Thursday, March 04, 2010
The Goldberg Robinson Continuum
Thanks to Neil Gaiman for posting this truly awesome video by OK Go, called This Too Shall Pass. You've heard of Rube Goldberg machines - this is the ultimate. I can't even begin to describe how neat this was to watch and I can't imagine how many takes it must have taken to get it right.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Nothing is real
Watching special effects production reels is always interesting, and especially now with the really advanced digital technology available to TV and film directors. The phrase "nothing is real" crops up in more than one Beatles song, but I doubt that they were thinking of the type of visual fakery shown in this Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot reel. It is truly mind blowing.
Labels: movies and television, photography, SF, video
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Dubai like you've never seen it
Dubai has to be one of the more SFnal places on Earth, and this video by Philip Bloom (who also did incredible videos of Prague and Skywalker Ranch) proves it. You have to wonder if the rulers of Dubai are Bladerunner fans. It was shot on a Canon DSLR too, which is even more amazing.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
The Home Scientist
When I was a kid, I was seriously interested in science, and I had a chemistry kit. I don't remember doing anything really remarkable or dangerous with it, but it was neat to mix up various chemicals and observe the results. My lab was the laundry room, because we didn't have a basement bathroom at the time, and the laundry tubs were pretty much impervious to anything I could concoct.
Chemistry kits have been pretty much emasculated by regulators, liablity laws, and the nanny state. But with a bit of work and not a lot of expense, you can put together a home lab that will let you do real science. The folks at O'Reilly and Make Magazine have started a Home Scientist channel on YouTube, featuring author Robert Bruce Thompson doing a series of videos explaining how do some fairly advanced experiments.
For example, he shows you how to test paint for lead, test for fingerprints, and how to synthesize your own basic chemicals and test their purity. This is real science here, at least at the level of an academic high-school course, but very clearly explained and demonstrated. I wish I had access to videos like this when I was taking chemistry courses - it would have helped a lot.
Chemistry kits have been pretty much emasculated by regulators, liablity laws, and the nanny state. But with a bit of work and not a lot of expense, you can put together a home lab that will let you do real science. The folks at O'Reilly and Make Magazine have started a Home Scientist channel on YouTube, featuring author Robert Bruce Thompson doing a series of videos explaining how do some fairly advanced experiments.
For example, he shows you how to test paint for lead, test for fingerprints, and how to synthesize your own basic chemicals and test their purity. This is real science here, at least at the level of an academic high-school course, but very clearly explained and demonstrated. I wish I had access to videos like this when I was taking chemistry courses - it would have helped a lot.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Video tour of S. M. Stirling's Emberverse
For the last decade or so, S. M. (Steve) Stirling has been expanding the story of his Emberverse, in which a mysterious event causes the island of Nantucket to be transported several thousand years into the past, and in our timeline stops electricity and high-pressure chemical reactions to stop working, resulting in the collapse of civilization and the death of about 99 percent of the human race. So far, there are nine books in the series, with the tenth, The High King of Montival, due out in September.
Much of the story takes place in and around the Willamette valley of Oregon. Steve Pate, who appears to be a serious Stirling fan, has put together a three-part video tour of some of the locations that feature in Steve's books. Part One, Part Two, Part Three.
What I found interesting, and in some cases almost eerie, was how closely my mental map of Montival (what the Willamette area ends up being called in the books) matched the actual location as seen in the videos. This was particularly true of part three, which shows the home of the Rangers (a state park lodge) and the Mount Angel monastery. Kudos a definitely due to Steve for his skill in bringing this area to life.
If you've read Steve's books, you'll definitely want to have a look at these.
Much of the story takes place in and around the Willamette valley of Oregon. Steve Pate, who appears to be a serious Stirling fan, has put together a three-part video tour of some of the locations that feature in Steve's books. Part One, Part Two, Part Three.
What I found interesting, and in some cases almost eerie, was how closely my mental map of Montival (what the Willamette area ends up being called in the books) matched the actual location as seen in the videos. This was particularly true of part three, which shows the home of the Rangers (a state park lodge) and the Mount Angel monastery. Kudos a definitely due to Steve for his skill in bringing this area to life.
If you've read Steve's books, you'll definitely want to have a look at these.
Friday, January 08, 2010
The known universe
This video, by the American Museum of Natural History, goes from the Earth out to the end of the universe and back again. Very cool, and it will make you feel very, very, small.
Update: Fixed the link.
Update: Fixed the link.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
A Prague winter's night
Here's a drop-dead gorgeous video of a winter's night in Prague, shot with a pre-production Canon 1D SLR. It's shot in black and white, and it's hard to believe that it wasn't shot with a full-scale professional movie camera. It's also a very nice piece of film making and will definitely put you in the mood for Christmas.
Labels: photography, places, video
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
At the end of Yonge Street
Torontonians (and most Canadians, I suspect) will know Yonge Street as Toronto's main north/south street, with a claim to being the longest street in the world. I'm not sure about that part, but I've walked enough of it over the years to know it's pretty damn long. A couple of Toronto film makers have taken it all the way and made a stop-motion movie of a 40 km. journey down Yonge. It's neat, and if I had a couple of days (and was 30 years younger), I might try it myself.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Neutra Face - An Ode on a Typeface
I haven't seen many videos about type faces. In fact, I think this is only the second - the other being the hilarious Arial versus Helvetica. This one, or so my daughter tells me, is a parody of Lady Gaga's Pokerface. In any case, this too is hilarious, and do listen to the words.
Friday, November 20, 2009
What if the Earth had rings
This is a really cool animation of what the Earth would look like if it had a ring system like Saturn's. The views of the rings from Earth are striking and beautiful. Too bad we'd have to blow up the Moon to see it.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Canon DSLR does incredible low-light video
The big trend in digital cameras now seems to be shooting video and low light photography. Canon's new ID Mark IV SLR does both and incredibly well, as the embedded video in this Gizmodo post shows. Now, admittedly, it was shot with pro rigs - tracking dollys, Steadicams, and the like. But the camera was the Canon shooting 1080p video entirely by available light. Amazing. I guess at $5K, it should be.
Labels: If I had a million dollars, photography, video
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
First time I've seen a video for online help
Thanks to Cherryleaf Technical Authors Blog which links to the first video I've ever seen for online help - a Microsoft video promoting the online help for Windows 7. (The ad shows the help on Microsoft's web site, which is pretty good). The help is a lot better than the video, which is seriously cheesy, but at least their hearts are in the right place.
Labels: Microsoft, technical communication, video, Windows 7
Thursday, September 17, 2009
U2 at Skydome - wish I was there
I'm am seriously kicking myself for not heading down to Skydome and trying to score a ticket for last night's U2 concert. If you want to know why, watch the video. Amazing. Just simply amazing. The music is great and the staging is out of this world. They've taken over the mantle from Pink Floyd as the ultimate arena rock act.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Best science visualizations of 2009
Wired has collected the best science visualization videos of 2009 as chosen by the Department of Energy. The lead video on the page is of an earthquake in Southern California and is quite impressive.
I also really liked the visualization of a supernova explosion.
This visualization illustrates some of the rupture and wave propagation phenomena of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault in Southern California. It shows how an earthquake originating 60 miles south of Palm Springs can end up shaking Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara minutes after the original fault rupture. The animation captures more than four minutes of complex dynamic rupture and wave propagation. Nearly 12 terabytes of earthquake simulation data was used to generate the animation.
I also really liked the visualization of a supernova explosion.
Labels: computing, science, video
Thursday, August 13, 2009
How small we are
Some years ago, NASA used the Hubble Space Telescope to capture an extremely long image of a small patch of what appeared to be empty sky. It wasn't empty - to paraphrase the famous line from 2001: "My God - it's full of galaxies". Now they've modelled the image in 3D and animated a fly-through. If you want to get an idea of our real place in the universe, watch this video. It's beautiful and very sobering.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Remembering Jerry
In memory of Jerry Garcia. who died fourteen years ago today. This version of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was one of his last recorded performances.
Friday, June 26, 2009
How to tie a tie
It's been so long since I've had to wear a tie regularly, that I'm not sure that I can remember how to do a even a simple half-Windsor. So I'm going to bookmark this set of videos explaining how to tie some common tie knots.
Labels: video
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Beatles in two minutes
I'm not a big fan of the game Rock Band, but the opening video for The Beatles: Rock Band is absolutely marvelous.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Blue Angels cockpit video
I've seen cockpit video of the Canadian Snowbirds aerobatic team, but this is the first cockpit video from the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels team that I've seen. It's pretty amazing. I get vertigo just watching it - I can't imagine how they do it, considering they must be pulling many Gs during the maneuvers.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Bridge demolition set to opera
Here's a video of bridge demolitions, set to opera. And what's even neater is that it was produced by a government agency, the Virginia Department of Transport. It's really well done too, beautifully synchronized with the music.
Labels: video
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
David Pogue TED keynote
David Pogue's keynote was one of the high points of the recent STC Summit in Atlanta, but for financial reasons, it wasn't recorded. However, the STC blog points out that you can view a very similar talk that he gave at the TED conference last year. I highly recommend it.
Labels: technical communication, video
Friday, May 08, 2009
Font Fight pits Arial against Helvetica
Here's an hilarious video pitting Arial against Helvetica in a fight to the death. Watch it all the way through to see who tries to save the day.
Update: Oops, I really should be more careful with the links in my morning posts. It's fixed now.
Update: Oops, I really should be more careful with the links in my morning posts. It's fixed now.
Labels: funny, technical communication, video
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Some Earth video for Earth day
Since it's Earth day, it's appropriate to post some video of the Earth from space - a HD video of the Earth from the ISS, courtesy of NASA. Simply breathtaking.
Labels: environment, video
Monday, March 02, 2009
Adobe Video Workshop
Adobe Video Workshop is a library of tutorial videos on Adobe products. Unfortunately, there aren't yet any on FrameMaker or RoboHelp, but there are quite a few on Acrobat.
Friday, November 21, 2008
World record base jump
Two Frenchmen recently set the world record for base jumping (parachuting from a structure) by jumping 650 metres from the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. And they videotaped it. Amazing.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Plain English videos
When I was at the DocTrain West conference earlier this year, I saw an amazing video that demonstrated the basics of wikis in about as simple a manner as you could possibly imagine. That was part of a series by the Common Craft Show, which includes videos on social networking, podcasting, blogs, and social photosharing, among others. The ContentWrangler site has collected several of these, and they're well worth looking at, and sharing with friends and co-workers.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
C-61 in 60 seconds winners
Law professor Michael Geist had a competition to see who could create the best video summarizing Canada's Bill C-61 in 60 seconds. Bill C-61 is basically the Canadian equivalent of the horrible US Digital Millenium Copyright Act. In some ways, it's even worse. Boing Boing has links to the three top entries and they're pretty good. For what it's worth, I like the last one best.
Labels: intellectual property, video
Monday, June 16, 2008
Pink Floyd/Kubrick mashup
Here is a video combining two of my favourite artists: Stanley Kubrick and Pink Floyd. It's the last 20 minutes or so of Kubrick's masterpiece 2001, A Space Odyssey with the audio from Pink Floyd's Echoes from their Meddle album. It works beautifully.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wonder How To
If you've ever wondered how to do something, check out Wonder How To. It's a site that has more than 100,000 videos that show you how to do just about anything you can think of. I searched on "how to grout tile" and found several good videos that will help me do a bit of maintenance on our bathroom tile. This is one that's going on my bookmark list.
Labels: video
Monday, December 31, 2007
Anti-Canadian-DMCA video
Galacticast has produced a funny yet quite pointed and educational web video about the proposed Canadian equivalent to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It also parodies several classic SF films.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Top 10 space videos
New Scientist has a list of their picks for the top 10 space videos. I really liked the meteorite compilation.
Monday, December 10, 2007
DITA for Help
Back in March, I posted about a paper written by Tony Self in which he looked at using DITA for online help and found it lacking in some key area. Now, some of these shortcoming may be addressed with the formation of a subcommittee of the DITA Technical Committee that will focus on online help.
The aims of the DITA Help SC are to:
* develop a top-level design for authoring of Help systems and user assistance content for implementation using DITA;
* establish recommendations for the integration of DITA-authored Help systems and software applications using context-sensitivity;
* remove the obstacles to effective use of DITA for Help systems through the creation of best practice guidelines, cookbooks and worked examples, and to promote the use of DITA for creating Help systems and user assistance content;
* develop informal support for processing DITA for delivery as Help systems and user assistance;
* establish guidelines that promote best practices for applying standard DITA approaches to Help systems and user assistance content. The deliverables of the DHSC will be:
* recommendations to the DITA TC for specification changes to better support Help systems and user assistance content;
* a high-level processing model description that defines the standard use of DITA for Help systems and user assistance content;
* explanations and guidelines for the use of DITA for Help systems and user assistance content.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Amazing rock video
This is one of the most bizarre rock videos I have ever seen. The Lenningrad Cowboys with the Red Army Choir doing Sweet Home Alabama. Trust me - you don't want to miss this.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Really, really, extreme skiing
There's extreme sports and there's really extreme sports. This video of ski-gliding the Eiger has to be absolutely the most extreme sports video I have ever seen. You've seen stunts similar to this in James Bond movies, but this is for real.
Labels: video
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Women in art
Women in art is a truly mesmerizing video of 500 years of women's faces in paintings, morphing from one to another. It's one of the coolest videos I've seen in some time.
Monday, June 11, 2007
All about video codecs
I don't mess around with video a lot, but I have had occasion to do silly things like converting WMV files to MPEG so I could get them to play in a DVD player. What seems like a simple task generally isn't when video is involved. Reading Eveything you always wanted to know about video codecs might help - especially if you've never heard of a codec before, or just know about it because Windows Media Player says you need one when you try to play a file. It isn't the most detailed explanation of video software that I've seen on the Web, but it's one of the clearest and most comprehensive.
Labels: video
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Free documentaries on Google
Here's a link to a page listing all of the free documentaries on Google Video (over 3000). There's some good stuff here: A Discover channel program on the history of hacking, a BBC documentary about the classic Fischer vs. Spassky chess match of 1972, and much, much more.
Labels: movies and television, video
Monday, February 12, 2007
Dr. Who stuff
I'm eagerly awaiting the start of seaon 3 of the new Dr. Who. In the meantime, here's a couple of Dr. Who items. First, a 4-port USB hub in the shape of a TARDIS. If I ever see one, I'm buying it on sight. Second, here's a video mashup called Dr. Who and the French Dalek - the video is from the Dr. Who story, Dalek - the audio is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's hilarious.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Joe Haldeman webcast
Joe Haldeman is one of the great SF writers, a genuinely nice guy, and a teacher. MIT World is webcasting one of his lectures on the craft of science fiction, and if you want The Word, straight from the mouth of a master, this is it.
Unfortunately, the webcast requires that you use RealPlayer, so I'm not sure if you can view it on a Linux system.
Unfortunately, the webcast requires that you use RealPlayer, so I'm not sure if you can view it on a Linux system.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Good documentaries on Google Video
Google Video is hosting several good Nova documentaries, including The Elegant Universe and Richard Dawkins' The Good Delusion. I may watch these over the holidays. Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip.
Labels: movies and television, science, video
Friday, December 01, 2006
Young live Dead
Courtesy of YouTube, here's the Grateful Dead doing St. Stephen. This is early, young Grateful Dead - I think it's the earliest video I've seen of the band - it's from the Playboy After Dark TV show aired in 1969, though it looks earlier than that.
Update: There's even earlier video of the Dead on YouTube, from the infamous Acid Test shows (1966?). As you might expect from something called the Acid Test, the video is ... pscyhedic. The performance (Death Don't Have No Mercy) is perfectly listenable.
Update: There's even earlier video of the Dead on YouTube, from the infamous Acid Test shows (1966?). As you might expect from something called the Acid Test, the video is ... pscyhedic. The performance (Death Don't Have No Mercy) is perfectly listenable.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Shuttle booster video
Here's a spectacular video of the shuttle Discovery launch, taken from the solid rocket booster. This video is a montage from two cameras, one looking up and one down, following the booster from launch to splashdown. And whoever put it together added a Brian Eno soundtrack.
