Thunder and Lightning in SF

Filed Under Photography, SF Bay Area, Video | 2010-01-19, 17:34

The way that Twitter blows up during large thunderstorms, you’d think that lightning and thunder in the Bay Area is rarer than earthquakes. Well, I’m not sure of the stats, but it just might be. Early this morning I ~~woke up~~ gained some semblance of consciousness as thunder rolled through San Francisco along with storms that have continued on and off all day.

After seeing the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder half a dozen times, I decided to setup my Zoom H2 audio recorder and Flip video camera to see what I could capture. Only three minutes later lightning struck again. My Flip video camera isn’t quite up to the task of recording lightning, but you can see a flickr and hear the thunder (along with some guy on the street yelling). The audio recorder is slightly better at it’s job, picking up the echoing thunder as it traveled across the city.

[audio:http://www.geeked.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ThunderInSF.mp3|titles=ThunderInSF]

And of course, once the rain tapered off, it was up to the roof with a camera to catch the awesome light as blue skies returned.

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The Matrix Bullet Scene In Lego Stop Motion

Filed Under Art, Movies and Music, Video | 2009-11-25, 13:46

I love stop motion and I love Legos. LegoMatrix put them together to recreate the classic roof-top bullet-time scene from The Matrix. The accuracy with which they’ve recreated this defining scene is amazing. They took each frame of the 44 seconds of this scene and recreated it with as much accuracy as Legos would allow, and then some. While the video itself is amazing, even more impressive is the “behind the scenes” of how they actually put it all together. Building camera rigs, figuring out all the tricks they’d have to do to make it accurate, let alone what Lego pieces to choose!

By the way, you can check their accuracy below:

Well done guys!!

via Great White Snark via Geekologie

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Journey to the End of the Night Halloween 2009

Filed Under Events, SF Bay Area, Video | 2009-11-03, 17:39

The Halloween edition of sf0’s “Journey to the End of the Night” had a massive turn out. Well over 600 people showed up to play. There isn’t a final count as we ran out of waivers and maps for everyone and only 600 of those were printed. But regardless of the limitations, the getting kicked out of venues, and other hiccups, everyone had a great time. And I have to point out the best description of the event (via ombwah): At one point whilst ombwah was pouncing on a fleeing rabbit. A police officer asked me.. ” whats this, a Jump into the street and Die game?

Rather than playing in this dangerous game of dodge traffic and chasers, I spent the evening being one of those chasers to dodge and helping out at Checkpoint 3 (yes the one where we got kicked out of the garage). What follows is my proof submitted to sf0 (photos are also up on flickr as usual):

My evening started late as I scrambled to turn a briefcase into a backpack using only climbing rope and a carabiner. Success finally and I jumped on my bike to race down to Justin Herman Plaza, where a small group of eager players was already forming 30 minutes prior to the actual meeting time. I rolled around the corner to meet up with my fellow chasers. We were briefed, tied on pink ribbons, made plans and then disappeared into the night to stake out good places to ambush players.

Dressed in my white slacks, white jacket, and baby blue t-shirt I looked like an old vice squad officer on vacation from Miami. The nondescript black briefcase that looked like it could be either holding drugs, large sums of money, or divorce papers was a nice addition. Inside the briefcase was 2kg of candy, a pink ribbon, and a video camera. The plan was to pop open the briefcase in front of players and watch them scatter. That was the plan at least.

I locked up my bike and started wandering the streets, briefcase in tow. The first few players I encountered didn’t quite get it. I popped the briefcase, asked if they wanted any candy, they said “no thanks” and just continued walking to Checkpoint 1. One player did go for the offer of candy. After asking about any illegal additives, he reached into the briefcase, brushing the pink ribbon aside, grabbed some candy, said “thanks” and continued on to Checkpoint 1. Absolute failure.

I gave up on the briefcase ploy, tied the ribbon around my arm and just started yelling at people. The bus stop on the corner of the block was packed with people, every single one of them keeping an eye on me once my identity was known. There were many looks of confusions, often followed by a quick sprint away from me from other players. It seems that many of them either weren’t listening when the game was explained or didn’t see my chaser ribbon as I stood in the middle of a crosswalk, players streaming by each side of me as I yelled “I could tag every single one of you right now”. Fortunately for them I didn’t have the heart to tag someone only a few blocks from the start of their journey.

After feeling like Moses in a crosswalk, I decided visibility was what I needed. That meant more ribbons that would make it obvious that I was a chaser. After a 15 minute hunt for my misplaced bike, I headed back to the plaza to grab a handful of chaser ribbons from Sam. I affixed them to every part of my body and headed back out into the night.

I spent some time biking north of Market, and west of Checkpoint 5, hoping I’d run into those players that thought they were being sneaky taking a long way around to different checkpoints. Nope, either I was too far ahead of the pack, or they were taking more direct routes. I headed over to Checkpoint 3 to give them a hand.

While dismounting from my bike in the safe zone of Checkpoint 3, I saw a player approaching. I feinted as if I were going to give chase and he scrambled. Carrying my bike, I half-chased him down the block. He screamed “I’m in a safe zone!” to which I yelled back “Then why are you running?!” Light bulb went off, he stopped and I directed him to Checkpoint 3.

Up on the roof of the parking garage I found two agents pulling players aside, whispering questions to them and then zip-tying bells to their ankles and shows. As I attempted to figure out what in the world was going on, the parking garage security guy came up and told us we couldn’t use the 9th floor of the parking garage. Long story made short, security kicked us out and we setup shop on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the garage. They were cool with this. The one security guy even stood at the doors and helped direct confused players to the line we had going.

Boy was there a line. At on point there were so many players in like that we had to give up asking questions and just started zip-tying ankles, one after another. I have no idea what 30-40 of the players that came through Checkpoint 3 looked like, but I could probably identify them by their footwear. I spent the next couple of hours at Checkpoint 3, watching as friends, familiar faces, and complete strangers came to get their manifests “signed” with a zip tied bell or the occasional sparkly pipe cleaner.

Then it was off to Noisebridge for the after-party where some players had already arrived after traversing the entire course in about 2 hours.

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We Are Douchebags

Filed Under Funny, Video | 2009-11-02, 15:25

3 Comments

Google Navigation.. Yes please

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Video | 2009-10-28, 11:59

I think I’m sold on the Motorola Droid (and Android 2.0) with the addition of Google Navigation:

Google Navigation takes the awesomeness of Google Maps and puts all of it and more onto your Android device.
Up to date map data, easy searching, voice navigation, live traffic reports, searching for stops along your route, satellite AND street view?! About the only downside is how it behaves if it is unable to get a data signal. I’ll still keep my Garmin eTrex vista HCx for those off road trips and for logging tracks, but looks like Google Navigation blows other navigation software out of the water when it comes to driving.

More details over on the Google Blog.

Film of San Francisco in 1958

Filed Under SF Bay Area, Video | 2009-10-23, 15:58

One of my favorite songs (“Alone in Kyoto” by Air) and my favorite city, San Francisco. How can you go wrong? The pairing of the music with the video gives me goosebumps.

Jeff Altman restores and posts old videos from his grandfather on Vimeo. He recently discovered that this one, labeled “Alameda 1958”, included some great shots of San Francisco at the time. Can’t wait to see more!

via Spots Unknown

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Videos of Bullets At 1 Million Frames Per Second

Filed Under Video | 2009-10-11, 19:51

A breathtaking video of a variety of bullets flying through the air and their impacts at up to 1 million frames per second. The videos are from Kurzzeit, a German ballistics measurement company that also sells cameras capable of 30-1,000,000fps at a 312×260 resolution. The cameras are made by Shimadzu.

Coder Girl: An ode to female programmers

Filed Under Funny, Geek, Video | 2009-07-24, 22:22

This song by Dale Chase is spot-on:

The first hint that my own “coder girl” and I would be good together? Seeing O’Reilly books on her bedroom shelf.

Of course I’d be remiss to not point you to the Girl at the Video Game store video from G4’s Attack of the Show to supplement the above:

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Dance Dance Immolation on Boing Boing Video

Filed Under Fire Art, Video | 2009-05-27, 14:34

We’ve been boing-boinged a second time for Dance Dance Immolation. The first was back in 2005 when DDI was in it’s infancy. Fast forward 4 years and this time DDI is a bit more polished. BB has a video put together by Eddie Codel, hosted by SFSlim and Charis Tobias and starring the various members of Interpretive Arson. Yours truly is in it for only a moment, but it’s one of those most wonderful moments where Rubin and I are hitting the buttons that makes the fire go! The video was all filmed during our setup and run for How To Destroy The Universe Part 6.

You can check out the official post on Boing Boing.

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Jet Pack World Speed Record Set

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Video | 2009-05-14, 14:52

If you had any doubt that we were living in the future, we’re no longer at the “let’s try to build a jet pack” stage. Now we’re trying to see how fast they can go. This past weekend, a Go Fast Jet Pack Pilot named Eric Scott set the world speed record for a jetpack: 68mph. He even raced it against a Ford Focus and narrowly beat the Focus. Eric Scott is no stranger to world records when it comes to jet packs. He also holds the world record for height (1,053ft) and distance (1,500ft) with a jetpack.

The Go Fast (I swear, that’s their name!) Jet Pack is surprisingly environmentally friendly. It is not a combustion engine, and actually uses hydrogen peroxide, precious metals, and super-heated steam to give about 800 horse power for 30 seconds. Oh, and it’s loud, clocking in at 130 db.

I want one.

For a less polished video of the jet pack in action, check this out:

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