↑Only in India is a fairly new blog ‘on funny photos collected in India, sent to me by email or clicked while travelling. Stuff you only get to see in India really… or possible elsewhere too :)’ It’s not at all about technology only, like e.g. ↑afrigadget or ↑street use, but then again technical improvisations and contraptions creep up, like the car lock above. … Continue reading
via ↑entry at ↑arstechnica … Continue reading
American-born, Paris-based photographer ↑Peter Lippman explores a world of stationary cars overtaken by nature in his series entitled ↑Paradise Parking. This personal project that was two years in the making captures abandoned cars from yesteryear that are overwhelmed by roots and leaves from its surrounding natural environment. The vehicles’ rusty, tarnished finish coupled with nature’s swarming shades of green and brown wrapping its extended limbs around the cars makes for an interestingly post-apocalyptic scene. via ↑entry at ↑kueperpunk … Continue reading
The above 3D-scene, called ‘Desert Lion,’ was done by Andrew March in 2004 and since then sat on my HDD. Andrew used the model of the Cougar ↑mech (which at least dates back to 2002, but you can still ↓download it) by Pawel Czarnecki—until today a legend within the scene—, the model of the ↑AMX-30 tank by Deespona, and nicely composed and rendered them within his own scene. Obviously the piece of art was created under the impression of the ↑Iraq War. The picture immediately rung a chord within me back then, but somehow I never came around … Continue reading
He promised it ↵in a comment here, and made it true: The podcast ↑JetHead live with astronaut Mike Mullane is online. ↑Mike Mullane is a former NASA astronaut and author of the book ↑Riding rockets: The outrageous tales of a space shuttle astronaut (2006). The tagline of JetHead’s interview with Mullane reads: ‘What’s it like to ride over 4 million pounds of explosive thrust into earth orbit? Three times?’ This gives an overall impression, but there’s more in the book and the podcast, e.g. Mullane’s evolution from a ‘male sexist pig’ [his own words] towards a human being ;-) Much … Continue reading
‘↑Captain Nemo was a technical anarcho-terrorist.’ wrote Bruce Sterling (1991: 39) about the main protagonist of ↑Jules Verne‘s ‘↓20,000 leagues under the sea‘ (1870). The same can be said about the character Robur appearing in Verne’s ‘↓Robur the Conqueror‘ (1886) and its sequel ‘↓Master of the World‘ (1904). By way of his submarine ‘Nautilus’ Captain Nemo rules the oceans. Robur rules everything above through his vessels, the ‘Albatross’ and the ‘Terror.’ Just recently I learned that around the same time yet another literary ‘technical anarcho-terrorist’ appeared: ‘↓Hartmann the Anarchist‘ by Edward Douglas Fawcett (1893): ↑A sensational tale of the evil … Continue reading
Two 17-year-olds from Canada attached a LEGO minifigure to a helium-filled weather ballon and had it soar up 24 km, which is right in the middle of the stratosphere. During the journey upwards the helium inside a balloon expands until the balloon bursts. The legonaut was found 122 km away from the two teenagers’ home—it had safely landed on its homemade parachute. A time lapse camera documented the journey. from PK via e-mail—tnx! … Continue reading
In India and Pakistan trucks get decorated until they are gaudy pieces of art on wheels: In Japan the same is done, but there, hardly surprising, the dekotora [decorated trucks] follow the neon æsthetics: In Sudan trucks are completely deconstructed and then reconstructed—the results are visually not as spectacular as their Asian kin, but are masterpieces of a comparatively young engineering culture (↓Beck 2009): In Mexico, and within a totally different context, the not so conspicuous Sudanese trucks seem to have cousins: ‘Rhino trucks, narco tanks, Mad Mex-inismos? No one can agree on what to call the armored monster vehicles … Continue reading
This is the islet Montecristo, where Edmond Dantès found the treasure enabling him to become ‘↑The Count of Monte Cristo‘ (↑Dumas 1844-1846) [legally for free ↓at Project Gutenberg] and to take bitter revenge. The photo shows Montecristo as seen from Giglio Island—I took it when I was there in 2007. With all the media coverage of the ↑Costa Concordia disaster I’m astounded that it nowhere crept up that Montecristo was that close (at least I didn’t read it anywhere). The story of the captain (who faces preliminary charges of multiple manslaughter, failure to assist passengers in need, and abandonment of … Continue reading