Something to do in Rotterdam tomorrow

In case you are stuck for something to do in Rotterdam tomorrow (Sunday 21st March), we might suggest you get yourself down to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam for the “Made in Holland” exhibition. It’s on for a couple more weeks, but tomorrow being the first day of spring, and the equinox, there might just be the chance of a nice sunny day.

The exhibition covers everything from the Speediest of Speed Skaters’ Speed Skating Skates (say that fast!), to aerodynamic brollies, designed to not turn inside out. Delving into the famous archives of the TU Delft, it documents over 400 years of innovation in this small corner of Europe.

The museum has a great little park next to it, as most people in Rotterdam know already, so can certainly have a nice sit out if the weather is anything like.

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Saturday: 404

Don’t worry, it isn’t a real 404!

Just a quick little post… Looking for something totally unrelated the other day and Everybody stumbled upon a reference to one of our favourite films of all time. The Big Lebowski.

The Illustrator, Dave Mott, has both a fantastic style and the set of illustrations in his portfolio blog show this in the best possible manner. He produced this as a concept for the HTML 404 error pages. As he says so many quotes from that film make great 404 pages. Click Walter to go and see his work!

Everybody loves the work of this Illustrator and hopes that you will spend a few minutes looking around his site. Maybe even commision him. Brilliant work Dave.

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Falcon: old and new combined

With my rocky history with motorcycles I have to admit I’m not particularly bothered about them, but as with all other things there are always outstanding examples which make you stand up and pay attention.

Recently I stumbled upon one of those examples and had to point you in its direction. Falcon is a Los Angeles based motorcycle manufacturing company based on high standards of manufacture and quality in design. Ian Barry, co-founder and designer, has been obsessed with old British bikes like Triumph and Norton for years leading to his designing the Falcon when he met his business partner Amaryllis in LA.

Both spent two years sourcing vintage materials and machinery from around the world to create a workshop in Downtown LA where they could make their dream a reality.

So the first result is pretty much what you see above here, an imagining of what would happen would Triumph have produced a Board racer. It’s called “The Bullet” and is effectively a custom Triumph motorcycle, starting years ago as the derelict frame and engine of a 1950 pre-unit Triumph Thunderbird (which for all you movie buffs is the self same motorbike Marlon Brando can be seen riding in the classic movie “The Wild One”.

Everybody will be keeping a keen eye on this and we would advise you to as well, absorb the beauty of the bike, it really is something special. They plan many more bikes all based on vintage forms, so it’s going to really be a thing to watch over the next couple of years.

Good work vintage bike fellas!

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Spiral radiator by Marco Dessi

Nothing ultra new in terms of recently designed stuff, especially if you follow the world of interiors and furniture design, but I still love it. I picked up some materials from my shelf this week and found the leaflet I have showing my second favourite radiator of all time. (Yes it is sad I have a favourite, radiator, and possibly even sadder I have a second favourite, but let’s face it, ordering and ranking is what we do every day to help ourselves with decisions… granted my more important decisions are not radiator based but you know what I mean.)

Anyway, this Radiator was shown at the Cologne fair in 2007 by Italian born designer Macro Dessi, as a concept. He designed it in 2006 and his own little bit of blurb about the product is as follows:

“The raw expression of functional industrial radiators was a source of inspiration for the radiator . While maintaining this raw strenght [sic.], the object was transformed for living spaces. The rotation of the individual element is reminiscent of the sheet metal spirals of old- fashioned radiators.”

I have to say that having just experienced one of the longest, and coldest winters in recent memory, I for one, would be more than happy to actually place a couple of these beauties in my house, and even, for that matter, next to my desk in the west wing of Everybody towers.

Everybody says… great work Marco, let us know when we can buy it!

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Zipshot: Self assembling tripodular standing device

There are up-sides and down-sides to every single product, the most successful ones being those with less downs. Usually. Not always anyway. But this is one of those products which I would have been very interested in when travelling recently, despite its obvious down-side. I use a really, really good Manfrotto which, granted, is a little large, but stays still in a howling gale, but I had to leave it at home on a recent trip to New York due to baggage limitations and stuff like that.

The product you see above is the new Zipshot from Tamrac. It’s a self assembling mechanism, it pops up from a small form factor in a second and allows (apparently) relatively good stability. It will handle a camera and lens combo of up to three pounds (which for you Continental types is around 1.25Kg.) not much, but it would certainly be great for holding video cameras steady for long shots of landscapes or to create time lapse videos.

It’s available now from many places for around $50-60 US it is certainly worth it for those people who hike or travel extensively.

Everybody says nice work Tamrac, it’s a great thing to have in our camera bag.

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Recycling should be heard not just seen!

OK, as most of you know, living in the Netherlands you have to recycle. No seriously, it’s, like, the law and stuff, paper, cardboard, plastic, old batteries, glass – your hair too if you want. Anyway, I’m kind of used to it now, but you have to take it seriously, it’s for the best in the long run, apparently.

A couple of friends had recently bought new iPod Nanos and Shuffles in the clear plastic boxes. Which are kind of cool (does anyone remember the original iPod packaging – that was awesome) but then you have an empty plastic box. What to do, what to do… Well this company has some great ideas for the use of them. Turn that empty box into a speaker for the iPod which came out of it, genius. All you need to do is switch the top from your box for the new one with the speaker mechanism on it to the clear plastic base. $40 US isn’t a bad price.

One question is, what do you do with the top you replaced? now you have one part of a cool box, but not the part you can put anything in… or am I being too damn practical again.? Hope it gives you ideas, it made me think about repurposing some of my old bits and pieces – being such a geek is useful at times, but being idle is the thing I have to get over.

Everybody says well done AudioCubes.com, great idea.

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The future of publishing

So. After years of speculation Apple have finally launched a tablet. A slate, or a pad. Whatever you want to call it, it is a quite interesting piece of gear. Whilst we at Everybody are all Apple users, I for one was not overly impressed with the iPad when Steve Jobs presented it. Sure it looked pretty, fitted the brand, but seemed like over kill for me as I use a MacBook pro and have an iPhone. So where is it going to change my life?

Last month I was talking to the other members of the office here, and we figured it was mainly going to allow more flexibility in digital publishing… then we stumbled upon this video on the Adobe website, which articulates perfectly exactly what we were discussing at that very minute.

So rather than set out a vision of how I think the Future will go, I am posting the link to the Video in which Wired (the technology magazine at the cutting edge of utilising tech in magazines) talk about how they see being able to use the technology behind the iPad (and doubtless all the other iPad-a-likes which will follow) to make the Magazine experience exciting again. Take five minutes to watch this, then think about the possibilities.

Everybody says it isn’t about what the iPad can do for you, it’s about how you can make the iPad anonymous. Sit back and enjoy.

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She farted and created the world

Yes, you read that right. She farted and created the world is the title of an animation by a talented fella by the name of Scott Coello.

He uses only bits of recycled paper and pens to draw with to make a very impressive animation about the evolution of everything. Cleverly conceived and even better in execution, this is well worth it’s position in the final 12 of the virgin media animated short film awards.

Everybody loves this style, digs this subject and enjoyed it thoroughly. Make sure you click the link above to watch the movie on Vimeo. Very worth the effort, but make sure the HD is on, it makes it really worth while.

That was a short but sweet post, but then so is the animation.

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Imagine Greater

I have to say that we at Everybody are not really your standard television viewers. We generally turn the channel to watch something specific, until it’s end and then see if there is something else on worth watching, or turn off. Recently it’s been more “turn off” than “watch”. BUT. Occasionally there is something that comes along that really captures your imagination.

Harking back over previous years, these things have been more and more the small things like “Channel Idents” and the occasional advert, I’m thinking things like the jaw-droppingly beautiful Sony Bravia advert (you know… the one where the coloured balls all roll down a San Francisco street) and the clever trailers for Better off Ted currently on Comedy Central, and not the programming itself.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because you may or may not be aware that recently the “Sci-Fi Channel” re-branded itself to the, much more multi-lingual friendly “SyFy Channel”. This was heralded on it’s sister channel 13th street, during one of the shows I watch (House, in case you wondered) and so I duly tuned in to see the re-launch.

At 20:30 the channel’s new logo was revealed on screen and was followed by an amazing little trail video. High in gloss, high in style and über high in production value. The video is entitled “the house of Imagination (Imagine Greater)” and you should watch it. No really, take three minutes to watch the video (by clicking the image above) you will see what I mean.

Everybody says well done SyFy Channel, you have actually made us Imagine Greater.

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Mommy, what does a computer virus look like?

Once in a while a piece of art comes along which strikes you as original, clever and downright good looking. In this instance, a fella has written some code/witchcraft to use malware (the nasty bits of software that do nasty bits of work on your computer) to create a beautiful and organic image to represent the nasty bit of software itself.

Dig deeper into his site and you will find that he also grows something which he calls “spam plants”. These use more code/witchcraft to take spam messages and grow them into more organic looking and in some cases beautiful images.

It kind of reminds us of those art images based on fractals which did the rounds in poster stores in the 1990’s. But there is something wonderful about these images, something which makes you want more. The uniqueness is interesting to me and the way in which they seem different each time you look at them is equally as enthralling.

Just one thing strikes me about this though, and that is that this guy has to have been sent a virus and spam at some point to get this going, so lord help him now his project is public, as he will be doubtless bombarded with the stuff we spend our online lives trying to avoid. Take this one step further and imagine loosing the work to a virus itself… Hope he has a picture called, “My back up” On a serious note though, good work Alex, stunning images and an original idea. Nice.

Design is the fabric of the universe, it wraps us all, keeps us warm and makes you feel snuggly. It needs washing occasionally though, so be careful it doesn’t shrink.

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