Superposition Kitty » Monthly Round-Up

Monthly Round-Up July

Ryan — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:52:57 +0000

For some reason, this months round-up features a variety of Japanese content, starting with some brilliant (yet devastating) photos of Hiroshima from 64 years ago thanks to The Big Picture. We haven’t mentioned The Big Picture on Superposition Kitty before, but it’s a definite favourite in my feeds. Run by Alan Taylor, a web developer who previously worked for Amazon, it’s a photo blog updated thrice weekly with some of the best, most beautiful, and highest quality images of what’s been going on each week.

Next up is the artwork of Toshio Saeki, the 63 year old godfather of Japanese erotica. You can find a rather large collection of his work here and here (very not work safe). He studied art at school, and after graduating pursued a career in graphic design. At the age of 24 he left his hometown of Osaka and traveled to Tokyo where, using the money he saved up, he rented a tiny apartment and began working as an illustrator and erotic artist. Famous for his images which revolve around both sex and death, Saeki says that he is not a violent person but that he just loves to entertain and shock people.

Only in Japan would a restaurant kitchen be run by robots. You can watch them do their thing (serving up delicious bowls of Ramen) on YouTube. Apparently the benefits of using the robots in such an environment is that they can perfectly time boiling the noodles, and are capable of precise movements in adding toppings, so that the temperature and taste is consistent from bowl to bowl. They also spin plates and carry out mock duals in the downtime!

Moving away from the Japanese theme, we have some terrific interactive design in the form of these screenshots of the Xerox Star 8010 interface. Introduced in 1981, it was the first commercial personal computer to implement a graphical user interface. Not to mention the mouse, Ethernet networking, file servers, print servers and e-mail! Screenshots of the interface such as this one and this one show the level of detail required in designing a cohesive feel for the system. You can read about (and see) the progression the interface took here .

Monthly Round-Up: June

Ryan — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:56:30 +0000

This months links round up has been delayed by Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin of which I still have roughly 30 pages left to read. The only reason I am not reading it right now is because I’m expecting a phone call some time in the next hour and don’t want the end ruined by not being able to think about it properly.

I’ve also read The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake this month. The former was a good as I remembered it being when I first read it as a teenager. The latter you would have had to pry from my cold dead hands to stop me from finishing it.

So June 2009s summation comes fueled by Margaret Atwood. Who is amazing. You should all read her books right now.

Other things that have taken up time in June have been La Roux’s debut album which appeared around two weeks ago. It’s obviously written by a 21 year old girl who’s been in a bad relationship for what seems like forever. It’s more than likely common knowledge by now that there were floods and rivers of tears produced during its recording because music journalists love to make a point of it (although I suppose I’m just as bad now). In fact the only thing people like to comment on more is her hair cut or choice of clothes, like musicians should all dress in clothes from Topshop and be wearing fruity mass produced unique hipster bo-ho head bands just like that Shirley Manson chick or that David Bowie dude.

But who cares about all that? Her personal grooming is her own business and we’ll all be 21 once whether it’s now, earlier or later, and we will all do dumb stuff. What really matters is that the album is a tight little work filled with hooky synth lines and clever lyrics that Elly Jackson really means. What else do you want in your wonky synth pop?

Speaking of Elly Jackson and La Roux I also have to touch on other, sadder news — which is of course that her album was in fact batted from the number one spot here in the UK by the resurgent interest in the now dead and once again popular Michael Jackson. I may hold personal opinions of Mr Jackson which don’t seem to match up to those of other people but I felt the same way about my families memories of my grandfather when he died so perhaps this is what death does to people and their feelings. I wont lie though, and tell you I was a fan of his music, because I was not. I watched Moon Walker as a child and couldn’t possibly avoid seeing every video of his ever due to the omnipresent media machine that was his career but my most vivid memory of him is Jarvis Cocker’s interuption of Earth Song during the 1996 Brit Awards.

I am sorry I can’t fake enjoyment as a tribute to him but I can play Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Smooth Criminal over and over. I think it’s what he would have wanted.

And that was June.

(I could go on to mention Perez Hilton’s terrible month but I’d rather pass you onto Mat and Trey of Southpark who covered the issues nicely in an episode called Breast Cancer Show Ever. If you’re outside of America and can’t watch the episode I’m sure you can figure out another way to manage it.)

A Slightly More Late Monthly Round Up

Ryan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:29:58 +0000

Welcome to Edition Two. I haven’t done one of these in a while because I’m lazy, so I suppose I better get right into it.

THEM THANGS is the photo blog of Justin Blyth. There are rarely any words, and definitely no explanations, so I’m going to have to make some assumptions here. THEM THANGS is a collection of cool photos/designs/pictures/lyrics/words that Justin has found in his travels throughout the internet, and there is certainly a lot of them (over 10 pages now). Make sure to wait for the long load times, and beware of the slightly NSFW content that lurks within.

Scott Pommier takes cool pictures of cool things, there really isn’t much more to be said than that, but make sure to click on through to his interview with feature shoot and read about how he got started.

The Beardmore Bros are legends in automotive circles. Having worked for decades, and with an almost unhealthy obsession of Morris Minors, they have created some of the coolest custom cars and sleepers in the UK. Make sure to read about their latest project: A space framed, 2000cc 16v Fiat engined, 178mm widened, Morris Minor convertible that they use for hillclimbs and sprints.

Windosill is a beautiful point-and-click adventure from Vectorpark — creators of a bunch of brilliantly simple downloadable games for the Mac and PC. You can play the first part of the game online here but will have to pay US$3.00 to play the remainder.

And lastly I’m going to introduce you to the way that I’ve been spending the last 3 days: reading Fullmetal Alchemist. A manga about two brothers who are trying to restore their bodies after an attempt to bring their mother back to life went very wrong. Full of terrific action, great comedy, and an enthralling plot, it will suck you in. I’m sure that if you search hard enough you’ll find a variety of ways to read it online.

Really Late Monthly Links Round Up

Ryan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:33:04 +0000

It doesn’t matter that we’re halfway through June already — there’s still time to gather up all the stuff we’ve been looking at at SPK and throw together a post of to let the internet know about it. So to make up for our extreme lateness, we will be doing two editions, one from each of us.

For the most part the reason that this post is late has a lot to do with comics. Specifically Seinen Manga which I can’t seem to get enough of right now. Since there are so many of the things out there it’s proven difficult to stop

Luckily (or unluckily) for me, as I am not Japanese and sometimes find it hard to tell which title will be what I’m looking for, recommendation sites like Anime Planet exist and their easy to use database system, though small right now, makes it very easy to pick out something new.

Just to get you started here are a few of the things it’s pointed me towards this month:

Dragon Head is post-apocalyptic, dark and creepy but otherwise difficult to catergorise but definitely worth a look.

Berserk requires a word of warning: there are just over 20 years of it to read so it could take a while to trawl through it. It’s also a fairly brutal read focusing as it does on evisceration and sexual violence towards almost everything so if these things are not to your taste it may be best avoided. However it is a brilliantly drawn, engrossing and stunning in it’s scale and imagination. There are also a lot of drawings of horses.

Hotel is a short but beautiful one-shot comic. If it doesn’t make you cry a little you are probably not human.

If you’re interested in any of these titles, or any manga at all and you’re looking for a place to try them out for yourself then you can head over to MangaFox which is easily the best site of it’s kind I have found so far.

Movie wise The Good, The Bad and The Weird is released on DVD this month. If you like anachronisms, trick riding, and Westerns set in 1940s Manchuria you will probably like this movie which stars Kunh-ho Song star of The Host, and Park Chan Wook’s Thirst (which recently premiered at Cannes). It may not always make a lot of sense but it is visually stunning, entertaining and oddly hilarious.

Another movie of interest is Moon which is on limited release in the USA right now and which will eventually arrive in the UK on the 17th of July. Starring Kevin Spacey as GERTY, a whimsically creepy HAL-esque computer this could be like a watchable version of epic but frustrating 2001.

Lastly a new series of the long running Red vs Blue starts tonight at 9pm CST (that’s 3am for all you UK people). I can’t say a lot of about a machinima series put together with Halo 3 because I neither own an XBox 360 or enjoy anything to do with Microsoft, but I can endorse Red Vs Blue as the only good thing to do with both of those things. The previous five seasons and their companion mini series have been consistently hilarious and are even enjoyed by my mother which should go to prove that a prior knowledge of the Master Chief is not required to enjoy them.