Tag: video

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Things 91: Dresden Codak, i.e., Paths of Flight

Link
In Things 48 (not yet blogged) I linked to an Aaron Diaz’s Dresden Codak update featuring 42 sharply observed 3rd-act plot twists, but recently realised that this may have misrepresented his work, which instead usually consists of astonishingly deft single-page stories revolving around simple but brilliant ideas.

Here’s 3 of my favourites to give you a much better idea of Diaz’s oeuvre:

Lantern Season:

Fabulous Prizes:

Girl vs Bear:

His blog on comic art theory is also well worth checking out if you are remotely interested in the art form.

Quote
During a characteristically interesting and varied conversation with Adam a few days ago, he suddenly revealed the following:

That reminds me of a really interesting thing I read in the Metro today – something like: 30,000 people… something. I can’t remember what it was, but it was really amazing.

Question
Sometimes I want to ask things in Things that are even more obviously not what people might call Puzzles than usual, so in these cases I’m going to be more direct and call a question a Question. So here is a Question.

When it comes to arguments about the English Language I tend to side with the people saying “most people say it this way so that’s now correct” against those saying “this is the way some Victorian guy wrote in a book that it should be said so everyone doing otherwise is wrong”, but I do admit that some distinctions are worth holding against a tide of misuse, one example being that I would correct instances of “i.e.” and “e.g.” being used in one another’s stead where polite and possible.

Fortunately, this didn’t come up very often.

Then in 2010 something terrible happened. About 95% of all instances of “i.e.” that I read were incorrect and should have been “e.g.”, which is particularly silly as it reads as if the author believes a set of many elements (e.g. social networks) consists of only one (e.g. “i.e. Facebook”).

So my question is this: have you also noticed such a sudden rise in “i.e.” misuse, or have I just been unlucky and/or suffered from confirmation bias?

Video
A while ago I realised you could collage time lapse photography of a flight path to obtain an image of a string of planes; I then realised you could do the same thing with video, but recognised that this was beyond my means to produce. Conveniently, GE have now done this:

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Things 31: Literal Take On Me, Heinlein’s Standard Response, Squirrel Fishing

Films
I really enjoyed City of Ember, but I have to admit this is probably because I love films about things that are underground or the end of the world or mechanical contraptions, all of which it has.

I’m going to try to see Eagle Eye because it looks like it might hold my attention with a combination of a moderately creative idea and a lot of explosions.

Trailer:

IMDb: 6.9/10
RT: 28%… but critics never like this sort of thing!

Also of course there’s Quantum of Solace which is out next Friday.

Puzzle from before
In Things 30 I asked why we look after the ‘least fit’ despite the fact that we evolved through ‘survival of the fittest’. A lot of people turn this around and use it as an argument that we shouldn’t look after the weak, which is ridiculous for a number of reasons, but most of all it is ridiculous because of the answer to this puzzle.

The trick is that evolution optimises for survival of genes, not individuals, and individuals tend to share a lot of genes. Helping the ‘least fit’ is nothing more than a strategy that evolution tried out and turns out to have been extremely successful. Anyone advocating the ‘kill the weak for survival of the fittest’ argument needs to explain how it is humans have managed to thrive across the entire planet by being nice to their fellow tribe-members.

This week’s puzzle
Last weekend I drove a hire car from Edinburgh to Cardiff. As it got dark, other drivers started flashing their lights at me, even though I had my lights on. I pulled over and checked the lights – they were all on, front and back. What was the problem?

A video
The stop/go cat I linked to in Things 30 has become a massive viral hit. Here’s another one – literal lyrics put to the legendary Take On Me music video:

Link
Robert Heinlein’s standard response letter to fan mail:
http://kk.org/ct2/heinlein.php

A quote
Tarim: I used to want to be a juggler when I grew up, then I realised you couldn’t do both.

A picture
Results of my recent squirrel fishing at Regents Park (click for full size):

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Things 89: Human Towers, Retroactive Prayer, Local Universe Map

Trailer
I saw Monsters at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and it’s now on general release. As I said back in my big EIFF review post:

What: Low budget yet well-realised alien invasion as setting for semi-romantic road movie
Good: Beautifully shot, atmospheric, with an incredibly realistic-feel for its budget and a beautifully understated soundtrack from Jon Hopkins. And giant alien octopi.
Bad: Weakness in the development of the female character betrays a male gaze bias, undermining the main dynamic of the film
Conclusion: Essential viewing for anyone interested in what can be achieved on a budget, giant alien octopi, or Whitney Able’s legs

Trailer:

Video
Human Towers, some of which alarmingly do fall down:

Casteller from Mike Randolph on Vimeo.

Quote
Martin Bland, paraphrased by Peter Norvig in an excellent article on the shortcomings of evidence for prayer healing:

An ethical study proving the efficacy of retroactive prayer is logically impossible.

Puzzle
Since physical attractiveness has at least some part to play in our evolution, why does the perceived attractiveness of any given individual vary so much depending on who you ask?

Picture
I had previously wondered what the ‘local’ area of the universe looked like, for varying values of ‘local’, but some idle Googling didn’t produce an answer at the time. Just recently I came across a really nice image on Wikipedia giving the answer across some interesting different scales. Check out the file on Wikipedia, where you can also download a 7MB, not-very-compressed jpg of the image. (If that’s gone for some reason I’ve put a slightly more compressed version (2.5MB) of the image here).

Here’s a snapshot of just part of it:

Last Week’s Puzzle
Last week I asked why bedsprings make a ‘pyoing’ noise out of nowhere. Either this was too easy, too hard, or no one had any idea what I was talking about, because nobody had an answer. Consequently I turned to my not-very-secret research alter ego and asked the internet, as I did before on the shampoo question. The internet said springs get squinched down sometimes and will later pop back up. If that was the case, I would expect to usually hear these noises very soon after getting off a bed, with just a few rare occasions when it was released later. I remain unsure.

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Things 29: Love Talk, Photogenic Theories, Top 10 Cats 2008

(Originally sent September 2008)

You may notice at this point that Things 30 will come out the day before I turn 30. Is this a coincidence? Or was the Things hiatus earlier this year actually very carefully planned?

Films
Still rubbish. Still not time to see them either.

A video
Here is the teaser video for my 30th birthday event:

A link
What is love? An interesting way to answer this question would be to create a web page that anyone online can edit, where they can add their opinion. Unfortunately this is not how Wikipedia is supposed to be used. Fortunately, this is how the talk page on Love *is* used, and it’s well worth a browse.

A quote
I overhead this on the street the other day:

“Fffffffffit! Fuckin’ fit, man. They are the fittest in all of South East Asia.”

The implication being that this man has assessed the fitness of not only all groups in South East Asia, but also those in the North East, North West, and South West as well. Impressive!

Last week’s puzzle
On the topic of being photogenic, I received a few replies. Xuan suggested people look different in 2D and 3D. Sian suggested that it’s actually about being comfortable with cameras, and non-photogenic people freeze up around them. This is similar to theories I have read that our perception of people is surprisingly dependent on their movements, so when we see them static it is quite different. Suzanne took this theory further by suggesting that photogenic people might be those that don’t have particularly animated faces.

In this case Yahoo Answers is very little help – but the Wikipedia page, on the other hand, is quite good, and covers some of the above theories:

I would personally add that the focal length of most cameras is not the same as that of the human eye, which can cause some subtle effects. I also once heard a great quote from a professional photographer – he said that “Women with strong character come across better in a photo when they don’t smile.” I think this is true. But do note that I don’t believe this implies the converse, which would be that women that come across well when they smile don’t have strong character!

Finally, Suzanne points out that beauty is either in the eye of the beholder; skin deep; or comes from within.

This week’s puzzle
Puzzles have been a bit serious lately so it’s time for something silly.
What is the difference between a duck?

A picture
I’ve seen a lot of lolcats since I posted a top 10 at Christmas last year. Here’s my top 10 of the ones I have seen between then and now.