For those of you who’re in Singapore, you might have noticed that a tent has been set up for an artist to sketch on the pavement tiles the past few days. While you may not know the name of this artist, it’s quite likely that you’ve seen some of his works whether in forwarded emails or links to the website, where he draws anamorphic illusions on pavements using chalk. When seen from a particular perspective, the drawing looks like 3D in perspective. Here’s a link to the archive of his works.
Above is the drawing – more commercialized and straightforward than some of his other decidedly more tantalizing works. It’s a pity, but I guess someone has to foot the bill after all.
[Is it just me or does the boat in the canal near the bridge looking like a gorilla baring its teeth?]
Here’s a video of the test-evacuation done on the Airbus 380, currently the largest airliner in the world. At about 50% bigger than the rival Boeing 747, the aircraft can house up to 853 passengers in the full economy class configuration spread over the plane’s two decks. And since it’s a whole lot bigger, they needed to test the evacuation as per safety regulations. Some of the conditions to meet are:
– Only half of the 16 exits would be opened. The other half are considered “blocked”, and cannot be used. Neither the crew nor the passengers know beforehand which exits are blocked.
– Out of the participants, 35% must be over 50. A minimum of 40% must be female, and 15% are female and over 50.
– Happens in darkness. Only the emergency lights are on.
So 873 (including crew) people have to be evacuated in they need to get out in no more than 90 seconds, including the time required to deploy the inflatable slides. They did it in 77 seconds. From the video, the participants seemed to be rather calm, and knew what to expect/do. Maybe they’ve got the staff and families to participate, or maybe there are rehearsals (?). Maybe all those over 50 are aged 51, and are Boston marathon participants.
I stumbled upon this website, which starts by asking which of these do you feel today: nostalgic, like dancing, blessed, like stargazing, surreal. 2 more of these somewhat irreverent questions later, it finally reveals itself as an experiential outreach site for a wedding photographer.
It’s hard to describe it in words – but I think this was a great site and experience. Most professional wedding photographer’s sites would probably showcase their own work, how good they are, the variety/depth of their commissions, etc. It’s like a slick business presentation, hoping to impress the visitors enough to engage them. In other words, those sites are about them, the photographer(s).
This one takes a totally different tack – by being human and caring about the visitor. I felt like I was the center of this site’s universe (whatever that meant). Accompanied with a splendid choice of music (great music, but not mainstream or cliche at all), it feels really personal and special. The questions at the start worked to set a mood by laying down the visitors’ guards, while inviting a reflection of themselves. The Flash usage is for once aiding the site design, IMHO: seamless, straightforward, where one doesn’t look for the “Skip Intro” button. The photographs themselves are of course also great – some of them are almost like classical paintings.
After all, weddings is an intimate, special and happy occasion for the couple, perhaps also a time of reflection and to count the blessings, rather than simply an event that you tick off and execute like your typical business convention. I think this site caught that spirit.
For those of you who bowl, you’d know that when the pins are “Split” (i.e. after the first roll, two or more pins are left standing with a substantial gap between them, so it’s very difficult to knock them all down in the second roll). Now, what if the split is…across lanes?
It’s a bowling trick-shot – not quite what you’d encounter in your normal alley outings – but it’s still quite cool to see! If you prefer the real deal, it looks something like this.
I’m not sure if this is a production advertisement or perhaps a viral marketing video – whatever it is, it is really cool! While I’ve seen Chinese peasants practicing calligraphy with a mop and water, the scale of this is definitely much larger. Watch as the guy paints a picture many times his size – and when others join in the fun as well! I really wonder how he maintains a sense of proportion and perspective over such a large canvas though.
This is some crazily fast printer, even though this Video doesn’t really do it justice. Silverbrook Research, one of the top 10 innovative companies globally in terms of patent granted, has unveiled the prototypes for a new inkjet technology that analysts think will revolutionize the industry.
Traditional dogma says that out of fast, cheap and good, you can only pick two. Let’s see where this thing stands:
Fast: Unbelievable fast. Some statistics: Document printers can go at 60 pages, full width and color at 1600dpi, per minute. Label printers blaze at 6-12 inches per second. And large format printer (51″ wide) goes at 6 inches to 1 foot per second.
Cheap: Yes. A 30-photo per minute printer is projected to cost just around $150 while still being 10 times faster than existing competitors. Projected printing costs are at $0.02 and $0.06 per page for black text and color pages respectively. 50-ml individual ink cartridges are predicted to sell for less than $20 – compared to current 10-ml cartridges which go for $15-$30.
Good: Can’t be determined exactly yet – from the video it doesn’t look that bad at all. Not bad at all.
So how does this work? Conventional inkjet printers have a small printhead that zips across the page repeatedly to spray ink. In this technology, the printhead covers the span of the page, eliminating the need to shuttle around. 1600 nozzles per inch (working to 70,400 nozzles in a standard A4 printer) are arrayed to spray the required inkdrops.
I am definitely looking forward to this – traditional giants like HP, Canon and Epson have dominated the market, whose clout on the printing industry has enabled them to sell ink at rather exorbitant prices. It’s refreshing then to see a potentially revolutionary product that might redraw the battlegrounds with superior technologies. [Pessimist] Though Silverbrook will probably just license the technology to the Goliaths again, and once again price-fixing, disabling chips etc. would mean that eventually this isn’t all that rosy cheap, fast future, as the raw deal gets shoved down our throats again. [/Pessimist]
If you’re a modeling (that is, the art of coloring and assembling scale models, as opposed to the art of posing and walking) fanatic, you’d probably be in permanent orgasm when you’re in Hamburg’s Mini Wonderland. Housing the world’s biggest model railway tracks, it is a stunning showcase of the most detailed scenes from the world. Cars, bridges, human figures, the level of detail is truly amazing. HOW on earth do they place all those people in the stadium? And it’s not just straight lining-up of models – they do make it more interesting by adding little twists and life, like the cyclists who’d fallen down, and even, the couple making out in the sunflower field. Amazing!
Another amazing pure-CG visual effect with what is perhaps the most difficult to work with – water. See it flow, splash, bubbled, bend, in pure 3d goodness (no composite frames at all). By Scanline VFX, who worked on films like Poseidon.
Man, recent developments in games and 3D effect technologies just doesn’t stop amazing me – check out the trailer above on Crysis, an upcoming game that has already netted numerous awards on its technical excellence. And if you think that it’s just marketing trailer, and that game play would be of a significantly lower quality, you may be convinced otherwise after looking at this video of their level editor for an earlier Crysis version.
All elements real, destructible, dynamically mapped, dynamic shadows, parametric skeletal animation, I could go on and on – but if I do, I’d start to wonder why does my simple one-frame product render still take up so much time!
