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In this litigious society, I think it would only be right and fair for Disney to sue Disney for everything they’ve got. This video, showing the blatant duplication of Disney choreography, should be entered as evidence.
Smashing today posted an article today showcasing a bunch of delightful logo work. These are some of my favorites.
I think the Media Factory is my fave, though Wordpress cropped it a little tight here.
Give Smashing some love, since I stole (and then Wordpress abused) their nicely-squared images. And because they’re wonderful.
In response to the horror that is Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwean Newspaper has come up with this lucid and salient campaign using essentially worthless Zimbabwean currency as poster material.
Three more after the jump.
* Post title inspired by Jesse calling Mugabe “an asshole”; good call, that.
Wonderful little “infofilm”. (I declare that term mine. Gimme a nickel.)
As always, I highly recommend clicking through to the video in HD on Vimeo.
Via new/ stuff
A recent Lifehacker article recommended a piece of software called Synergy to allow one keyboard/mouse to control multiple machines, across platforms, pulling clipboard data along the way (as well as syncing screensavers). The problem is, Synergy hasn’t been updated in nearly three years and I couldn’t get it working.
Digging through the comments, I found Teleport, which has the disadvantage of being Mac-only, but the advantage of… well… working. Quite nicely, at that. It is more polished, prettier, supports drag-and-drop file copying, and has more robust options.
Installation is a snap. Add a preference pane to each machine, turn it on, arrange your monitors as in a dual-display setup, and set options as shown above. Et voila.
One cautionary note: tablets are not as yet really supported, but switching my Bamboo to mouse mode has done the trick (this is a meaningful tradeoff, and I’m hopeful for a fix).
This will be a substantial boon for my productivity and happiness.
Two more screenshots after the jump.
The Wave is a red-rock stunner on the border of Arizona and Utah, made of 190-million-year-old sand dunes that have turned to rock. L.A. Times photographer Spencer Weiner captured the swirling drama of this little-known formation that’s accessible only on foot via a three-mile hike and highly regulated.
A few more at LA Times
So Zazzle is doing 50% off all posters (use code ZAZZLEPOSTER), and they sent me an email promo tailored to their historic posters and, long story short, I ordered a giant print, on canvas and framed, of San Diego in 1876 (pictured). Proceeding in the wrong sequence, I followed up my order with some research into the print.
Turns out the Library of Congress has the original print, and it’s availble as a 8720×6048px jpg (12mb). They also have another high-res photo from 1915.
Along the way, I learned a couple interesting tidbits from the Library:
Over 300 years later, gold miner Pringle Shaw described San Diego in his 1857 book Ramblings in California as:
“a favorite resort for horse stealers and suspicious looking greasers…chiefly from its remoteness and the uncertain communication with the more civilized districts…[The climate resembles] the balmiest portions of Italy…In ‘54 but one physician existed in the place, and he died of a broken-heart, occasioned, it was said, by a want of practice. He complained…of the citizens’ obstinacy in adhering to robust health.”
And:
By 1888, Harriet Harper observed a more refined San Diego. In her Letters from California, she describes San Diego as:
“curled up in the arms of her beautiful bay…[with] long lines of yellow graveled streets… many wooden houses…[and] utter innocence of flower and foliage…. An electric railway runs past my windows; steam motors take you in any direction. The principal streets have electric lights and cement pavements, and there is an encouraging amount of building going on…
all conditions are favorable for a future great city.”
So yeah. Perhaps I could have gotten it printed myself cheaper (though really with the half-off, I’m not even sure of that). But hurrah for the Library of Congress. I’m sure there are many, many more cartographic wonders ahoy.
Sweet little story, stunning visuals, cooler-than-Minority-Report interfaces. Sadly, not in HD.
Via Gizmodo
Beautiful, elegant, really well-shot. (I strongly recommend you hit the video on Vimeo in HD)
This house sports a fully retractable outer shell. Pull it back to reveal the greenhouse-like interior, with full views of the English countryside. Close it up for privacy or temperature regulation. This is somehow more beautiful seeing it in action than the actual aesthetics of the execution. I think I’d love this, seeing as how I love the outdoors, and I love the indoors. What?
Via Geekologie
PS I wish this was in a higher resolution, though this is pretty good. I guess.
PPS I still hate YouTube’s title and rating overlay.
Interesting mashup project here, showing the radii of death and damage from a variety of weapons (and even asteroid impacts). Using Google maps, you can see the effect on any location in the world. A few years ago I saw a similarly haunting map of London at The Imperial War Museum. It has really stuck with me, so I wanted to pass this on.
Shown above is the 50 megaton “Tsar Bomba” – the largest explosion ever – detonated over San Diego. The inner region is “conflagration”: everyone is dead within 24 hours. Radiating out from there are regions of 3rd, 2nd, and then 1st degree burns.
Quoting the BldgBlog post:
Nuclear weapons present us with a kind of demonic skeleton key, capable of catastrophically unlocking any city in the world, no matter how dense or well-fortified, in mere seconds.
…
The overwhelming obliterative power of nuclear weapons turns them into a kind of ubiquitous anti-landscape, something that no geography, built or natural, can successfully resist.
…
If we’re going to study cities, in other words, then we should also study that which is radically anti-city.
…but it is about aesthetics. That is… I never got “customer of the week” before I had this righteous beard (for International Mustache Month, natch).
PS I look like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. In the bad way.
PPS Not a bad pic for the iPhone.
