Archive for May, 2005
Game Controller Evolution
Someone has mapped out a family tree of game controllers starting from the Atari 2600 to the PS2 and Gamecube contollers with numerous branches and missing links; like a descendent of the Colecovision leading to the Sega Genesis controller. Then there is the rather simplified descent of the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Game and Watch. where there is no doubt a lot of intermediary steps. Still, its cool that someone has even attempted to do this.
5 commentsPitman World
Pitman tells it. Ya better listen tossers.
Or you can fuck off.
you wanna go to the videos…couldn’t link directly, sorry.
Rube Goldberg Ad
Apologies, but I don’t know how to capture and post screenshots or stills of movies. Anyway, this Honda ad is worth a look, so allow me to do my part as an internet sheep.
The engineer who sent it to me sent it with these claims, though I’ve no way to verify them:
There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn’t work.
They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions. The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete including full engineering of the sequence.
In addition, it’s two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they’re shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in “free viewings” (Honda isn’t paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!). When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation – including the costs.
Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord) are parts from two cars. The voiceover is Garrison Keillor.When the ad was shown to Honda executives,they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real.
Oh, and about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet. It looks a bit weird in the commercial.
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Glue Sniffin’ Time
Sweet gallery of Hot Rod Models by Revell, Testors, et. al. Some wacky wheels, TV tributes, and cool cover art (Mead perhaps?).
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Hovercraft
A 1960 article on hovercrafts, featured on Tacky-Times, a pretty nifty retro webzine and blog.
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