Kieppi – Nojespark.NET
Linnanmäki got its most intense ride in 2003, when the Huss Booster opened. It’s a rough but fun flat spinning ride with many fast sommersaults trough the ride time. The multiple movement patterns of the gondolas make the flips different each time.
Kieppi was placed to a new area Linnanmäki had bought near the southern entrance gate. A kiddie-ride was also placed next to Kieppi and the HipHop was moved to that same area in 2004 to make room for Tulireki. Any new flat rides Linnanmäki may buy are likely going to be placed here as well.
Kieppi is Finnish for “The Flip”.
I finally had the courage to try it out when I took kids to the amusement park a couple of weeks ago. It is an intense ride and you know it from the minute you sit down on the tightly enclosed seat. It spins around all axis and occasionally “flips” over as if you are doing the classic cartwheel acrobatics move. The G-forces are probably quite high, but there is really nothing you can do except grasp on to the handlebars with white knuckles and scream. It was tons of fun and I haven’t seen anyone throw up after the ride.
Posted by api at 08:05 - 3 Comments »
Wonderfully creative collage book made by Second Hand Rose
It’s like the difference between a drummer and a drum machine. I don’t think she or anyone else could have made these on a computer. I’ve seen a lot of collages made in Photoshop, but you can usually notice the difference.
Posted by api at 08:10 - No Comments »
You can apply pressure and stroke on a Polaroid Time-Zero film while it’s developing to create unique “pola-paintings”. It seems to be a quite popular hobby. This a sample image from one of the many Time-Zero manipulated picture galleries I found:
General Chang
I made this portrait at a renaissance fair.
The gentleman was posed next to a tree to allow portrait
lighting from the western sky to light the mask of his
face. Becky manipulated his clothing and the background
which was green trees with some blue sky showing through.
The pink is from small reflections off of leaves from the
western sky. Virtually nothing was done to his face.
Polaroid even provides instructions on the technique on their own website.
Posted by api at 08:23 - No Comments »
Turning Torso is a bold new skyscraper in Malmo, Sweden. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava.
Wikipedia Turning Torso entry
The tower reaches a height of 190 metres (623 feet) with 54 stories. The design is based on a sculpture by Calatrava called Twisting Torso. The tower’s design uses nine five-storey cubes that twists as it rises; the top-most segment is twisted ninety degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor. Each floor basically consists of a rectangular section surrounding the central core, along with a triangular section, which is partially supported by an exterior steel scaffold. The two lower cubes are intended as office space. Cubes three through nine will house apartments, estimated to number roughly 150.
The picture above was taken during the construction phase. The black tower on the left is just a temporary support structure.
Posted by api at 08:17 - No Comments »
Young George Washington, Art student living off girlfriend, Billy Idol, Wili the former skinhead… a few of my alter egos kindly created by Synecdoche.
Posted by api at 10:30 - 1 Comment »
Well, I’m just recycling my old junk here. It’s a flash thingie I did for Helsinki City Theatre when they merged with a childrens’ theatre. The accessories were photographed by an assistant and composited into one big Photoshop file. After that they were exported as PICT files with alpha channel information. They are hidden off screen and moved into the correct position whenever the words are clicked.
Posted by api at 10:22 - No Comments »
We’ve outdone ourselves with this Halloween prop: completely realistic alligator will lunge forward and attempt to eat your guests.
Frightcatalog.com is selling a variety of Animatronics props. The prices range from a few hundred dollars all the way to 14900 dollars for Hot Seat Extreme
Maybe they are mostly catering to amusement parks and other such attractions, but I’m sure there are plenty of rich, eccentric rock stars and other individuals who buy their stuff as well.
If you are interested in Animatronics in general have a look at this link:
Animatronics Resource Site:Gallery
Posted by api at 10:16 - No Comments »
Mark Jen’s blog
on january 28th, 2005, i was terminated from google. either directly or indirectly, my blog was the reason. this came as a great shock to me because two days ago we had looked at my blog and removed all inappropriate content – the comments on financial performance and future products. for my next entries, i was very cognizant of my blogging content, making sure to stay away from these topics. i mean, as much as i like to be open and honest about communicating to users and customers, i’m not insubordinate. if i was told to shut down this blog, i would have.
Find your target, dive in, do a little disclosure blog stunt by criticizing your employer in your personal blog, explode in a brilliant flash of publicity.
Then perhaps cash in with a a book deal like Washingtonienne or just use the publicity to your advantage in some other ways like Mr. Jen. See the feature story at Simplyfired.com
From what I can gather, his blog is obviously damaging to the company and I am not surprised that he got fired. Some of the other employees had probably complained about it as well:
Quote at Outer court
I regret to inform you that Mark Jen was fired from Google on Friday, January 28th. I don’t have any details, but I can tell you that he was quietly let go. An e-mail was sent out to the entire company, letting us know that the matter many had written to management expressing their concerns about, had now been taken care of. I initially thought that this meant that Mark had been told to be more careful about discussing company financials, but it soon became apparent that Mark had left the company. I can only assume that his silence since that date means that they either threatened him or cut him a sweet severance deal. Whatever happened, it’s a sad day when you can’t speak openly about both the good and bad at your chosen place of work without getting silenced.
I think every country has had one or two of their own miniature “leaked through a blog” scandals by now.
I do appreciate free speech, but to me Mark Jen’s incident seems like a case of cash in Kamikaze blogging. I don’t think it was intentional, but after the fact he did squeeze every bit of publicity out of it that he could.
Posted by api at 08:43 - No Comments »
Ancient civilizations are a fascinating research subject. One sometimes encounters unexplainably high level of sophistication in many fields such as astrology, medicine and other areas of knowledge that obviously require a persistent and orchestrated research and exploration effort that must have spanned many generations and centuries.
The Piri Re’is Map
The Piri Re’is Map is only one of several anomalous maps drawn
in the 15th Century and earlier which appear to represent
better information about the shape of the continents than
should have been known at the time.
Furthermore, this information appears to have been obtained
at some distant time in the past.
Piri Re’is, Ptolomy (2nd Century A.D.), as well as
Mercator and Oronteus Finaeus, well-known 15th Century map-makers,
included the traditional southern continent in their world maps, as did others.
Antarctica was not discovered until the 19th Century, and it was largely
unexplored until the middle of the 20th.
This is just the start.
Anomalous maps also show the Behring Strait as linking Asia and America,
river deltas which appear much shorter than they do today,
islands in the Aegean which haven’t been above water since the
sea-level rise at the end of the ice-age and
huge glaciers covering Britian and Scandinavia.
Long dismissed as attempts by cartographers to fill in empty spaces,
some of the details of the old maps look very
startling when correlated with modern
(very mainstream) knowledge of the changes
in the Earths’ geography in the geologic past,
particularly during the Ice Ages.
The Piri Re’is map is most interesting because of the
attribution of the source of its information, and the extraordinary
detail of the coastal outlines.
Posted by api at 09:01 - No Comments »
Among other interesting records at the Guinness World Records video section there is a video clip of the world’s smallest disco, The Miniscule of Sound.
Guinness World Records
In August 1998, four British friends, Sam Williamson, Keith Packer, Francis Clarke, and Kevin Wright created a tiny disco sensation. The Miniscule Of Sound, the world’s smallest nightclub, is 2.4 m (8 ft) long, 1.2 m (4 ft) wide, and 2.4 m (8 ft) high – and every clubber on earth is dying to get past the doorman! Complete with DJ, full sound system, smoke machine, and tiny
2 m2 dance floor, The Miniscule Of Sound is an intense disco experience. The maximum capacity is 14 people, including DJ, and the music is a mix of 1970s disco, techno, drum and bass, reggae, and rock.
Posted by api at 09:29 - No Comments »
There is some friendly rivalry between two master jugglers, Jason Garfield and Anthony Gatta. Here’s an amusing video clip of Mr. Garfield trash talking in Ali G style (click on the title picture on the video page):
2005 WJF Profile Videos – Banned from the WJF
Jason Garfield produced two competitor profile videos for the WJF which have since been banned from the WJF site due to content or disk space, we’re not sure which. After a week long debate with Jason Garfield and the WJF President, and near expulsion of Garfield from all past and future WJF events, a compromise was made. A third video was produced and accepted by the WJF. The controversial videos now rest here, safe at home at jasongarfield.com. Jason Garfield would like to take this opportunity to say that the WJF has no balls and that he resents this treatment of one of their finest competitors. Jason still plans on competing, but is uncertain for 2006.
Posted by api at 14:42 - No Comments »
Well, I went to see The Island, even though I knew it was not going to be all that good. Well, it was a quite fulfilling bag of eye candy.. bangs, explosions and actually some very, very good camerawork and color timing. The actors did a marvelous job trying to keep the implausible plot together. For me, the more annoying problems were with some of the fundamental dramaturgy issues and, more surprisingly, the depressingly unoriginal soundtrack! The music was a cheap L.A. imitation of Vangelis style epic synth pads and some cheesy techno leftovers that could have been found in the trashcan of some Chemical Brothers wannabe studio wizard. Steve Jablonsky is his name.
And what about that sound effects department? Why does every single button, door and screen have to make a quasi-futuristic beep whenever they are touched?
The story was about cloning and it wasn’t all that bad, but I’ve seen parts of it it a dozen times in other movies.
One of the most horrible things in the movie was the fact that they had pumped silicone not only into the visual effects hardware, but apparently into the lips and breast of the female co-star of the movie, Ms. Johanssen.
Compare these two studio photographs:
Still, after all this bashing, I must admit that the film did have some merits including very impressive art direction and a lot of beautiful closeup shots. Steve Buscemi was also outstanding with the little scraps of dialog they had thrown to him.. even stealing the show from the big name, Ewan McGregor. With a little bit of work here and there, this could have been a great movie.
Posted by api at 23:54 - No Comments »
The Zen of Sports
In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Csikszentmihalyi identifies a self-surpassing dimension of human experience that is recognized by people the world over, regardless of culture, gender, race, or nationality. Its characteristics include deep concentration, highly efficient performance, emotional buoyancy, a heightened sense of mastery, a lack of self-consciousness, and self-transcendence. Csikszentmihalyi calls the experience “flow”; today’s athlete calls it being in “the zone.”
The zone. All athletes know it, strive for it, prize its attainment. It is that realm of play in which everything-skill, training and mental discipline-comes together, and players feel themselves lifted to a level of peak performance in which limits seem to fall away.
Posted by api at 09:32 - No Comments »
NPC Online Library: Dr. Louis Hagler’s Response To Community Noise
Noise has always been an important environmental problem for humans. In
ancient Rome, legislation was enacted to control the noise emitted by the
iron-covered wheels of wagons on paving stones, which disrupted sleep and
caused annoyance to the citizens. In some cities in Medieval Europe, horse
drawn carriages and horses were banned from the streets at night in order
to ensure peaceful sleep for the inhabitants. The noise problems of the
past pale in significance to those experienced by modern city-dwellers;
noise pollution continues to grow in extent, frequency, and severity as a
result of population growth, urbanization, and technological developments.
The growth in urban noise pollution involves direct and cumulative adverse
health effects; it affects future generations by degrading residential,
social, and learning environments with corresponding economic losses.
Is it just me or has the social noise really increased considerably over the last two decades? What exactly is the sound pressure level sufficient to disturb sleep? What are those annoying radio “entertainers” smoking? Will people be wearing both gas masks and hearing protectors while walking on the streets in the future?
Don’t lose the music
Posted by api at 09:26 - 1 Comment »
I’ve always liked stealthing classes in online games.. Cloakers in Planetside, Rogues in WoW and the three true stealthing classes (Shadowblade, Infiltrator and Nightshade) in DAoC. I never really played these classes myself, but I got stabbed in the back hundreds of times while playing a Warden in DAoC. It’s a great way to add yet another element of surprise in the game dynamics.
Posted by api at 09:31 - No Comments »
