The Keaton Music Typewriter was first patented in 1936 (14 keys) by Robert H. Keaton from San Francisco, California. Another patent was taken out in 1953 (33 keys) which included improvements to the machine. The machine types on a sheet of paper lying flat under the typing mechanism. [source]

The artwork measures 30cm x 20cm and represents 9 minutes of the earthquake. The sculpture will be presented at the Jerwood Space in London for a show called Terra. Exploring how data is read and can be represented and interpreted, the artwork is one of a series of data visualization sculptures Jerram has recently created. [source]

car sketching by Jim Denevan

NeverWet is a silicon based spary-on developed by the Ross Technology Corp that repels water and oils and, hell… it’s more impact to just watch this…

I’m throwing cash at the screen, but my ultimate slip n slide dreams aren’t coming true.

This is both great and an inspirational reminder for me.

Partly because I’ve been looking to get back into some drawing and free flowing creativity again; but mostly because I just spent the whole weekend locked away in my room playing video games and had to wear pants only twice the whole time.

Watch this.

That’s all I’m really wanting to say on this one. I’ve posted some previous time lapse videos, but this one has the unique position to be shot from aboard the International Space Station using a special 4K resolution, low light camera at night and daaaamn the resulting beauty of the spinning Earth is just breathtakingly amazing.

I’d rant on and on about it, but really, just check it out for yourself (be sure to do so in HD):

Isn’t that just incredible? From the familiar sights of coastlines and lakes to the strangely foreign spread of the the city lights, to the wonderfully detailed clouds and thunderstorms; all of them floating and spinning together… hell, I get so lost in the simple beauty of it, I almost forget about the whole aurora part being in there too and that part is really amazing. Those towering red and green lights, floating high above the Earth, with the ‘tiny’ cities below and the stars as a backdrop are all so spectacularly captured in this video, to me, they illustrate a grand scale to the Earth and its relationship to the cosmos that’s really not often seen enough. Or at least, not this simple and beautiful in its execution.

Another great TED keynote. This time on the use of complex technology as a tool to creating dynamic artworks. Really great stuff in this, look forward to seeing where this thinking will take them.

National Geographic’s Visions of Earth

Maurizio Cattelan: all retrospective

Susan Stockwell

Missing planet explains solar system’s structure
All but 10 per cent of the four-planet simulations wound up with only three left, he says. But in half the five-planet simulations, they ended with the four in a solar system that looks remarkably like our own. The best results occurred when the fifth planet started off between Saturn and Uranus and ended up being ejected after an encounter with Jupiter…  [read more]

Quantum mechanics difficult to grasp? Too bad
To those uncomfortable with quantum theory’s picture of wavelike particles that are simultaneously everywhere, their message in The Quantum Universe is clear: tough. Scientists are, they tell us, “not mandated to produce a theory that bears any relation to the way we perceive the world at large” [read more]

A wedding featuring Bastion’s narrator? For one fan, it happened
The story begins simply: after becoming a fan of the game’s soundtrack, Greschner sent an e-mail to Supergiant about helping out with the ceremony itself. After that? Well, I’ll let him tell the story. [read more]

Christian 4th grade school textbook tries to explain electricity, gives up
As Myers points out, “[W]e can use [electricity] to build hair dryers and Large Hadron Colliders; to make the argument that we are mystified by it is lying to the kids.” I’ll go one further, to subject children to this sort of “education” is anti-intellectual child-abuse… [read more]

Sagaki Keita is an artist whose recent works are created by fusing together tiny doodles into madly detailed illustrations of ancient Roman sculptures. The word incredible can be used to describe not just the level of detail in these drawings, but also the output of work by the guy… already 12 of these released in this year alone (!).

Many more samples of his artworks are available at his website, but I’m still hoping for some high resolution images or at least a price on some prints, cause I’ve got a feeling to see these in only 72 dpi does it all very little justice.
(more…)

This is a wonderfully captured video of a ‘murmuration’ of starlings in flight and it really captures the natural beauty of their movements, flying and turning in the air, almost like a single living entity.

Two solid write ups on the scientific properties of their flights if you’re interested, they can be found here and here (with video).

Mathematical analysis of flock dynamics show how each starling’s movement is influenced by every other starling, and vice versa. It doesn’t matter how large a flock is, or if two birds are on opposite sides. It’s as if every individual is connected to the same network.

Or like me, get all your information on life and eating baconnaise from The Daily Show, this is a good chuckle…