Portent

Thsi is a really clever idea and great implementation. Just upload a photo to this site then set a parameter or two and it generates a pdf containing the photo blown up big. I used the picture from the Epica Awards story on portent in Landscape/A4 size and it generated a pdf approx 4 feet wide by 2.3 feet high.

It generated the pdf very fast- it seemed instant and I could save the pdf or print it. Very clever and well implemented. The photo is from their gallery- you can see the photo of the model when 'blocked' and printed.

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How language changes. A woman who was well stacked was …

Sport Stacking is a fast-moving routine that looks like a shell game played in triple-time as students stack and collapse pyramids of plastic cups. You can buy the cups, join the WSSA and if you're as good as the girl in the video is (and she is very good!), no doubt make a pretty penny or two.

According to this report (pdf) sport stacking is indeed effective in enhancing hand-eye coordination and reaction time of 2nd grade students.

I guess that once you're over the age of 21 you will be too old! I learnt my motor skills in the battlefields of arcadia…repelling invaders from space, galaxians, gorf, protecting cities from Missiles and especially blowing up 3d wireframe tanks on the moon.

Link (to Video of World record).

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The moon is full of craters because there has been at various times in the past a lot of material (meteors and comets) in the vicinity. The earth has also been so affected but it's because of the atmosphere and generally greenery that it has taken a while to recognise it. This site is a database of Earth impact points. Because of the earth's atmosphere only the real biggies get through but when they do you get massive devastation like in Tunguska in 1908. Thankfully very big impacts are pretty rare- though it is believed that one which has more energy than all of the worlds nuclear arsenals happens on average once in a million years or less.

The Earth Impact Database is compiled and held by the University of New Brunswick, Canada and consists of maps of impact points across the globe with extra material for each one, including geological data and in some cases photographs like this one shown in Morasko in Poland.

Incidentally the moon is believed to have formed when debris the size of Mars hit the Earth and ejected what became the moon! Strange to think that our tidal system only happened because of a bit of a fluke!

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Eighyt years ago French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin had a flash of inspiration how the great Pyramid (Pyramid of Khufu) might have been built. His idea- an external ramp then an internal spiral ramp. Dassault provided a team of engineers to assist with the project and produce the 3d visualisations. Fascinating stuff.

Note, you will need to download and install 3d browser addins to see the visualisations. 

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Ferry Halim is an artist who works in Flash, 3D, and has a gorgeous looking portfolio of Flash games "Orsinal".  The games are short, distracting but quite compelling, often with perfect little tunes. The whole site is a visual treat. I don't know who or what Orsinal is, but I suspect not a popular term with Tottenham or Chelsea fans…

Link

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I have to own up that I'm part of No2ID and not afraid to admit it. This is a protest campaign that should serve as a model on how to run campaigns. Despite an environment of increasing fear promulgated by the Govt, No2ID has stayed fully legal and embarrassed ministers, politicians and civil servants who are trying to bring it into being.

No2ID is not just against ID cards but also the database state behind them which would give hundreds of thousands of civil servants and council workerrs access to your private data. This will be rammed down your throat by punitive fines if you decide that you want no part of it. After years of increasing laws about data protection the Govt is trying to loosen those protections on data about you. And to fund this rediculous scheme they will sell your data.

Should this abhorrent scheme ever happen then people would look back on Soviet Russia and East German regimes as models of liberty and enlightenment by comparison. Think I'm making this up? Go and visit No2Id and see why more and more people are waking up and trying to stop this monster.

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I have been using imgred.com for a couple of days and felt a bit guilty about it as it meant that out of every 600Kb downloaded about 500Kb came from them. Multiply that by a few hundred daily visitors and it all adds up.

Today I noticed no images and found that some kind of error is occuring- whether that is deliberate or accidental I don't know. I've reverted to serving them up.  I tried emailing imgred but it bounced- if anyone knows anyone there, please let me know! Email me via the contact form on my website.

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This is such a simple but neat idea It is a collaborative wiki of deep links to instructions,
user manuals, and building guides for toys and children's games. This
site also offers links to blog searches, photos, and Yahoo user groups
for toy brands, and a moderated list of top fan sites.

So if you've got instructions and wondering whether to keep them, search the site and if they are there, bin them. If not, add them, then bin them!

Link

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This is an interesting set of photos of different generations in Japanese families, taken in 1984. The two parents are covered in tattoos. Interesting stuff.

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Before Flash there was Javascript or dhtml (dynamic html) as it is often called. After being in the doldrums for years, Google maps revived the genre with draggable maps.

There are other uses for it though and this site showcases some excellent demos that at first glance appear as if they were done in flash. They are that good. Click here for the main site.

Link  (to I panicked demo)

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If you don't recall this Flickr Photo printing tie in, have a look at an earlier about Moo entry. As a free offer for paying Flickr.com customers, they'd print 10 mini cards and mail them anywhere in the world. Mine arrived today and they look and feel great.

The half height business card is a little odd and it took a little bit of fiddling to crop pictures for maximum impact but they are very nicely printed.

I'm not sure these will set the world on fire but I reckon moo.com is one to watch in the future. Now if they could only persuade Flickr to allow more graphics…

Link

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If you know your engines, you'll recognise this as a 2 stroke internal combustion engine. Illustrated by Matt Keveney (and a few years old but worth featuring nonetheless), this site has a whole host of 2d engine animations. Clearly a labour of love, and while it may not quite match the technical excellence of 3d animation of an earlier portent story Deutz engine animation it is no less for it.

If you want to know how a Wankel engine works or a Stirling engine you'll find animations of 6 internal combustion, 3 Stirling and 10 steam engines. Excellent stuff.

Link

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I've been playing Celebdaq on and off for three or four years – I can't remember when it started. It is hosted by the BBC and is a simple game where you can buy or sell shares in celebrities. You start with £10,000 and if you ever reach a million you get a recognition of that fact and reset to £10,000.

The value of stars depends on their newspaper appearences and stories so this week for some reason Jade Goody is the highest moving star. There are several hundred stars tracked and their value moves upand down quite rapidly. Most are languishing around the £1.00 mark. Eg David Hasselhof while others Daniel Radcliffe and Alex Ferguson have stellar prices. The celebs are drawn from the worlds of pop,movies, tv, sport and fashion.

It's free to play so why not signup and have a go! There are no prizes just fun and it doesn't take up much time.

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has long been a centre of excellence in the computing field. Professor Seymour Papert created the Logo programming language and Turtle Graphics there.

Now there is a new programming language, inspired by Logo that makes it easy to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art, and share creations on the web. It's free and runs on Mac OSX and Windows. It uses a simple building block approach making programming easy for as young as 8 years old but has what you need to write programs- namely iteration, conditionals, variables, data types, events, and processes. It can create programs that control and mix graphics, animations, music, and sound.

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Previously we've had a slow motion video of a water filled ballon popping on Portent. This one though doesn't pop, it deforms instead.

Interesting stuff- things you don't normally see!

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