79: Spicy

December 16, 2014

Hello internet friends!

Pretty soon I will write these emails on a fancy new device. Lovely, uh?

I’m usually not a big fan of “Oral History” articles – they tend to look too much like lazy copy-and-pasting of old interview quotes. This one here of Boogie Nights is pretty interesting to read, though.

Men who like spicy food are actually more alpha – a headline that made me laugh-cry while I was generously applying hot sauce to my lunch.

I used to play Transport Tycoon a lot, back in the days[1] and tended to be pretty proud of huge rail networks. But I doubt it is possible to simulate trains going from China to Spain.
It took about three weeks, that is pretty impressive.

Take care people – it’s the darkest week of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

  1. a couple of weeks ago. Thanks OpenTTD.  ↩

78: Portrait Of A Man

December 9, 2014

Hello internet friends!

OMG, no regular Irregularity this week?
I was busy all day yesterday, got up at 4:30am and didn’t got any rest until around 11pm. Such is life. Onwards!

How about some Rijks Emotions!

Rijks Emotions is a student project from Hyper Island, using the Rijksmuseum and Sightcorp api. We’re matching people’s emotions with their relatives that hang on the museum’s walls.

It works pretty well, too:

You are a 52 year old Male with the facial expression of fear

Now that the computers know me that well it can’t take long until they finally take over.

I am quite happy to be 52, though. So the terrible 40s are already behind me and I don’t have to look forward to that in my future anymore.

Completely unrelated yet interesting: (I’m too tired for better seques and still too proud for stupid puns. (Not that those would have been allowed in this context anway.)) Chinese Mobile App UI Trends.
If you want to say hi – here is my WeChat QR code.

Did you hear, there will be a new James Bond movie. In their old-school way they opted for unveiling a car and the people in the movie at some event – without even a teaser trailer that silly internet people could link to or embed.
Let’s just hope the new Bond movie fix one of the biggest problems of Skyfall.
At least Monica Bellucci and Daniel Craig are about the same age, so that’s something.

A brief history of web design for designers is pretty fun – especially the GIFs.

Let’s try to get through this week together.
You can do it! (And I’ll somehow manage to muddle through, somehow.)

77: Not Faux

December 1, 2014

Hello internet friends!

I had delicious fondue last night and it still seems like my insides are lined with cheese. Onwards!

Two movie trailers touched our collective nerd hearts last week – sometimes in a way that even feels a bit inappropriate.
The Jurassic World trailer scares me. Not the good kind of scared, either. Between CGI that looks like it would fit better into a videogame cut scene and the premise of a genetically engineered super-raptor, I am not sold.
Especially since the dinosaurs have no feathers.

Wired is worried, too:

Okay, as with any emergency situation, the first step is not to panic. We don’t need to tell you what’s going on in this first trailer for Jurassic World, or about all the concerns we suddenly have, because we’ve all watched it by now and are all unbuttoning our top buttons to alleviate the tension sweats.

But they do have a few good points why the movie might be better than the trailer. If you need your hopes brought down again, listen to Lisa Schmeiser and Philip Michaels ruin the movie for you.

Now if you wonder why the CGI looks so plastic-y, the answer might surprise you! (Saving you the click: it’s very early in the production schedule and the visual effects are in a rather rough state.)

A slightly shorted and better looking trailer comes courtesy of Star Wars! The Force Awakens. Probably after a short nap?
I’d need a nap, too, if I were busy rolling around the desert, though.

And of course the nerd world exploded – because what we really need are shot-for-shot replays of very short teaser trailers.

Anyone still reading after all this movie trailer talk? Here are some very beautiful street photographs of 1950s Hong Kong.
And if you like pho, here you go: How To Eat A Bowl Of Pho Like You Know What You’re Doing. (And if you don’t like pho, what’s wrong with you?)

We’ll get through this week together. Say hi!