Monday Links from the Fading Light of 2012 vol. CLVII

[BrilloPad]

Base 12 - Numberphile - Videos about Numbers and Stuff is quite interesting. Looks like the French have alot to answer for. Again.

[NickFitz]

Nick, thanks for this - for all your services to CUK I hereby grant you a non-exclusive royalty free license to use words "The official" in your threads dedicated to Monday links.

So now it can be - The official "Monday Links from the Fading Light of 2012 vol. CLVI"

My cup runneth over

[AtW]

Nick, thanks for this - for all your services to CUK I hereby grant you a non-exclusive royalty free license to use words "The official" in your threads dedicated to Monday links.

So now it can be - The official "Monday Links from the Fading Light of 2012 vol. CLVI"

[NickFitz]

Here endeth the third year of this nonsense. Remember, waste your time wisely!

• Fun for the Whole Family: Old Computer Ads Revisited - "I guess it was just part of the Universal Lie that was prevalent around home computers and game systems back [in the late 70s/early 80s]: that these things were Educational, would Help With Your Homework, would Bring The Whole Family Together in Joy and Harmony, and not just for little Johnny to shut himself in his room playing Beach Head and Impossible Mission in the hours in between masturbation sessions. Kids told their parents that, and the ads were happily complicit in the lie, representing some kind of nonexistent happy family Utopia in many a ridiculous ad." Like this:
  
  
  
  
  Don't miss the first part, The Psychedelic World of Old Computer Ads.
  
  
• Martin Scorsese's Film School: The 85 Films You Need To See To Know Anything About Film - "Interviewing Martin Scorsese is like taking a master class in film. Fast Company’s four-hour interview with the director for the December-January cover story was ostensibly about his career, and how he had been able to stay so creative through years of battling studios. But the Hugo director punctuated everything he said with references to movies: 85 of them, in fact, all listed below." Watch all these starting tomorrow, and you'll be able to launch your new career as a film director next week
  
  
• Numberphile - "Videos about numbers & stuff." And that's just what it is. Lots of them
  
  
• twin brass keys (valentines day gift) - "I machined 2 keys out of brass 7 months before I asked her to marry me. They are meant to be two separate keys but are designed to fit inside one another." And then there's the box that goes with them, and the secret compartment, and the beautifully over the top mechanism for opening it to reveal the ring... yet another project for the geek aspiring to be a romantic
  
  
• A dreadful hoax! - "In music, one doesn't make the END of a composition the 'point' of the composition." Trey Parker and Matt Stone, of South Park fame, created animations to illustrate a number of recordings of Zen guru Alan Watts. This one explains how society misleads us about what we should value in life.
  
  
  

  
  Shocking! The real purpose of your life! - YouTube
  
  
  There are more available at Freshminds, although unfortunately they require Flash; search for "Alan Watts South Park" on YouTube and you should find them
  
  
• 6 Places You'll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie - "We rarely pay attention to the locations in a film, unless the landscapes are unusually breathtaking (probably CGI) or, like, literally wallpapered in genitals. However, if you think back to your favorite films, you might notice that many of them used the same locations. Just like with actors, there is an elite group of places that tend to show up in hit and/or classic movies." Noteworthy for including the place where Zeity had his showdown with the War Criminal Kirk
  
  
• Some Thoughts on Front Doors - Paint expert Patrick Baty examines the history of painting front doors. "There are two identical front doors for No 10 Downing Street that are swapped over whenever maintenance is required. The ’0′ in the number 10 is painted at an angle as the original door has a badly-fixed zero."
  
  
• What Happens when You are The Doctor on the Airplane? - "My friend Drew is a doctor. I am not... He was the doctor who responded when they asked over the speaker, 'Is there a doctor in the house?' I couldn't let that story go untold, so I sent him a bunch of questions, which he was kind enough to answer." Turns out they don't just sink lower in their seat and try to look like an architect.
  
  
• Soul Men: The Making of The Blues Brothers - Brilliant, long history of the making of the classic film: "We had a budget in the movie for cocaine for night shoots."
  
  
• Time-lapse Images of Nude Dancers Created with 10,000 Individual Photographs - "NY-based photographer Shinichi Maruyama created these lovely photographs using nearly 10,000 individual photographs of a nude dancer in motion."
  
  
  

Happy New Year, and happy invoicing!