Portent

I’ve never been fond of Flash but there’s no denying that it lets designers do some amazing effects. Where theres a lot of Flash code to load, the better designers usually provide a pre-loader; an animation usually showing a %loaded.

That’s all this site does though they do let you filter by year and provide information about the site that each pre-loader was used in. There are some brilliant animations there…

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Dual and even triple screen computers are fairly common place now and single screen wall papers just don’t cut the mustard. On Flickr.com, you can find a very nice selection of wide screen images, including the one pictured above at 5128 x 1604.

I suspect you may need to be a paid up member (I am!) to download the bigger images!

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There are plenty of film review websites but this one is about movie posters. It’s only been going for a few months and is really a blog but if you like films you will probably like this.

It’s not just the individual posters, for example you can see several different posters for the 3rd Bourne film and best films (posters) for last year.

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This is not about building sand castles but is a remarkable video of a live performance on “Ukraine’s got talent”. An artist called Kseniya Simonova tells a tale of love in World War 2 using just sand and her fingers and artistic talent.

She conjures up images in the sand with her fingers then wham they’re gone, wiped clean and replaced by something else. A truly remarkable performance.

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Well London Underground (who receive over £1,200 a year from me!) have only themselves to blame after the earlier fiasco when they got heavy with one of their supporters over his anagram map.

Ed Sanders, a Cambridge Uni Computer Science student (I guess) and Wikipedian sysop, together with JDFoster has put together individual maps of the various lines as well as Zone 1 and (shown) Zone 2 maps using public domain data and software he’s written to fit smooth bezier curves through the stations. They look very nice and are licensed under Creative Commons. There are also some derivative maps including the July 7th 2005 bombings and July 21st.

The maps are hosted on the Wikimedia site, part of Wikipedia.

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Some of these statues are very strange indeed. Some aren’t exactly statues- like the Mini parked up the wall but they are all all a bit odd.

The rhino hanging in mid air is my favourite, followed closely by the women swinging the kid.

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I love it when you see somebody talented do something extraordinary with everyday objects. It gives me the hope that maybe, just maybe I could do that. Though deep in my heart I know I can’t and never will.

A point in question, this photograph and many others (Link goes via Google.com translation as original site is in Spanish). You can also see his art on the online Saatchi Gallery.

These are photo quality but drawn by hand using ballpoint pens from photos he has taken by the Spanish artist Juan Francisco Casas. Apparently he goes through 4 pens per painting! They are of the “i can’t believe it’s not a photo” quality. Just amazing!

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Something a little different. You are shown image after image and have to rate them for life likeness, on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is most like a face like and 0 isn’t anything like a face.

I suspect this is some variation of a genetic algorithm. This is a way of trying to solve a problem that doesn’t lend itself to normal computation by using a process akin to genetic selection. Interesting.

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Duu Blair is an American artist, who (like Wayne Forrest) produces photographic quality images by hand. The photo shows his rendition of a model called Tica over a number of hours. You would swear it is a photograph not hand drawn.

His work features aircraft and space technology and there is a good chance you have seen his work and never realised it was by him.

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Catherine Mulbrandon is an Economics graduate and Masters in Interaction Design who is into visualising data (her job is an interaction designer/information architect) and creates posters about aspects of the US economy, particularly income distribution as a hobby.

The segment shown is from one showing incomes levels for typical jobs from the year 2000. Depressingly, I realise that my salary then was exactly what she shows for the average income (and Computer Programmers, which is what I am!). If you like her posters- which have a clean open look to them, you can buy them online at cafepress.

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You have got to love anywhere that says “Come visit the “real” MOBA in the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre, conveniently located just outside the men’s room. The nearby flushing helps maintain a uniform humidity.”

This is a real museum located in Dedham, Massachusetts, as well as the website. The examples shown on the site exemplify that the art shown here is not very good. It’s a community-based, private institution dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition, and celebration of bad art in all its forms and in all its glory. The museum was founded in the fall of 1993 and presented its first show in March 1994. You can even buy greetings card featuring some of the Moba art work from the Massachusetts Bay Trading Company. That’s tempting!

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These are quite wonderful, puzzle boxes and remind me of puzzles in films. You have to solve the puzzle to open the box.

You can buy some, for example the snake box, which costs just under $700 has tessellations on the top. By moving pieces around, eventually you end up with a chessboard pattern and the box opens.

The designer Kagen Schaefer is into maths and woodworking and makes puzzle boxes for a living in Denver, Colorado.

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I’ve seen this effect used recently in an advert in a newspaper or magazine so I expect to see it happen more over the next 12-18 months before it becomes a clche and advertising agencies look for something else new and fresh.

That said, it’s still pretty clever and must take a fair bit of time, tweaking and adjusting to get just the right shadow you want.
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Well there are high-brow websites and cultural ones but then you get something a little less intellectual like this one. The title may be a clue: statue molesters.

It’s a fairly easy concept to explain. Take a statue- the ruder or sillier the better, have somebody pose near it, maybe holding their hands or posture in a rude or naughty way. Take a photo… The gallery screen shot gives you a clue… there are a lot of pages of photos…

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Canadian artist Wayne Forrest uses Adobe tools to draw photorealistic images. Yes that isn’t a photo of Angelina Jolie but a drawing.

Warning some of these are slightly rude- one shows a woman smoking! He also does cars, sea views and photo restoration. These images are amazing- they look so lifelike that it’s hard to accept they are NOT photos!

Link (Some parts possibly NSFW)

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