luminodot.

Luckily for me, my parents are both artists and so growing up I was handed a constant flow of creativity-inducing and brain-building toys like Lego, Simon Says, Play-Doh, building blocks, crayons, paints… but the big daddy of them all was my Lite Brite. I was only 5, but I wanted to make love to my Lite Brite. It plugged in, it had patterns, it was colourful, and it lit up. There was nothing not to love. My obession with shape and colour, in all it’s incarnations, started with Lite Brite. I’ve suffered with silent nostalgic longing for my Lite Brite for far too long. Finally… my prayers have been answered.

Luminodot is Lite Brite on steroids. Besides looking sleek and modern enough that you could leave it out in your place and not feel like a total throwback if someone you’re trying to impress comes over, but it’s got an online template generator you can convert to .pdf, in addition to its included designs. Complete with 1600 pegs in 12 colours (the total display is 50×70 pegs, or 3500 spots in total), Luminodot is LED backlit and has 25 pre-programmed animated light sequences that allow you to create, literally, motion art.

Right now Luminodot is only up for grabs in Japan for about US $96. I’ve read that some have popped up on eBay for about US $130. The retro/kitsch/designer/geek/artsy market for this is huge, so I’d be shocked if it didn’t make its way to at least a few North American retailers some time soon.

Via Fubiz

james houston: big ideas (don’t get any).

Sometimes I find things that give me faith in the future of humanity. This is one of those things.

When Radiohead started an online contest to remix “Nude” from In Rainbows, the goal was to find the same level of ingenuity and creativity in the remixes as Radiohead has always turned out in… well… everything they’ve ever done. For his final project from graphic design at the Glasgow School of Art, James Houston wired obsolete computer parts to play “Nude”. It’s all kinds of amazing.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

For the hardcore geeks, here’s how he created the instruments:

Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array – Vocals & FX

As for his inspiration, Houston explains it beautifully himself:

“Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.”

The video is also posted on YouTube, and trolling through the comments I found this little gem:

“This is so beautiful. The machines looks so enslaved and pathetic, and yet so loyal and endearing. So fucking beautiful.”

That’s passion right there folks. The guy/gal that wrote that comment just had an experience. I can’t think of a bigger compliment to an artist than that. This is the kind of thing that Thom Yorke’s wet dreams are made of. And even though Houston missed the deadline for the contest, he definitely didn’t miss the point.  Radiohead still heard. They posted the link back to his video on Dead Air Space, Radiohead’s blog and social forum. High praise from the men themselves, and deservedly so.

Via Everyone Forever

bluelounge sanctuary charging station.

This thing is going to be all over the net in about ten minutes, but here’s my two cents anyway. I’m not sure why stuff like this is so awesome, it just is. I think it’s the kind of ridiculous currency of the situation – that we’ve got too many wires… so many wires we can’t take it anymore. There’s famine and disease and economic decline… but I really freak out when I can’t find my iPod cord.

Imagine going back in time, say, to 1969 – there’s colour TV, girls mostly wear skirts on a regular basis, people just got their asses on the moon. You say to someone “In about 40 years, I’m going to have a little flat electronic telephone with no wires that I carry in my pocket, and a little flat electronic record player that holds about 30,000 songs and has little headphones that fit in my ear – oh, and sometimes, the little telephone and the little record player are combined into one little record-playing telephone – and there are so many cords that plug into these little suckers that I need a special, felt-lined box to keep it all straight. God I’m stressed!”

Say hello to the Bluelounge Sanctuary Charging Station. Hmmmm… sanctuary. Sounds like a spa. Or political refuge. Is keeping a couple cords untangled really so traumatic that it involves seeking sanctuary? The Hunchback of Notre Dame needed some sanctuary. My iPod just needs a shelf. Granted, this little puppy looks totally hot and it’s got its own power source and 11 different types of chargers and a USB port built in. I dig the airplane food-esque compartmentalization of the thing – everything has it’s own parallel-aligned spot. At US $129.99 it a little over-priced, but so are the iPod and the mobile phone you’ll be charging in it.

Via BLTD

macbook air.

This article also appeared on Josh Spear

It’s Apple’s world. We just live in it. Right when you think they might chill for a bit, they start dropping innovations as if it’s just another day. Which, for them, it sorta is.

The new MacBook Air is so thin it slides inside an envelope. Weighing only 3 pounds, it’s a mere .76 inches at its thickest point and at it’s thinnest is a shocking .16 inches. Innovations in the screen and keyboard, the two areas that cause the bulk in most laptops, allowed them to slim it down so much. A 13.3 inch wide LED display saves room and battery life, while the full-size backlit keyboard’s ambient light sensor alters the keyboard’s brightness depending on how dark your environment is. Like when surfing porn…

The enlarged trackpad has built in the ease-of-use innovations from the iPhone and iPod Touch: pinch and drag with two fingers to automatically zoom in and out and use the good ol’ finger-swipe technique to scroll through websites in Safari. Their new port hatch fits into the smooth design and clicks open when you need headphones or the USB. Then shut it when you don’t.

In order to ditch the optical drive, they’ve created Remote Disc so you can wirelessly download CD or DVD software from other Macs in the vicinity. Basically, you jack their drive for a while so that you don’t have to carry around your own. If you want to backup your files, the new Time Capsule uses OS X Leopard’s Time Machine to not only automatically but also wirelessly send your stuff to an external drive. You can forget about the FireWire, too. When you open up your new Air the Setup Assistant helps you wirelessly download iTunes, iPhoto, and all your other treasures from your old Mac. Long story short: no wires. Ever.

australia: ipods will kill you.

In a recently launched print campaign, created for the New South Wales Police by DDB Sydney, the message is clear: your iPod will kill you.

These ads are clearly ridiculous. If anyone offered me an iPod with headphone cords long enough to wrap a chalk line around someone, I’d save them the trauma of the accident and just murder them for it. A little sensationalism never hurts when promoting public safety, I suppose, but I combed the NSWP site and couldn’t find any hard data or stats that backed up their claim that iPod-caused road deaths have reached the “epidemic proportions” they claim.

What I find most interesting about these ads are that they have an obvious iPod lying next to the corpse. I’m don’t know what Apple’s official feelings might be, but the online fan-geeks are already up in arms over the slandering of the beloved music player. Let’s face it: an iPod is now as necessary as a mobile phone. Since your mobile phone’s will give you brain cancer and now your iPod will get your hit by a bus, it’s a surprise there are still so many mobile-phone chatting iPod-listening young people still walking around. We should really all be dead by now.

wildcharge: off the wire.

Our inexorable march towards the future continues. Bringing us one step closer to a fully-realized Jetsonality is the WildCharge.

This nifty little pad, wireless itself, charges all your techie electronic things… wirelessly. Walk in the door, throw down your keys, throw your Crackberry on the pad. Makes sense to me. Right now they only offer WildCharges for Motorola Razrs but their site promises that pads for iPods, iPhones, Blackberrys, and more are on the horizon.

Soon we’ll be taking our WildCharge into the hovercar and juicing up our iRobots. It’s only a matter of time…