Tag: space

Five things on Friday #88

Things of note for the week ending September 5th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending September 5th, 2014.

shuttle

1. Disappearing Drive-Ins

Drive In

Photographer, Stephanie Klavens, has been documenting the fading world of US-based drive-in cinemas in a series of photos called ‘Vanishing Drive-Ins‘.

Strangely beautiful and, for me at least, a little poignant – these snapshots of disappearing Americana make me long for a UK revival.

drivein

via

2. Become Legend

Destiny: Live Action

Destiny arrives in less than a week from now (advance warning: Five Things might be late next week BECAUSE PLAYSTATION) and this newly released live action trailer is so much better than it should be and could’ve been OH so much worse.

Well done.

3. Interesting London Talks
I’ve been following the Talk London Twitter account for some time now and I still get such joy from it. The premise? A Twitter account specifically for keeping track of interesting talks, debates, and seminars in and around London.

Awesome and dead useful too.

Not in London but want a new Twitter account to follow? Try Saved You A Verge. It’s like Saved You A Click, but for The Verge. Brilliant.

4. UK Cinema Release Dates for your Calendar
I made this thing the other day. I was going to just throw it in as a list item on this week’s Five Things but then I figured it was so good, it deserved its own post.

Basically, I’ve made a calendar-based RSS feed for the UK film releases that I think are going to be good/worth seeing and you can add it to your calendar (iCal, Outlook, or Google) with this handy guide.

That’s all.

Next thing?

5. Inside the ISS
It’s Friday afternoon as you read this (probably). The weekend is around the corner and you’re feeling on top of the world (maybe). But now imagine being above it, looking down, and seeing the whole planet flow by beneath you.

Well, if you were sat in the Cupola section of the ISS, that’s exactly what you’d be able to do.

Like this –

Looking down

Wouldn’t be lovely if you had an awesome camera? With a telescopic lens? Something with which you could get a proper look at everything down there?

Like this –

ISS photo shoot

Now what if you were to take a video with that camera? One that came in at around 3mins and 40secs long, something that was just wonderful and allowed people to get lost in the wonder that is the planet we live upon?

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Like this –

via.

Happy Friday everyone.

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Bonuses this week are all massively self-obsessed:

 

Until next week.

 

Five things on Friday #79

Things of note for the weekend ending July 4th, 2014.

Lego Glasses innit

1. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Early reviews of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are in and it’s beginning to read like one of the best sequels ever made.

Apes, man

You can read a bunch of SPOILER-FREE reactions over on Screenrant but here’s the quote that won me over –

Not quite the intimate parable of the first movie nor a balls-to-the-wall battlefield extravaganza, Dawn is pitched somewhere in the middle, with much of its two hour-plus running time powered by the simmering, expertly sustained tension both between and within the two species. The key to selling this knife-edge friction, of course, is the ability to buy into the apes as fully fleshed-out characters.

Yeah, I’m in.

2. Testing the ORION Space Launch System

KAPOOSH

KA-POOOOSH!

I picked this up from Tab Dump (a great news source) earlier this week. The Atlantic put together this amazing photo essay of NASA’s test of its new Space Launch system – and it is gorgeous.

3. The Slap
Another week, another Max Landis thing – The Slap – is a [somewhat late] response to the viral clothes marketing video from a few months ago, First Kiss. Both are worth watching.

4. Sink Hole Corvettes
I don’t know if you caught this at the time but back in February a 40-foot sinkhole opened up underneath the Corvette Museum in Kentucky and the poor guys lost a couple of beautiful cars to the Earth below.

sinkhole corvettes

Well, after dragging the smashed up beauties out of there, the museum’s board got together and tried to work out what to do with the gaping hole in the middle of their building.

The museum’s board felt that it had three options available: completely repair the sinkhole, leave it as-is or modify it slightly to be somewhat smaller. In a vote, the members decided on the third option, which would reduce the cavity’s size to 25-feet by 45-feet wide and 30-feet deep. That might be further modified after studies into how having an open hole in the Skydome will affect the humidity and heating costs. Regardless, the hope is to leave enough room to display two Corvette models down there, possibly the ones most badly damaged in the collapse.

Yup, that’s right, the AMAZING folks at the Corvette Museum decided to not only keep the sinkhole, but also display the damaged cars therein! Apparently, since the sinkhole occurred, attendance shot up by 59% so obviously it makes complete sense to keep it.

Brilliant.

5. Cutting costs? Nah, let’s make more money.
I read Scamp quite often and it’s pretty much nearly always a damn good read. This latest post, looking at why it’s not always the right idea to save money but instead just make more of it (it makes so much sense when you write it down like that) is a very good read and might make think everso slightly differently next time you’re going into the FD.

Scamp.

-Whatley out.

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Bonuses

One bonus this week – an awesome 8min long video on what the ‘one take’ in film really means and how the person you’d least expect is truly the one and only master.