This Looks Like Fun

"Lost In Austen" is a new British sci-fi drama from ITV that has a modern day woman transported into Pride & Prejudice.

From this video, it looks like it could be quite good. Hopefully, the torrents will be kind to me :-).


Thanks to io9.

Synthespians

This is a pretty amazing video. The "person" being interviewed is synthetically constructed, using a number of images taken of a real human being to generate all of the facial expressions.

It was created by a company called Image Metrics, who are the people behind the animations in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Update: I've replaced the original YouTube video, which seemed to have some kind of glitch partway through. This seems to be a superset of the old one.

Thanks to io9.

Mushroom Time Lapse

Wow, it feels like it's been a month since I last blogged ... oh, it has :-).

Anyway, here's a nice time-lapse video of mushrooms growing.


Thanks to Random Good Stuff.

Kinetic Sculpture

This is pretty cool ...

Chronotopic Anamorphosis

This is a clever bit of trickery that involves incorporating lines from subsequent frames into the current one, thereby causing parts of the video to move through time.



Thanks to Neatorama.

The Unbreakable Umbrella

The title and this video say it all ...

New PC vs Mac Banner Ad

Office Synchronisation

This is just weird enough to be interesting ...


Thanks to Random Good Stuff.

97 Degrees?!

You won't be getting me on this rollercoaster anytime soon ...

The Open Source Process In Action

Via Projectionist comes this impressive animation of the Python language's development over time ...

Mathematics Problem Videos

Via Teaching College Math, I discovered Math TV, which provides videos of worked-through high school level mathematics problems.

There are two sites: MathTV, which has problems presented by a couple of different people, and a YouTube site, which contains a lot more problems, all of which seem to be presented by the same guy.

That's OK, because I think he does the best job, anyway.

Unfortunately, they've disabled embedding, but click on the image for a nice example of integration by substitution ... although I think the last one could have been explained more simply than by using polynomial long-division!

All up, a nice resource.

They Set The Bar High at UNE

One of the subjects I'll be doing next semester includes an assignment that requires you to create an animation of some form.

This was the best submission from 2006. If I started now, and worked 16 hours a day on it, I reckon I could create something at least half as good by ... oh, let's say ... the end of second semester, 2010 :-).

Hopefully the person who produced this has been able to carry the same level of creativity and skill with them into their day to day teaching!

I Got The New iPhone

The title says it all ...

An Awesome Lecturer

Apple just expanded iTunes U to cover more universities, including at least one in Australia ... the University of NSW.

So, I popped on over to see what lectures were available and stumbled upon some introductory C programming lectures by a chap named Richard Buckland.

When I finally make it into the teaching profession, I just hope my classes can be a fraction of the fun this bloke's are.

Even if you have no interest in computing, please watch at least some of this. I think Richard has a truly amazing ability to bond with his class.

Fortunately, the lectures are also on YouTube, so you don't need to subscribe to iTunes U unless you want to. Here's the one I watched last night.

A quick warning, though ... it starts out a little slowly, because it would seem the lecture theatre was a slightly tricky to find, so he waits a few minutes to give people a chance to get there.

Creme That Egg!

Another, incredibly intricate Rube Goldberg machine.


Thanks to Dan Meyer for pointing it out.

Snake Jump

The title says it all ...

A River, A Large Bag & Some Rocks

That's what I'd be looking for if I had to put up with this performance more than once :-).

Gobbledigook

This is a recent music video by Icelandic band Sigur Rós.

It's definitely NSFW, but don't let that stop you from watching it away from W, because while almost the entire content contains full frontal nudity, it's quite tasteful.



Thanks to Random Good Stuff.

iPhone Earth

Here's an example of the kind of thing that makes me think the next iPhone will really take off.

That's not to say I think there's much value in it for me, personally. However, the SDK they're using to develop this is currently in the hands of thousands of programmers.

Trust me; there will be plenty of compelling applications for this device from day one ... and that number will increase rapidly.

These Kids Obviously Saw My Last Post!

Thanks to Projectionist for making my day with this ...