Most of us never get picked for astronaut training (in fact a few like me never get picked to play on a team of any kind), but for those who don’t, astronaut Jerry Carr got together with TED and produced this great little animation on the topic. This will introduce you to some of the details that NASA usually doesn’t mention, like the fact that being an Astronaut is something you only get to do after doing a whole lot of support stuff in the background, to help the current astronauts get their job done. I do love the excellent job that Sharon Colman did on the animation; it is classic 50s Disney line drawings, just like they did for the whole Mission to Mars program and all the other wonderful Disney space shows they did over the years.
This amazing moonrise video was made in a single take, with no stop motion, no compositing, and no CGI effects of any kind. After watching this I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that the man who filmed it, Mark G, is a professional photographer with some really tasty optical gear. He got about two kilometers behind the Mount Victoria Lookout in New Zealand so the people looked really small, making the moon look very large indeed. This is another one from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site, one of my favorite online destinations.
Full Moon Silhouettes from Mark Gee on Vimeo.
The first track is from the band Body Parts with the song Doing Things. Not only do I like the music, but the video for this song is also silly fun, a great combination. The second track is UK band China Rats doing To Be Like, and again these are from the SXSW Showcasing Artist collection.
If you saw Wreck-It Ralph in a movie theater, this was the short feature that prefaced that film. If you haven’t seen it, this one is up for an Academy Award in the Short Film, Animated category. It is a wonderful bit of storytelling, made even more amazing by the fact they didn’t even need many words to make you fully understand it.
The band is called The Slants, the song title is Love Letters From Andromeda, and the footage is from Tai Chi Zero, a Steampunk Kung-Fu movie coming out on DVD today. The second one is the band National Campaign doing another music video for the same movie, called The Stand. Enjoy.
Abney Park lead singer Captain Robert put together this quick and dirty instruction video on how to give your TV a Steampunk look. They also just posted a new live video online, so I had to include it here. The DIY instructions will work just fine for many models of TVs, but some other models would need something more elaborate in the way of masking. I love the fact that it is such an easy TV mod, makes me think of other equally easy projects one might try.