Posted in Design and Art, Society on 13/03/2024|
The documentary “20 Days In Mariupol” is probably heartbraking, and the political context in the world may have contributed to its win of the 2023 “Documentary Feature Film” category at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood.
I’m just wondering: how long will it be before a russian propaganda film about the war in Ukraine wins a prize in Moscow?
Posted in Design and Art, Photography on 10/07/2023|
Yesterday we attended the GentJazz festival in Ghent. The performance by Ludovico Einaudi and his musicians made for a very special experience: the audience, some 3000 strong, was eerily quiet while Einaudi played, and -like us – very enthousiast in their appreciation of the music. A magical time!
Posted in Design and Art on 03/04/2023|
Posted in Design and Art, Society on 10/03/2023|
The official statement by the Ukranian Postal Service does not include an image, but Banksy’s Instagram account does. So I copied that image here:
In their own words:
The graffiti on the wall of a damaged building in urban-type settlement Borodyanka, which depicts the duel of two judokas, was chosen by Ukrposhta as a sketch for the postal issue “FCK PTN!”. A little boy who knocks out a grown man is an allegorical image – this is the struggle of Ukraine against the russian federation.
Ukrposhta
Propaganda? Of course – but necessary, I’m afraid. Note how all references to the enemy are written without capital letters ;-)
Posted in Design and Art, Technology on 22/01/2022|
My first camera was an Olympus OM-1 – my father bought it for me in 1977. I loved that camera, because it (and its lenses!) was (were) small en light compared to the cameras of the big photo industry names at that time. I parted with it after the birth of our son: trying to shoot good pictures of a children without auto-focus capacity was too hard for me ;-)
Don’t ask me why I preferred this model over one from a more established SLR produces like Nikon or Canon – I can’t remember how the decision was made. But I never regretted owning and using it. In fact, today I only regret having parted with it!
So there I was with that svelte and light camera. What I did not know was that the designers of the OM-1 originally imagined a completely different device! Kosmo Foto tells the story: “This is what the Olympus OM-1 could have looked like“. The OM-X system was meant to produce a modular camera, somewhat like the Hasselblad system but for 35mm film.
Luckily for me, Olympus did not start selling that system: I would never have been able to afford it (or let’s say that my father probably would not have spent money on that). I would have loved to play with it, just as I once dreamed of buying a second-hand Hasselblad… but never did – toys like that are too expensive for me.
What does surprise me, is that such a system has not yet been produced now that the “back” of such a camera can be a lot simpler in mechanical terms. Shouldn’t that be easier in this digital age?
Posted in Design and Art, Society on 18/01/2021|
Click on the image to hear (and see) Annie Lennox and the London City Voices perform Dido’s Lament on YouTube
Posted in Design and Art on 17/10/2020|
Thank you, BoingBoing, for pointing me to this beautiful and very understandable rendition of Lewis Caroll’s “Jabberwocky“:
And of course: thank you, TED-Ed, for making this video.
Posted in Design and Art, Society on 23/04/2020|
Posted in Design and Art, Science, Technology on 15/03/2020|
Yes, that is how one of the comments on TechSpot describes the machine built by Daniel de Bruin. Mashable calls it the Googol Visualizer Machine, and that is what it is:
… the first gear needs to make one googol rotations just to turn the last gear one complete rotation.
Click the picture to see it running on YouTube
A googol is a 1 followed by a hundred zeroes in the decimal system – go read the Wikipedia for a explanation. That will also explain where Larry and Sergei got the name for the most famous search engine on the Internet ;-)
Posted in Design and Art, Web Development on 19/02/2020|
“Seeing” things as colors or sounds has always intrigued me, so I had to have a look at the “What Color Is Your Name?” website. Don’t expect an extensive and scientific explanation of the phenomenon; just enjoy the results. Here’s what the alphabet look s like for Bernadette:
I can see this site being used to select a color scheme by website designers!
Posted in Design and Art on 25/01/2020|
In the words of David Pescovitz (BoingBoing): “In memory of Monty Python co-founder Terry Jones, who died this week, please enjoy “Monty Python and the Holy Grail in LEGO.””
I couldn’t agree more.
Posted in Design and Art, Motorcycles on 29/09/2019|
Stefan Rohrer is a German sculptor, whose name I never would have known were it not for the picture that accompanied the announcement “Bikes und Blumen” (“Motorcycles and Flowers”) on the Motorrad website:
A sculpture called “Schwalbe 2007” by Stefan Rohrer- Photo by Thomas Schmieder (Click on the image to see the large version)
I suppose scooters fascinated him greatly in 2007, because he did something similar with a Vespa scooter as well:
A sculpture called “Vespa 2007” by Stefan Rohrer (Click on the image to see a larger version)
Posted in Design and Art on 10/08/2019|
I don’t think the word “caketrope” is in the English dictionary, except Pee-wee’s, of course. But the cake he points to is truly magnificent:
Click the image to visit Alexandre Dubosc’s site for more food art!
Alexandre Dubosc must be a patient man, in order to create the art he shows off on Youtube.
Posted in Design and Art, Photography, Technology on 06/06/2019|
My first camera was an Olympus OM-1, and I still regret parting with it when the children became so active that I needed an autofocus camera to catch them on film ;-)
I still remember the build quality of the OM-1, and I loved the fact that the OM-1 plus a 50mm and 135mm lens (plus a bit of small junk) fitted in a small bag that could barely contain the Nikon F-something from my best friend. Olympus takes a top spot in my list of reputable firms, that should be no surprise.
In October, Olympus will celebrate its 100 years of existence, and they have created a website to show the history of the company and some of its products. It includes a nice video documentary about the evolution of the Olympus camera business.
Olympus: “A Great Moment” (click the image to see the video)
There’s a brief history of the company logo as well; that’s where I found the name ‘Tokiwa’.
(via DPReview)
Posted in Design and Art, Internet, Photography on 17/05/2019|
This is not a placeholder post. But it may look like one, since it will (or at least may) be different for each visitor. I’m using the Picsum Lorem website to add a more or less random image to this page.
Click the image to go the Picsum Lorum home page
Picsum Lorem takes a well-known concept: the use of placeholder text when designing a document, and applies it to images. The images are free, coming from the Unsplash community. For details about what Unsplash means with “free” you should check out their Help pages. In summary and according to my interpretation, “free” does mean “free” as in “free beer”, but it is considered a basic form of politeness if you credit the photographer of an image when you use it in a commercial context. Sounds logical, no?
I guess it won’t be long before we also find a “Moviesum Lorem” – or perhaps we should call it “Vidsum Lorem” ;-)
NUKLEOS weblog 
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