catetos
31 August 2006
Another great photoset from Papelcontinuo. This appears to be some sort of French novelty cards (card game?). I dunno what it is. Babelfish translates ‘catetos’ as ‘legs’. The design reminds me of another great French card game, Mille Bornes. Would like to see a photoset of the original (c. 1960s) Mille Bornes cards but there doesn’t seem to be one out there as yet and I’m too lazy and/or busy to scan mine.
how to make a ‘doo rag’ (circuit-bent toy); how to make an electric guitar out of trash
31 August 2006
Papelcontinuo [flickr] [blog] is my new hero. Wish I spoke Spanish. Their blog is worth a look just for the excellent design of it.
This pamphlet was inspired by one on How to make an electric guitar out of trash. (*spanish*)
le parkour
27 August 2006
Le parkour, also known as ‘russian climbing’ or ‘free running’, is a relatively new sport originating in France. Basically it involves running and jumping through/under/over the built environment. It’s been referred to as ‘skateboarding without a skateboard’ which is apt in that it’s about improvising in the context of existing structures.
The best parkour footage I’ve found.
David Belle is reputedly the originator of ‘le parkour’ and probably its most well-known practitioner. This is a 10-minute piece on him from French television (with English subtitles).
Estonian best!
Latvia also not too bad!
I think this might be an excerpt of the 2001 film Yamakasi - Les samouraïs des temps modernes. Features David Belle.
David Belle’s ad for BBC - all stunts as they appear (no camera tricks) and all done by Belle himself.
pianographique
22 August 2006
[via Martin Klasch’s Favorite Things] Fun soundtoy - choose from different sample sets and then use your keyboard as a virtual sampling keyboard. Visuals automatically accompany. The blaxploitation one and the jazz one are particularly nice.
Image from the Disney History blog.
underground
18 August 2006
I read about this guy, the “Mole Man of Hackney” on Boing Boing a while back. Long and short of it is that he’s apparently been digging tunnels under the neighborhood and has been ordered by the council to stop.
Later post on Boing Boing mentioned this story that Seymour Cray, inventor of the so-called supercomputer, was an avid tunneler under his own house too, but someone-or-other refuted it and said it was just some creative mythmaking.
Reminds me of this low-level obsession I have with building underground, just something that has really interested me for a long time but I haven’t gotten started on because I have quite a few other projects that need more immediate attention, like this blog I suppose, though really, creating big underground chambers seems a lot more fulfilling. Howsoever.
Roadside America reports on an attraction called Forestiere Underground Gardens (link to their official, sort of crappy site) that sounds quite nice. Nearly 100 rooms, an 800-foot auto tunnel, a chapel, lots of underground and partially-underground gardens and so forth. All built by some obsessive with more time and energy than I.
A few things really attract me about underground living:
- cool in the summer, warm in the winter
- quiet
- private
- safe from many hazards such as weather, possibly nuclear fallout depending on construction, urban unrest if entrances are properly concealed.
However, underground chambers are potentially very unsafe if poorly constructed - another reason other than laziness and busy-ness that I haven’t begun working on any underground tunnels myself.
I believe I posted elsewhere about the Paris ‘cataphiles’. This is a sort-of interesting Parisian subculture of people who do illegal exploration of the catacombs. Speaking of lazy, here’s the Wikipedia entry on the Paris catacombs. One of the most memorable places on this earth I’ve touristed.
Who knew there was an extensive air-conditioned public tunnel system under Houston’s downtown? I didn’t…
Here’s an excellent piece from Modern Mechanix on tunnel digging as a hobby, as practiced by Dr. H.G. Dyar, international authority on butterflies and moths of the Smithsonian Institution.
Coming up in another exciting blog post: Le parkour! Illegal building-climbing (’buildering’)! Psychogeography! The French!
The Hasselhoff Effect
15 August 2006
The Droste Effect is the motif of an image wholly containing itself (and so on, forever). Here we see an animated example of this effect featuring David Hasselhoff modeling his custom Speedos which are printed with the alluring image of…David Hasselhoff wearing Speedos.
Another sort of similar animation but much creepier, also from Geriatric Punks.
Here is the original Droste hot chocolate box for which the effect is named, no doubt responsible for wrecking many a young Dutch head. This is probably what got that Escher going. Speaking of which, here are some Drostian animations of Escher images for your edification. I can’t seem to find an actual animation of the Droste box, though I have seen one somewhere.
While I’m on the subject, though it is probably pretty old hat by now, if you haven’t you should probably take a look at the zoomquilt.
Oh my! Just looked at the top level of where that Droste image was hosted, and it was a site devoted to images of cats looking at computer monitors with images of cats looking at other cats on computer monitors.
youtube down
15 August 2006
It’s funny, youtube has become such an integral part of all of this internet. Will they ever be destroyed by the entertainment industry? If so there will be a lot of holes in a lot of blog archives.
Which reminds me that I’ve been thinking lately about the idea of a peer-to-peer web, as opposed to the client/server web we’re used to.
Theoretically, a peer-to-peer type protocol could mean data (like youtube videos) could live forever. Well, not forever, maybe.
2 groovy Jason Forrest videos
12 August 2006
Two videos by Jason Forrest (formerly AKA Donna Summer):
I get the feelings the kids are already all over this stuff, though it’s new to me. I also get the feelings the kids are in their mid-30s. What are the actual kids into these days, I wonder? If anyone knows, tell me. Anyhow, these videos are fantastic. I won’t get into who or what Jason Forrest is, if you’re real curious see what you can find on the internet.