misc


Mesmerizing video!!!

“Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

For more details see this link

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.

Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg [Am J Phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)] at the University of Maryland. The particular apparatus shown here was built by our own Nils Sorensen.”

via youtube

Amazing! Just a reminder in how breath-taking and beautiful nature is. I still need to watch the documentary movie Oceans as well which I posted about 2 years ago.

“In 2008, Sandra Critelli shot this excellent photo of Golden Rays off the Mexican coast:

She said: “It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.

“It’s hard to say exactly how many there were but in the range of a few thousand.

“We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too.

Golden Rays grow up to seven feet across and migrate within the Caribbean.”

Photo Link and Article Link via reddit (via Neatorama)

I started Designverb on January 18th, 2006 as a quick experiment to jot down the many things I found to share with my friends and anyone else curious. Today, August 1st, 2010,  marks my 1000th post, and this one being the 1001’st.

I’ll admit the the opportunities, friendship, community, and insights I’ve received throughout the years has been amazing and it has surely kept me busy after a long day of work and on weekends.  There are times where I’m flooded with work and have very little time to post, but I started a Facebook Fan page where I post quick  fun links and have recently found some extra contributors to help find more great things to post about.

The Above picture is of sushi at O Ya here in Boston. I tend to eat sushi to celebrate  so maybe I’ll go there this week again.

Anyhow, I had no plans to really celebrate, but I thought I’d share some of the most popular posts since starting Designverb.
1. Tunnel House
2. Stuck At Heathrow Airport
3. Paint Chip Card Holder
4. Red Bull Headquarters
5. Mark Khaisman Brown Tape Art
6. Stefans Stormtroopers a Day
7. Heineken World Bottle: Beer to Bricks
8. Creepy Snow Globes
9. Color Changing Mini-Cooper
10. Burj Al Arab: Tennis Court in the Sky!
11. Non-Metric Countries
12. Shoes That Make Everyone the Same Height
13. How 315 Billion Dollars Looks
14. GadgetOff 2007 and 2009 Recaps.
15. TerraCycle Inc

And one of my fun little trips came from GM here.

I’ve been incredibly busy helping organize the TEDxCambridge event occurring May 16th at the MIT Stata Center. The theme “How do you eat”  is based off of this year TED prize winner Jamie Oliver in regards to Food and education. If you are in Boston May 16th, apply to get an invite and let me know. We can only invite 300 attendees and registration will close soon. You can learn more on tedxcambridge.com

Also, if you are in a position to sponsor any food, funding, or gifts for the event, please contact me asap. (now! =) ).
We will have 2 break sessions followed by an evening event in eating, drinking, and idea sharing!

Lots of awesome speakers in the line up!
– Wylie Dufresne: WD 50
– Chandler Burr: Times Scent critic
– Dan Ariely: Behavioral Economist
– Richard Chisolm: Filmmaker
– John Gertsen: Mixologist
–  many more!

update: Photos on flickr, via eddric(350),Tino(40), JB (60), millie(16)

gadgetoff.2009_deka.arm2

gadgetoff.2009_mondo.spider2

Gadgetoff 2009 unleashed an intense series of kabooms,  zaps, chomps, and kerplurks rattling 400 attendees on the beautiful 83 acre Staten Island grounds September 25th while slinging Lenovo laptops with a trebuchet,  cooking hot dogs with Telsa Coil Towers, riding jet fueled 5g merry-go-rounds, writing code drunk for autonomous cars legally, and thrashing a series of incredible lectures and demos throughout the day! Welcome to the Gadgetoff 2009 Experience: Boom!

Robots rumbled in every corner ranging from dancing tai chi robots to tiny micro toy hex bugs that jittered their way into everyone’s pockets. The gigantic mechanical Mondo Spider chomped it’s way through the lunch gardens while on lookers enjoyed delicious alcohol infused sorbetDean Kamen of DEKA brought his breathtaking and ingeniously engineered “luke” arm (video) and toy inventor Brian Walker tinkered with large crossbows and rockets made to launch humans 20 miles across the air! Invisible inks, toys, gadgets, art, fire, illusions, magic, and disruptive ideas scorched the island while participants roamed in excitement and curiosity!

Just as I experienced last time, Gadgetoff invited the coolest hand’s on creatives to celebrate the Smart and Useless for an unforgetful day in disruptive goodness!

My adventure brief after the jump! (lots of pictures and videos)

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The TED conference has transformed dramatically over the years thanks to the launching of TEDtalks which I’ve posted on several times. This past year, TED launched another brilliant event called TEDx which allows individuals to host their own local unofficial TED like events. Since March 2009 several events have taken place around the world. How awesome!

A few weeks back, I attended the TEDxBoston event which I wanted to post about, but had no videos to share. As of today, TEDx videos from around the world can be viewed and shared on the TEDx YouTube Channel as well as play lists from each location like TEDxBoston. I’ll post the TEDxBoston videos after the jump, and make sure to watch the last video with our favorite Ben Zanders conducting the Youth Orchestra of Americas.

TEDx YouTube Channel

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I’m off to San Francisco for a Weekend Wedding, so I’m posting my weekend links a bit early. If ya’ll have any must see, eat, go to events in SF this week, please let me know.

– Travel: Jetblue offers a all you can fly month pass, Sept 8-October 8 ) for $599! hmm, I do need a break, perhaps each weekend!
– Graphics: Incredible digital flowers by Macoto Murayama! very cool, I want the larger images!
– Fashion: Socks are fun, go get happy socks at happysocks.com
– Tech: Nerdy cool web2 pillows! haha, I want I want!
– Fun: Colored bubbles! yah, colored I said…and no stains! its magic!

Hello world! Thank you for all your messages over the weeks since I have not had time to post anything lately.

I’ve been incredibly busy at the awesome start-up I’m at (We’re hiring creatives/designers..contact me), glued late at night watching the incredible Tour De France or just Lance Armstrong, laughing several times at the video of Buzz Aldrin punching a news reporter claiming the moon landing was fake, seeing very simple fun addictive websites such as this one, comparing the positions of people doing yoga or being drunk, viewing an awesome video of bike pro Danny Macaskill doing some great tricks, attending TEDxBoston, watching the Incredible Youth Symphony of America(YOA) conducted by Ben Zanders, trying to figure out how to help with the inspirational foundation El Sistema USA (a TED2009 wish), and most recently having a great time watching a recent wedding dance ceremony introduction go viral posted above!

Besides the crazy busy month in work and odd distractions, I’ll be catching up to many of the suggestions sent in and posting again soon.  Or as I’d like to think, I leaned back briefly, just like President Obama did in this awesome picture in the White House.