I’m always amazed by the regularity that occurs when you look at something with a time frame that is outside of what the human brain can process. (Example: Time lapse or slow motion.) Under the right conditions, the seemingly random and unpredictable can often turns into nice, neat patterns.
One example of this is Flight Patterns, a short clip by Charlie McCarthy that shows the flight patterns of bugs under a streetlight. It was made by stitching together a bunch of long exposure photographs, and shows that each bug has its own unique pattern that it likes to follow.
GamesByEmail.com needed a way to create thousands of dice rolls each day that would be equally random, so it created the Dice-O-Matic, a machine that is able to randomly roll up to 1.3 million die per day!
The machine is surprisingly simple, and uses a central conveyor belt that runs up a column to lift the dice past a camera, which records the numbers, and then down a chute where they roll and tumble to ensure complete randomness:
And you thought your 20-sided D&D dice were difficult to handle!
If you couldn’t make it to South by Southwest (aka #SXSW for the Twitter-ites) but you still want to keep up with all the latest and greatest in the semi-undiscovered music scene, then check out the fully legal, DRM-free, RIA-safe collection of music that’s been released by the festival’s promoters through the torrent world.
The torrent, which is the fifth such collection to be put out on the ‘net, contains more than 6 GB of music, or 1267 MP3s spanning multiple genres and levels of famous-ity.
Granted, not everything is going to match your specific tastes, but there are plenty of songs to try out, so open your mind and be prepared to discover, because you never know what’s going to be the next big thing.
(Just one warning: There are so many songs here that it will probably crush your current collection of music, and if you try to use the random function on your MP3 player ever again, you’ll still end up listening to 10 SXSW songs between every normal song, so be prepared. Not that that’s a bad thing, just don’t expect your best of Michael Jackson collection to string together like it used to ever again.)
Left 4k Dead is probably the best use of 4kb of Java code that I’ve ever seen!
The game is based on Valve’s Left 4 Dead, and plays surprisingly well for how small it is. You play as a small dot with a gun and a flashlight that must escape from an onslaught of zombies that are trying to kill you using only your wits (and your gun).
WASD keys move you around, and the mouse aims the flashlight and the gun, so the controls are rather intuitive. Plus, just like in the real game, the zombies and the powerups are randomly located inside of each level, so every time you play it’s a different game. The similarities between Left 4k Dead and Left 4 Dead don’t end there though, as you can still shoot after running out of ammo, only at half speed to simulate the pistols in the real game, and there are different types of zombies that all react differently to your presence as you walk around.
Beating a level means the game gets harder, but you also get more points for each zombie, so it’s a trade, and the goal for each level is to find the safe room which is outlined in red, so it’s a test of your survival skills as well as your shooting skills.
PleaseDress.Me is the ultimate t-shirt search engine.
Designed by Gary Vaynerchuk (of winelibrary.tv fame), AJ Vaynerchuk, and Joe Stump (lead architect for digg.com), PleaseDress.Me allows you to sift through the vast expanse of online t-shirts using searches by keyword/tag, color, price, or even random generation if you’re feeling especially indecisive.
PleaseDressMe is a classic example of scratching [...]
Vimeo Toys are “interactive visualizations of what’s happening right now” on Vimeo.
Though Vimeo encourages anyone to make a toy and submit it for approval, they’ve seeded the site with the first two: VimeoLand and Pulse.
Of the two, VimeoLand is definitely my favorite, as I really haven’t seen anything else like it before. VimeoLand is an [...]
…Vimeo Toys are fun to play with?
Vimeo Toys are “interactive visualizations of what’s happening right now” on Vimeo.
Though Vimeo encourages anyone to make a toy and submit it for approval, they’ve seeded the site with the first two: VimeoLand and Pulse.
Of the two, VimeoLand is definitely my favorite, as I really haven’t seen anything else like it before. VimeoLand is an [...]