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Featured

We Review: Parrot AR.Drone 2.0

Back in 2011, I did the one and only hardware review for this blog. It was for Parrot SA’s high-flying AR.Drone. I crashed it a couple of times, once into a light fitting at work. Mercifully no one was injured, except for my pride. Another time, an extremely high fence stopped what would have been a suicidal plunge into a ravine. It was the wind’s fault, honest.

Operator error aside, I lamented the AR.Drone’s terrible battery and even worse camera. And I said the price was too damn high. That’s just a quick summary though. You’re more than welcome to read my review of the original AR.Drone here.

Now, Parrot SA’s new AR.Drone 2.0 is not exactly new. It was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show of last year but was only available for purchase in South Africa several months later, in October. The new AR.Drone has been bumped up to version 2.0 and that would indicate some major improvements over its predecessor. What are they you ask? To find out, I decided to take it for a spin. See my flight log after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Music Video Clips

Mobius Strip Music

A Möbius strip is a surface that only has one side. Take a strip of paper, put a half twist on it, loop the two ends and you’ll have a physical representation of this object. Cartoonist and writer Sam Wilson plays with the twisted paper model in a delightful way.

Wilson composed and punched out a piece of music onto a Möbius strip of paper and cranked it out on a little music box. Listen as he plays the normal melody and then the inverted version where the high notes are now the low notes and vice versa. It’s a beautiful tune. I could listen to it for ever.

[via @WombatSam]

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Featured Game Reviews

We Review: Lego The Lord of the Rings

Traveller’s Tales have been on a roll with the number of quality Lego games they’ve been producing lately, and the latest game in their stable is Lego The Lord of the Rings, based more on the movies than on the books. How does the jaunt across Middle Earth compare as a Lego adventure? I took my trusty Mithril controller in hand to find out. (Please note that this review is strictly for the PS3 and Xbox360 versions of the game. Other versions may differ drastically.)

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Arty Cautionary Tales Featured Video Clips Weirdness

The Cat With Hands

Fluffy might have a sickly sweet look on its face, but know that cats has been plotting the downfall of humanity for hundreds of years. They are devious enough but can you imagine what they would get up to if they had hands? It’d be stuff of nightmares.

British filmmaker Robert Morgan explored the scary idea back in 2001. A mixture of live-action and stop-motion animation, The Cat With Hands opens up with an old man recounting the old folk tale of a fingered feline. See what transpires below.

Bad pussy!

[via Slackers]

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Animal Kingdom Arty Awesomeness Featured

U is for Uakari

We’ve seen some lovely themed alphabets in the past, including an A to Z of Japan, video games, Star Wars, and oddness.

With her alphabet, illustrator Casey Girard takes inspiration from nature and draws a series of wild animals that not only represent the letters of the alphabet but also are in the shape of them. Her drawings are playful, have a maternal look about them. Check out Girard’s endearing Animals in Alphabet series after the jump.

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Awesomeness Featured Science & Technology Video Clips

A Tour of the International Space Station

We’ve seen some remarkable photos and videos that look out from the International Space Station but not very many that look in.

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams has spent some 321 days aboard the ISS, as a flight engineer and more recently as a commander of an expedition. She has gone for walkabouts outside and is the first person in the world to do a triathlon in space. In this video, Williams takes us on a tour of the space craft that she has called home for almost a year, showing the different modules, sleeping quarters, kitchens, and orbital outhouses from her perspective. This is most likely the geekiest version of MTV Cribs you’re likely to see.

[via Kottke]

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Awesomeness Cautionary Tales Featured Science & Technology Video Clips

Hot and Steamy

Wikipedia defines the Leidenfrost effect as “a phenomenon in which a liquid, in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than the liquid’s boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer which keeps that liquid from boiling rapidly.”

Reading the concept might be boring, but seeing it in action is somewhat cooler. In this little clip, a glowing ball of red hot nickel is dropped into a container of water. Thanks to Leidenfrost effect, the surface of the ball becomes insulated from the water by a blanket of steam. But the effect is temporary, watch what happens when the ball cools.

The Leidenfrost effect has been demonstrated in a few other ways, most notably when the mustachioed Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman dared to dip his little piggy into a pot of molten lead. Have a look at that reaction after the jump.

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Arty Awesomeness Featured Video Clips

Further Up Yonder

Since the beginning of the expeditions, the International Space Station (ISS) has been home to scientists and astronauts from around the world.

These people from the United States, Russia, Canada, Italy, Japan, and Germany have worked in mutual collaboration off the earth, for the earth. This is part of the message in Giacomo Sardelli’s wonderful time-lapse video. In it he stitched together photographs captured from the ISS and included short radio messages recorded by astronauts who gaze upon the Earth and see a world without borders. Have a look at Further Up Yonder below.

To see the video in 2K and how it was made, head over to Sardelli’s blog.

[via PetaPixel]

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Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Music

Listen to the Most Relaxing Song in the World

According to scientists and sound therapists, an 8-minute song by Manchester band Marconi Union ranks as the most relaxing song ever. In a survey conducted by the purveyors of bubble bath (Radox Spa), the song was played to a test group and it reduced anxiety levels by 65% and further decreased the resting pulse rate of the subjects by 35%.

This is attributed to a continuous rhythm of 60 BPM that is meant to synchronize the brainwaves and heart rate to that rhythm. Underlying bass tones are meant to induce a more calmer mood. Lyz Cooper, founder of the British Academy of Sound Therapy, better explains why the song elicits the reactions that it does.

While listening, your heart rate gradually comes to match that beat. It is important that the song is eight minutes long because it takes about five minutes for this process, known as entrainment, to occur. The fall in heart rate also leads to a fall in blood pressure.

The harmonic intervals – or gaps between notes – have been chosen to create a feeling of euphoria and comfort. And there is no repeating melody, which allows your brain to completely switch off because you are no longer trying to predict what is coming next.

Instead, there are random chimes, which helps to induce a deeper sense of relaxation. The final element is the low, whooshing sounds and hums that are like buddhist chants. High tones stimulate but these low tones put you in a trance-like state.

But enough of the science. Put it to the test and let us know whether you feel calmer after it. Listen to Weightless below.

[via @za5]

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Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Movies Video Clips

Filmography 2012: The Year in Movies

2012 has been a year like no other. Like she has done for the past two years, video editor Gen Ip captures the highlights of the year in film though a most captivating compilation.

From Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to Zero Dark Thirty, Filmography 2012 splices together scenes from over 300 movies, an inclusive list that contains big budget action flicks, horror films, indie movies, animated tales, documentaries, and bottom-of-the-barrel b-movies. Gen Ip weaves together the scenes and common themes that we see in film year in and year out. Take a look back at the year in movies with Filmography 2012.

For a full list of the films used in the compilation, be sure to visit Gen’s blog.

[via The Verge]