Autumn a couple of years ago.
Standing at the window, wondering where to go.
“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.” – Chuck Palahniuk.
I’m not even sure what you call such a thing in English. Hook? Clasp? But it turned out nice, thanks to the rapid development of camera apps. Gather your whole world, piece by minute piece, until you have built a portrait of your life.
The ash-covered landscape of Chile’s Puyehue volcano
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this space shuttle mock-up, dubbed Pathfinder, is attached to the Mate-Demate Device for at fit-check on October 19, 1978. The mock-up, constructed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, possessed the general dimensions, weight and balance of a real space shuttle. (NASA)
Source: The Atlantic
The Space Shuttle Columbia on Rogers Dry lakebed at Edwards AFB after landing to complete its first orbital mission on April 14, 1981. Technicians towed the Shuttle back to the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center for post-flight processing and preparation for a return ferry flight atop a modified 747 to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA/JSC)
Source: The Atlantic
Clean-line food fun.
Star Wars poster by Olly Moss (great work, but ridiculously designed website), if only because I promised myself the first time I saw it, I’m going to rip this guy’s work shamelessly and completely.
Tiny life 2. Dear brown paper, will you ever fall out of grace?
What’s worse about meteorology, or rather, the importance of light and air, is that as soon as you start thinking about it, the feeling disappears.
A short song and video about bicycling all day and all night, created entirely on Apple hardware/software. And a snack bar. And Ettan Lössnus.
Camel thorn trees.
Really doesn’t look like a photograph, but it is, by Frans Lanting for National Geographic.
In this third batch, it’s obvious I must have been so immersed in the plot I forgot to stop and take pictures. Right at the end of Nova Prospekt, there’s a passage where you narrowly escape getting crushed by the mechanized walls that slowly grind through the city. That still gets to me, because it captures all my childhood fear of getting caught by big, malicious machines.
So at this stage in the game, you meet up with Alyx and make your way towards the Citadel, which is where the developers decided to turn the sinisterness knob to eleven, with awesome result. The Citadel interior resembles what I think much of Thomas Haakes lyrics are trying to convey: a completely automated machine world where transhumanism is not a concept, but a fully established regime.
Oh and after that, you know, you blow it all up but then the guy in the gray suit halts time and comes to tell you that you’re going nowhere on your own accord, and everything slips away and he leaves you in complete darkness. Roll credits. Till next time.
Sadly, the Cider release of Half Life 2 I played had some graphic limitations written into it, and I’m not nerd enough to tweak them. So when I arrive at Bridge Point, the large structure is crudely cut off midair instead of fading into the fog across the water.
Still, the noise of the strong winds as I traverse the bridge substructure provide enough atmosphere to convince me at least as much as any nocturnal dream.
Amongst other things, computer games actually wakes my dormant interest in architecture. I notice details in a way I never do in books on the subject, because most of them are deeply boring. Wanna get me inspired? Put me in a well-designed first person shooter.
Seriously, somebody at Valve must love Maxfield Parrish. And Roger Dean.
