* not a train wreck. As someone mentioned before, this is one of the repurposed Redbirds that have been stripped of usable parts, cleaned, and dumped off the eastern seaboard. Please get it right, or note it.
If you're going to show an accident involving NYC rollingstock, at least show a real accident
Check this out.. Two photos of the only train wreck in US history where four steam locomotive trains collided... occurred at East Thompson Connecticut, Dec.4, 1891.
@ujanja They were intentionally put there to encourage reef growth on the otherwise flat and featureless ocean floor along the eastern seaboard off the coast of the Carolinas. This reef growth has also been great for tourism and fishing in the area.
I am very impressed to the people who made a lot of stuff like that. I always wanted to learn how to make them. But unfortunately, I can't. So to make myself happy and contented I make sure that I have all the stuff I want or atleast search for a site like this to give my own perspective. Thanks for the post.
1: http://funnypics3.blogspot.com/ Great collection of Funny Pics
2: http://123amazingpics.blogspot.com/ Amazing,Excellent,Awesome,Wonderful,Tremendous pics of daily things around the globe
3: http://extreme-funnyvideos.blogspot.com/ A great collection of funny videos ever 4 http://funnydotnet.blogspot.com/ More useful site for Freshers who learn .NET.Here i provide links For to download PROJECTS with source code and more
To quote from the article you linked to, these animals are found at "depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet)". That sounds a bit more reasonable. Incredible fish for sure.
My Russian is pretty weak (nonexistant), but I'm willing to guess that Matthias is saying what I was going to say - that in 2001 there weren't any "Soviets", so perhaps you meant "Russians".
Sources disagree about when it was constructed, varying from 1980 to 1989 to 1996 to 2001.
The best explanation for that appears to be (according to RIAN), that construction started under Soviet direction in 1989, was put on hiatus for a decade after the Gulf War, and Russians went back to work on it in 2001 until conditions [and probably lack of payment] led them to leave in 2004.
So both "Soviet" and "2001" are reasonable, just not quite in the conjunction offered.
What about the most famous London power station? Battersea!!! The one Pink Floyd took to hang the pink inflatable pig on the two front towers, for taking a picture for their album. Sometimes I go there and I think that it's a shame that they abandoned such a marvellous magnificent architectural beauty... It seems that has been recently bought and will be transformed in a shopping center (but maybe I'm wrong)
Круто, я точно знал что Советский Союз, нашу родную Империю Зла, перестройкой так просто не угрохать. Возможно, СССР ещё даже слегонца жив.
Actually, what Маттиас said was something more or less like this:
Cool! I just knew that the Soviet Union, our own Empire of Evil, couldn't be destroyed so easily by perestroika. Perhaps the USSR is still alive even today.
Check out OMSI's Turbine Hall. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is located in a building donated by the Portland General Electric company. Massive indoor space with the overhead cranes still in place. Picture here: http://www.omsi.info/visit/physics/engineerit/graphics/components/turbinehall.jpg
and more info here: http://www.omsi.org/visit/physics/
You can have a great day out at this dissused atomic power station in Germany: http://www.wunderlandkalkar.eu/ws/content.asp?navigationId=45&base=1&Title=Kernie's%20Familiepark
|
SFSite
6 Comments:
last one is a Dutch cartoon called Dirk-Jan
Microsoft - envisioning the future, stuck in the past.
On "Computing": The McFuture
On "Arabic": stunning -- should be part of an Islamic culture project to tour the West
On "Steampunk": most grovious!
On "Rocket Car": On Her Majesty Victoria's Secret Service!
On "The Coolest Story": groovulous!
On "Cute Rail": retrolicious!
On "Dark Russian Fantasy" - I read something like this somewhere about Weimar art prefiguring the later horrors.
On "Stressed Dogs": #2 is actually scary - a Martian houndworm, very dangerous!
"groovulous" and "retrolicious" should be in every dictionary :)
thanks!
Very nice future computing video, but they forgot the blue screens of death!
That short story made up from search terms is exquisite!
Post a Comment
<< Home