The nerdcore ninjas at Boston Dynamics, famous for bringing the robot invasion ever closer with creepy military research robots like big dog, recently demonstrated a mega jumping wheeled robot, Sand Flea.
In a pitch-a-palooza we hold at least every year at work, one of the guys came up with “All I want to do is hit a button and BAM! my favorite food comes to me.” If pizza is your favorite, here you go
Andrew Dickey riding freestyle through the streets of Melbourne. This is amazing. The height and insano distance Andrew Dickey gets in this video… incredible. Sweet track Attack Ships on Fire by Architect too…
The video is published as volume 1. Can’t wait for Vol. 2
Many of our readers will remember that there used to be a kind of technology, a bit like a huge, flat, noisy slow USB key that stored less than 2 Megs of data. Not gigs, megs.
So anyway, these were called Floppy Disks (even though they were square and rigid (the actual disk is inside the casing) and the floppy drives that each computer had back in the before time, well they were NEVER ever used to make music like this, except by extreme geeks with too much time on their hands:
The sound comes from getting the disk to “seek” by moving the read/write “head” with its little motor to read different parts of the disk, but moving in a stuttering, stepping fashion. The stuttering speed is fast enough to make a “tone”. The tones can be “played” by (somehow) converting a midi file into commands that cause the floppy drives to move in just the right way when it’s their turn to play the “note”. Freak!
I’ve looked closely and can’t see any tricks. Yet this is the kind of dancing that could never have been conceived without modern digital video production technology as a reference point. Note the extended reversal.
How does one person change a whole mass of people? This amazing video shows one man going from nutcase to leader of a large crowd in about three minutes.
As the commentary says, note the role of the first follower. This person changes a nutcase who is acting alone into a leader. The leader must adopt the first follower as an equal and not exert superiority. The first follower is also a kind of leader.
Interestingly it doesn’t seem to matter that the first follower is possibly mocking the lone nutcase, to me it’s not clear if this is happening actually, but that’s probably mostly thanks to the reaction of the leader. The leader adopts and includes the follower and the follower turns to call his friends.
At some point there is an inflection point where the non-conformance of the breakaway group becomes conformance to a new dominant behaviour. People not following start looking more conspicuous than the followers.
Please excuse the poor video quality, I think the raw capture of a real, unscripted social effect is worth putting up with a wobbly camera.
My favourite bit is the girl at the very end saying from off camera:
This baby is getting filthy with the dubstep… and the chilli.
There are other dubstep babies, sure. Babies have a natural affinity with both grime and wobbles. But this baby is truly feeling it.. you can see it in her face.
Like attracts like. My good friend Dan Rosen (who is not merely very interesting to talk to) hit me with a link to this the other day and I have been debating whether to tip the Strong Like Water ship one more notch towards Skrillex’ direction and relay it to you my subscribers.
As you can see by this cute acoustic version of Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, I have won the debate and so have you:
You can download that from the artist’s facebook page (for the grand price of one like) here: http://on.fb.me/qXb7yp
Andrew Flanders appears to be practicing Aphex Twin covers on acoustic guitar. An ex-rock guitarist, he’s challenging himself by playing technical music like this, practicing his finger work. A self-confessed lover of Aphex Twin’s music, this time he capably delivers an incredible take on Girl/Boy from the gorgeous Richard D. James Album.
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