Jill Johansen: September 2013

Monday, September 30, 2013

What travelling around the world looks like in 1 minute

What travelling around the world looks like in 1 minute

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62706403929

Sunday, September 29, 2013

ruckawriter: brianmichaelbendis: The Avengers...

ruckawriter:

brianmichaelbendis:

The Avengers (2012)

Brilliant.

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62591938602

smithsonianmag: The Sounds of Pink Floyd, Daft Punk and James...

"Around the World," by Daft Punk. © Martin Klimas.

"On The Run," by Pink Floyd. © Martin Klimas.

"Run Run Run," by Velvet Underground and Nico. © Martin Klimas.

"House Burning Down," by Jimi Hendrix. © Martin Klimas.

smithsonianmag:

The Sounds of Pink Floyd, Daft Punk and James Brown, As Expressed by Flying Paint

By Joseph Stromberg

Photos © Martin Klimas

Most of us are content to hear music. But last year, German photographer Martin Klimas decided he wanted to see it.

“I was listening to lots of minimalist music—contemporary classical and free jazz—and I started looking for imagery that could express it best,” he says. “Then, soon afterward, I came across the research of Hans Jenny and his Study of Wave Phenomena .”

In the sixties, Jenny, a German physician and scientist, began experimenting with and photographing the effects of sound vibrations on a variety of materials—fluids, powders and liquid paste. By setting these substances on a rubber drum head and making it vibrate, he found that different tones produced different spatial patterns in the materials: Low tones led powders to gather in simple, straight lines, while deeper tones produced more complex patterns.

“It gave me an idea,” Klimas says. “I wanted to take these two things—the effects of vibrations, and music—and bring them together.”

Over the next year, he spent countless hours capturing what he calls “sonic sculptures” of a variety of musicians—everyone from Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd to Philip Glass and Johann Sebastian Bach. “I use an ordinary speaker with a funnel-shaped protective membrane on top of it,” he says. “I pour paint colors onto the rubber membrane, and then I withdraw from the setup.”

Continue reading about Martin Klimas’ unique art and see more photos at Smithsonian.com.

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62591868712

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Yzc2NjQ1MzQyNDU2MjMyMz: My time with the Steam Controller

Yzc2NjQ1MzQyNDU2MjMyMz: My time with the Steam Controller:

tommyrefenes:

When I started Super Meat Boy, I knew that proper controls would be the make or break for the game. I’m very picky about controls in games, to the point if the game doesn’t control well, I don’t care who makes it or what it is, I will stop playing it. I often get asked which formulas I used for…

Still more about the Steam controller, I’ll shut up about it after this. This, plus the Kotaku article about the controller, are making me feel a lot better about the placement of the face buttons. If Super Meat Boy is playable on this thing, something I had doubts about given my experience with the game (I suck ass at it, but still) I think it will be fine. I like that the touchpads can be configured to be not just one but 4 buttons!

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62496676063

Friday, September 27, 2013

I was expecting a new controller from Valve today, but I...

I was expecting a new controller from Valve today, but I wasn’t expecting one quite like this! First reaction was that I wasn’t quite sure how you were supposed to use it, but reading the page cleared that up, and I like a lot of things about it. The touchpad is great to support mouse based games (though my first thought would have been a trackball) more buttons than other controllers, the touchscreen is a great idea, it looks cool, looks comfortable. But I do have a few quibbles. The X and Y button placement concerns me. What if you need to hit them while moving? The lack of colors on the ABXY buttons is also problematic. They’ve changed the positions, and until you memorize the new placements, hitting them on short notice (such as during a dreaded QTE) could be problematic… a bit of paint will fix that, to an extent, but the prompts will likely not be color coded to match. While I think the right stick definitely needed replacing to make it truly PC compatible, I am unsure of the need to replace the left stick and I am not sure how well that will work for movement. Will it still allow you to do things like move your thumb a bit and you walk, a bit further and you run? if so, it ought to be fine, but I do worry a bit. Also, while no price was mentioned, it looks expensive to me… I hope to be proven wrong about that.

But, overall, I think it’s much better for PC gaming than a traditional controller. I am a pure PC gamer, I do not own a console, nor do I plan on ever getting one, but my Steam account has hundreds of games. I do like to use controllers sometimes, it helps with my tendonitis, but have always hated how imprecise the left stick is compared to a mouse…

(via Steam Controller)

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62432489783

discoverynews: DNews’ Anthony gets more than a little excited...

discoverynews:

DNews’ Anthony gets more than a little excited by the most recent Curiosity “water on Mars” announcement… and with good reason!

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62422677824

Thursday, September 26, 2013

dokidokidave: sonata-of-the-soul: lucidwolves: EVERYONE,...

dokidokidave:

sonata-of-the-soul:

lucidwolves:

EVERYONE, ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE NEEDS TO WATCH THIS.

EVERY.

FUCKING.

ONE.

God bless

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62316063382

Bitch, Make Me 300 Sandwiches, Orders Beautiful Woman's Boyfriend

Bitch, Make Me 300 Sandwiches, Orders Beautiful Woman's Boyfriend:

nachtflix:

A terrifyingly beautiful New York City woman is either preparing the most exquisite, slow-burn revenge murder of all time or has lost her goddamn mind, the New York Post reports today.

Run. Make yourself 300 sandwiches to tide you over while you escape this abusive asshole.

Yikes. I cannot even imagine….

Though I must confess, going to her site, some of those sandwiches look awfully tasty. But made for all the wrong reasons.

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62315547968

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

slowlyeden: Norman Rockwell reference photos alongside finished...

slowlyeden:

Norman Rockwell reference photos alongside finished works

Great demonstration of the right way to use photo reference. Use it to get everything right, but you don’t have to be a slave to it. Look how he pushes the poses and expressions, or flat out changes elements entirely to make them stronger.

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62313354441

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

n-a-s-a: Perseid Meteor Shower at Snowy Range Credit: David...

n-a-s-a:

Perseid Meteor Shower at Snowy Range

Credit: David Kingham

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62225725015

odditiesoflife: Brinicles — The Ocean’s “Ice Fingers of...

odditiesoflife:

Brinicles — The Ocean’s “Ice Fingers of Death”

Reaching down like frozen fingers from the water’s surface, where the so-called “brinicle” meets the sea bed, a web of ice forms that instantly freezes and kills everything it touches, including sea urchins and starfish.

The formation of brinicles, also known as ice stalactites, is dangerous to marine life. Sea ice is frozen fresh water because the salt in ocean water does not freeze with it. As the water freezes, high concentrations of salt are excluded. This brine – super saturated salt – gets pushed out of the ice through channels. Some of it gets pushed up and out, leaving a slightly salty layer on top of the sea ice, but much of it gets pushed down, back into the water.

A s this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it sinks in a descending plume and freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume into what is called a “brinicle” – an icicle of brine. These look like icicles hanging from the underside of the ice. If the brinicles keep growing and extending down to the ocean floor, they form a web of ice that freezes everything. Hence the nickname “ice fingers of death”. An amazing video which captures the formation of a brinicle was first filmed in 2011 for the BBC series Frozen Planet.

sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62225403088

Sunday, September 22, 2013

psychoace: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Neil Gaiman talkin’ about...

psychoace:

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Neil Gaiman talkin’ about rainbows.

Love this. Two of my favorite people demonstrating why they are awesome

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/62027832749

Friday, September 20, 2013

Photo

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/61809157823

skyrimconfessionss: "Many of my favorite mods require...

skyrimconfessionss:

"Many of my favorite mods require Dawnguard, but I don’t want the quest line to trigger yet, so I have been level hoarding. My Dragonborn should be level 21, but I have kept her at level 9 for a damn long time."

http://skyrimconfessions.com

There is a mod out there to delay the start of the Dawnguard (and Dragonborn, if you like, among other things) questline. It’s called Timing is Everything

Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/61808956681

harroldtheflyingsheep: bootyshortscronus: dogekin: sunshien: ...

harroldtheflyingsheep:

bootyshortscronus:

dogekin:

sunshien:

i love What Does The Fox Say as much as the next guy but we need to talk about this one too

I JUST CHOKED I CNA’T STOP LAUGHING FUCK

this is it, this is the video that killed me.

crying!!!!