hellokinsella

It takes aspiring London cabbies two to four years to acquire ‘The Knowledge’. Only if they know their way around the 25,000 streets in a 6-mile radius from Charing Cross (and along 320 main roads within Greater London) will they be licensed to drive one of London’s iconic black cabs. The London Taxicab Examination System is reputed to be the hardest of its kind in the world, and this speaks to the complexity of the British capital’s road grid.

That complexity, and the cabbies’ Knowledge, put passengers at the risk of being overcharged, the Victorians feared. Mid-19th century, even before the current Examination System was instituted (in 1865), a Mr John Leighton devised a system to prevent passengers from being taken for a proverbial as well as a literal ride. Leighton, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, published a scheme to divide London in a number of hexagonals, specifically aimed at preventing overcharging by cab drivers.

“John Leighton suggested that the old borough boundaries should be altered to conform to a honeycomb pattern. Within a 5-mile radius of the General Post Office all the sprawling, differently sized boroughs were to become hexagonal-shaped areas, 2 miles across. There were 19 altogether with the City in the centre of the honeycomb. Each hexagonal borough would be identified by a letter, and the letter as well as a number would be painted or cut out of tin-plate to be visible by day and night on lampposts at every street corner.”

The proposal for a hexagonal London is described in London As It Might Have Been, a book by Felix Barber and Ralph Hyde, also detailing plans for a giant pyramid to house the remains five million dead Londoners, and a scheme to erect a structure in Wembley to dwarf the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Ever wondered what those wizards at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop were doing will all those mad tape machines and huge dials. This helps.

Meet the grandfather of the synthesizer.

Berna vintage electronic studio.

Berna is a software simulation of a 1950s elctronic music studio. Explore serial, concrete and tape music or create strange new soundscapes with vintage technology.

At that time there wasn’t any electronic musical instruments market, as a matter of fact, most of the equipment was adapted from scientific tools belonging to radio engineering departments.

Sometimes the equipment was built from scratch cannibalizing anything that had wires, tubes and pots, more rarely, the studios used the few commercial instruments available in those days, such as the Melchord, the Trautonium and the Theremin.

Contrarily to what happens today, electronic music then was everything but fast and easy to create. A few minutes of electronic composition could take more than one year of work.

More info - Gleetchplug.com

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For the best part of ten years, Guinness ads bearing the slogan Good Things Come To Those Who Wait have worked wonders for the drinks brand, garnering fans of both the drink and its advertising around the world. However, tonight a new TV commercial - created by the brand’s long serving agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO - will air that sees a new campaign line, Bring It To Life, make its debut…

The ad, entitled World (still shown above), sees a group of men playing god and creating a world of their own: Canyons are carved, forests erected and waterfalls are, erm, encouraged - the idea being that this world-creation is a metaphor for the famous surge and settle motion of a pint of Guinness and the way it comes alive in front of your eyes when poured.

What do you think?

More at:
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/november/a-new-guinness-campaign-is-brought-to-life

You’re all familiar with Google Street View and the camera-topped Google Car - but what about all of the interesting places inaccessible to cars?

Enter the Google Trike, which started as a project by Daniel Ratner, a Senior Mechanical Engineer on the Street View team:

“I began thinking about building a bicycle-based Street View system after realizing how many interesting places around the world - ranging from historic landmarks to beautiful trails to shopping districts - aren’t accessible by car,” says Dan. “When I’m riding the trike, so many people come up to me and ask where it’s off to next or how they can get imagery of their favorite spot, so I can’t wait to see what our users come up with.”

Google’s Street View trike lets us take pictures of places that are not accessible by car. Tell us where to send the trike next at http://www.google.com/trike

This Papercraft Self Portrait was made by Eric Testroete as his Halloween costume last weekend.

Eric is a 3D artist in the Vancouver game industry and he was inspired by the big-head mode seen in videogames. You can find more photos in this Flickr set.

G’day I’m Stiv Justic, I’m a real DJ and I’ve been up all night.

Hahah.

Viral campaign for Dunlop Volley I think.

More here: http://www.youtube.com/user/volleywarehouse

Essentially the system collects contacts/info from;

1. Google Profile (and the sites you’ve listed; blogs, social etc..)
2. Google Contacts/Gtalk (friends/family/etc.. and Gtalk peeps)
3. Google Reader ( the blogs/sites you follow)

Getting a top score at Guitar Hero or Rock Band seems like a widely spread ambition in the geek community (what about learning an actual instrument huh?) and trying to master the game using electrotechnical skills is the usual best way to do just that. Videos of those projects are very popular all around Youtube because well, it is indeed a nice engineering project.

Well, here is another one and what’s particular this time is that it’s on the iPhone Rock Band app. The idea is that it scans the screen using light sensors and it then uses sticks with conductive foam at the end to tap the notes. It’s pretty crazy if you ask me, here is how it works in.

The noise is bloody annoying though.

This video examines the benefits and limitations inherent in current mouse-based and window-oriented interfaces, the problems facing other potential solutions, and visualizes my proposal for a completely new way of interacting with desktop computers.

A journey into the microscopic depths of Gordon Ramsay’s wrinkley hate-filled features.

This was made for the BBC comedy website and is based loosely on an old documentary called ‘Powers of Ten’