Brain of James (tumblr edition)

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:14:47 -0400

Brian Wood: My Ambitionz Az A CrossFitter

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:05:33 -0400

Brian Wood: My Ambitionz Az A CrossFitter:

I figured I’d write something that explains the sudden volume of tweets and instagram pics from me having to do with health and CrossFit and diet. I’m sure it came out of nowhere and seems out of place, but it’s been a long time in coming and relates back to the way I make comics.

I made a…

Words of wisdom for all of us keyboard cats.

wearethedigitalkids: China’s Counterfeit Cities

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:01:55 -0400

wearethedigitalkids:

China’s Counterfeit Cities

Kyle Cassidy's Image Stream: Behind the Scenes on the Philadelphia Weekly cover shoot with Neil Gaiman

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:49:20 -0400

Kyle Cassidy's Image Stream: Behind the Scenes on the Philadelphia Weekly cover shoot with Neil Gaiman:

kylecassidy:

Behind the Scenes on the Philadelphia Weekly cover shoot with Neil Gaiman. While it’s the cover shoot, it ended up not being the actual cover photo. The actual cover was a photo I took last year of Neil taking a Behind The Scenes tour of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology…

brucesterling: abandonedography: Project HARP (High Altitude...

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:36:40 -0400

brucesterling:

abandonedography:

Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project) was a joint initiative between the United States and Canada to research the use of ballistics to deliver objects into the upper atmosphere and beyond.

In lay terms, the project was established to create a cartoonishly large gun to shoot things into space. The sole fruit of this partnership, a massive toppled gun barrel, still remains on the Barbados test site.

Designed by mad ballistic engineer Gerald Bull, the gun itself was originally built from a 50 caliber naval cannon, like what might be seen on a battleship, and was later doubled to 100 caliber, making the gun too big for effective military application, but seemingly perfect for satellite delivery. Not-designed for delivering human subjects, the cannon fired smaller projectiles in a sabot that would protect the payload during the firing and would fall away as the satellite rose. At its apex, the gun was able to fire an object a staggering 112 miles into the sky, setting the 1963 world record for gun-launched altitude at 93 KM.

As the project continued, installing similar guns in further locations, the Barbados gun was abandoned in the late 1960s and left to rust on its original launch site. Looking more like a painted sewer pipe than a Godzilla-size gun barrel, the original Project HARP space gun can still be reached along the Barbados coast.

Source

*That space cannon is looking better than Dr Jerry Bull, who ended up with a lethal barrage of handgun bullets in him after working for Saddam Hussein’s space cannon.

Train reading from @janchip.

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:16:40 -0400

Train reading from @janchip.

Goodbye, Montreal. It’s been a wild ride, as always.

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:05:46 -0400

Goodbye, Montreal. It’s been a wild ride, as always.

Breakfast gone wrong.

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:25 -0400

Breakfast gone wrong.

life1nmotion: Danny Torres on the Burj Dubai Heli-pad viewing...

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:23:54 -0400

life1nmotion:

Danny Torres on the Burj Dubai Heli-pad viewing the Burj Khalifa

neil-gaiman: odditiesoflife: Stunning Landscape - Cappadocia,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:17:15 -0400

neil-gaiman:

odditiesoflife:

Stunning Landscape - Cappadocia, Turkey

The mysterious rock formations and underground cities of Cappadocia make this region of Turkey one the most beautiful in the world. The rich history of this site can be told through the villages, subterranean churches and fortresses that have been carved straight into the soft, porous, eerily eroded rock.

Popular activities in the region include visits to the underground cities, viewing the ancient Christian cave art, seeing the “fairy chimney” rock formations, and taking sunrise hot air balloon rides for a view of the breathtaking landscape from above.

When I am certain everyone else in the world is following odditiesoflife I will not reblog everything she puts up quite so industriously….

Classic Montreal bits.

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:07:28 -0400

Classic Montreal bits.

Tree shimmer.

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:34:09 -0400

Tree shimmer.

Heading to Montreal rolling stock style.

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:54:35 -0400

Heading to Montreal rolling stock style.

rcruzniemiec: Harvest timeFranz Schumacher Summer storm at...

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:26:39 -0400

rcruzniemiec:

Harvest timeFranz Schumacher

Summer storm at harvest time in Strohgaeu Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany

cinephilearchive: Due to unprecedented demand, Steven...

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:27:31 -0400

cinephilearchive:

Due to unprecedented demand, Steven Soderbergh has given The San Francisco Film Society permission to release this video that was recorded initially only for archival purposes. The full transcript is also provided. —Steven Soderbergh: The State of Cinema Video & Transcript

“Cinema is under assault,” Steven Soderbergh told an audience in San Francisco over the weekend. He said that the Hollywood studios are to blame and that moviegoers are their accomplices. “Fewer and fewer executives in the industry love movies,” Soderbergh continued, “There’s a total lack of leadership in my opinion, that’s what’s killing cinema.” The director’s remarks came at the San Francisco International Film Festival’s annual State of Cinema Address. It was a sort of Jerry Maguire memo, “Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s as unique as a fingerprint. If it’s done well, you know exactly who made it,” Steven Soderbergh defined on Saturday, “Is there a difference between cinema and movies? If I ran team America, I’d say fuck ya. Cinema is something that is made, movies are seen.”

Soderbergh said that he needed $5 million to make his upcoming Liberace movie, Behind the Candelabra, which stars Michael Douglas as the famous piano player and Matt Damon as the musician’s lover. Yet he said that the studios needed the movie to gross $70 million to make it work financially. “No one has figured out how to lower the costs of marketing movies…no one,” Soderbergh said. “The thing that mystifies me is in terms of spending, is there anyone in the galaxy that doesn’t know Iron Man 2 is opening that weekend!?” He continued, ”Studios only gamble on openings instead of supporting filmmakers over the long haul. In my opinion, it’s about horses - not races.”

“Executives don’t get punished for making bombs the way filmmakers do,” Soderbergh charged, “So there’s no turnover with people who don’t know their own business.” “I’m spending so much time talking business and sexy math because this is what’s driving everything right now,” Soderbergh said. Yet he also sounded a few optimistic notes. So what would he do differently? “If I were running a studio, I’d get a Shane Carruth, a Barry Jenkins and an Amy Seimetz and ask ‘What do you wanna make?’” Soderbergh said, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect someone running a multi-billion dollar business to be able to identify talent. I’m wrong a lot, it doesn’t even raise my blood pressure anymore, maybe the audiences are happy, the studios are happy – maybe I’m wrong. Maybe everything is just fine,” Soderbergh said at one point near the end of his speech. The room erupted with some chuckles because clearly those in the audience agreed with him that everything isn’t just fine. —The World According to Steven: Insights from Soderbergh

claytoncubitt: If you haven’t seen the stunning 2001...

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:33:58 -0400

claytoncubitt:

If you haven’t seen the stunning 2001 documentary “War Photographer” about prize-winning conflict photojournalist James Nachtwey, you really must. It’s a beautifully filmed, deeply contemplative study of what it means to be a photographer, and what it means to be a witness to conflict.

It also features an absolutely enthralling cinematic technique: a tiny camera mounted above Nachtwey’s own shutter button, so you can see the stream of time and context around each of his decisions to capture (or not capture.) You can see it in the trailer above, at the 1:17 mark.

And this brings me back to my recent essay, On the Constant Moment. If the Decisive Moment is Nachtwey’s shutter button there with the protestors on the West Bank in 2001, the Constant Moment is your ability to choose different moments from the video feed, from wherever you are, in 2013.

Freed from instant decision in the middle of chaos, able to pause and rewind, did you make different aesthetic choices about when to “shoot?” Would Nachtwey, if he could?

That’s the Constant Moment.

juhavantzelfde: This Is the Most Detailed Picture of the...

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:33:26 -0400

juhavantzelfde:

This Is the Most Detailed Picture of the Internet Ever (and Making it Was Very Illegal) | Motherboard

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:21:59 -0400

new-aesthetic: The halfcat, attracting newly revived interest...

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:56:19 -0400

new-aesthetic:

The halfcat, attracting newly revived interest on Twitter thanks to this blog post, appears to have first been spotted in this blog post in August 2009. But there are no attributions. The latest reports pin it to Street View - not mentioned in the original posting - and it certainly appears to be Street View image, but, lacking coordinates, the halfcat seems destined to be a mystery forever, one of any number of mythical beings, lost in the Clouds.

More interesting than the halfcat’s strangeness, perhaps, is its unknowability. Someone saw the halfcat, snapped it, but the route back is lost. The databases contain such multitudes of new myths.

csmartfx: Experimental on Flickr.

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:23:53 -0400

csmartfx:

Experimental on Flickr.