Dr. Who: K-9

In the US, growing up with Dr. Who on PBS during the Tom Baker years was also growing up with my favorite robotic dog, K-9. When the good doctor was in trouble, K-9, much like Star Wars' R2-D2 came to the rescue with an assortment of robo-hijinx. Tom Coates at plasticbag.org reports that man's best robotic friend is back in action. Awesome!

tags: drwho, scifi

Desert Living Tip #18: Tempe Town Lake

Excerpts below from The City of Tempe's Tempe Town Lake Timeline:

Between 500 A.D. to 1450 A.D. prehistoric Hohokam Indians created an extensive desert valley canal system. As late as the 1800s, the Salt River flowed through this area uncontrolled. A large number of farmers and immigrants settled the area near the river. In 1871, Charles Trumbull Hayden started the Hayden Ferry crossing at the Salt River "Narrows," now the entrance to downtown Tempe. Hayden was one of the entrepreneurial pioneers who founded Tempe. His flour mill made use of the water from the river through a canal. The water ran through the mill, over a large screw that turned the mill. Leaving the mill, water fell over a 25-foot waterfall to the base of Hayden Butte. The 1880s saw construction of the first railroad bridge. This crossing at the river allowed for the exploration of supplies such as dates, citrus and flour.



Theodore Roosevelt dedicated Roosevelt Dam in 1911. The dam, constructed on the upper Salt River, slowed the flow of water through the Valley and provided water retention and agricultural irrigation control. In the 1920s, the Salt River provided cool escape from the desert heat. Individuals gathered near Tempe Beach Park and swam at the base of the State Bridge. In the early 1980s, floods damaged bridges across the river. The old Mill Avenue Bridge was the only bridge that remained open. Employees and residents used boats and trains to cross the river. By March of 1989, a groundbreaking ceremony near Tempe Beach Park marked the beginning of construction of the river channelization. This construction recovered more than 840 acres of flood plain land that would be available for later development.





In 1996, Tempe completed a lake capacity needs study and started a lake management plan. The City sent Requests for Qualifications to manufacturers of inflatable dams.



On June 2, 1999, Water from the Central Arizona Project started flowing into the Tempe Town Lake. On July 14, 1999, the Tempe Town Lake was officially declared full. On November 22, 2002, Arizona Game and Fish stocked Tempe Town Lake with about 5,000 rainbow trout. This was the first release of sport fish into Town Lake. In 2001, stockings had to be postponed due to excessively warm weather that led to high pH levels. On July 4, 2000, more than 125,000 visitors celebrated Independence Day at Tempe Town Lake. Fireworks were shot from the east Mill Avenue bridge over the lake.




Fast-forward to 2006, what better to do on a man-made lake in the middle of a desert metropolis than have a cardboard boat race? Tomorrow, the Tempe Town Lake, will host the Rotary River Rally. Admission is free, 9 AM to 3:00 PM, just east of Tempe Beach Park.

Mark Ecko vs. Air Force One

Check out the footage at StillFree.com and compare with the detailed breakdown by Flight Global on why this is a hoax.

Note to Mark: Next time you mock up plane shots, know you are dealing with these aircraft, engineering and typogrpahic 'experts':

"If you compare some photos of the two VC-25As and compare the antenna layout along the top of the fuselage aft of the upper deck, there are a significant number missing in the video."

"The engines are the old type of General Electric GE CF6-50E as opposed to the latest GE CF6-80C that are on the VC-25As."

"The font used on the aircraft is also slightly wrong, due to different tracking used between characters of the all-capital Palatino. The Presidential Seal, which has changed subtly over the years, is also a different version to the one used currently by president George Bush."

Regardless of whether it's real or not, Mark Ecko's ability to get his message out was a success.

Tags: video, graffiti, protest

Monome

The Monome 40(h), an 8 by 8 grid with 64 button/LEDs. The interaction between the buttons, lights, and computer software is all configurable by the user. Preset configurations are available. No programming skills are required to integrate the box with a computer software setup.

View the 40(h) in action in this video

Monome? As in monomial.

Tags: music, hardware

Pet Shop Boys - I'm With Stupid

The Pet Shop Boys release a new album, Fundamental, this summer. The new single. I'm With Stupid, comes out May 8th (go to the official site and click the single's cover to hear the track). All accounts hint at a classic PSB dance sound. As with the classic album covers in the 80's and early 90's, Mark Farrow will design and art direct a fitting visual design for all singles, albums and promotional material.

"Fundamental" looks like this:

Psychological
The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
I made my excuses and left
Minimal
Numb
God willing
Luna Park
I'm with Stupid
Casanova in Hell
Twentieth Century
Indefinite leave to remain
Integral

The album will be released on May 22.

A special edition of the new Pet Shop Boys' album, "Fundamental", will include a bonus dance album, "Fundamentalism", containing six remixes and two new tracks. The full track-listing is as follows:

1. Fugitive (Richard X extended mix)
2. Sodom (Trentmoller remix)
3. Psychological (Alter Ego remix)
4. Flamboyant (Michael Mayer remix)
5. I'm with Stupid (Melnyk mix)
6. In private (Stuart Crichton club mix)
7. Minimal (Lobe remix)
8. Gomorrah (Dettinger remix)

"Fugitive" was originally written at the beginning of last year and was recently completed with Richard X. "In private" is Pet Shop Boys' own version of the hit they wrote and produced for Dusty Springfield in 1989. It features vocals by Neil Tennant and Elton John.

Tags: pet shop boys, music

Lomo Fotosniper

The new Lomo Fotosniper. Probably not the best zoom in the world, but it might be the most fun. In recent years Lomo has really focused on the fun in photography. While everything else is going digital they are taking the opposite path..cheap plastic with personality and 35MM rolls of 'actual' film.

Tags: photogrpahy, design

01:02:03 04/05/06

Tomorrow, Wednesday April 5, 2006, at two minutes and three seconds past 1:00 A.M., the time and date will be as follows: 01:02:03 04/05/06. This won't happen again until 2106.

Via: Design Observer

Tags: time, calendar, sequence

Inside: Interview with Jenna North

I have often been interested in hybrids, how two things come together to form something new. One favorite is how sound is mixed with visuals. Even better is visuals generated by sounds. The latest Inside Interview is with artist Jenna North. She has a new series of paintings based on the work of Ernst Chladni (1756-1827), who laid the foundations for visualizing sound and advancing the science of acoustics. Chladni´s ingenious experiments provided a means of transposing sound into a visual experience.


"To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in."
-Richard P. Feynman



MS: What's your work all about, what's your process?

JN: My art is essentially conceptually based on the history of ornament and design, and I'm interested in the notion of how the metamorphosis of aesthetics is driven, and how art both follows and leads the course of popular culture and communication. Art invents its own language, and the intersection of how that is perceived by the public eye and how society affects the artists' course seems to define creative invention. Through a process that involves revealing latent geometries, my work explores the region between Art, Science, and Nature. Through symmetry I experience a heightened awareness of natural mysteries and the science of beauty. This process has allowed me to survey many periods, like a time traveler surfing the epochs of visual history.

MS: Are there any stories you are trying to tell?

JN: The current work has no intended narrative; rather the grey-tones are actual depictions of a natural phenomenon. The paintings are visual representations of the principals of Cymatics; the study of shapes and patterns created by sound vibrations.



MS: Why grey?

JN: Purity. Color and all of its associations is an enormous can of worms that I’m not yet ready to enter into this work. I want the viewer to immerse in the phenomenon, and the pattern and SHAPE formations.

MS: Have you ever tried to paint by sound? To let the music drive your brush strokes, composition and final work?

JN: Yes. Music has always been an important tool for my art. Ironically, although the grey-tones are conceptually and fundamentally based on harmonics, it wasn’t until I started working on these that I didn’t feel the superstitious need to have the perfect music to set the working mode.

MS: What kind of music do you like? What are you listening to right now?

JN: This question reminds me of Myspace, and is much too long to answer. What I am listening to right now…. Well it’s spring, and love is in the air, so the last couple of days it’s been the Beatles Anthology on my new ipod. This is the six disk set; lot’s of rough and goofy studio recording gems and failures. I’ve been listening while working on a couple of new paintings. I love the process element of this set.

MS: What other artists have inspired you?

JN: I love art history, but I love the history of design, and studying the natural world just as much. The artists that I am in the closest contact with are usually the ones that inspire me the most, ie. previous teachers, fellow studio artists/partners and my main man Mr. C.

Oh, but really one of the most inspiring visual artists is Lee Bontecue.

MS: How did you get into shapes?

JN: Shapes, they're everything! I would say my experience in the first two years of art school at the Munson Williams Proctor Institute is what brought me in tuned to shapes as fundamental elements in art. In both 2-D and color theory, there was quite a bit of emphasis on shapes. When speaking of a composition it is near impossible not to use shapes in a descriptive sense.

MS: Is there anythinig else you would like to add?

JN: This past winter I applied to grad schools, and apparently the timing was on. I’ve just decided to accept an offer to study at the San Francisco Art Institute where I am the full fellowship recipient for the MFA painting department. This should be a very exciting time for the work as the possibilities are gargantuan!

MS: Lastly, what's your favorite shape?

JN: Diamonds are forever, but flying saucers are aerodynamic, and dingbats of course!

Tags: art, shapes