The Windowfarms Project

In this video Britta Riley introduces us to her home based vertical hydroponic window farming project. She sources her containers from the recycle bin of her apartment complex and purchases the other materials from the local hardware and planting shops.

If it's really productive, this little project provides maybe 1/20th of the food she consumes, however its more so a matter of taking some control of producing what you consume, no matter how small a quantity, it gifts a feeling your doing something for the environment !

Nevertheless this little project has spawned the ability of giving people a means to collaborate on research and development of these vertical hydroponic food-growing curtains through their community website, which in her words has resulted in R&DIY (Research & Develop It Yourself) culture.

If they really intend on growing anything more than a few salad herbs I would hazard a guess that they are going to have to turn their brick-walled apartments into glass curtains !

Female praying mantis eats male after mating

The praying mantis mating season is the summer time. After mating the female praying mantis will eat the male, and in this video begins with the head.

The reason the male survives even though his head is gone is because his ganglion is in his abdomen. The ganglion is like a brain but more so a cluster of neurones that acts kind of like a brain and it connects certain systems of the body together.

Brian Eno makes music to create a more desirable reality

I have been listening to, and appreciating Brian Eno's music since he starred as the feather-crested electronic keyboard genius of Roxy Music forty years ago. Since then he has been hailed as a pioneer, with his revolutionary experiments in ambient music and audio visual art and as featured producer on benchmark albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay.

The video here is the first part of a documentary directed by Nicola Roberts wherein  we learn some snippets of his thinking, such as transcendence which he equates with looking at stones and pebbles on a beach.

I coincidently have pebbles and rocks as a background image on my twitter page with which I too reflect upon, when not thinking or twittering. I feel its worth sharing with you, dear readers of nevertheless, that this is my 1000th post.

Go to More Dark Than Shark for everything about Brian Eno.

A little metaphysical Scrabble

Craziest is a quaint but entertaining short story by Liz Dubelman.

Pink Terror by Mike Barzman

Beautiful, but creepy, destruction filled media art video, of scary masked men throwing, shooting, and breaking stuff in 1000fps slow-motion with audio from a Stephen Hawking interview and techno-music playing in the background.

Cool new take: on one man acapella band with iPhone

Les Ramens shows us how easy it is to create a simple harmonic vocalized tune on an iphone. It was wonderful for the amount of effort it appeared to take.

He uses Everyday looper, an iPhone application that provides four audio tracks as you record and manipulate as you want.

The application costs $4:99 (iTunes link) and is bound to become a useful tool for many a tune maker and muso. Although I think with a little practice and a dose of inspiration other iphone users may also rinse some creative genius from this clever application.

OK Go: Cinematic Panorama Rock Video

While I stagger stumble my blog experience into uncharted waters of online structure, this video, pushes our viewing appreciation around a challenging space, divided into two floors of an open plan factory. The video and song production is the result of a time lapse technique and provides a wealth of unexpected surprises as the camera swims and swoons us through a panoramic cinema of pure gravity.

This immense media art project was directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The song This Too Shall Pass is from the the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky"

Pretty cool and fun all round really !

IMMERSE

is a stunning suspenseful entertaining short media art video by weareom with lighting by Mihai Sibianu with sound by Alin Flaidar and edited by Dan Mateescu.

Cool projection animation

from Ukrainan animation artist animtr, appears to imitate an air brush painting texture

The flow of the animation is well paced with a popular music track, hey whats it called ?

A wireless future of medicine with Eric Topol

As the American government is currently seeking to institute a better and fairer Health Care Administration, Eric Topol says we'll soon use our smartphones to monitor our vital signs and chronic conditions. In this video he highlights several of the most important uses wireless mobile devices will have in medicine's future, all helping to keep more of us out of hospital beds.

Although Eric Topol uses an iPhone in his lecture, one has to think more broadly the phone doesn't matter. All smartphones are as good as long as they are capable of running the programs needed.

I was gobsmacked to hear about the huge numbers of the  American population that have life threatening diseases and serious medical conditions. if everyone had this, maybe one day we could predict where and when someone will have heart failure - and prevent it.

Ever tried taking a cat for a walk ?

Although this video clip is curiously entertaining, the owners behavior is verging on animal cruelty !

Nevertheless, I have a friend that takes her cat for a walk on a leash, and as she has explained, Burmese cats would be the closest type of cat to a dog in that they have a kind of barking sound in their vocabulary and are the pedigree that can be more readily trained to walk on a leash.

Jazari : A robotic percussive ensemble

Patrick Flanagan has invented a new genre of robotic musical instrument he calls Jazari. The robust construction of the instrument as can be seen in the video employs the use of solenoids, actuators, and a couple of controllers from the Nintendo Wii.

He refers to his system as Jazari Music, in which he controls a suite of djembe drums, bongos, and other percussive instruments by pressing buttons and tilting the angle of the Wiimotes. To see a more definitive appreciation of how his robotic percussive instrument works, go here.

The Jazari Music robot system is driven by his own software, Factor Oracle and his research involvement with AI has helped him make his system auto responsive. This essentially means that he can jam with his instrument, on the fly, as it were, and quickly switch back to his control. Alternatively he can also loop rhythms or even have the robots improvise on their own.

In case your wondering Al-Jazari was a 12th century Arabic scholar who was said to have created the first mechanical musicians.

How many oranges does it take to charge an iphone?

Who ever would have thought this possible but marketing and social media firm Imperial Leisure, created an advertisement using an iPhone, to promote the sale of Jaffa oranges. They discovered that with a lot of rods and cable you can use orange power, or rather the power of 595 Jaffa oranges sliced into 2380 quarters, to power an iPhone.

If you think that this story ought to be examined by the Mythbusters, then you ought to check this out first.

Nevertheless in case your looking for an alternative method for powering your iphone or similar hand held gadget other than the one shown in the video, you might like to try this one.

Thrill seeker cat and a tragedy

This kitty cat was lucky but no so lucky were 3 teenage girls in Florida.

Flyfire: swarm bots to create huge airspace displays

MIT is looking to launch swarms of robotic LED-equipped micro-helicopters, they call Firefly and coordinate them synchronously to create massive free floating 2D or 3D displays in which each bot serves as a single pixel. Each bot is to be endowed with enough smarts and positional awareness to organize themselves into an airborne canvas.

The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience.

If they succeed in doing this, its likely Flyfire may only be practical within large indoor stadiums, since its almost impossible to maintain a stationary position in the open air by even the most successful hover piloting let alone thousands of almost weightless helicopter robots ? Or just how would they cope in almost any change in the atmosphere ?

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