Archives for category: look over here!

Over at McSweeney’s: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.

[The warrior] accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.

Deep, deep behind the recliner did the warrior crawl, over great mountains of National Geographic magazines and deep chasms of TV Guides. At last he reached a gnarled thicket of cords, a terrifying knot of gray and white and black and blue threatening to ensnare all who ventured further. The warrior charged ahead. Weaker men would have lost their minds in the madness: telephone cords plugged into Ethernet jacks, AC adapters plugged into phone jacks, a lone VGA cable wrapped in a firm knot around an Ethernet cord. But the warrior bested the thicket, ripping away the vestigial cords and swiftly untangling the deadly trap.

via Eric

In more Psychic Bunny/Lead Balloon news – the super-secret 360° shoot I worked on a few years ago has also been posted (probably awhile ago – apologies for not being more on top of this!). Social Animal‘s camera rig…was amazing. The SA9 has nine HD cameras pointed straight up at a mirrored rig, all connected to nine MacBookPros. It made for some pretty intense equipment moves/hides and cable wrangling, not to mention the challenges of directing actors in360°. It was a really awesome shoot and I’m glad I can finally talk about it!

You can watch the demo we shot, and a behind the scenes featurette at the Qualia site. Be on the lookout for me! I’m wearing a teal hoodie.

So remember that ‘Dr. Bonesaw’ shoot I worked on way back when (photos here)? Psychic Bunny/Lead Balloon took that footage and rolled it into a short about…well…aftermath, is the best way I can put it – starring the delightfulLaurel Vail! Scroll down the Lead Balloon projects page to ‘Still Beating’.

laurel, dead

(Also I am way way late in posting this. Apologies!)

Ahhh, like a breath of fresh air…

Italy - Lake Como: Wisteria Blues

by John & Tina Reid

So many amazing things in this io9 post. Highlights below:

via The Happy Ottoman

Worf and Data with Spot the cat – custom-painted Little Fatty figures from FatCatStudio.com

My Little Worf Pony by Kipperfrog

Eric directed me to this post over at Brain Pickings about the 11 best illustrated children’s books of 2011. They’re all pretty cool (check out the Edward Gorey and the Brothers Grimm!) but these illustrations of Hindu deities by Pixar animator Sanjay Patel really caught my eye:

Today’s Google doodle commemorates Nicolas Steno‘s 374th birthday. Steno pioneered the concept of superposition, which is one of the fundamental principles of geology.

Via the Atlantic:

A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5, 2011. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations as it sent up a cloud of ash that circled the globe. Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images

Lightning bolts strike around the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain near southern Osorno city, on June 5, 2011. Reuters/Ivan Alvarado

Volcanic activity in the sea off the Canary island of El Hierro, seen in this aerial photo taken on November 5, 2011. The regional government of the Canary Islands ordered the evacuation of homes and road closures near the southern tip of El Hierro after two earth tremors and increased offshore volcanic activity caused a buildup of malodorous debris floating on the sea. Seismic activity began in the area on July 17 and residents have since been rocked by more than 10,000 tremors, while underwater fissures have released an almost continuous flow of sulfurous gases, smoke and hot debris. AP Photo/Canary Islands Government

Tungurahua Volcano is seen from the town of Guadalupe, Ecuador, on November 28, 2011. Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images

The spiral Antennae galaxies are one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA-ESA/Hubble Collaboration – click to embiggen

During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. […] Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink. The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like “arms” extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen by ground-based telescopes.

via the Atlantic’s Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar. More info about the Antennae Galaxies

Oh my god. I don’t even know what to say. All I keep thinking is, “Jeeeeeesus. …JEEEESUUUUUSSSS.” The horror. Read it here. Excerpt below, but it really doesn’t do it justice.

Backstory: the recipient of this email thought the first date was ‘horrendous’ and wanted nothing more to do with this guy. I’m sure you will not be surprised by her decision after reading the email.

I suggest that we continue to go out and see what happens. Needless to say, I find you less appealing now (given that you haven’t returned my messages) than I did at our first date. However, I would be willing to go out with you again. I’m open minded and flexible and am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wish you would give me the benefit of the doubt too. If you don’t want to go out again, in my opinion, you would be making a big mistake, perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in your life.