The Text Peeping Tom

There is a wonderful site called SMS Peeping and the site’s sole purpose is to post text messages people send through the website or on an SMS Widget for the Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4. Read more about SMS Peeping!

Sources: SMS Peeping, Wikipedia,

Hoax

The Museum of Hoaxes is like a blog version of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, just a little less weird.

Learning to Fly

Space is a vast and unknown beast and I’ve always been fascinated with it, as I know many others are. And now, Sir Richard Branson, along with Scaled are making space travel possible for those willing to pay the price. SpaceShipTwo, the follow up to SpaceShipOne is their newest endeavor and is able to hold at least a few passengers for flight. SpaceShipOne only went suborbital, not actually making it to orbit, still an incredibly astonishing feat for a non government funded ship and won the Ansari X Prize for it’s manned flight on June 21, 2004. I am still blown away that in just a little over 100 years, since 1903, man has created and flown airplanes eventually making it into space. With this rapid advancement of interplanetary travel, it just makes one wonder how far man/woman will get in our own lifetimes, what we will be able to see happen. In the meantime, check out the video at Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s company which will be hosting the flights.

Sources: BoingBoing, Space, Virgin Galactic, Wikipedia, Scaled

Foolscreen

When I heard that the original theatrical releases of Star Wars were going to be released in later 2006, I flipped out. I was so excited to buy the set and watch the movies I remember from my childhood. But when I got to the store, I found to my horror that there was something wrong with the DVD releases of these classics…

Foolscreen – when a widescreen movie is cropped and chopped to fill a 4:3 frame (one of the worst things you can do to a movie), thanks Cinema Blend and Urban Dictionary for the term! Now, what George Lucas has done to the original theatrical releases of Star Wars, episodes IV – VI, is not foolscreen, but he has presented it in letterboxed 4:3, a travesty of justice to these movies. If you don’t understand what this means, take a gander at the diagram below…

People think that since the 4:3 image is bigger on the TV (none of those stupid black bars), that they’re getting the upper hand. I don’t need to write more on this subject, it’s already been written on, visit the Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy Page for examples and further information. I just think that fans of the original theatrical releases should get a proper release. For even further reading, Wikipedia has some pages devoted to the aspect ratio. And the fact that this movie was shot in the ratio 2.35:1 means that it’s cutting way more off of the picture than foolscreening a 1.78:1 (16:9) movie. To paraphrase Scorsese: “Showing a movie in fullscreen is like if you took a painting and cut off the ends, it’s not the original artwork, nor is it the artists’ intent to present it as such.” Again, this limited theatrical release of Star Wars isn’t foolscreen, but I’m still outraged over their decision, when I could have even cropped and exported it in Final Cut Pro with ease. Ugh…

Sources: Cinema Blend, LWA, Wikipedia

Legal 5 finger discount

If you’re a fan of movies and a fan of downloading or a fan of downloading movies, mosey on over to the Internet Archive where they host plenty of pinnacles of classic cinema, all for free! Because of loopholes or forgetfulness or what have you, the movies on this site are copyright free and legal to download. They have greats like His Girl Friday with Cary Grant. Charlie Chaplin‘s The Kid, as well as the original Night of the Living Dead, Reefer Madness and Nosferatu. This is a hoard of good stuff just yearning to be watched, so do the classics proud and hit that download button.

Sources: The Internet Archive, Wikipedia

Oh! The iconery!

Free stuff is great. Free good clip art is fantastic, so hit up some National Park Service icons. Any icon you might find at national parks, they have for your downloading pleasure and use (since it is federal property, it is public domain!) in PDF and Illustrator format. Rock the Casbah!

Sources: National Park Service, Elastic Limit (for reference), Wikipedia

Stop Animation

Through a Digg article, I came upon this incredible stop animation short by a guy in the Netherlands. For most of the life I can remember, I’ve been entranced by stop motion, namely, Peter Gabriel‘s “Sledgehammer” video – always a source of ideas and motivation when I get stuck in one spot. Another stunning and inspiring animation is from director Michel Gondry (a master in his own right) for the White Stripes‘ “Fell in Love with a Girl.”

Sources: Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB

Logo look-a-like

I was at the movie theater this past weekend and thought the poster for the upcoming Sofia Coppola movie, Marie Antoinette, had a similar looking logo to the Sex Pisols‘ Never Mind the Bollocks…album cover. Maybe it’s because of the text design with similar colors…maybe.

Sources: Wikipedia, IMDB

Inside Straight Draw – origins of playing cards

With the steadily increasing amount of people being turned onto poker (nearly 9000 entrants at this year’s World Series of Poker) and those already in the thick of it, as well as other card game players, most people probably don’t know the origin of playing cards or the history surrounding them. Playing cards, with origins in China around the 1300s, were responsible for the increase in literacy among peasants when the cards made their way to Europe.

I have loved playing cards since I was young and have been playing poker for the past few years, Texas Hold ‘Em being my game of choice, but I am also an avid Hearts and Gin player.

There are some good images on the Wikipedia article on playing cards, but even better pictures of much older decks on other sites. Most of the links find their origin at the World of Playing Cards which incorporates decks from all over the world; the oldest and most interesting being German. Some other ancient card images and history are over at Trionfi.com – Master of the Playing Cards and Master E.S. deck. Tracy Roos has some modern artist renditions of a deck of cards, each with their own flair and personality.

Sources: Wikipedia, Trionfi, World of Playing Cards, Tracy Roos Studios

Talk Like a Pirate

Arg…but comes once a long tide. If you haven’t heard (next to impossible) tomorrow be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so, you know…celebrate accordingly. Be it throwing back some Captain Morgan’s or wearing an eye patch, why not have a little fun? If you feel you’re not yet ready to embrace the language, an instructional video has been put out (pretty well made to boot) to assist ye. Some engrossing reading on Blackbeard can be found on Wikipedia’s article, I found my self opening each link in a new tab, if you don’t know who Blackbeard is, then I highly recommend checking it out.

Sources: Wikipedia, Elzbth, Blog Idaho