You may have heard that the US army has developed a “ray gun” capable of inflicting searing pain at long distance. They are not hiding its possible uses as a non-lethal crowd control device.
Check out this Yahoo! news video of the US army giving a demonstration. The “mock-mob” they are directing the beam against are carrying banners with slogans like “World peace” and “Love for all”. It’s nuts, and I wonder how soon it will be before the weapon is being used against US citizens in protests.
I’ve finally set up flickr for blogging, so much fun to be had by all. This is the detail on a harry potter magic wand. I love the french: “agitate the magic baguette”
Lots has happened, but I must first apologise for the state of Neonascent over the last few days. Unfortunately the site was hacked and I’ve spent a day repairing the damage.
I’ve just “processed” the first few images from my homemade 3d camera, and they’re viewable on my flickr page. They are viewable without any glasses or anything - just cross your eyes as per usual for cross-eye stereographs. Some pictures from my farewell, and a few others from just experimenting with the cameras.
Well today was interesting; I got hit by a car. I was riding through a little English town of Woodley, and coming up to a zebra crossing and lollipop lady. A little orange car started pulling out towards me from a right hand street, and I braked and blew my (extremely loud 130db horn), and they kept on coming. Their back-right side nudged me off my bike, which fell to the ground, and I tripped onto the ground.
By the time I’d got up and was checking damage of the bike, the woman who’d hit me came up, shaking, white as a sheet, and with hands held to mouth. So far I seem to have ended up as good as can ever be hoped for a car-on-bike collision… just a sore wrist, scuffed knee, and aching back (waiting to see what aches tomorrow morning!). The bike is a bit scrapped and bruised from the fall too, but was ridable home, and the insurance is looking to come and repair it, and provide a replacement bike.
It was flagrantly the driver’s fault, and there is no dispute over liability, but I feel a bit bad as a biker that I hadn’t managed to pre-empt/anticipate and avoid it (although I guess I managed to evade to some extent). I was wearing a big reflective orange jacket. Needless to say I have a renewed sense of the stupidity of drivers.
I got home and told of my first getting-hit-by-car experience.
Other notable events for today are seeing a fox, and a shooting star. Both during a night time ramble around the village I’m staying in.
Well, my optimistic (lack of) planning didn’t end in disaster; I bought a motorbike on my second day in England, and road to Paris for the festival to see Bjork. Paris was lovely, and I enjoyed remembering French and attempting to communicate with people.
On my way to the airport in Sydney I managed to pick up a D70 that I’d won on ebay that morning, and yesturday I grabbed a cheap Rollop medium format camera at Delft market to experiment with. Lovely, lovely.
Hayden has some eclectic farewell party pictures up on his flickr account. I’ve got some 3D ones that I’ll put up when I get back to England to get my 3D camera. Harrah!
Here’s the latest Josh news: I’m flying to London on the 18th August. Not sure if it will be a long-term trip or not; I’ve only booked a one-way journey, though I’m not going to burn any bridges.
I’m aiming to have a Friday the 17th Birthday/Farewell party. More on that later when I’ve thought about it more.
The good news is that we’ve completed scanning the band members of Dappled Cities Fly, and it looks like I’ll be co-directing (and doing the majority of animation for) a music video for their song Holy Chord.
The bad news is the warehouse I was set up in has been sold, and so I have no studio. I have a fair few models scanned however, and have work that can be done on them without the need of more scanning.
