Recreating the entire 2001 film in Lego would be a massive undertaking and wisely this doesn’t attempt to do that. Instead in just one minute it gives a potted take of the best scenes, e.g. the ape striking the bone which segues into Discovery (not as nice looking as this Lego Discovery!), then the scene where HAL 9000 tries to prevent Dave Bowman from re-entering the ship and the final psychedelic trip voyage and finish in the Hotel room.
However it does play for laughs with digital text on the Monolith “Hit things with Sticks!” and an accurate observation by HAL “I can’t Dave, I’m nuts…”. This is nicely done and very professional looking. It may only last a minute but clearly a lot of time and effort went into making it.
Popularity: 22% [?]
This is particularly impressive. Wikivid is a collection of free videos that show or teach you how to use Software. The range is very impressive and the links go all over the web. The number of viodeos varies, so something like Flash has a lot of instructional videos from the likes of lynda.com, vtc.com , teach-ict.com. creativecow.net and lot’s more. The open source package nvu for creating websites has 11.
It’s still in “alpha” stage, content is limited to software tutorials only, but their vision is to add video uploads and more. As it’s a wiki, you can add your own video links, edit existing pages, etc!
Popularity: 7% [?]
I could see this bloke being a future candidate for the Darwin Awards! He starts off skating normally on blades then goes horizontal; he is wearing the suit he invented with special wheels attached. It lets him go at speeds up to 60 MPH.
Frenchman Jean-Yves Blondeau first conceived of his plastic Buggy Rollin’ suit in 1994, while he was a student at Olivier de Serres design school, in Paris.
The rest of the 4 minute 22 second video shows him going down the road at amazing speeds, at one point overtaking a motor bike! You can also see another video of him close up on this five minute youtube video (with obligatory, if hackneyed view of the Eiffel Tower in the background!) but in this suit and talking about the suit when out of it. Just amazing.
Popularity: 6% [?]
I think this is an excellent idea and hope other third level educational establishments will follow- MIT already do this but not on youtube. The University of California, Berkeley has done a deal with youtube to host videos of their lectures.
These comprise biology (39 lectures) , physics (26 Lectures) and search engines(6 lectures) which is a bit of an odd mix. If you want to see and hear what Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google is like), have a look.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Sometimes you see something so amazingly well done that you can’t but stare. This is one.
It’s a video, just over seven and a half minutes long of a couple of thousand dancers who are effectively human pixels. They have different colour clothes on I’d guess and turn to face the camera at pretty precise times. Through the seven and a half minutes they move about, change colour and act in a totally coordinated way. It must have taken months of setting up, choreographing and designing it. Amazing!
Popularity: 10% [?]
Peer to Peer (P2P) technology is what drives the internet. There are many who say that downloading is evil and theft and in some cases it is true, but not only does it have many legitimate uses (e.g. Linux Distributions- distros are often provided in this way) because by its very nature, it takes a significant load off servers, but the Jury is out as to whether it deprives producers of money (from not selling their content) or helps them sell more because it makes it easier for people to try it out.
It’s said that between 1/3rd and 2/3rds of all internet traffic is P2P, specifically BitTorrent. Some people find it a bit hard to use and to provide download information you have to create a torrent seed. There has been a bit of a campaign by organisations like the MPAA against sites which host seeds. They won’t I imagine like Tribler!
Tribler is a software package fom Harvard University’s school of Engineering and Applied Sciences that simplifies using Bittorrent and lets you find other Tribler users without having a central server. The name Tribler (according to Wikipedia) stems from the word Tribe, refering to the usage of social networks in this P2P client.
Tribler’s purpose is a step in bringing internet TV closer to being an everyday occurrence, not only making it easier to find content but also quicker to download. There are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Popularity: 9% [?]
One of the benefits of the web is the way that material that would be hard to track down, due to geographical limitations becomes available. One site helping to do this is this blog Vintage Tooncast.
Films include many from Walt Disney, Betty Boop (Black and white) going back 70 years and more. If you like old cartoons this is a good place to look. The blog has been going nearly two years so there is a lot of stuff there.
Popularity: 13% [?]
The image on the left was created by artist Phil Hansen out of 7,000 matches with red, black and white heads- you can see a close up on the right. After creating this, he set it on fire. Talk about performance art!
There’s a Youtube video of him creating it (speeded up) and then it burning on his site.
Popularity: 7% [?]
It’s not often that I praise TFL for anything- their anti-car policies slow down traffic deliberately, but I was surprised to see them combining traffic web cam shots with Google Maps in a mash-up.
The linked web page shows some 60 or so camera- though not all are active- certainly Stratford wasn’t when I looked, stretching from Richmond in the West to Dartford in the East. Click on any map marker and you get a pop up with the most recent traffic web cam.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Ever fancied being in a movie? This British website (movie? We call them films!) lets you audition by video for one of many roles.
Additionally you can invest as an angel, with a £109 minimum, which also gives you voting privileges to help choose a cast that doesn’t appear to be made of solid timber. They need £1.2 million and are already 10% of the way there. The director and script are both award winning and if you register you can view the script. There’s a directors blog and an online community. An interesting approach and I hope the film is a smash hit.
Having said that, the site has two things I hate- white text on black and too much Flash animations- it eats up CPU time! Bring out an HTML version of the site please! (There might be one I didn’t see it).
Popularity: 7% [?]
In Skanda Vale in wales, there is a Hindu community with a bullock Shambo that is sacred to them. Unfortunately Shambo has been diagnosed as having Bovine Tuberculis (TB) and after much legal wrangling is set to be culled to prevent the spread of TB but the Hindu community is very upset about this.
This is his webcam so snatch a last look before the worst happens. You can sign a petition to try and save him (20,000 strong so far) but it may be too late.
Later- the webcam appears down…hmm not a good sign.
Popularity: 4% [?]
This is brilliant. Someone created a small robot- well more like a harness, for the Nintendo Wii bowling game using the Lego robotics system Lego Mindstorms. It moves the Wiimote absolutely perfectly so that it can score a perfect 100% (a 300 score!) on the game.
It’s a heck of a way to cheat! You can watch it in operation on the page- there’s a video!
Popularity: 20% [?]
When you see card tricks of this quality it is truly impressive. Bill Malone, sits and tells the story of Sam the Bellhop who fetches people. As he is telling the story the cards are being constantly shuffled and cut, yet at the right time he is able to bring out 4 of this, or a particular sequence.
He does it so effortlessly as well, hardly glancing at the cards. You know it’s a trick but it is so well done…Five minutes of excellent entertainment.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Watching a solid chunk of metal being carved by a machine into a high precision engine block is just amazing. When you realise that the accuracy of the carving is fractions of a millimetre, the precision of the carving robot is a wonder.
This 10 minute video shows the block, from start to finished block. An incredible testimony to modern engineering.
Popularity: 14% [?]
I’m not saying how sturdy these are but they look quite stylish, especially as you can print anything on them. It’s a video on how to fold paper (Origami) into CD cases. Useful for mailing in the post though I’d recommend a piece of card inside as well or use thick paper.
Not a lot of people know that I have a black belt in Origami. I made it myself…
Popularity: 11% [?]