How Fast Are You?

Steampunk artist and maker Art Donovan has created The Shiva Mandala, a mechanical sculpture with elements of Hinduism, Freemasonry, ancient astronomy and, of course, steampunk.

Click to enbiggen

He has documented the design and build process for your reading pleasure as well.

via Boing Boing.

This objet is exactly the kind of thing I would spend several pages gushing over, leading to free publicity for the artist, one Alex CF, leveraging our many millions of readers.¹

However, the pictures are just too damned small. How are we supposed to gush over tiny details that speak volumes about the dedication to detail and the spirit of the source material, if we can’t see the bloody things properly? I ask you.

Sure looks cool though.

Via ECTOPLASMOSIS!.

Jed Turner makes wonderful sculpture from bits of machinery and found objects.

Trilo Temporalis

Want.

Via art machines.

Artist Thomas Thwaites has project at the Royal College of Art in London that reminds me of nothing so much as the James Burke television series Connections, which I absolutely loved as a young nerd, and still adore as an old nerd.

Mr. Thwaites is building a toaster from scratch, including smelting metals and making his own plastics. Quoth we make money not art:

Under its rather unassuming name, The Toaster Project is probably the most ambitious project of the show. It is also a clever and humorous reflection on today’s most burning issues such as sustainability, industrialization, mass consumption, child labour, DIY culture, etc. Its author, Thomas Thwaites is trying to make an electric toaster, from scratch. Beginning with mining the raw materials. And yes, that means extracting oil to make plastic and even processing his own copper to make the pins of the electric plug, the cord, and internal wires, iron for the steel grilling apparatus, and the spring to pop up the toast, mica around which the heating element is wound and nickel for the heating elements The end result which will hopefully see the light of the day for the RCA Summer show in June will be a fully functioning toaster.

The extraction and processing of these materials happens on a scale irreconcilable with that of a mass product that Argos sells for a few pounds throughout the UK and that performs the very mundane task of toasting your bread every morning.

If you’re in London some time between now and summer, just go ahead and add this to your list of things to do.

The fine people at we make money not art have a great writeup and more pictures, and there’s a little more information at The Toaster Project.

Quoth machine project:

Christopher Allen will give a talk on how molecules move electrons, and how this applies to the design of new materials. Two different processes will be discussed. The movement of electrons hoping from one independent molecule to another will be illustrated by the example of a glucose sensor. The process of electrons moving around within a molecule will be illustrated with the example of conductive plastics used in flexible display panels. Also discussed will be how chemists utilize their knowledge of the geometrical and electronic structure of molecules to design new materials.

Sounds like fun! Well, my idea of fun, anyway.

See machine project for details.

It looks like we will get to see the Watchmen movie on March 6. The Associated Press reports that 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers have settled their little tiff:

The release date had been in doubt for months as each studio’s attorneys grappled for an upper hand. Fox contended that Warner Bros. shot the film knowing that it didn’t have all the adequate rights; Warner Bros. countered that Fox had lost its rights in the graphic novel and was owed nothing more than a right of first refusal.

At stake was a movie that has stoked the excitement of “Watchmen” fans and that Warner Bros. claims cost it $150 million to film and market.

Until recently, the studios appeared to be in a stalemate as protracted as the Cold War backdrop of the film’s source material. But a Christmas Eve ruling by U.S. District Judge Gary Allen Feess found that Fox did have at least a distribution stake in the film.

Within days of that ruling, Warner Bros. and Fox were in serious settlement negotiations.

Attorneys were scheduled to update Feess on the settlement Friday morning.

While the studios agreed on little throughout the case, the statement released Thursday sought to end months of acrimony.

“Warner Bros. and Fox, like all ‘Watchmen’ fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film’s March 6 release in theaters,” the statement said.

As part of the agreement, both sides acknowledged the others were acting in “good faith,” although Warner Bros. conceded Fox notified it of its rights before filming began.

All I know is, anybody that stops this movie from coming out is going to have to answer to me.

via SCI FI Wire.

I’m a photo nerd and a professional web geek.
I relish all things tech and food.
I have been known to bring a roomful of people under my control with several well-placed chocolate cakes. Beware.

Did I mention the food?

• I like to eat and nap.
• I have an Apple tattoo… on my heart.
• I live near the water where there are fewer humans.
• I welcome our future robot overlords.
• I am freakishly tall.
• I can reach the top shelf where the cookies are hidden.
• No, you cannot have a cookie.

Andrew Bawidamann makes some great pin-up art with a tongue-in-cheek (or wherever you’d like it) military theme. Take one home today.

http://bawidamannapparel.com

Sarasvati, Hindu goddess of learning and the arts, rendered as Sock Monkey. Sacrilecious!

via Sock Monkey Goddess Sarasvati – Neatorama.

What’s In a Name?

The full and proper name of this website is “How Fast Are You? How Dense?” (sometimes abbreviated as HFAYHD) and reading the explanation of what the name means is kind of like having a joke explained to you: by the time you’ve heard the entire explanation, you get why it was supposed to be funny, but that time is now long past. Having said that, what follows attempts to explain why this website is called “How Fast Are You? How Dense?”, and by the time you finish reading it, you will probably understand why it has such a obtuse and grammatically inappropriate name, but you will almost certainly no longer care. Plunging onward:

Once upon a time, in a far off land called “The 80’s”, there was a magazine called Mondo 2000. It was the coolest thing ever. It covered a future full of wearable computers and smart-drugs and virtual reality and everything that was going to turn us all into gloriously posthuman cyborgs that lived and breathed information. And this future had just arrived, this very minute, and minds and bodies would never be the same. In a word, it talked about cyberpunk.

This herald of the “future now” (Mondo) had a tag line: “How fast are you? How dense?”¹ This, also, was the coolest thing ever. In the darkly dystopian future that was due any second now, we gloriously posthuman cyborgs would be using this as a recognition signal, a handshake protocol. We would greet everyone with a demand for bandwidth specification: How much information can you provide me with? How quickly can you accept the information that I have to impart? Because us cyborgs need information like a fish needs water, and I don’t have time for niceties.

This site attempts to provide you, the reader, with interesting information at as high a bitrate as our day jobs allow. Because you and us, we’re all are gloriously posthuman cyborgs, and we’re living in the cyberpunk future. For example:

Wearable computers? That cellphone in your pocket has more computing power than 3,600 desktop computers from The 80’s and is probably connected to the Internet, a massively interconnected system of billions of computers and providing a medium through which billions of people and companies work and play.

Smart-drugs? In a survey of 1,427 scientists, 62% percent said they had taken drugs like Ritalin, and 44% reported using Provigil, to improve their mental performance. It is estimated that 7-20% of college students have taken drugs like Ritalin and Adderall for the same reason.

Virtual reality? Look no further than Second Life, World of Warcraft, or any of the other dozens of virtual locations where meet to play, socialize and create.

So, welcome to the future. Now, how fast are you? How dense?

Complaints? Requests? Corrections? Threats? Bribes? Anything else that won’t fit in a comment form?