Paste has a nice rundown of 10 Scenes That Were More Real Than You Knew, mostly based on unexpected character reactions but the #5 anecdote regarding Battlestar Galactica is pretty ridiculous. You will enjoy the entire list, I promise.
Fire up your preferred WebKit browser (sorry Firefox!) and check out this demo of Interactive CSS3 Lighting Effects. It's hard to imagine that this is being rendered entirely with CSS 3D transforms and gradients. I am consistently blown away by what people are doing with the new tools at hand for browsers and this is no exception.
For a little while now I've been keeping a playlist on VHX of Nashville area music videos. It has become a great way to compile YouTube and Vimeo sourced videos into one playlist. Having compiled a good bit of videos into one location it occurred to me to try my hand at incorporating the VHX API into an App-esque site to display the videos. The resulting Video Archive turned out pretty well. It needs some work - i.e. permalinks, a better name, iPhone optimization, etc - but it's a solid beta in my opinion. Check it out and let me know any useful feedback you may have on it!
Take a moment this morning to read this insightful piece from Koushik Dutta on The Unintended Effects of Driverless Cars. As you may, or may not, know - Google has been working on a Driverless Car for awhile now. Granted, it's a long way off from perfection (or from the mainstream in general) but the article in question raises some incredibly interesting points - namely, why would people own multiple cars if the automated version could constantly be driving about carpooling people to individual locations? I can't imagine the huge car manufacturers and/or insurance companies are too keen on the idea in general but it's an exciting prospect to ponder.
“So, what we’re seeing isn’t the expansion of our social network; it’s the shrinking of what and who we care about. My Facebook feed is full of what friends are listening to, what friends are reading, etc. And frankly, I don’t give a damn. I would care if they told me personally; I’d even care if they used a medium as semi-personal as Twitter. The effort required to tweet tells me that someone thought it was important. And I do care about that. I will care much less if Spotify and Rdio integrate with Twitter. I already don’t care about the blizzard of automated tweets from FourSquare.”
For the most part, I think speculating about Social Media on the whole is kind of a waste of breath, it is what it is and it will organically change over time. That being said, I think the point of this article that the automated updates being fed into Facebook definitely devalue it. Not being a huge FB user myself I can't really speak to how it's changed the mindset of the enormous user base but I can say that the personal curation of services like Twitter and Tumblr do it better. If someone posts "Currently listening to..." or "Just checked in at..." updates too often, they're out - forever. I'm not going back if all you have to share is mediocre, dry, facts about your activities. Personality, even if it's your Online Persona, is key to all social services being worthwhile.. at least as far as I can tell.
It's rare these days to have your mind blown by an advertisment - especially an iTunes commercial (the bar is set pretty high). However, this new Beatles ad (high quality QT version here) absolutely floored me. Incredible animation of their cover art from start to finish.
Webkit Overflow Scrolling - I'm going to be honest, when I stumbled on this last Friday afternoon I was freaking out. There's actually a way to make overflowed blocks on an iOS device scroll with the natural inertia you expect. I realize being excited over such a thing is ridiculous but it completely made my day. Now if I could just figure out a way to incorporate the natural Tap To Top to reset the scrolled view I'd be in serious business (the example on the linked site doesn't seem to cover the event that would fire when hitting the top status bar).
Here's this weeks playlist - it's pretty solid if I do say so myself.
Scottish Winds - Scotland is getting hit with some crazy winds right now, this video is but a sample of its power. Stay safe you guys!
Best Talk Show Ever - yea, you've likely seen this bouncing around the web all week but you know what? You could stand to watch it again and again and again. I do. I never tire of this man's whistling facial expressions, the sheer disbelief on the children's faces and the absolutely bizarre wrap up chat at the end of the performance. It really is the Best Ever.
Serta Trek - this was posted in June so it's probably super old Internet news but it's new to me. In fact, the entire series of Dodd's commercials is new to me. How have I missed these?
Louis CK Live at the Beacon Outtake - Louis CK is posting a new standup special on his site tomorrow, Dec 10th, for $5. This is an outtake from said performance.
Oran "Juice" Jones - The Rain - you may think you're not into this song but if you stick with it until about 2:22 when Oran "Juice" Jones calls his lady out in the most ridiculous monologue. Heads up via Jeremy.
Paul McCartney making mashed potatoes - no joke here.. just 10 minutes of Sir Paul making mashed potatoes. Will you make it through the endurance challenge? I didn't.
BONUS
Everything. Part 19 - I've posted about this before but didn't realize the final episode had finally made its way on to Vimeo.
c trailer - preview of a new sci-fi movie striving to create a film with loads of special effects sans-cgi / greenscreen. The Kickstarter reached its goal so, hopefully, they'll continue the goodness they've started with the trailer.
Michael Kiwanuka - Tell Me a Tale - have you heard this guy? Insanely good. Yea, it sounds 100% like it's straight outta the 1970's but it's perfectly on target. Lovely.
The portfolio site for Small Studio is right up my alley - solid typography work, intriguing icons and a playful experience all mixed with panels of bizarre sci-fi scenes. The work itself is strong (and presented in huge full browser panels) but I was more compelled to just scroll around the site! They've got a blog as well - which I will now begin following to keep up with all their latest undertakings.
Emory Allen has taken on a rather daunting task with An Exquisite Beast - post a new drawing every day that connects with the piece from the day before; creating an incredibly long exquisite corpse (the secondary participant is Time; think about it). However you want to describe it, it's a joy to scroll through - particularly when it takes large shifts in style. View it, Bookmark it, just don't forget about it!
Take some time to read through Hobo Lobo of Hamelin - the tale of a hobo Pied Piper hired to save a town from ravaging rats. The most intriguing part is the bonkers side scrolling parallax effect throughout. It's incredibly well done and by the time you hit Page 3 you're hooked and definitely want to see more. It's really quite unlike anything I've seen on the web; particularly being done without Flash. It's rare that you can combine a bit of impressive technical execution and alluring art / storyline into one project but Hobo Lobo definitely nails it.
Many thanks to Scott Robbin for developing this jQuery Pageslide Demo. This methodology of content reveal is quickly becoming a standard UI/UX in the mobile world and I'd love to see it deployed more on the web in general. You can see it in action here or download it here.
I've been on the hunt for a proper TV / movie cataloging service for a little while now and it appears that maybe, just maybe, IntoNow could be the app I need. The introductory video makes the claim that you can just point the ole iPad at your TV and it will know what you're watching but I've yet to experience that kind of magic. At the very least, my interest is piqued. Anyone used this with any great regularity with Pros and Cons to share?
Loving this short film, The Gift, from Big Lazy Robot. The Visual FX, the character design and the action sequence are perfectly compelling. The story? Well, that's a little weird but it doesn't matter so much when you've got a weird Victorian Robot racing a motorcycle through snowy Russian cityscapes eluding the police.
Yugodrom has a bunch of foreign, vintage magazine covers scanned in to his photostream but the majority of it consists of a huge archive of Galaksija covers - a journal of popular science from the early 70's with some of the most phenomenal sci-fi covers I've encountered in awhile. You know the work is among good company when you remember this piece from Bruce Pennington - remember? Lots of good stuff in there - get to it.
Top 10 Movie Recasts You Didn't Know - Spoiler alert, #1 is Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly but you knew it would be. The rest of the list actually had a few surprises; namely Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones and Sylvester Stallone as Axel Foley - that would have been a very different movie.
Top 10 Best Worst Movies - I don't have the tolerance for awful movies like somepeople I know but this list of terrible treats seems pretty appealing. I'd heard hysterical things about Birdemic before but now I'm entirely convinced to watch it. As for Shark Attack 3, I think this probably sums it up.
Touch of Evil is "a video gallery of cinematic villainy, inspired by nefarious icons and featuring the best performers from the year in film." If that's not enough to draw you in it's also, put more simply, Brad Pitt recreating Eraserhead, George Clooney as Napoleon, Rooney Mara as Alex DeLarge and Gary Oldman as the creepiest ventriloquist doll you've never wanted to see (to just name a few). The Mia Wasikowska bit might be my favorite but it's rather hard to choose when among such great company.
From this point forward, you should start every day of your life with a quick visit to Procatinator - a brilliantly curated mash-up of hilarious cat gifs and perfectly matched songs. You can also follow them on Twitter but, really, all you need is a good dose of the site.
Craig Moan, aka Young Whale, is responsible for a number of beautiful prints. His site only contains a small portion of said creations but those that are up there, are aesthetically inspiring and well worth browsing through. Once you're done with that, hit up his blog for a load of great creative inspiration and more of his own goods snuck in for good measure. I'm excited to see what he's up to next.
