Author Archives: Egg Syntax

How the Antikythera Mechanism worked — with Lego!

[This is utterly awesome. -egg]

You honestly think I give a fuck about what you wore today?For…

[I really don’t quite know what to make of this site, but I like it. -egg]

You honestly think I give a fuck about what you wore today?
For…: “

You honestly think I give a fuck about what you wore today?

For real, real?

While you were outside of a Starbucks.

Tweeting low-res pics of your hindquarters.

Showing off your crotch blowout.

I was in a fucking mine shaft.

Fading my selvedge.

And reading Glenn O’Drama’s bio.

On my iPad.

You city slickers slay me.

You really do.

But I guess if Rozay is a dealer.

And Yeezy is a martyr.

Then y’all are some rugged motherfuckers.

But on the real.

When’s the last time you heard it like this?

Henley and suspenders.

Scragglepuss beard and lived in White’s.

Clay pomade and fucking boulders.

Do they let you bring a shovel to brunch?

At Balthazar?

Didn’t think so.

Just because I look like a 49er.

Doesn’t mean my swagger isn’t on a hundred.

Thousand.

Trillion.

I’m chillin’ in the Sierra Nevada.

Somewhere near Kings Canyon.

Prospecting for steez.

You’re drinking a Sierra Nevada.

Somewhere near Flatbush.

Prospecting for chicks with septum piercings.

“

Glorious, elaborate, profane insults of the world

Glorious, elaborate, profane insults of the world: “An open Reddit thread entitled ‘What are your favorite culturally untranslateable phrases?’ rapidly degenerated into a collection of rollicking, profane, grotesque insults, each more alarming and delightful than the last. Read the whole thing, of course, but here are some of the less profane examples:


* The Dutch phrase for giving too much attention to insignificant details is ‘ant fucking‘.

* Afrikaans: ‘Jou mammie naai vir bakstene om jou sissie se hoerhuis te bou Vieslik!’ your mother engages in prostitution in order to raise funds for the building materials necessary to construct a brothel from which your sister will operate.

* German: ‘backpfeifengesicht‘ – a face in need of slapping

* Finnish: ‘Kyrpä otsassa‘ – a vulgar way to say you’re incredibly annoyed. It means that you have a dick in your forehead (should be visualized as hanging forward, rather than actually in your forehead, for some reason).

* Finnish: ‘pilkunnussija‘ – a comma fucker; someone who corrects little or meaningless things.

* Spanish: ‘Está tratando de cagar mas alto de lo que le da el culo‘ – He’s trying to shit higher than his ass can reach.

What are your favorite culturally untranslateable phrases?

(Image: Okay, so it’s funny., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from andrewbain’s photostream)


“

High-speed camera shooting FROM a train

High-speed camera shooting FROM a train: “

Graeme Taylor shot out the window of a train at 210 frames per second, reversing the usual trick of shooting and slowing down a high-speed object from a stationary spot; rather, he shot a stationary spot from a high-speed object. The effect is something like a mundane bullet-time, where the world has stopped so that no one can do much of anything. It’s mesmerizing.

As Jason Kottke writes, ‘Wonderful illustration of the concept of frames of reference.’


Both glides were filmed by sticking a – relatively cheap – digital camera out of the window of a train as it arrived at a station. The ‘trick’ is the camera collects images at a rate of 210 per second – but the film is played back at 30 frames per second. So, every seven seconds of footage that you watch corresponds to 1 real second. At least at the start, one real second is plenty of time for someone to move into, then out of, the camera’s field of view, but isn’t enough time for them to really do much: hence, the frozen effect. It breaks down towards the end not because I’m doing something clever with the frame rates (captured or replayed), but simply because the train was stopping! Thus, as it decelerated, any given person would be in view for longer, and have more time to point an arm, take a few steps along the platform, or maybe even notice me at the window. Any such action captured is still slowed down seven-fold during playback, just as with my usual static captures.

At least one other person has tried this before: Trey Ratcliff captured a station in Japan this way over a year ago, describing the effect as ‘Stuck in motion’. He also mixes in other slow motion footage and its inverse, time lapse photography, in this gorgeous video, Heartbeats of Time.

‘Pointless, action-free and totally mesmerising’


“

Fictional story of a flash mob gone terribly wrong

[Fast and interesting. -egg]

Fictional story of a flash mob gone terribly wrong: “

Tom Scott’s Ignite London talk ‘Flash Mob Gone Wrong’ is a fictionalized account of just how badly a flash mob could go. It’s got an eerie ring of plausibility, largely because each of the steps leading up to the disastrous ending actually happened, just not all together. It’s a freaky way to spend five minutes.

Flash Mob Gone Wrong by Tom Scott, Ep 77


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